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Harold gave her a sheepish smile. “Helicopter’s down.”

“Down how?” Willow asked.

“Mechanical issue. Contractor says it’s minor and there should only be a slight delay. Thought I’d come out here to tell you.”

“How much of a delay?”

Harold glanced toward the brightening eastern sky. “They’re saying an hour.”

Jodie looked at her watch, then at the sky. A haze of smoke from one of the distant wildfires turned the morning light orange as the sun rose over the mountains. Other than that, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“It’s supposed to hit ninety today,” she told Harold.

“BLM’s cutoff is ninety-five.”

“And these horses have been living through a drought for three years,” Willow said. “Ninety-five is too damn hot to run them for miles and you know it.”

Harold nodded. “I know. We’re watching it. But it’s a minor delay and we’ll be done long before it gets too warm.”

Famous last words.

By seven-thirty, the promised one-hour delay had become another hour.

By eight-thirty, nobody was using the word minor anymore.

At nine, Jodie checked the temperature on her phone. Eighty-one degrees.

The camp had gone into hurry-up-and-wait mode, with the exception of Sandra, who took the opportunity to interview volunteers. Jodie had checked every list three times. There was nothing left to organize.

She hated that.

Willow sat at one of the folding tables refreshing the weather app on her phone like she could intimidate the temperature into dropping. Jodie sat down beside her.

“Eighty-one,” Willow told her without looking up from her screen.

“I know.”

“They said an hour three hours ago.”

Jodie looked at her. “They also said minor.”

Willow shook her head. The sun beat down on them and the dry landscape.

Mac and Hank were putting up another shade canopy near the tables, mostly because standing around doing nothing apparently offended both of them on an equally personal level as it did Jodie. Mac held one end while Hank wrestled with a leg that refused to lock into place.

Jodie reached into a nearby cooler, pulled out one of the bottles she’d already mixed with electrolytes, and walked it over.

“Here. Drink up.”

Mac took it without pausing in what he was doing. “Thanks, baby.” He drank half of it, tucked the bottle beneath the canopy, and went back to helping Hank.

Jodie returned to Willow.

“Eighty-three,” Willow intoned.

At nine-fifteen, Harold got another call. Everyone watched him walk away from the tables with his phone pressed to his ear.

“That doesn’t look encouraging,” Sandra said.