Minnie Hoopes
My heart thumped, my breath expanded. The weight of time along my forearms, the tug of legacy at my back.
I spun. Strands of hair scattered across my cheekbones and stuck to my eyebrows. I pushed them away. I could build my house snuggled against that embankment. It’d be warm, the blackjacks barring the torrent of wind. And there, in that patch of sunglow, my horses’ barn. A southern orchard, perhaps a glossy orange sapling sprouting toward the sky. From horizon to horizon, an expanse of my own. I’d done it. I’d braved this brutal race and claimed my future.
Beside my flag, I dug into the soil with my shovel, the ricochet against dry earth reverberating up my arms. All the women of my heritage, none had owned land. I thought of my ma, in the dawn light a month earlier, as I’d tightened my last saddlebag onto Cricket. She’d placed her pocket-size Methodist hymnal in my palms, the embossed leather worn, her hands cupping mine.Ma, you sure?She carried that hymnal in her apron every day, humming low in her throat as she worked, sometimes cracking open the spine, lips pursed as she flipped the pages to her song, her timbre a crisp prayer resounding through the sagebrush. Take a breath every now and then,she’d said and drawn me into a hug.Write home when you can. And make sure you tell the Lord about your adventures every day.She’d squeezed me round the shoulders, then let go, her black boots stepping back a pace, beyond the shadow of my silhouette.
After digging a couple of feet into the earth, I untied a few boards from my saddle and tossed them cross the hole, fashioning a makeshift cellar, some evidence I’d improved upon this quarter section. Battles over land ownership could be overlong and brutal. I jogged to Cricket and brought my nose to his soft, soot-black muzzle. “We did it, old buddy.” I mounted, and with one last glance at my flag snapping in the wind, we galloped to check the other three corners of the claim, to make sure no one else had beat me. But I knew this was my land. I’d gotten here first. A gleam of afternoon gold brushed over the field as we checked the markers—none had been claimed.
Down in the creek bottoms, I drank and filled my canteens. I lay in the water, submerging beneath the surface, cleansing, reviving, andthen we rode back through the gilded land, and I swear, the power of the earth pulsed below Cricket’s hooves.
The ground shuddered and groaned as if awakening. Perhaps a norther blustered through the meadowflowers. Maybe a stampede approached from afar. Or perhaps my land had come alive to welcome me.
I swung down and walked through fiery red grass, drenched skirts dragging behind. I pushed aside the braided layers of stiff, pale groundcover until I found the dirt. Pressing into the soil, my finger pads felt the warmth of the earth. “Hello,” I whispered.
It was quiet. The rush of the wind, the faint song of a meadowlark, some guttural gunfire faroff, but no brothers, fathers, neighbors. I’d heard of the isolation, of the deep loneliness of homesteading life. But I hungered boundlessly for space. To be rid of remembrances and begin anew. I pushed up, wiped my palms on my skirts.
Time to hurry onward to the land office. This was still a race, after all. I jogged back to Cricket and grasped my saddle pommel—then hesitated. An all-overish quiver of disquiet shot up the back of my neck.
Something had changed.
I lowered my boots back to the dirt. Unease spread across the expanse, like ink in water. I swiped a palm across my forehead, unsure.
And then I smelt it. Warm and deep, the scent of winter’s end.
Fire was coming.
Chapter Four
Beyond my rolling hills, along the edge of the horizon, spread a line of orange. The blaze careened forward; two cowboys silhouetted the glow. They must’ve set the fire, supposing it’d chase me off. I squinted—was that brawny one the Lawman?
Cricket reared, tendons contracting on his neck. I grasped his bridle. White sclera was visible below his amber irises, wrinkles tented above his eyelids. “We’re fine.” I rubbed his nose. “Hold on to your boots.”
I must start a backfire. With my hunting knife, I sliced off a branch from a hazel shrub, then dug in my satchel for matches.
The box was damp. I cursed and struck the lucifer. Nothing. Struck again. Nothing. The wind pummeled southeast, which would draw the wildfire straight to us. During a drought, with a strong wind, a prairie fire could flare past in minutes, devouring everything in its path.
I struck the lucifer on the box, struck again. And—finally, the match burst. After lighting my hazel branch, I raced to the hilltop and studied the bearing of the wind, the oat-colored grasses tossing about in discord. I lit the grass before me.
A feathery plume of fountain grass caught. The red-orange ember glowed, and then the flame expanded, blackened waves unfurling, ready to ravage. I gauged the direction of my backburn. The blaze burnt true, upwind and straight toward the oncoming fire. I swept my hazel brush in a strip before me, igniting the grasses and honey mesquite bushes along the cusp of the hill. Fire tumbled down my branch, the entirestalk almost ablaze. Heat singed the hair on my forearms. I moved along my line, creating a burnt refuge, my backfire creeping down the hill with crackling flame, wind roaring across the prairie. The springtime fires of years past had echoed with voices. Lark rushing up and down the line, jittery with enthusiasm; Magnolia poised below her bonnet, her gaze focused on the burn; Pa hollering instructions to Ezra; Willie cursing as he burnt himself.
I tossed my branch into the flames, yanked up a stalk of dried thistle, and sliced off the prickly edges. Around the stalk, I looped a nightgown and wetted the fabric with my canteen. I dumped my other canteen onto my necktie and pulled the doused cotton over my mouth. Then I squared my shoulders and battled flame. My fire behaved well, slithering down the slope, but here and there it burst backward. I stomped and swung. My shoulders ached; my hands throbbed. Smoke sank into my skin, clogged my breath, but my fire fell back. My fire would fight fire.
A few knolls away, the headfire loped across the plain at unbelievable speed, gobbling up all the colors and nutrients of my land. The flames rose as tall as a wood grove. Fingers of crimson reached outward, as if to grasp me, as if the hunger and greed of this race had infected the flame. I recognized the wildfire’s frantic need to devour, its inability to harness control. But I hoped I never again was that destructive.
Once my fire had burnt a couple of feet of blackline, I grasped Cricket’s reins and stepped onto the charred earth, the coals hot against the soles of my boots. I knelt at the hill’s divot, tugged Cricket toward me. He jerked his head, eyes wide in terror and pain, but he didn’t run.
The oncoming fire boomed like a thundering locomotive. I pressed my knees into our refuge, the ground searing the white cotton of my skirt, the embers blackening the tiny bluebonnets growing along the fabric. The fire a column of red and bronze, violet and cobalt shadows, wisps of ochre and mustard. We were surrounded by flame, the wildfire roaring and snapping, my hair sizzling, the swarm of heat suffocating.And then, after a moment engulfed, the terror surged past, racing on to devour whatever next fell into its path, its hiss dimming and dimming until I could again breathe.
Flakes of gray drifted onto my shoulders: ashes floating in smoke. I tugged the damp fabric off my mouth, swept the cloth over my face. The white cotton coiled in my palms, covered in soot. Somehow I knew my life would never be free of ash again. I fingered the ends of my hair, walnut-brown strands dappled by smoke and chalk.
The wildfire had burnt roots and branches, scars and memory. The sky above transformed into gunmetal-tinged clouds of smoke, as if the earth had exhaled a puff of exhaustion, and then something murmured up from the deep. I felt whispers.
It was like the earth groaned.
I toppled backward into the debris. I needed air and water. The fire had stolen my senses and left me dreaming. I held my temples, inhaled, and stood. I must continue.
I strode to my saddlebag, my body full of smoke, my bones sluggish, and yanked out my Winchester. Trained the barrel on the horizon.
