Too bad the tower didn’t have water in it. They could have opened some draining valves near the bottom, and that would have helped extinguish the fire. But no. It hadn’t been repaired enough to become functional again, and now it might not ever be.
The flames licked a fence that ran along the pasture where a few days before Zane had taken those ill-fated steps on the dam.
Some colorful words had left the mouths of all he’d been standing near as they realized the magnitude of the location of the fire.
Yeah. Go on cussing. That’s the only thing he could thinkto do too.
They’d set up their front lines, aiming their hoses at the blaze as the flames jumped voraciously toward the old tower.
Peeling paint flew into the air, looking like dirty snow.
“They’re cedar planks.” Mack joined him. “The structure is mostly cedar planks held together by steel bands.” On Mack’s dirty face was a sad semblance of a smile lifted at one corner.
Parker walked up. He hadn’t been on the volunteer team for very long, but he was getting the hang of things. “We better start planning for the possibility of a collapse, Zane.” Parker’s voice was a warning above the roaring of the water on the fire.
Inexplicably, Zane’s first thought after Parker’s words wasn’t an image of the tower crashing down. And it wasn’t of a possible prevention tactic.
His first thought was of Mabel. Of the last time he’d seen her, clutching both Styles’s hand and Chief’s leash, her chin raised, her eyes questioning. Hurt.
She was the most precious thing to him. She was the reason he did what he did. It was because of her that he was who he was and had the strength to lead his women and men in the worst fire he’d ever had to deal with.
But her eyes had spoken of betrayal, and he suddenly realized what it must have looked like when Carolina showed up. Zane had been surprised to see her, and they had little time to talk. She had started to explain why she was there but never got to finish.
He wished he’d had time to talk—really talk—with Mabel. Because the Facebook post and the photo, combined with his distance over an insecurity of how Mabel’s day with Dallin Conforth had gone, would certainly be weighing on Mabel. And then to see Carolina there at the proposal?
Oh no. He might lose Mabel over this. Just when they’d begun treating one another in a way that was finally consistent with how they’d been feeling all this time. Just when he hoped he was starting to regain her trust.
“Zane? It might collapse.” Parker placed a hand on Zane’s shoulder.
He knew Parker was right. But how was this supposed to work? They couldn’t give up yet. Preparing for collapse was, in some ways, allowing the structure to burn some more because the women and men had to back way up, which meant giving the fire the go-ahead to charge ahead in its destruction.
“How do you want to proceed, Chief?” someone asked at his elbow, but the fire was so loud and the blood pulsing through his head was so overwhelming that he wasn’t sure who it was.
Holding his eighty-pound hose steady, he ordered several people to go around to the dry brush in the back in an offensive move. Stepping forward, he yelled at the driver to inch closer in his defensive attack. His friends—his brothers and sisters—flanked him on either side as they stepped carefully into the fire.
His eyes played tricks on him sometimes when he was fighting a fire. Because he didn’t see until now the blacked legs propping up the tank. Yes, they were blackened, already compromised.
How much longer until the whole thing gave way?
Zane lost all track of time as he continued to fight, moving along the edge. He vaguely thought of Silver Plum, but his gut told him the structures closest to this edge of town would be fine. There was still a mile until the flames reached city limits, and that had been the last time he’d checked. The guys he’d left in charge of that side were experts at what they did. He’d trust them with anything.
“Chief, there’s evidence of arson,” someone said to his left. “Possible accelerants. And the burn patterns over near the sediment barare suspicious.” Zane turned to look at who was talking. He didn’t recognize the man at first. It wasn’t until someone else called him by his name that he realized it was one of the bigwigs on the county team.
When had the county gotten there?
He ordered his team to retreat. The flames were so close to toppling the tower that he couldn’t risk it anymore.
He could only pleaded in his mind.Please. Please.
“The cedar?” August yelled at him, his face covered in smudges of soot. “It’s so waterlogged that it might hold it off a bit. Maybe we can avoid a collapse.”
“Let’s keep pushing it, then.” Zane wasn’t sure of anything, but if there was a chance they could save it from collapse, they’d better try. Saving it from utter ruin? Probably not possible. But they could try to save it from collapse. That was their next job: to mitigate the damage as best as possible.
They fought into the night, long past dark.
When he could take a step back and breathe without his mask, he saw that his watch read 12:21 a.m. No wonder he was so exhausted. No wonder his head beat like a drum with the lingering adrenaline.
They seemed to be making progress, though. The flames that lapped up the water tower’s base were dwindling.
