Page 83 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

Sadie shrugs. “Maybe that goat forgot.”

“I suppose anything’s possible,” Red says, reaching over to ruffle her curls, and she nods as though he’s finally seen reason.

The laughter keeps circling the fire while Sadie curls against Arizona with half a toasted marshmallow clutched in her sticky fist, happily chewing away as Arizona laughs over another story.

Emmett stretches out in his chair with an easy smile that I’ve barely seen all week, and even Red quits scanning the fence line long enough to stare into the fire while the horses wander through the pasture behind us.

Watching all of them together makes me think maybe this bonfire did exactly what I’d hoped it would.

A deafening blast rips across the ranch, jerking every head toward the equipment sheds before another explosion follows and a wall of orange fire surges into the night above one of the rodeo trailers.

“Shit,” Red barks as his chair flips backward behind him.

He’s already running before the rest of us reach our feet, and my pulse hammers as I spot the trailer fully ablaze.

“The trailer!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Arizona

Smoke rips through my throat before I even register the shouting. I’m already running toward the equipment yard as people spill out of the bunkhouse, the barn, and the house, all racing toward the trailer that’s burning hard enough to turn the night orange.

Flames burst through every window, racing across the roof while black smoke coils into the sky, and the heat hits me long before I reach the others, forcing tears into my eyes.

Red stands beside the water tank directing everyone with the kind of authority nobody thinks to question, ranch hands scramble for buckets and hoses, Willy flaps both arms at anybody getting too close while inventing enough profanity to make a sailor blush, and Emmett has water flowing through a hose before I’ve even worked out where he connected it.

“Keep back!” Red yells.

The warning disappears beneath the scramble of boots and shouted replies, and I throw myself into the middle of it anyway.

A bucket appears in my hands before I ask for one. I fill it at the trough, step into the chain between the tank and the trailer, and fall into the pace everyone else has already found.

Buckets pass from one person to the next so quickly my arms barely finish one throw before another arrives, and every splash of water vanishes behind a blast of steam that does little more than make the fire hiss.

“We’re losing it!” somebody shouts.

“Keep feeding it water!” another calls. “Don’t let it reach the tank!”

I wipe sweat and smoke from my eyes with my sleeve, grab another bucket, and hurry forward.

“Arizona!” I look over to see Emmett weaving through the line, his gaze fixed squarely on me. “Move back.”

“I’m busy.”

“I can see that.”

“Then stop distracting me.”

His mouth flattens into a line that tells me he’s losing patience. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

I shoulder past him with another bucket before he can argue again.

The explosion hits without warning.

One of the trailer’s tires blows apart with a crack that shakes the ground beneath my boots. Everybody flinches, a few people stumble backward, and Willy throws his hat into the dirt.