Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

There wasn’t time for Laura to even speak to Johnny at the fire. He managed to stop the whole train of horses not a dozen paces from her perch. He leapt to the ground as she slithered down from her boulder.

He kissed her, grinned, and slapped her butt, before turning and sprinting back toward the fire. He was on the radio before he was even fully turned away.

Many men had slapped her butt. And almost every one had carried the bright red mark on their cheek of the hardest slap she could deliver.

Johnny’s slap told her that life was so damn good that she could barely keep the feeling inside. She wanted to dance as she hugged Mister Ed’s nose. He was blowing hard with the intensity of the brief run through the close flames, but his ears were pricked forward and his tail whipped about with his pleasure at being out of the fire and with her again.

Two-Tall clambered down, offered her a sickly smile, then chased his friend’s heels back to fight the fire.

The horses were positively giddy as she led them back down the trail to the Lodge. In their corral she carefully tended each one, giving them all extra oats.

Word soon filtered up to the Lodge that the horses were back. Her entire ride group came down to the corral, much the worse for their time in the bar. Others joined in to see the horses who had galloped through the flames. Bess must be spreading the word far and wide.

Laura only told the story once. The tour group was much more somber when she finished her tale of what two men had done to save seven horses. She then left it to the voluble Gus and his fiancée to retell and embellish the tale.

After that, she kept quiet, calmed her horses and herself.

And did her best not to smile too much at the image of her white knight, in char-dusted yellow Nomex and a hardhat, riding hell bent for leather out of the flames.

# # #

It was dawn by the time Akbar came off the line. He’d turned down the chopper ride and followed the trail east toward the Lodge. He was dog tired, but they’d beaten down the southeastern branch of the fire.

The deep slice that Krista’s team and the choppers had cut into the fire to clear his escape route along the trail had been held. And it was rapidly tied into the flanking retardant they’d been building along the edge of the canyon. The fight to contain it had been close, but they’d held it at bay while the choppers trapped the upper lines of the fire from spreading sideways.

They’d let the flames above the trail run up the mountain to die above the timberline, on the barren rocks left behind by the summer’s retreating snow. The edge of the fire was defined by the southern ridge of Zigzag Canyon and the right angle slice of the PCT had been held. There was no need to evacuate the Lodge or the ski areas.

The north side was still in play, but a Hotshot team had become available and one of the new high-capacity fixed-wing air tankers would be on site as soon as the sun was up. The BAe-146 with its four jet engines could deliver three times the load of the Firehawk. So, he’d left half of his smoke team embedded with the Hotshots, and released the other half when a mop-up crew had arrived at his and Krista’s side of the fire.

It felt good to simply walk off the high tension and adrenalin of the firefight, but he was thankful for the level trail. A day and a night on the front lines had left him a little lightheaded. The morning chill sliding downslope from the ice fields slowly cooled his skin until he was glad of the exercise to keep him warm. He should have kept his jacket when he was tossing his gear aboard the chopper headed back to camp.

He wanted to check on the horses, see if Mister Ed was willing to talk to him, and he’d bet Laura would be up on the mountain early this morning.

Akbar reached the corral below the Lodge as the sun edged over the mountain peaks to the east and splashed long dark shadows that distorted the world.

The horses were still asleep. He leaned on the corral rail and watched them for a while.

Laura had trusted him and he’d found a way to deliver. Women who trusted Akbar were usually in for a rude shock somewhere along the way. But for Laura, he’d been driven to a creative solution by his desire to deserve her trust. That the tactic had ultimately led to the containment of the fire had entered into his plan, but he hadn’t actually expected it to work as well as it had.

He liked the way it felt that she’d trusted him. And that he’d proven himself trustworthy. He also knew there’d have been no blame if he hadn’t saved the horses; it wasn’t something a woman like her would do. There’d be hurt and pain and tears and all of those other things he’d always done his best to avoid, but there would never be blame. Like his crew, she simply knew he’d always do his best.

Akbar realized that the big gelding was watching him from across the corral.

“Yeah, who are we kidding?” he whispered softer than the dawn. “Trust isn’t the question that’s bothering us, is it?”

Mister Ed shook his head, flipping his dark brown mane back and forth and making his big ears flop ridiculously.

“It’s that she loves us.”

The horse offered a snort.

At the sound, Akbar spotted movement over in the corner of the corral. On a bed made of straw bales and a couple of horse blankets, Laura shifted position slightly, then slid back into sleep.

As quietly as he could, he clambered over the fence. He stopped a step away and looked down at her. Love was a word that he’d heard a lot in his family; it was a family sort of word.

How hard would it be to imagine Laura in a family sort of way? Not very hard at all once he tried it. Akbar found it easy to picture living in the beautiful cabin in the woods, a small herd of horses dancing about the corral, maybe even a kid. Nope, not hard to picture at all.

If he put her I love you in a place down inside himself, it made perfect sense.

He heard the slow clip-clop of the big tan gelding coming up behind him across the hard-packed earth. Mister Ed stopped with his head beside Akbar’s shoulder. He rubbed the horse’s nose as they looked down at the sleeping woman together.

“Yes,” he told the horse. “She makes it real easy to imagine.”

“Hey, lover,” Laura greeted him with a sleepy voice, looking up at him with those half-lidded honey-gold eyes.

“Hey, my love,” he had to try it out. Oddly enough, it wasn’t scary at all. It fit inside him as if he’d been waiting his whole life for that one missing piece.

She lifted one edge of the blanket. He left the horse and slid against her warmth, holding her long into the brightening day.