Ali turned nonchalantly and whispered to the other horses what he and Desperado planned to do. They all agreed to help. Very slowly the horses moved and got into position as they covertly watched the cat creeping along the wall of the canyon.
When the cat reached a spot about twenty feet from where the kids and Hilda lay sleeping, Ali nodded his head and Desperado screamed the stallion challenge. With Desperado leading, all ten horses rushed the cat at the same time. The cat didn’t see that coming. His prey had never turned on him and certainly not in a group. He snarled and spit, turned and ran while the horses charged him from behind. He was halfway out of the canyon before Todd and Becky sat up to see what was happening. They watched as Desperado led the charge at something large and tawny streaking to the canyon opening. They heard the cat’s snarls and knew what it was immediately. The others sat up too watching the horses running toward the mouth of the canyon. At first, they thought the horses were running away and began calling them back in panic.
The horses stopped in a bunch as soon as the cat streaked out of the canyon. They turned and walked nonchalantly back to the pond as if nothing happened. Todd found the paw prints only a few feet from where they were sleeping. The prints were huge. He pointed them out to the others.
“Looks like our horses saved us again,” Todd told the group. “Those look like mountain lion prints and from the size of them, it was a big one. Did you notice Desperado leading the charge?”
Everyone had to look at the prints. They shivered when they realized how close that big cat came to them. Everyone including Hilda hugged the horses and praised them for their bravery. They shuddered as they thought about what could have happened. Hilda paid special attention to Annabella. She seemed a bit short of air for the exertion. She was in her late teens and hadn’t had that much excitement for many years. Hilda worried about her but she soon calmed down and began grazing on the grass around the pond. In reality, she was almost as excited about her son’s intelligence in stopping a potential slaughter than she was about the extreme exercise it brought her for a short period of time. Her breathing slowed back to normal not as quickly as the others, but for her age pretty quickly for the situation. She was intensely proud of her son.
Once things settled down in the canyon and the kids’ heart rates returned to normal, they talked about it. Todd was so proud of Desperado; he could have popped the buttons off his shirt. “Did you see who was leading the pack after that ol’ cougar?” he said.
Becky chimed in, “Yeah, I can’t believe they chased that thing! Prince Ali was a half-step behind him and I know he’s been attacked by one of those before.”
“I always thought horses would run from a predator like that,” Charlie said. “I’ve never heard of horses chasing one before.”
Hilda remembered the young Desperado before she sent him to Chris O’Neal for training. He was a trickster. Desperado loved to sneak up behind her while she was bent over working in her kitchen garden. Sometimes he sneaked up and goosed her. Sometimes he’d overturn her wheelbarrow or try to drag her rake away. She smiled remembering what a character he was. She was proud of him. Desperado managed to get them to this canyon safely and he led the charge to keep the predator away from her and the kids. He was big and strong and powerful and she loved him dearly. With 40 years of breeding experience, she knew he was the finest horse she and Jan ever brought into this world. She wished Jan could be here with them now and see how Desperado turned out. Jan would be as proud of him as she was. It brought a tear to her eye.
Todd remembered Desperado when he came to Cold Water Creek Ranch as a lanky two-year-old. The grooms had to watch their ball caps or Desperado would snatch them and toss them across the barn. Pocket rags were fair game too. Within days of his arrival, Chris was called to the barn before he finished his first cup of coffee one morning. The feed crew discovered Desperado’s stall door open and the horse missing. They searched the entire ranch. He was nowhere to be found. Chris was mighty upset when he called Jan Jorgenson to let him know they couldn’t find Desperado.
Jan laughed when Chris explained the horse managed to open his stall door and disappear. “Did I forget to tell you about that?” Jan said. “That youngster is an escape artist for sure. I never did find a latch that could hold him in his stall if he wanted to go walkabout. I’ll bet he’s here or close by. I’ll go look for him and bring him back.”
Todd loved that young horse. He had a sense of humor. He loved everyone and he teased them all with his pranks. At the same time, he was a handsome Arabian horse in all the right ways. His bay coat gleamed. His white markings stood out against his brown body that was so dark it was nearly black. His movements were graceful and sparing as they should be in a Western horse.
Desperado spent a few months with Chris O’Neal and went back home until he was ready for saddle training. Todd missed the horse terribly while he was gone but felt elated when Hilda returned him for training after Jan passed away. He took to training like a duck to water. He loved working. Todd watched his dad work with Desperado as often as he could. He was itching to climb aboard himself and take a spin on him.
He talked to his dad over dinner one night. “Dad, do you think Desperado could be a youth horse?” he asked. Chris mulled the thought around and said, “Yes, I think he could. I think he might be great in the 13-and Under Western classes. I’ll talk to Hilda about that. Maybe you’d like to take him to a show?”
That was the answer Todd was hoping for. “Oh, yes, Dad! I’d love to ride him. He’s my favorite of all your training horses next to Prince Ali. Ali is Becky’s horse. Maybe Hilda would let me be Desperado’s rider.”
Hilda was pleased to have a young rider with Todd’s talent ride her horse. The two did very well together. Chris continued working with Desperado and turned him into an excellent Reining horse as well as a winning Western Pleasure horse. Desperado could do the sliding stops without a single hop and his spins were perfect, fast, and straight. His flying lead changes in the figure eight patterns were as good as they get. He and Todd were a team about as talented as they come. The strong connection between horse and rider was obvious to anyone that watched them.
CHAPTER NINE
As dawn broke through the darkness, the smoky smell of the fire permeated the air over the entire area. Exhausted and hungry men and women returned to the temporary fire camp at the ranch south of Cold Water Creek Ranch for rest and food. New crews dispatched to take their places at the head of the fire. Airplanes again lumbered into the sky with their loads of water and fire retardant. Helicopters refilled their belly buckets and turned toward the head of the fire which now stretched miles across. Ground crews went into the forest behind the fire to mop up hot spots where they could do so safely. Dozer engines choked and sputtered as they started back up and headed out to clear more trees and land in an attempt to stop the deadly northward march of the beast. Crews came in from neighboring states to lend their hands and backs to the effort. Wyoming was in a direct line. Their fire crews established wide firebreaks on their own territory in case the fire reached them. Additional air support flew in from other states to help drop water and fire retardant on the blaze. There were thousands of men and women dedicated to stopping this fire and willing to expend whatever effort was necessary to do so.
The Fire Chief sent up two helicopters for reconnaissance. He needed first-hand reports about the fire. The chopper pilots headed north above the heart of the fire and sent back their visual findings. The Chief used those reports to move assets around in the field to get ahead of the fire and stop it in its tracks.
One of the chopper pilots reported the sighting of the nine kids after his second pass over the canyon where they holed-up for the night. The canyon was surrounded on two sides by active fire. There was no way to get the kids and their horses out of there so the decision was made to drop supplies to them. Chief Odom personally found Chris O’Neal to let him know the kids were spotted in a safe area for the moment. He
told him he was having supplies dropped in for them and what the general situation was. They could not get to the kids for a while, maybe the next day if they were lucky. The Chief had a satellite phone added to the supplies on the outside chance one of them could figure out how to use it properly. He didn’t really expect them to.
Chief Odom was startled to get the call from Todd O’Neal a few hours after the supplies were dropped in the canyon by helicopters. He made it a point to find Chris again and let him know what Todd told him. Chris shared the news with the other parents at Cold Water Creek Ranch. As exhausted as they all were by that time, the knowledge that the kids and their horses were safe for the moment buoyed their spirits.
With all the extra animals at Cold Water Creek Ranch, the family members of the trapped kids pitched in and worked through the day. Chris’s normal workers were unable to get to the ranch because of roadblocks on the highway. Some of the women kept up the coffee and ice tea service from Sharon’s kitchen. A couple of them went to the camp south of the ranch which was providing rest and food for the firefighters. They pitched in there. They helped cook on the grills and served the men and women taking rest-breaks from the firefight. They had another very long and worrisome night.
The recon helicopter took off at first light the next morning to check on the fire’s progress through the night and do a flyover of the canyon where the kids and horses were trapped. He reported back that the firebreaks and the fire retardant were making headway. The northward progress of the fire had been stopped in a few places. Ground crews handled spot fires there with engines and old-fashioned picks and shovels. They were beginning to win!
As he flew over the canyon he saw the neat row of tents and the kids waving. He checked the area east of the canyon and saw what he thought was a way into the canyon. It would take some time and heavy equipment, but he thought they might be able to get to the group within a day. He reported his findings to the Chief directly.
Chief Odom had another problem on his hands now. The Public Information Officer reported the missing kids to the media sometime during a briefing the day before. One enterprising reporter reached the Arabian Horse Association in Denver and got a list of the kids who’d been competing in Albuquerque, New Mexico the week before and spotted something newsworthy. He’d done more checking and found out which kids and horses were associated with Cold Water Creek Ranch at that competition. He zeroed in on two names – Prince Ali and Becky Howard. They’d been all over the news a few months ago when the 2.5 million dollar stallion was stolen from the Swallows Day Parade in San Juan Capistrano, California and the thieves left Becky in a coma.
The reporter was sitting on national news! If Prince Ali was one of the horses trapped by the fire, this would hit the newspapers and TV across the nation and possibly even beyond that. He had to get confirmation somehow. He wanted credit for this one. A news story of this size might get him out of the Colorado Daily in Boulder and into one of the big markets, like New York or Los Angeles.
Harvey Thurman tried every way he could think of to get past the roadblocks on the highway. He had to get to Cold Water Creek Ranch to confirm Prince Ali was among the missing. The Forest Service personnel were not cooperating. The Highway Patrol personnel were not cooperating. No one would let him through the roadblocks especially because the Command and Control vehicle and personnel were all at Cold Water Creek Ranch themselves. Chief Odom would have the badges of anyone who let a reporter through and they knew it.
The Chief got several calls about Harvey Thurman. He didn’t have time to talk to the man. He had his hands full with thousands of men and women fighting the largest blaze in this area in recorded history. Hundreds of home and ranch owners depended on him and his strategies to save their homes and livelihoods. He didn’t have time to waste on a single reporter.
Harvey Thurman was resourceful. He was an outdoorsman. He liked to hunt and fish. He hiked, skied and loved water sports. He also owned a four-wheel two-seat off-road machine. When all else failed him, he pulled that out, gassed it up, added a couple of extra five-gallon cans of gas on the back and headed out into the forest. If he couldn’t use the highway, he’d find another way. The way was rough going. There were no roads, only animal trails to follow. He had to cross over several brooks and streams which dumped into Boulder Creek at some point. He knew approximately where he was going but hoped he’d recognize it when he saw it.
It took him almost five hours. He was behind the rear gate of Cold Water Creek Ranch when he recognized the Fire Service Command and Control Vehicle. He hid his four-wheeler in the woods and walked through the gate to the house looking for Chris O’Neal. One of the ladies directed him to the barn.
Harvey introduced himself to Chris. He asked him to confirm Prince Ali was among the missing horses and Becky Howard was among the missing kids. Walter Howard was in the barn and heard his daughter’s name mentioned and joined the conversation. Harvey’s heart rate zoomed. He had his scoop! Between Walter and Chris, he got the names of Charlie Reeves, another Boulder youth, Chris’s son, Todd, and the one boy and five girls from California too. He had a breaking story to deliver. He asked Chris if he could use the barn office for a minute. He called the news editor at the Colorado Daily in Boulder and spilled everything he knew. He dictated the story by phone to the editor.
The news editor in Boulder broke the news and it hit the AP wire within minutes. The story was picked up by every news service in the country. Photos of Prince Ali and Becky Howard were pulled from the archives and made the front pages again as well as the late afternoon telecasts from the major TV stations across the nation. The Boulder fire was headline news everywhere with a 2.5 million dollar stallion in the mix. Harvey Thurman was jumping with excitement as he headed back to Boulder on his four-wheel vehicle.
Chief Odom had no idea Prince Ali and Becky Howard were part of the group of kids trapped by the fire until his supervisors called him. He and his wife knew the Howards and Prince Ali well. The Chief talked with his superiors about how he might rescue the kids and horses. He studied maps for the canyon the chopper pilot pinpointed by his onboard GPS. The mouth of that canyon was several miles off the highway in undeveloped land. Getting to it would require bulldozing a road in for engines and ground crews. It would take hours to get there and would take back-breaking work every inch of the way. Chief Odom only had a few hours of daylight left. He decided to make a start on the job and see how much his crews could get done before they lost the light. The pressure was on him now since news about Prince Ali and Becky Howard being trapped in the canyon got out.
CHAPTER TEN
The Arson Investigation Team arrived at the mansion construction site as soon as they could safely do so. Fire crews poured enough water on the burning framing timbers to extinguish the fire the afternoon it started. The team consisted of three men, two experienced arson investigators and one who’d just finished his schooling and was in the field for the first time. The lead investigator was Buck Martin.
Buck had been around for 30 years with the fire department. He was something of a hero to the newer hires. He started as one of the fire crew and worked his way up. He got his education at night and became an arson investigator for the Boulder City Fire Department. He’d investigated a lot of suspicious fires; businesses on the brink of bankruptcy, homes going into foreclosure, cars about to be repossessed, homes of the hated ex-spouse or business partner, etc. People had lots of reasons to burn things up, mostly bad reasons. And there were lots of sloppy ways to start a fire. He saw the gas can used to burn a car left in the back seat. He found the melted Bic lighters. He walked into a burned out home and saw where someone had actually piled charcoal briquettes on the couch and used barbecue lighter fluid to start the fire right in the living room. Most people believe the evidence will be burned up in the fire. They are often wrong. Buck could smell accelerant. He looked for burn patterns which told him where and how the fire was started. He told the younger guys, “The signs are all
there. All you need to do is learn how to read them.”
Buck walked over the concrete foundation looking at the burned studs shaking his head. This would have been a very large building had the fire not knocked it down. He didn’t see any evidence the fire started in the mess here. He noted in the original reports one of the firemen thought they’d found the remains of incendiary devices on some trees across the brook. He found a narrow area along the stream and jumped across. When he looked at the south side of the cottonwood trees he found what he was looking for. The burn patterns on the trees were clear. He used his knife to pull what looked like a staple out of one tree where the bark was burned the heaviest. He was sure that was where a device was attached to the tree. He put it in an evidence bag he pulled from his pocket. He could see where flammable material dropped onto the leaf pile at the base of the tree and how the flames went up the bark on that side. A portion of the tree was burned but the fire never got hot enough to burn deep enough into the tree to kill it. Over time, new bark would form around the burn area to protect the internal structures of the tree. One of the four trees was burned more seriously than the others. That one might or might not survive. He dug around in the remainder of the leaf piles at the bases of the trees. He could see where the wind pushed the top layer of burning leaves and embers around the trees and across the brook. He figured that was the likely cause of the fire in the framing structure. He hopped back over the brook and followed the burn path there right up to the foundation of the structure. He also followed burn paths directly into shrubs and natural leaf piles at the bases of trees to the north and west of the foundation. He could see the conflagration in his mind.
Buck walked back to the brook and walked up and down the bank looking along the edges for anything out of the ordinary. He knew it when he spotted it. One of the devices had blown off a cottonwood tree and hit the water. The water extinguished the flames. The current pushed it downstream for a way until what remained of an incendiary device caught on rocks along the edge of the brook. He took photos and then used a stick to pick it up. Scorch marks on it proved him correct. He pulled a larger evidence bag out of his pocket and placed the device inside. He carefully marked the bag with the exact location where he found it.
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