Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “You have mine.”

  Something searching in the way his eyes met hers made her look away to the northwest toward Mount Washburn. “I could never make Nick do anything, not even when …” she broke off.

  “You sound bitter.” He sat up, his long-fingered hands draped over his knees. “Want to tell me about it?”

  Kyle didn’t want to talk about Nick, but something softened inside her at Wyatt’s gentle tone.

  Crouched on her heels, she stirred the plaster for a moment while she thought of how to explain her feelings. When she raised her head, he was studying her with a waiting expression.

  “Remember the first time you fell in love?” she tried. “The world looked freshly minted like a coin, the images on it you and your other half. It was molded, meant to be.”

  Wyatt’s angular jaw set, but she went on, “You couldn’t imagine not growing closer and closer until you became one.”

  “Since I’ve been single, love isn’t something I’ve given a lot of thought to.” He inhaled deeply.

  In an effort to get the spotlight off her and Nick, Kyle met Wyatt’s troubled regard. “You’ve never told me what happened to your marriage.”

  He picked up a pebble and turned it in his hands. “Marie ran out on me. Took all her clothes and left a note.”

  “Oh, no.” A shaft of pain went through her at the image of him coming home, perhaps whistling as he came through the door. Then stopping at the sight of a lone slip of paper where the table ought to be set for supper. “From the few times you spoke of her, or rather failed to speak of her, I was afraid it was something like that.” She paused and took a breath. “Nick sent me a letter. After field camp was over.”

  As though speaking of Nick conjured him, he came into view, hiking slowly up the mountain’s spine. He wore no hat; his hair glinted in the sun.

  Wyatt followed her gaze. “Have you two taken up where you left off?”

  “Left is the operative phrase, as in he left me.” She poked around in the bucket. “This plaster is about to set up.”

  He picked it up and poured some slurry into the hole. Kyle handed him the seismic sensor. Bent with her head close to his, she watched him place it in the plaster and level the bubble on top of the case.

  The scrape of boots on gravel announced Nick. His face was animated, his eyes a little bloodshot without sunglasses. “Come see what I’ve found.”

  Wyatt got up, brushed off his pants and gave Nick a hard look. “After you give us a hand with the solar panels.”

  Nick returned his glare. “I’ve been working as hard as you, cowboy.”

  “Come on, gentlemen.” Kyle took the pole and the two men the business end, lifting the iridescent blue panel covered with circular cells into place on a five-foot aluminum mast.

  Fifteen minutes later, the station was in operation. One of the plastic chests contained the batteries, the digital drive and the clock, covered with a tarp weighted down by stones. A few feet away, more rocks stabilized a square of plywood over the pit sheltering the DAS. Wires connected the sensor to the data drive.

  Kyle and Wyatt followed Nick down the ridge to a thick cliff of gray sandy material, studded liberally with rocks from pea-sized to several feet in diameter.

  “What do you see?” Nick asked.

  She studied the outcrop. “Pyroclastic flow?”

  He nodded. Those roiling volcanic landslides could spread over wide areas, depending on eruption volume and topography. Any hapless animal or human in the path of one with clasts this size would be bulldozed.

  Kyle pointed downslope to another outcrop fifty yards below. “What about that?”

  “Part of the same event.”

  A stunned silence fell over both her and Wyatt. A flow that size would have to indicate a vent or source far larger than the mountain upon which they stood today.

  She and Wyatt walked a little way down the trail, agreeing with Nick as they went that there did not seem to be a break in the deposition of the flow.

  “How long ago?” she wondered.

  Nick patted his pack. “I’ve taken samples we can send in for age dating once we get home. But you already said there were radiocarbon dates from wood fragments found in the flows here that indicated an eruption date around 10,000 years ago.”

  “A geologic eye blink,” said Wyatt.

  Nick cleared his throat. “Let’s walk up to the summit.” His tone and the way he looked at Kyle suggested he was inviting only her.

  “Yes, let’s,” she agreed, including Wyatt with a smile.

  He checked his watch. “Coming up on four. I need to schlep these tools back, check on the horses.”

  “Come on,” Kyle urged.

  “It’s my night to cook.” His head bent and he scooped up the dusty plaster bag.

  Aware that Nick wasn’t supporting her argument, she urged Wyatt, “We can have a late supper.”

  Without a reply, he retrieved the mixing bucket, collected the shovel and walked away.

  Kyle and Nick climbed.

  Though her feet were still tender, she appreciated placing her feet on rock rather than the tile floors at the Institute. Though she got into the field occasionally, she envied Nick that aspect of his nomad life. Along the way, he pointed out aspects of the stacked flows that made up the mountain, and stopped now and then to knock off a rock sample and study it with a ten-power hand lens.

  As the ascent became more difficult, even his patter died. Kyle breathed deeply and evenly through her nose and paused for frequent sips from her water bottle. When the spine of rock disappeared into the smoother slope above tree line they slowed further to account for the waist-high brush.

  When they reached bare scree above, their boots crunched on dark porous cinders. The going was tough in the loose and gravelly material, but finally they reached the top of the mountain.

  Kyle bent over and put her hands on her thighs, letting the breeze cool her. After a moment, she lifted her gaze from her footing to the limitless horizon.

  “My God.”

  “I thought you’d like it.” Nick lifted both arms in a football referee’s signal for a touchdown. “I climbed up here this morning to start my traverse.”

  Beneath an azure sky marked by cotton ball cumulous, the long valley of the Lamar stretched to the northwest. Mountains lined either side. To the south were the twin peaks of Castor and Pollux, rising to over 11,000 feet. Formed of layered sediments, they reminded Kyle of the Precambrian Belt Series exposed in Glacier Park and the Canadian Rockies.

  West across the Lamar rose Pelican Cone, topped by both a fire lookout and one of the seismic stations whose pattern she had studied yesterday.

  Beyond, sunlight sparkled on a glimpse of Yellowstone Lake, making it look like a signal mirror. A hundred miles to the southwest, the air was clear enough to see the bluish spires of the Tetons.

  Nick gestured at the mountain they stood upon. “From up here, you can read the volcano’s history in its shape.”

  A frisson of foreboding touched a nerve when he called Nez Perce a volcano. Of course, that was the correct terminology, but hadn’t she been thinking in terms of past events in a context of geologic time.

  Using his hands, Nick mimed the sequence. “First, a series of big ash flows pulsed from the vent, gradually building the shield-shaped mountain.” With its broad smooth sides, it would have looked benign, except for the three black basaltic spines spreading from the peak, steep-sided buttresses with sheer drops on either side.

  “Then the vertical dikes were emplaced, where molten rock squeezed up through the softer welded tuffs formed from the hot ash.” Later erosion uncovered the dikes, making treacherous footing for man or beast. “The most recent event was the extrusion of the cinder cone.”

  Nick slung off his pack and threw himself down onto the ground. Kyle followed suit more slowly. Though she looked out at the view, she sensed his gaze on her.

  “It’s been a long time since we climbed a mountain toget
her,” he said.

  Feeling like a kid again, she found her eyes darting from the stunning vista to her hands, to the laces of her boots. Finally, she realized that was silly and looked directly into familiar green eyes. “A very long time.”

  “It feels good.” All trace of teasing was gone from his tone.

  “It does,” she admitted. Though they sat at least five feet apart, it seemed closer.

  They studied each other a moment longer, then Nick bent and picked up a handful of cinders, sifting them through his fingers. “Notice anything funny about this stuff?”

  His abrupt change of subject both surprised and relieved her. For something to do, she scraped up some gravel and studied it.

  Nearly as lightweight as pumice, this scoria might float in water. Small vesicles showed that it had been frothy with air bubbles when extruded from the volcano. As iron leached out and oxidized, it had weathered to shades from vermilion to ochre. Kyle broke a fragment crisply in half and saw the original dark surface beneath a rind no more than a millimeter thick.

  “Think this is 10,000 years old?” Nick asked.

  She stared at the freshly broken surface. “It reminds me of material from Craters of the Moon over in the Snake River Plain …” Idaho’s broad volcanic expanse had been dissected by a fissure so recently that it gave the effect of a broken asphalt parking lot.

  “Craters is dated at 2,000 years, give or take,” Nick estimated.

  “Sunset Crater north of Flagstaff…” A classic cinder cone named for the oxidized colors they were seeing here.

  “1064 A.D.,” Nick said. “Precisely dated from tree rings.”

  “Some of the stuff in Hawaii…”

  “Stanton’s students agedated this mountain,” Nick mused. “Do you know where they took their samples?”

  Kyle broke another piece of scoria. “I can find out.”

  Nick pulled a cloth sample bag from his pack and labeled it “Nez Perce Summit-2.”

  “I grabbed some on the other side this morning,” he explained. After putting a generous handful of cinders in the bag, he drew out his folded topographic map and handheld GPS. It took only a moment to take a reading, mark an ‘X’ on the approximate spot, and write the coordinates on both the map and the sample bag’s label.

  While Nick worked, Kyle recalled that she carried a map of the Nez Perce area, drawn by a Master’s candidate several years ago. She dug around in her pack and found it beneath her notebook.

  When she tried to unfold the map, the wind made it snap and billow in her hands. Nick slid on his behind across the loose surface, took one side of it, and settled in beside her. Shoulder to shoulder, they bent their heads together.

  Though the map bore dirt stains from other trips to the field, the tough, tear-resistant material was intact, the black ink notations legible.

  Kyle located Nez Perce.

  The students had sampled stream and river drainages, as per standard procedure. They had grabbed a piece of some of the pyroclastic flows Nick had shown her and Wyatt down the valley. In addition, they had brought back chunks of the great dikes radiating outward from the base of the cinder cone.

  No markings were apparent near the summit.

  “Kids,” said Nick.

  “We were young once.”

  Nick dropped his side of the map and let her struggle to fold it. “You and I were never so young not to climb to the top of the mountain and check it out.”

  “Come on.” She focused on cramming the map into her pack. “We made our own mistakes.”

  “Guess I deserve that one.” He pushed to his feet. “At any rate, I think we’re seeing evidence that this mountain was born yesterday.”

  Once more, her spine prickled. “The plumbing’s still down there … waiting to be used again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SEPTEMBER 24

  At midafternoon the next day, Kyle rode Strawberry out of a narrow canyon onto a wider, brush-covered slope above seismic station two. She dismounted and took a replacement data drive from one of the weather-resistant bags behind the saddle.

  The little roan nickered and nudged Kyle’s shoulder, sending a gust of warm alfalfa breath down her neck. Kyle set the equipment down and stroked Strawberry’s horsy-smelling nose. “You think so?” she murmured.

  The horse pawed the ground.

  “Well…” Kyle dragged out the word. “Okay.” Digging out a carrot from a plastic bag, she offered it.

  Strawberry tossed her head and neighed, her strong white teeth crunching the slightly withered vegetable as though it were ambrosia. “You’re a good girl,” Kyle enthused.

  Turning her attention to the seismic station, she pulled back the tarp and opened the weather-resistant box. After activating the quick release on the cables, she disconnected them from the working drive and replaced it with the substitute.

  A closer look at the solar array revealed a few rips in the plastic coating, but it had been that way when deployed. As long as they were seventy percent effective, the panels remained in use. A problem she did see was a healthy dose of bird droppings on the cells. Using a cloth from her saddlebag, she scrubbed away the material that would keep sunlight from the panels.

  Putting the data drive into the saddlebag, Kyle checked the sun angle. If she didn’t want to be caught by darkness, it was time to head up the trail.

  With a flick of the reins, she urged Strawberry toward the patrol cabin. Once in the canyon, the path wound among tall trees, and the earth was spongy beneath the horse’s hooves. Afternoon shadows lay deep.

  As Kyle drew closer to the cabin, she wondered if Nick would get back before Wyatt. If he did, would he keep up his artful distance, or had yesterday’s time alone on the mountain broken the ice once more?

  Though the thought of Nick made her pulse accelerate, shouldn’t Wyatt’s angry and protective reaction be a warning about jumping back into a relationship with a man of Nick’s track record?

  Last night, during one of his field tales, Nick had said that in the course of his two failed marriages he’d been careful not to tell his wives how much fun he had in the field. And this right after a story of his being in a small plane headed for one of the Aleutian volcanoes. In near zero visibility, past the point of no return on fuel, he admitted to writing a farewell note to his current spouse, then crumpling it and burning it upon a safe landing.

  Deep in the canyon, Strawberry picked her way daintily, but just before the trail wound down into a hollow, she stopped without warning, ears cocked.

  Kyle tensed, while not even birdsong broke the quiet. As she scanned the woods, Strawberry pawed the earth and tossed her head toward a five-foot high outcrop of black basalt.

  There. Kyle spied a deer, lying on its side with the unmistakable boneless look of recent death. The buck’s rack would have pleased some hunter.

  Strawberry snorted.

  Perhaps a poacher waited in the rocks for them to go away. On the other hand, there was no sign of a bullet wound. No marks of a predator’s teeth or claws, but Kyle needed to dismount to be sure.

  A gentle nudge sent Strawberry forward. Perhaps the buck had broken its leg on the rocks and died of dehydration. But wouldn’t she have noticed it when she came down the canyon earlier?

  Strawberry stopped and refused to move into the low area.

  Then Kyle caught the stench of rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide, a deadly poison heavier than air, tended to pool in topographic depressions. Colorless, the gas’s only warning was the few seconds in which its victim could smell before the scent receptors in the nose burned out.

  Less than thirty feet away Kyle spied another dead deer, this one a doe.

  Choking, she jerked the reins.

  Strawberry wheeled and ran up the rise. Though she hated to do it, Kyle dug in her heels, spurred and yelled.

  Once over the rise and again on the downhill, they galloped around a curve, where a deadfall they’d circumvented earlier lay across the path.

 
Forced to rein in, Kyle inhaled carefully. The air bore the moldy aroma of moss and autumn leaf litter. Two breaths, three, and she didn’t feel dizzy or nauseous. Strawberry stood steady.

  Yet, as the sunless chill in the canyon deepened, Kyle wondered what to do. The narrow trail through steep rock walls was made impassible by the gas.

  On the south side was the boulder field. Even if Kyle could climb it, she would have to leave Strawberry behind. That would spell certain doom if the sweet animal tried to follow and broke a leg.

  She tried repeatedly to radio Wyatt or Nick, but the canyon ramparts interfered with the signal. Though Nick had said he would be on the east side of the mountain, Wyatt had gone down the canyon.

  The thought seized her that if the gas had been there this morning, he and Thunder would have died like the deer. This was further proof that the seep had begun only a few hours ago. It reminded her ominously of David Mowry diving into a spring turned scalding overnight.

  Checking her watch and the sky, Kyle figured Wyatt and Thunder should be headed back this way. Though it would be dark soon, she decided she must backtrack to the canyon mouth and wait to warn him. Together they’d try circling up over the smoother face of Little Saddle and down to the cabin.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was on the open slope. Wyatt still did not answer his radio. Neither did Nick. On the next try, her batteries gave up.

  Two hours later, Kyle watched the light fade over the broad bowl of the Yellowstone caldera. The stack of firewood she’d gathered ranged from kindling to stout branches. Now she looked with dismay at the size of the pile and calculated it might last a few hours at most. She had two flashlights, but she’d not brought extra batteries for what was supposed to be a day hike.

  Despair washed over her. Oh, to be a normal person who enjoyed touring caverns, who laughed when they turned out the lights to show total darkness. With mounting dread at the gathering twilight, she looked around for more wood.

  In the canyon, deadfalls lay at haphazard angles, some propped up by others, but there was too much danger of starting a forest fire if she lit off a blaze in so much dry wood.

  On the grassy slope, she located a likely length of pine, sun-bleached silver white. It was about a foot in diameter and ten feet long, and with some wrestling, she got a rope around it. With the horizon dimming from scarlet to ultramarine, Strawberry dragged the log to Kyle’s makeshift camp.