They kept coming.
Within fifteen minutes, the road looked like a parking lot.Pickups, sedans, SUVs, a tractor, and an ancient flatbed that belonged to Harlan, with a 500-gallon water tank strapped to the bed.People climbed out of vehicles carrying shovels, rakes, wet blankets, buckets, and optimistically, garden hoses.
Jenna arrived towing her big stock trailer and four more shovels.She’d left Sully at the ranch guarding the herd.
Rose appeared with Cooper.She’d closed the diner and sent everyone east to flee the fire or west to fight it.
Tucker’s ambulance parked behind the fire engine.Molly was with him.She jumped out and started organizing a first-aid station with calm efficiency.
Gray stood on the fire engine’s running board and looked at the assembly.Ranchers, shopkeepers, retirees, waitresses, a hodgepodge of people who called this place home and came together as one when their home was threatened.
And all of them were here because a chain of phone calls that started with Bonnie.It had reached every corner of the valley and brought dozens of them here in under twenty minutes.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We’re cutting a fire break along County Road 10!”He pointed west.“The fire is coming down Mason Ridge.It’s moving six to eight feet per minute.We have maybe forty-five minutes before it reaches the road.I need everyone who can shovel to go to the east side of the road and scrape the grass back to bare dirt.A strip at least ten feet wide, as far north and south from where Walter Meeks is digging as we can go in the time we have.He’s found the center of the fire.Spread out in both directions from him.”
Harlan raised a hand.“What about the water?”
“I’ll position the engine at the south end of the fire break.Harlan, can you take your water tank to the north end?If the fire tries to flank us, we hit it with water and push it back toward the break.”
“I’ll take the middle with Walter,” Cooper said.
“I’ll go with him,” Boone chimed in.
The volunteers moved out.Gray drove the fire truck over to the dirt road, carrying two dozen volunteers on the fire truck’s generous fenders.They hopped down and fanned out along the dirt road, a ragged line of people with shovels and hand tools.Walter already had a fifty-foot-long strip cleared as he scraped grass with the practiced rhythm of a man who’d been doing this since before fire science was a college degree.
Several ranch hands fell in beside him.Charlotte and Natalie worked the section nearest the truck.Jenna drove the stock trailer up and down the dirt road to ferry tools, water, and more volunteers as they arrived.
Willard Thomason, a pinochle regular who made Ruth Sanger look like a spring chicken arrived with a lawn chair, a pair of binoculars, and a walkie-talkie.He set himself up on a piece of high ground near the staging area and announced that he would be serving as the “fire spotter.”This appeared to mean he would sit in his chair and provide running commentary on the fire’s progress to anyone within earshot.
Within a few minutes, though, Gray had to admit Willard’s information was actually useful.They were able to add volunteers to spots where the digging was going slow and shift the entire line of diggers when the wind shifted and drove the fire slightly further south.
Rose walked up to the engine and thrust a big cardboard box at Gray.“A hundred sandwiches.People are going to be hungry.”
“Rose, we’re fighting a fire.”
“And fires take hours.People fight better when they’ve eaten.”
He took the box.The next time Jenna returned with the stock trailer, he handed it to her.
He was climbing back onto the engine cab roof to get a better view of the fire line when his phone rang.Bonnie.
“Status?”she asked, all business.
“We’re cutting a fire break along the north-south County Road 10.Maybe sixty people on the line.More volunteers are still arriving.Apple Pie Creek Fire department is still twenty minutes out.”
“I’ve got more people coming.Sheriff Wheeler’s sending two deputies with chainsaws.And I got a hold of the county road crew supervisor at home.He’s bringing over a road grader.”
He nearly dropped the phone.A motor grader could scrape a fifty-foot-wide fire break in the time it took fifty people to scrape ten feet.“Bonnie, you’re a genius.”
“The county yard’s eight miles out.He should be at your location in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s incredible.”He swallowed.“That changes everything.”
“I hope so.”
“Where are the kids?”he asked.
“My parents will be here in twenty minutes.They’re taking Cassidy and Noah back to Apple Pie Creek with them.They’ll be safe.”
