The Big Burn (19 page)

"And did it?" Jarrett asked.

"I don't know."

The man hurried to catch up with the group ahead, and Jarrett guessed from the way he grabbed an arm and hung on that he was after another person to tell his story to.

"We were fortunate," Jarrett said.

"Yes," Rolling Joe agreed.

***

Later, when the sounds of a working railroad yard told Jarrett they were almost to Avery, he asked Rolling Joe, "You got a place to go from here?"

"The Reeses will go to Spokane, where Mrs. Reese waits," he said. "Henry asked me to go with them to help. Then, I am thinking, I might come back to see if the railroad has work."

"It probably will," Jarrett said. "It's always needing men." He paused, knowing
needing men
and
needing Chinese
weren't necessarily the same thing. "Say," he said, speaking impulsively, "what's your real name?"

The man walking next to him hesitated. "Li Danian," he said. "If you wish, you may call me Lao Li. It means 'Old Li.'" When Jarrett started to protest Lao Li chuckled. "Don't worry. It is an honorable way to call me."

"Then I will," Jarrett said. "What are you going to do now, Jarrett?"

"I don't know, Lao Li. I haven't got past thinking I need to let the Forest Service know we're alive."

The Chinese man said, "It is because of you that we are."

Jarrett, embarrassed at the praise, shook his head. "That's not right," he said. "We all pitched in. But thank you for saying it."

A few minutes later they reached the first buildings on Avery's western outskirts. Passing Pop's place, Jarrett was relieved to see the window shades down and the front door closed. On a day this hot, the shut-up house probably meant he was off on a train run, well away from the St. Joe fires.

The relieved feeling surprised Jarrett, since he hadn't realized he had been worrying about Pop.

The sight of soldiers in town also surprised Jarrett, and then he remembered talking with Seth Brown about how his outfit was probably headed here.

Jarrett said good-bye to his crew and the Reeses outside the soldiers' camp, where an army corpsman was dispensing help as needed.

At the one remaining railroad station—one
had
burned—Lizbeth and Celia learned that the eastbound hospital train carrying Mrs. Marston was feared lost. Sometime during the night it had picked up additional refugees in Mullan, which had been bracing for flames sweeping down on that town. Since then no further telegraphed messages about its whereabouts had come in.

So much was not known. Lizbeth heard someone say Supervisor Weigle had finally made it in from Placer Creek, but he'd had a narrow escape. And that Ranger Pulaski had saved a bunch of men, but he'd got hurt doing it.

Here, men fought the remains of fires still burning in the smoke-filled city, and others patrolled, watching for flare-ups. In the light of day, though, and with the emergency at least for now behind them, they seemed to have slipped back into thinking fire work wasn't a job for females. Lizbeth's offer to help got turned down.

Celia was needed more. Hospital beds were filling up with injured firefighters coming in from the burning mountains, and a beleaguered nurse jumped at Celia's volunteering to do what chores she could.

The nurse didn't want Lizbeth, though. "You're just too young, child," she said, not unkindly, her Irish brogue thick. "You don't want to be seeing the wounds we'll have in front of us this day."

"Go on," Celia said. "If things get too bad, I'm sure you'll be called on."

At a loss for what to do, Lizbeth wandered through residential streets, where house doors and windows stood open. She watched a pair of young soldiers go from one home to another, knocking and calling, and where they didn't get an answer, they closed things up for the absent owners.

They reminded her of the soldier who had run to Jarrett's aid, and she wondered if he might be someplace about Since half the soldiers had been sent to Avery, he might be down there.

Avery,
where Jarrett was from. Of course, he was off in the woods someplace—far, far away, she hoped, from the fires that had caught the injured men she'd seen at the hospital.
What's happening on the St. Joe anyway? Does anybody know?

Abruptly, she turned toward the Western Union office, which was open despite its being Sunday. People waited in line to send word of their situation to faraway relatives. Others bunched up to read a list of telegrams that had arrived and could be picked up.

"Why, there's one sent from Italy," a woman said. "Can you imagine? Someone clear across the ocean is worried about us in Wallace!"

"I don't see how you know that," another said.

"It's from Rome. It's to Wallace. It stands to reason," the first woman answered.

Lizbeth saw an employee come out and hurry toward Forest Service headquarters, a telegram in his hand. She followed him, only to be caught up in the crowd outside the door. Within minutes word of the telegram's contents circulated.

"It was from Avery," she heard. "The St. Joe's burning up. Dozens of dead up Setzer and Big Creek and injured men pouring in."

Lizbeth's whole body went cold.

"How's Avery itself?" someone asked.

"Apparently still safe."

Mr. Polson touched Lizbeth's elbow. "We've got good people down there," he said. "I'm sure they'll have gotten most of the men out."

"But you don't know?"

Mr. Polson looked about a hundred years old. "No," he said. "With communications down all over the Coeur d'Alene, we're lucky to have the Avery line still working. And given all the backcountry between here and there, with trails probably blocked, no way to get word in or out ... it's going to be days before we know what's happened. Even closer in..."

He paused, and when he spoke again his words sounded pained and careful. "We're hearing as many contradictions as straightforward accounts, so it's hard to know what to believe. But we do have several crews unaccounted for, and one of them is a group Samuel Logan took over just the other day." Mr. Polson shook his head as though wishing to clear it of thoughts worse than he could stand. "Samuel's likely all right, but I thought you might wish to warn your aunt."

Lizbeth realized she must be looking puzzled, because Mr. Polson asked, "Did I misunderstand your aunt's interest? When she came in yesterday to ask about him, I assumed ... Well, I better get myself back to work. And, Lizbeth, as far as your young man goes—I hear firefighters are pouring into Avery. Chances are Jarrett's safe among them."

Lizbeth felt herself blush. "I don't think he's my young man," she said.

"You might not," Mr. Polson told her. "But he does."

Seth walked patrol with other soldiers up and down the crowded platform of the railroad depot, not sure they were being much help. As far as he could tell, the railroad men were running things the way they wanted to. Or running them, anyway, as much as they could in all this crush of people trying to find out what was going on.

Like Abel had said, outsiders were coming in from all over, adding to the townspeople in the streets.

Seth had finally figured out what Abel wanted to do. Even told straight it sounded mad. Change their uniforms for regular clothes and think they could get away unnoticed?

Seth wouldn't have listened for a minute, except the other things Abel had said were turning out to be true. By midmorning everybody was sure Avery would burn, and everybody knew that only the civilians were going to be sent out.

"It'll work, you'll see," Abel had promised. He'd said how he one time saw a place being evacuated, and how all the people had gone pure crazy with fright. "Crowding and shoving and trying to be the first out." "Don't you see?" Abel had said. "All we got to do is go patrol some empty houses for suits of clothes and whatever else might help us after. Money. Or watches. Stuff like that. Then..."

Seth had stopped him right there. "I'm not doing any thieving," he said. "And I ain't going with you
if you
are."

The instant he'd said those words, he'd wished he could take them back.

"I knew you'd come along," Abel had said. "We're a team."

Seth, smarting from how he'd outtalked himself, had said, "I been meaning to ask about that. How come you just don't do all this stuff by your own self? You don't need me for none of it"

"Just because...'Cause everybody got to have a buddy. You're mine." Abel had given Seth a hard-to-figure look. "I'm yours. Who else you got?"

Now Seth reached the end of the platform, made a smart turn like he learned in drill, and started back the other way. It was the half of his patrol where he could better see into town.

Lord, there sure was a lot of firefighters roaming about, and they were wearing all kinds of bandages. Mostly around their eyes, Seth saw, thinking fire must be real hard on eyes.

One thing to say for Abel's plan—them not having white skins wouldn't matter in that mob. Right this minute, wasn't Seth seeing a pair of firefighters blacker than him?

And all sorts of people who looked foreign.

Seth turned again and saw two men come around the closest corner of the depot One of them, wearing an engineer's cap, seemed to be having a hard time shaking free of the other. Angrily, the engineer said, "I told you, I don't know where Logan lives. Now stop bothering me." He jerked out of the other man's grip, and Seth glimpsed a hand that was missing fingers.

Something probed at the back of Samuel's neck, an insistent touch that sent pain screaming through him. He tried to say
Stop,
but he couldn't draw enough air up his throat to form the word.

Even breathing was an agony of choking and hacking up grit He'd got a mouthful of dirt all right he thought, but that wasn't nearly as terrible as the persistent poking at the base of his skull.

It's bad enoug/i I've failed my pack test,
he thought
letting that mule boot me to kingdom come. That Forest Service man giving the exam has no need to torment me more.

And why was the man whining? Samuel wondered. He wasn't the one eating dirt.

Samuel struggled to turn his head, the effort causing him to spit up more grit—it tasted like a potato jacket burned to ash in a campfire.
Ash...

A clearer thought stirred in his mind, and he groped toward it This wasn't his ranger's examination, was it? That was years before. And he'd passed it after all. Showed how he could run a survey line, fell a tree where he was told to put it, estimate timber, and shoot a pistol and a rifle. Answered questions.
How would you put out a snag fire? What would you do in a wildfire?

Run like crazy,
he'd written. The Forest Service had hired him anyway. Maybe nobody there had known a better answer.

"Stop bothering me!" Samuel demanded, but he couldn't tell if he'd managed to say the words aloud. Painfully, he swatted at his neck, wanting to halt the hurtful jabbing. He touched sticky fur.

Boone?

Boone surely wasn't at Samuel's ranger examination. Boone didn't come until later, a puppy scraping out survival in an abandoned logging camp Samuel had holed up in for a time his first winter as a forest guard. The little guy had dug himself into a snowbank, and his eyes had blazed fearful and hopeful as Samuel had coaxed him out. Samuel had stretched full out in the snow to do it, just like now.

But that was wrong. Snow would feel good, not like the hot, rocky earth scratching against Samuel. And it would smell clean, instead of like smoke and things burning. If he could just remember...

Snowbank ... dirt bank ... dirt hollow...

***

The next time Samuel awoke, he knew he lay facedown in the hollow depression he'd dug by the rocks. And he remembered setting backfires, the way he'd promised his crew. As long as he could stand to, he'd fanned the backfires toward the onrushing flames, and then he'd run to the hollow and flattened himself as deep into it as he could. Boone had burrowed in next to him as Samuel had tried to keep his breathing shallow in the thin band of fresh air along the ground.
So we've lived,
Samuel thought He hadn't expected that He wondered if his crew had gotten away. And Thistle? The last Samuel had seen of his horse, Thistle was racing in circles, terrified, neighing. A bull elk had run by, and Thistle had shied away from it and then bolted in the other direction as a mountain lion streaked past.

If Samuel could just open his eyes, he thought he could see who it was that wouldn't leave his neck alone.

Then he remembered that it wasn't a person but Boone who was with him.

They'd need someone to come for them soon, or they would die. Samuel knew that Die of thirst if not bums.

It took Samuel long moments of worrying over how dry mouthed he was before he remembered he'd saved a canteen of water for just this. And then it took him a long, long time to unscrew the cap and get the canteen to his mouth. To drink some and spill some into his hand for Boone.

The scene at the depot was degenerating into pandemonium as more and more women piled onto the evacuation train, dragging children, carrying babies, pulling bags of belongings along.

Hearing someone call his name, Jarrett turned and saw Mr. Blakeney, the railroad man who'd hired and fired him from his job as a fire spotter. Without a word of greeting, Mr. Blakeney demanded, "Logan, where's your father? I need him to help direct these soldiers."

"Isn't Pop on a run?" Jarrett asked.

"No, his run was cancelled, and anyway, he didn't show. First time I've ever known him to miss."

I never have,
Jarrett thought.

"When you find him," Mr. Blakeney went on, "tell him to get down here and make himself useful. These soldiers mean well, but they don't know squat about loading trains."

A woman carrying a dog and pulling along a small child claimed his attention. "There's a soldier over there saying no animals. Explain to him pets are different."