“Bad.Chinook’s driving it toward town.”
“I’ll bring the ambulance.Where?”
“West ridge road.Staging area at the county turnoff.”
“I’m fifteen minutes out.”
“Bring Molly.Bring everybody.”
He pocketed his phone as he opened his truck door.
The passenger door flew open.“I’m coming with you,” Sully said.“The rest of the ranch hands will be right behind us.”
“I need you here.If it jumps the ridge and comes toward the ranch, move all the livestock to the river bottom.The creek bed’s a natural fire break.”
Sully’s jaw tightened, but he nodded.He was a rancher to his core, and protecting the herd was an instinct deeper than argument.
Gray drove to the station faster than was advisable on a gravel road.The bay door was open in under a minute.He pulled the engine out of the bay.The water reservoir was full.Fifteen hundred gallons.He’d kept it topped off all week, ever since the chinook started because his gut had been shouting at him for days that this might happen.
Driving the engine through Cobbler Cove with the siren screaming felt surreal.Main Street was quiet—Saturday morning, the diner half-full, a few pickups angle-parked along the curb.People looked up as the fire engine passed.Some pointed.Some pulled out their phones.By the time he reached the west end of town, he could see curtains being pulled back in houses and front doors opening.
The first police cars arrived at the west edge of town as he streaked past the last houses before farmland took over.
Ruth Sanger’s phone was doing its work.
The smoke column had widened in the ten minutes since he’d first seen it.It was darker now, heavier, and the base was no longer a single point.The fire had spread along the ridge, running with the wind, eating the dead grass in a line that was lengthening by the minute.
He could see the flames.
Orange and yellow, low to the ground, moving fast through the dry grass with the rolling, liquid motion he’d read about in his wild land fire behavior textbook.The fire wasn’t crowning.There were no trees on the ridge to climb into.But the grass fire was running.Fast.Driven by the chinook, it was advancing east at a speed that made his stomach drop.
He parked the engine at the county road turnoff where the dirt track met the paved road.High ground.Good sightlines.Room for other vehicles to stage.
He climbed onto the roof of the engine cab and looked west.
The fire line was roughly three-quarters of a mile long and advancing toward town at eight to twelve feet per minute.That was fast for a grass fire.
Worse, there were no natural fire breaks between the fire and Cobbler Cove
He pulled up a topographic map on his phone.Studied it urgently.Found what he was looking for.A dirt road that ran north-south roughly half a mile ahead of the fire’s current position.If they could cut a fire break along that road and remove enough fuel on its east side, they could stop the fire before it reached town.
It would take the fire maybe an hour to reach the road.
He was going to need a lot of shovels and a lot of hands wielding them.
The first pickup truck arrived just then.It was Walter Meeks with two shovels and a fire extinguisher in his truck bed.He pulled up beside the engine and rolled down his window.
“Harlan called me,” Walter said.“Said the west ridge is burning.”
“It is.I need you to drive to this dirt road, County Road 10 ...”Gray pointed to the map on his phone, “...and start cutting grass back from the east side.Scrape it to bare dirt, at least ten feet wide.Can you do that?”
“Son, I’ve been fighting grass fires since before you were born.I know what a fire break is.”
“Then you know we need it done fast.The fire will reach that road in an hour.Find the fire’s head.It’s the spot running ahead of the rest.The fire will be the most intense and moving fastest there.Start digging where the head’s going to cross the road and work outward from there.”
Walter gave him a thumbs up through the window and pulled away with a spit of gravel from his tires.
The second vehicle was Boone Crawford’s truck with Charlotte in the passenger seat and a truckload of shovels and rakes that looked like they’d been grabbed from the hardware store.Behind them, Natalie pulled up with a big cooler full of wet towels in the back seat.Behind her came a truck Gray didn’t recognize.It held three ranch hands from a spread north of town.
