"Had enough of this yet, buddy?" Abel asked.
"Of fire? I hope never to see another one," Seth answered, trying to sound tougher than he felt.
"Of the army!" Abel said. He grinned. "Ain't this wind great? Just a little more wind, buddy. Just a little more fire..."
A corporal overheard and demanded, "What's that?"
Abel answered, "I was saying we need more fire to show our stuff."
The corporal, looking uncertain, hesitated before replying, "Don't wish it In fact, just don't talk at all."
After he was out of earshot, Seth told Abel, "You didn't fool him."
Abel shrugged. "So what? You think he's gonna trouble his self over us? I keep telling you, buddy, ain't nobody in this outfit gonna matter to us once we're gone, or do one thing about our going."
***
The winds blew harder and the fire whipped more wildly as the morning and then the early afternoon wore on. And more and more Seth felt like somebody else was slamming down the pick end of his mattock. Someone else smashing blazing chunks of wood into smaller pieces of fire that could be beat out. Because it didn't make sense that a body feeling as sick and scared-weak as his could be doing all that work.
He kept expecting that somebody would make out how frightened he was and call it out so everyone would know. Except, he realized, the fire was making so much noise that not everyone would hear.
And then, just when he didn't see how he could hang on another minute, word passed down that they were going back to town. The fires had become too dangerous to keep fighting.
Abel threw Seth a mocking smile. "What'd I tell you? The army gives up easy."
An instant later a large brown blur of fur barreled between them, knocking Abel off his feet in its frantic charge down the burning mountain. Abel let out a shout of surprise that sounded a lot like fear. "What was that?"
Seth, his gaze following the terrified animal, said, "Looks like you got knocked down by a bear."
Then Seth started laughing, feeling like he might never stop, and pretty soon all the startled men around him were laughing, too. All except Abel anyway.
They got back to camp with Abel still acting like his nose was out of joint, and as soon as the company was dismissed he stalked off to town.
Left alone, Seth paced the length of the army camp on its narrow site between the St. Joe River and a mountainside that ran almost to the water's edge. What space the little line of conical-roofed tents didn't take up, railroad tracks did.
He didn't like how it was only four o'clock in the afternoon and already dark as late evening. This was more of the fire's doing, and the wind's, blowing in smoke so thick it hid the hills across the river.
Watching a train go by, he saw a conductor lighting lanterns inside a passenger car.
It made him think of Jarrett Logan. Hadn't Jarrett said his father was a conductor down here? Seth was glad he wasn't Jarrett, out fighting a fire someplace without even an army camp to retreat to.
Wallace
August 20, Morning
Celia and Lizbeth had slept in their old room at Mrs. Marston's boardinghouse, and now Lizbeth awoke still exhausted and in turmoil over whispered arguments that had lasted into the night.
Celia seemed determined to leave Idaho, whether their place had burned or not. "I must have been crazy to risk our lives that way," she said. "Greed for the tree money—I don't know what else to put my behavior to, and I won't remain in a place that makes me that way."
Lizbeth had tried to reason. "Cel, you're not greedy, and, besides, a place can't make you be any special way."
"A homestead made Dora Crane bitter. Anyway, even if you're right about that, I won't keep you in a place that can put you in danger so fast. Lizbeth, don't argue. My mind is made up."
"First thing tomorrow," Lizbeth had said, "I'll walk down to see if the Forest Service knows what happened. Maybe the fire went around us, and our trees are all still standing. Then you'd reconsider, wouldn't you?" "Didn't you hear what I just said?" Celia asked. "I'm not reconsidering anything except which day we leave."
***
The Forest Service office had no news to give Lizbeth, although one of the women employees did say that Supervisor Weigle intended to ride up Placer Creek to inspect the fire situation for himself. "So you might want to come back this afternoon," she suggested.
On returning to the boardinghouse, Lizbeth shared a late breakfast with Mrs. Marston. Just tea and toast, which was fine with Lizbeth. She didn't want to eat up all Mrs. Marston's food when there wasn't any rent or board money coming in to buy more. The boarders were all still out in the woods fighting fires.
As though Mis. Maiston could read Lizbeth's thoughts, she opened a jar of applesauce and said, "I can feed my own." She dished some out and sprinkled cinnamon on top. "Your starving won't help anybody."
Lizbeth looked at her in surprise, and the old woman gave a little laugh. "Well, maybe you aren't exactly my own," she said, "but you and your aunt are as close to family as I've got. I reckoned that long as you were living on your own place, getting along, that didn't need saying. But now ... well, you just tuck it in the back of your mind."
Lizbeth nodded and reached over to squeeze a bony, veined hand.
"Now," Mrs. Marston said, pulling back, "no need to go sentimental." But Lizbeth was sure her eyes misted.
And Lizbeth's eyes teared up in response, or at least she thought that was the reason. Then the next thing she knew, all the tears she hadn't cried the night before spilled out in a torrent. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."
"I'd like to know what about!" Mrs. Marston said. "Making a foolish old woman go softhearted? Or do you aim to claim responsibility for the wildfires?"
"No," Lizbeth said, giggling and then sobbing again. "It's just ... coming in yesterday, we left so much fire behind, getting worse. I can't bear to think of our place burning. Not just of us losing it, but of its being lost."
She doubted she was making sense, but Mrs. Marston nodded.
Lizbeth went on. "And Jarrett and Ranger Logan are out somewhere, along with lots of others, at least trying to do some good, and I can't help. And Celia..."
"Celia what?" her aunt asked, coming into the kitchen. She looked as though she hadn't slept well either.
"I was going to say," Lizbeth answered, picking her words carefully, "that you and I need to find something useful to occupy ourselves with while we wait for news. There probably won't be any coming in before afternoon."
"Occupy yourselves! You can help me can tomatoes," Mrs. Marston said. "I got two boughten basketsful that are spoiling while we natter over what can't be helped."
***
Neither Lizbeth nor Celia brought up the previous night's argument directly, but it was the unspoken current that ran beneath the on-again, off-again talk of the next few hours. Working into the early afternoon, they cut stem ends and bad spots from tomatoes while Mrs. Marston did the stove-and-jar work. After a while they had ranks of sparkling, newly filled jars cooling on tea towels. It seemed to Lizbeth that the labor had calmed her aunt. Or maybe the thought of all the tomato mush, stewed tomatoes, tomato soup, and tomato-and-beef casseroles that she'd be making for Mrs. Marston's boarders come winter had just plain numbed her.
Come winter! We won't even be here! The thought stabbed through Lizbeth.
They worked with all the windows open, but the oppressive air of the hot day bore down inside the small kitchen. Mrs. Marston wavered at her post over the canning kettle. "Perhaps we ought to stop for lemonade," she said. "We might take it to the porch..."
She broke off as a puzzling, faint noise started up outside. The branches of a lilac bush by the back door brushed the screen and an instant later hit it again, harder. And then wind rushed through the yard, making Mrs. Marston's garden plants arch over, spring back, and arch over again. Green leaves tore away from her maple tree. Warm wind coming in the open window wrapped the tea towels around the filled jars, and it blew a par
ing knife right off the table.
"My word," Mrs. Marston said. "That was some gust."
Celia, going to the back door, said, "Dear god, it is getting so dark"
FIELD NOTES
Fire always gives off heat and light, but it never does so twice in quite the same way.
A given amount of fuel—a tree, a wood door, a leather harness, a gallon of oil—can produce only a finite amount of heat. The variables are time and temperature. The fuel can burn either hot and fast, or less hot but for longer.
Think of climbing a mountain. Maybe you hike at a steady pace, your face sweaty and your legs tired but with your heart pumping only slightly faster than it usually does. You get to the top in two hours. You've expended a moderate level of energy over a relatively long period. Burned perhaps six hundred calories.
Or maybe you jog up that mountain, faceflaming, heart working hard, calf muscles straining. You reach the top in half the time while having burned about the same six hundred calories. You just burned them faster, hotter, and with more show.
A wildfire, too, can climb a mountain either slowly or fast.
It can take hours or days to creep up a slope of pine duff and brush. Burning like that, the fire doesn't give out enough heat to cause the forest canopy above to burst into flame.
Or, pushed by wind, the wildfire can pick up speed until it covers that same slope in minutes, tearing along at 1500 or 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Such a fire throws its furnace blast up and out, no longer earthbound but able to ignite a crown fire that can fly across treetops. It's a fire blowing up, and it throws off superheated air that races upward.
Down below, other air rushes in to replace the air tearing skyward. And still more air is drawn into motion by the gulping of the fire itself, as it reaches for the oxygen it needs to stay alive.
Now the fire is no longer only driven by wind. Now the fire is creating its own.
***
Firefighters went into the afternoon of August 20, 1910, with no warning that strong winds were about to fan the hundreds of fires burning on the Idaho panhandle and in neighboring forests. The firefighters were too isolated, and weather forecasting too primitive.
But a fast-moving cold front was coming toward them from the west. Along its leading edge, dense, cool air wedged itself under the warmer air it met. It sent the warmer air spiraling upward in turbulent currents that fought and joined one another and that whipped up other winds spawned by other, weaker fronts. From Washington's dry Palouse, the winds roiled and grew and sped ahead toward the Coeur d'Alene.
The firefighters—and drifters and townspeople, settlers and miners, railroad workers and loggers—went about their Saturday activities worried by fire danger but unaware they were in the path of swiftly traveling winds. Not knowing that when the winds hit they would blow those hundreds of fires together, and the fires would turn the winds into a gale.
Wallace
August 20, Afternoon
In Wallace, the women in Mrs. Marston's kitchen ignored the increasing winds as long as they could. Finally, after one especially strong blast delivered a hot ember right to the back stoop, Mrs. Marston put down her long-handled stirring spoon. "My heart," she announced, "is not in tomatoes."
Lizbeth and Celia burst out in laughter that threatened to turn hysterical. Then they helped put the canning things away.
Having skipped lunch, now they ate a late afternoon meal of ham sandwiches and rice pudding. Then Lizbeth said, "I'm going downtown. Would you like to go with me?"
"I believe I had better remain here," Mrs. Marston said.
"I may walk down in a bit," Celia answered. "You go on now, if you want"
The shortest way from Mrs. Marston's to the business district was down a long, steep flight of wood steps built onto the hillside. It was a good thing they had handrails—otherwise the wind might have blown Lizbeth right off them.
The fire threat seemed to have brought everyone out into the streets. People watered awnings, watered roofs, and huddled in groups, staring toward Placer Creek. The smoke rising up in the southern sky was incredible: a huge, angry, churning thundercloud of black.
Lizbeth hadn't been able to see the smoke cloud from the boardinghouse, where the hillside cut off the view. Now that she could, she was shocked.
And from down here she could see, too, the flames of backfires that ringed the city like some sprawling medieval wall thrown up against marauding hordes.
She found the Forest Service office crowded with people looking for information. She recognized several townswomen, probably with husbands or sons out fighting to keep the wildfires from their homes.
"No, Supervisor Weigle hasn't returned," a harried-looking official was saying. Someone handed him a slip of paper. He read it and then said, "I can tell you the soldiers are pulling in from Placer Creek. The fires have forced their retreat"
"But what about the homesteads?" Lizbeth asked. "And the regular fire crews?"
"Miss," the man said, "I just don't know." He raised his voice. "Folks, I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to give us working room. I'll post any word I get"
As Lizbeth was leaving she saw Mr. Polson motion to her. "I remember you coming in here with Jarrett Logan," he said. "I thought you'd like to know that he's nowhere near Placer Creek." He frowned. "But that's where your place is, isn't it? I wish I could give you good news."
"Thank you," she said. "I did know about Jarrett—his brother mentioned it."
"Jarrett's probably all right," Mr. Polson said. "There's plenty of fire activity along the St. Joe, but as far as we know none poses special problems today."
"I see," Lizbeth said. "Thank you again. Oh! And can you please tell me about Ranger Logan?"
"He's in the mountains west of here. I don't think you need to worry especially about him either. To be honest, the Placer Creek area and Wallace itself are our big concerns today."
Outside, Lizbeth saw an automobile pass by and heard a man say, "There goes the mayor again."
"Earning his pay," his companion answered.
"We better be glad he is," the first man said. "We've got an emergency brewing."
A policeman approached the pair. "All able-bodied men are to assemble at the courthouse," he told them. "We're going to start a new round of backfires to protect the town's flanks."
***
Lizbeth didn't keep track of how long she walked, listening in on conversations being shouted over stronger and stronger winds. Talking seemed to be the one thing everybody wanted to do. Even the people holding hoses, fighting to direct streams of water onto buildings, talked while they worked.
She heard folks contending that everyone was getting stirred up over nothing. They said that the hills around might bum, but the fires wouldn't come into town. Not when Wallace had a fire chief who knew what he was doing, all the town's men available to be firefighters, and endless water from the river.
Others said they really should go home to pack. They'd heard evacuation trains were being made up. Why, they asked, was that being done, if Wallace wasn't in danger?
Lizbeth hurried to the train depots and found that at both the Northern Pacific and the OR & N, crews were linking up odd assortments of railroad cars.
She saw people piling goods along the depot walls—suitcases and trunks, bulging pillow slips, and quilt bundles like one Lizbeth had put together.
"Just in case," one woman told her.
"No doubt about it," a man said, gesturing toward the south. "Once Placer Creek goes, we're next"
North of the St. Joe River
August 20, Afternoon
Jarrett pounded out another of the small fires that had flared up in the burned area where he'd brought everyone. At least this appeared to be the last of them.
Hours before, he'd begun wishing he'd done something different with his men. Maybe taken them all down to the creek, where he'd filled their canteens. From there they might have worked their way to the St. Joe River.
He'd disca
rded that idea because he'd been afraid it would leave a search party wandering needlessly. But the crew foreman must not have sent one out Surely searchers would already have found them.
And now it was too late in the day to start such a hike, especially with Mr. Reese like he was.
Jarrett went over to where Rolling Joe was dividing up a hunk of cheese Henry had pulled from his carpetbag and offered for all to share. "I think things are safe for the time being," Jarrett said. "Will you be all right keeping everybody here while I try to find our camp?" Rolling Joe nodded. "I believe so. Do you think you will have success?"
"I just hope the light holds up a few hours so I can give it a good try," Jarrett answered. Although it was still afternoon, the day had turned as dark as at dusk.
***
Unencumbered by the others, Jarrett moved swiftly up the mountain. He followed the burn as long as he could, cutting across openings where only undergrowth had been destroyed. Then, when he came on a section where whole trees had burned and fallen, he struck out into the green forest.
The ridgeline he was aiming for turned out not to be a main ridge at all, but just a rim that had blocked his view of higher land behind it. He thought he could make out a sharp peak poking through the blanketing smoke and considered trying to get to it.
Then he reconsidered. The peak, if that's what it was, appeared far away, and already he'd picked up enough altitude that much of the smoke lay below him. A ponderosa towered close by, reminding him of Samuel's lookout tree.
Jarrett began climbing branch to branch, wondering, as he did, where a faint singing sound came from. He scrambled up eighty, maybe a hundred feet—until limbs started to bend alarmingly under his weight. Then, with one arm wrapped around the tree trunk, he leaned out as far as he could and pulled boughs away from his face.
For a moment he was caught spellbound by the beauty of the scene in front of him. Far into the distance the tops of mountain ranges rose above the smoky haze that hid valley bottoms. From up here he could even see the sun, a blood-colored ball in a dirty pink-and-yellow sky.
The Big Burn Page 12