Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “So there I was at Kilauea next to this molten river of lava,” he said when they got back on the horses after a lunch stop. “The levee broke and spilled a flood right toward me.”

  Kyle smiled, for the thick Hawaiian lava was usually easy to avoid.

  “I was a goner, for sure,” Nick spun, “until I made it onto a little rise. Stood there and watched the stuff run around my private island, all the time wondering if my boots would catch fire.”

  “Guess it all worked out.” Wyatt effectively cut off the tale.

  They drew up in a clearing to rest the horses. Though Kyle and Wyatt dismounted, Nick remained on Gray’s back with one hand on the saddle horn. Squinting up at him in the midday light, Kyle noted that aside from being a bit more sun-beaten, his once-familiar hands had not changed; square nails cut short, a little scar on the left wrist. He’d told her it came from teasing the neighborhood tomcat when he was nine.

  Deliberately, she looked away. When he’d spanned her waist in his cabin and she’d run, he’d let the matter drop. Now, she didn’t know whether to be glad or sad that he gone back to treating her with the teasing manner he’d used on everyone at field camp … no matter whether they were provision shopping, packing, or sharing two night’s unromantic hamburger dinners in the Mammoth grill.

  They traveled deeper into the wilderness. The trail, a corridor through tall trees, became hypnotic as Indian summer sun cast shadow stripes. In another half-hour, the caravan reached the crest of Mist Creek Pass.

  After another rest, they wound down to the confluence of Cold Creek with the Lamar River, eleven miles out from the trailhead. The skyline on the valley’s opposite wall was dominated by Nez Perce Peak, looking peaceful in the golden light. The side facing them sported enormous blocks of talus, tumbled rocks as big as houses. The crown of the peak, clearly a cinder cone, was bare and smooth, already snowcapped. It dropped away rapidly into three sharp spines of ridges. The great radial dikes of dark rock had been emplaced while liquid, oozing along zones of geologic weakness.

  While Kyle and the others paused to appreciate the tranquil yet majestic beauty, there came the clacking of stone against stone, an avalanche of boulders rearranging the mountain’s west slope.

  Three hours later, Kyle released the rope that held her duffel bag behind Strawberry’s saddle. Tired and sore, she was dismayed by her first sight of the Nez Perce Patrol Cabin.

  “It looks ancient,” she said to Wyatt.

  He chuckled. “The system of backcountry cabins dates to the late 1800s. The Army set up ‘snowshoe cabins’ for winter anti-poaching patrols.”

  Accepting that she’d stayed in a more rustic accommodation, Kyle studied the high valley. The cabin sat in a meadow above the Saddle Valley separating Nez Perce Peak from the Little Saddle and Saddle Mountain complex to the north. They’d come up through a steep-walled canyon, but at higher elevation, the terrain smoothed out. Behind the cabin rose a steep and forested slope, while above towered the terminal end of the easternmost dike.

  Wyatt and the muleteer dismounted and started carrying boxes though the cabin door. Nick sat atop Gray as though gauging the distance to the ground.

  “You getting off here or making the round trip?” Kyle asked.

  “Not sure.”

  She dumped her duffel and extended a hand. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

  Wyatt’s laugh rang out from the split log front porch.

  Nick ignored Kyle’s offer and slid to the ground. “The eagle has landed.”

  Wyatt helped the muleteer ease the load off another of the pack animals. “You just gonna stand around looking pretty?” he asked Nick, shouldering his burden.

  As afternoon shadows lengthened and the gear was unloaded, the muleteer said his goodbyes. “You folks be careful with that big quake coming.”

  Kyle’s spine prickled as the mules moved off compliantly downhill.

  Wyatt saw to the horses, bringing out picket pins from the load and staking the animals out to forage. They’d brought pellets and grain to supplement the autumn grasses.

  While Nick chopped firewood, Kyle set up the kitchen and threw a blanket over the ancient sprung sofa that was the cabin’s token attempt at luxury. She checked the supplies that remained with the place full time. Canned food, bottled water with a skim of ice from last night’s freeze, blankets, windproof matches, and a signal flare kit.

  Kyle opened the plastic weatherproof bag and drew out the red pistol with a black handgrip. The aerial flares were 12-gauge and looked like shotgun shells. The label promised the red distress flares to be 15,000 candlepower with a burn time of six seconds.

  Thoughtfully, she put everything back where she’d found it, recalling her conversation with Wyatt about flares and smoke signals. Nez Perce Peak had been named, along with Nez Perce Creek farther west in the park because a portion of the tribe had passed this way in 1877. Pursued by the U.S. Army, they fled across three states after refusing to go on to a reservation. According to Franny, Kyle’s great-grandfather had ridden with the tribe as a child and somehow escaped their capture and subsequent incarceration in the equivalent of concentration camps.

  When it started to get dark, Kyle went back out to help Wyatt. Together, they put the horses into the small stable where they’d be safe from bears, filled their feed buckets, and gave them a drink from one of the plastic water barrels they’d packed in.

  When she and Wyatt returned to the cabin where Nick was stacking wood on the porch, she asked, “Shall we fire the generator?” The portable electric plant put out 1,500 watts, enough to power their computer and light the cabin’s main room from a utility light.

  Wyatt, in charge of logistics, shook his head. “Need to conserve fuel.”

  Kyle went to the bunkroom and transferred one of her flashlights from her duffel to the pocket of her pants. When darkness deepened, she did not ask, but fueled and lit a Coleman lantern to hang above the table.

  Nick had drawn the short straw and had to cook the first meal. While he opened cans of pork and beans and set out store-bought bread that would go stale in a few days, Kyle worked on an equipment inventory.

  Each of the new permanent field stations would consist of the seismograph, to be placed in a hole about three feet deep to isolate it from surface disturbances and wind noise. The foam used to pack the equipment would be used to line the hole to further reduce signals from the wind. Wired to the seismograph was the digital acquisition system, or DAS. A GPS clock synchronized systems around the world to the exact time, and solar panels charged auto batteries to provide power. All the components would be packed into the weatherproof chests that had been used to transport them, strapped on the mules.

  Her inventory complete, Kyle used the satellite phone to check email.

  A note from Leila said Stanton’s condition had stabilized and he’d been moved to a less critical care status. He had been briefly conscious and Leila was certain he recognized her. With her throat feeling thick and her eyes stinging, Kyle composed a reply.

  So glad to hear Stanton has improved. Wyatt and I are pulling for him. We arrived today at the Nez Perce Patrol cabin in the Absarokas east of Yellowstone Lake. The ride up was beautiful. Hope the weather holds.

  Her fingers paused over the laptop keyboard.

  Nick Darden … you remember me telling you about him over too many glasses of wine? You won’t believe this, but Colin Gruy sent him to help us out. The cocky you-know-what didn’t even recognize me at first …

  Kyle stopped typing and looked at what she’d written. She could well imagine all the questions Leila would come back with on this one. And if Nick happened to be looking at the computer when a message about him came in …

  She backspaced and erased the last paragraph.

  Xi Hong reported in from an Internet café in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, but said he would be out of touch when he went into the field. She sent a newsy message about their project, telling him about everything including Nick’s arrival, omitt
ing only their past relationship.

  Finally, there was an incoherent rant from Hollis Delbert, damning both her ethics for stealing his equipment and casting aspersions on Radford Bullis for not forcing her to return it.

  Her fingers poised over the keyboard to compose a scathing reply, but instinct told her to choose her battles.

  Next, Kyle checked the seismic patterns for the park stations already in place. To her surprise, things had quieted since the day before.

  “Nick,” she said.

  “Yo.” He turned from where he was stirring beans in a cast-iron Dutch oven over the fire.

  “Look at this.”

  With a graceful motion, he rose and came to study first one and then another of ten stations. “There’s the event that sent those rocks down the mountain earlier.” He pointed to a sharp excursion on the chart from Pelican Cone, a mountain they had passed on the trail a few miles east. “Other than that, things look pretty still.”

  There was no concrete reason to argue, but Kyle felt as if she could sense the unsettled pulse of the earth. Though she tried telling herself she had overreacted before, it didn’t help.

  Leaving her at the laptop, Nick went back to dinner prep. A few minutes later, she had to move the computer off the table for chow call. Although the steaming plates of beans appeared appetizing, there was no butter, salt, or pepper, nor anything set out to drink. Nick sat and started to eat while Kyle poured bottled water and Wyatt collected condiments from a cardboard box.

  After forking up a mouthful of beans, Wyatt reached for the salt. “Cook much?”

  Nick scowled. “You a cordon bleu chef, as well as the consummate horseman?”

  “That’s enough!” Kyle said.

  Wyatt’s expression went dark. “What’s enough?”

  “It’s going to be a long goddamn field season if you two keep at each other’s throats.” Although she was hungry, she shoved back her chair. The definitive firmness with which she shut the cabin door behind her was not quite a bang.

  In the stable, the horses nickered softly. Ignoring their invitation for company, or more likely a plea for extra oats, she studied the night. The sky, that had been clear earlier, was overcast. Toward the Nez Perce summit, the towering dike was blacker than the rest of the sky.

  Kyle pulled out her flashlight and turned it on. From inside, she heard Nick and Wyatt’s voices continue to mingle in acrimony.

  A moment later, boots clomped toward the door. She placed her light on the rail with the beam pointed outward and hugged herself against the chill.

  The door behind her creaked the way it had when she’d come out. With her back to it, she felt the feathery cloud of her down coat settle over her shoulders. Not knowing which man was behind her, she inhaled the sharpness of impending weather. “I smell snow.”

  “That time of year.” Wyatt moved in front of her and glanced at her flashlight. “Think that’ll keep the bears away?”

  “Something like that.”

  He eased onto the porch rail, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and nodded toward the closed cabin door. “Seriously, what are we going to do with Dr. Nicholas?”

  Thinking this was about turf or resenting outside interference, she tried to set him straight. “Colin sent Nick to help. He was doing us a favor.”

  “Do you always have to be so damned reasonable?”

  Something Stanton had told her when she was a student came back. “You don’t go to work to make your friends.”

  Wyatt’s easy posture dissolved, and he came to his feet. “You and Nick were more than friends.”

  The sting of accusation surprised her, starting an unsettled feeling in her chest. To hide it, she studied the clouds, billowy bellies pregnant with snow. “When Nick saw me in your office, he didn’t even recognize me.”

  Wyatt’s look was steady. “You sure as hell remember him.”

  The first flakes swirled.

  Wyatt went back inside, shutting the door with crisp deliberation.

  Kyle slammed her hand against the log wall and immediately regretted it. She’d taken the bandages off her cuts only this morning and now the deepest one started bleeding again. She also managed to get a wood splinter near the base of her thumb. Sucking her palm and biting at it only served to push the sliver in deeper.

  It was unlike Wyatt to take such an active dislike to someone, and in her past experience, most men liked Nick’s pleasant mix of banter and bullshit. Though she heard no voices inside, she stayed out a while longer watching the snowfall.

  Someone clattered dishes and she figured her ill manners had been punished by missing the rest of her dinner. It couldn’t be helped, though. She needed to cool off so she wouldn’t be angry with Wyatt for pointing out the unvarnished truth.

  Yes, she remembered Nick. For all these years, each summer rainstorm had made her imagine him on a Wyoming mountain, soaking wet and trying to struggle a poncho out of his pack, yet laughing. On every camping trip she took, the unique waxy smell of a tent’s interior took her back to their hideout in the woods. Year by year, September brought the memory of her heartbreak upon reading his final letter.

  When she went back in, the Coleman lantern gave a rasping low fuel warning. The dishes were stacked in the drainer. Wyatt stood in front of the fire, his rangy legs apart. He’d changed from his uniform into black sweats that emphasized his lean body.

  Nick was not in sight.

  Wordlessly, she tossed her jacket onto the couch and went to the kitchen where she made and ate a peanut-butter-and-jelly fold-over. In the light from the lantern, she poked again at the splinter and grimaced.

  Wyatt glanced over his shoulder and came to her. Peering through his glasses at the small wound, he extracted a Swiss Army Knife from his pocket, pulled out the tweezers and went to work. As he concentrated, a line appeared between his dark brows.

  After a minute of prodding that burned and stung, he said, “There.” With the fragment of wood out, she thought he studied her palm longer than necessary.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The lantern sputtered out.

  Standing in the dimness with Wyatt still holding her hand, she forgot to be alarmed at the lack of light. The dying fire’s illumination accentuated his cheekbones and she became aware that with both of them barefoot, he was several inches taller than she.

  With his free hand, he drew off his glasses and perched them on top his head. Her stomach fluttered with a disconcerting feeling foreign to their prior easy friendship.

  He let her fingers go. “You need to get a fresh bandage on that cut.”

  From the first aid box in the kitchen, he pulled out a flesh-toned strip and helped her position it over her wound. Then they went back to standing side by side before the hearth. When the front of her legs grew uncomfortable, she turned around to cook the other side.

  Though she’d been on dozens of fieldtrips, sleeping ten to a motel room in her school days, sharing cabins and tents in close quarters, this was different. She felt a deep reluctance to climb into her sleeping bag in the bunk above Nick’s and only a few feet away from Wyatt. There was an intimacy to the arrangement that almost made her want to drag her bag out and sleep on the sofa. Already unsettled by Wyatt’s attitude, she both feared and anticipated that she might catch the scent of Nick’s skin, a mix of musk and spice that wasn’t soap or aftershave. From the next room came the distinct sound of him clearing his throat.

  Wyatt looked toward the door. “I think I’ll turn in.”

  Kyle watched the embers until she heard the two men’s mingled deep breathing. Even then, it was a long time before she lit her candle lantern, suspended it from the bed frame, and slid into her sleeping bag. Sure enough, she smelled the essence of Nick.

  Wyatt threw out his arm in a restless motion.

  Difficult as the chemistry was between the three of them, she was glad she wasn’t alone on the mountain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SEPTEMBER 23

/>   Where’s Nick wandered off to?” Wyatt asked Kyle the next afternoon in the field.

  “Don’t know.” She scanned the rocky talus on the west slope of Nez Perce. Last night’s snow had not amounted to anything, melting away before 9 AM.

  She and Wyatt worked on a ridge, preparing a permanent seismic station with a line of sight to a receiver on Mount Washburn. Its radio signal would transmit to the Institute automatically.

  Wyatt tossed aside the shovel he’d been digging with, lay on his stomach and extended his arm into the hole. Placing the digital sensor experimentally onto solid rock, he checked its position and pulled it back out. “Ready for plaster of Paris.”

  Kyle mixed white powder with water in a plastic bucket.

  “This would go a lot faster if Nick pulled his weight,” Wyatt observed.

  “He’s probably found something interesting.”

  Wyatt fiddled with the sensor, frowning at it. “Next you’ll be telling me Dr. Darden has studied volcanoes all over the world, while I’m just a lowly Ph.D. out of the Mountain West.”

  “If that’s what you are, then I am, too.” She turned her face away to avoid the plaster dust as she mixed. “Stanton taught us both what we know.”

  “You’ve seen Nick’s attitude toward me.”

  She stopped stirring and let the silence go on until Wyatt pushed up on the lip of the excavation and looked at her.

  “I’ve seen yours toward him,” she said.

  He sat for a moment looking irritated. “So, I haven’t been all over the world. I’m content to be who I am.”

  Once she remembered commenting on that when they were in the rock lab. “It’s peaceful working with you, Wyatt,” she had said while she emptied a ball mill that crushed samples. “You know when to talk and when to be quiet.” He’d leaned against the slate-topped counter looking comfortable inside his skin.

  With Nick around, Wyatt no longer seemed to feel at ease.

  “No fancy trips to Tibet or South America for me,” he went on. “I’ve just lived this region. That should entitle me to some respect.”