Prairie Fire

by Kayt C Peck

  PRAIRIE FIRE

  PRAIRIE FIRE

  KAYT C. PECK

  SAPPHIRE BOOKS

  SALINAS, CALIFORNIA

  Prairie Fire

  Copyright © 2016 by Kayt C. Peck. All rights reserved.

  ISBN EPUB - 978-1-943353-48-4

  This is a work of fiction - names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the publisher.

  Editor - Kaycee Hawn

  Book Design - LJ Reynolds

  Cover Design - Michelle Brodeur

  Sapphire Books Publishing, LLC

  P.O. Box 8142

  Salinas, CA 93912

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition – October 2016

  This and other Sapphire Books titles can be found at

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Dedication

  To Joe Bob James, a cowboy’s cowboy. I never told him he was a hero to me. To Chris Svendsen, the visionary behind Sapphire Books. I learned my lesson. I’ll tell her now that she’s a hero to me.

  Prologue

  Judy was a rancher, pure and simple. From the time she drew her first breath, country air gave her lungs the power they needed to cry her proclamation that she was now a living, breathing member of the human race. Her first memory was of sitting in the saddle in front of her mother as they rode, the whole family doing their part in the annual gathering of the yearlings. That memory included her mother’s gentle hand, holding her in place. Judy was barely old enough to be out of her crib.

  Judy was a rancher; her parents and grandparents had been ranchers. Her great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had been among those who first gathered the wild Longhorns from the Texas Hill Country, part of the very founders of the modern cattle industry, an industry they followed north from South Texas into the Panhandle where they found their own land and made their ranching tradition.

  Like most country kids, she’d tried to leave, but for Judy, it wasn’t because she longed to leave for a bigger world. For Judy, it was because she longed to be her true self, a self she believed would never be welcome on the land and among the people in her ranch home, her ranch roots. A woman who loved women…well…the country preacher in their little rural church certainly made clear the sinfulness of homosexuality. College brought Judy her first experiences of the truth she’d secretly known about herself from the time she was thirteen.

  A short-lived career as a graphic artist took her to city life, and it was there she found Sandy and the joy of true love. A joy that, in time, she thought she’d have to give up forever. When a car wreck took her parents, Judy had to make a choice – to continue life with Sandy and watch the family ranch sold and parceled out to modern-day hobby ranchers, or to go home to continue the family tradition. Her love for Sandy could not outweigh her love for the land, for the life that was in her blood.

  She chose the land. She chose solitude. She chose loneliness, or so she thought, until Kathleen Romero arrived unexpectedly, a woman whose love of writing brought her to a lonely ranch where they both found unexpected gifts in each other and in a shared love for the land. As time passed, it just got better and better.

  Chapter One

  From Heaven to Hell

  The bed felt good, damn good, but not as good as the woman lying beside her. Judy woke slowly, enjoying the little piece of heaven that was now the start of all her days. Two years, it had been. Two years since Kathleen walked into her solitary life, totally unexpected, like a gift from the Universe. Judy snuggled close, spooning beside her lover, burying her face in the vanilla scent of Kathleen’s hair.

  Chores awaited. Judy knew the horses were probably already snorting in the corrals, waiting for breakfast, and there were chickens to feed and eggs to gather, a new development that Kathleen had insisted they add to their country life. Judy didn’t mind the extra work. Fresh eggs were well worth a few minutes work each morning, and Judy had a growing affection for Cogburn, their bantam rooster. The morning ritual of the nose to beak greeting between Cogburn and her dog, Useless, was a joy she had grown to count on as she watched the depth of this non-traditional friendship.

  Very soon, Judy would put on her boots, jeans, and worn denim shirt and head outside, but not yet. Now she was warm and comfortable and holding the woman she loved more than she ever thought she could love anyone.

  “Ummmmm,” Kathleen said.

  “You awake?” Judy whispered into Kathleen’s hair.

  “Reluctantly,” Kathleen mumbled into the pillow.

  Judy nibbled playfully where Kathleen’s neck conjoined with her shoulder.

  “Okay, not so reluctantly now,” Kathleen said as she rolled over, her arm raised, until, with well-practiced synchronicity, they achieved a final position with Kathleen’s arm around Judy and Judy’s head resting on Kathleen’s shoulder. Judy raised slightly, positioning herself for a gentle and deep kiss. Kathleen put her hand playfully over her mouth.

  “I have morning breath,” she mumbled behind her hand.

  Judy nuzzled at the hand barrier. “I love your morning breath,” she said.

  The kiss was gentle but deep, as much loving familiarity as passion. Judy finally pulled back, positioning herself half atop and half beside her lover.

  “I love you,” she whispered into her lover’s face.

  Kathleen’s eyes widened, one eyebrow raising in mild disdain. Judy rolled slightly to the side and put her hand over her own mouth.

  “Sorry. Guess it’s the onions from last night’s enchiladas,” she said.

  Kathleen laughed softly, and reached to brush a whisper of hair from her lover’s face. “I love you too, Judy Proctor, morning breath and all.” She nestled her face between Judy’s breasts and inhaled deeply. “The rest of you smells absolutely wonderful.”

  Judy smiled and chuckled, inhaling deeply to enjoy the combined scents of their sleepy bodies. Mid-breath, she stopped, sitting up abruptly.

  “I thought you liked my morning breath,” Kathleen said

  “Smell,” Judy said harshly.

  “What? The onions aren’t that bad,” Kathleen answered.

  “Smell,” Judy demanded again.

  Kathleen sat up and inhaled deeply. Her face registered surprise and concern. They looked at each other with shared urgency.

  “Smoke,” they said in unison.

  The leisurely morning evaporated. In minutes, they were both in clothes and boots and heading out the front door. Both dogs, Useless and Somegood, crawled from their summer beds beneath the porch, greeting their mistresses, but neither woman took time for the usual pet and scratch behind the ears. Instead, their attention was focused on a wall of smoke not a mile south of their home and ranch headquarters. Prairie fire!

  “Call the fire department,” Judy yelled as she started for the barn.

  “Call 911?” Kathleen asked.

  “No, the fire department number posted on the refrigerator. The 911 number doesn’t work here,” Judy answered, pausing to turn and look at Kathleen.

  “It will take them an hour to get here,” Kathleen said.

  “Call anyway. Then call the Kentons,” Judy yelled as she ran toward the barn. The thought of the Kentons gave her more comfort than the distant fire department in the town of Dulson. They were neighbors, friends, and a second family. She felt she could face almost anything with a Kenton by
her side. For three generations, the Proctors and the Kentons had watched each other’s backs.

  “What will we do?” Kathleen yelled.

  Judy barely paused, pivoting briefly back toward Kathleen. “Fight it! Shut Somegood and Useless in the house,” she said.

  At a dead run, Judy half climbed, half jumped over the fence to the horse pasture behind the barn. She ran to the far end and opened the wire gate leading to the far larger cattle pasture behind the house. The horses were agitated in the corrals, troubled by the smoke. She opened the corral gate, and her horse, Jackson, Kathleen’s gelding, Dancer, and her late father’s horse, Big Tom, thundered past, glad to be free of the corrals.

  “Stay free of the fire, boys. That’s all the help I can give you,” Judy said, her heart twisted in fear for the horses she loved.

  Badly winded, Judy forced herself to slow her pace as she headed back to the barn. A broken ankle from a wild run would make her useless as the community gathered to fight the fire. Judy grabbed a stack of gunnysacks from the feed room and a wide scoop shovel from the small metal silo where they stored oats for the horses. Judy knew that the sacks and the shovel had the wide surface area so helpful in beating down the flames of a grass fire. She hoped they’d still work. In her life, she’d fought two prairie fires, both small. As she trotted back to the house where her truck was parked, she looked south to the billows of smoke, knowing exactly where the fire was. It was a field where her father had planted winter wheat for decades. For five years, that field had been part of the federal Crop Reduction Program (CRP), planted back to grass and left untouched. The grass was higher and thicker than any she’d ever seen on her semi-arid prairie. She prayed the methods she knew would work. She thought about the brief thunderstorm she and Kathleen had driven through the night before while coming home from dinner in town. Lightning, Judy thought. Lightning had to have started it.

  Kathleen stood by the truck, holding a shovel from the garden and a gallon milk jug of drinking water.

  “Can I use this?” Kathleen asked, holding up the shovel.

  “Perfect,” Judy answered.

  “Fire department is on the way. Julie Kenton said Curley Thomas already picked up Harold, Brad, and Martha, and they’re on their way over.”

  Judy’s heart went cold as she looked at her lover. She felt fear like none she’d ever known as she envisioned Kathleen, surrounded by fire.

  “Honey, you don’t have to go. I mean, it’s not…”

  “Fuck you. This is my home too,” Kathleen answered.

  The cold steel Judy saw glinting in Kathleen’s eyes made it clear there would be no more argument. Both women were so engrossed in each other and the silent conflict that neither of them noticed the pickup roaring down the county road beside the house until it turned into the yard and slammed to a halt, raising a dense cloud of dust.

  “Get in!” Brad Kenton, Judy’s best friend since childhood, yelled from the bed of the truck.

  Curley Thompson, another neighbor, was driving and Judy could see Brad’s parents, Harold and Martha Kenton, riding shotgun and middle inside the cab. Other neighbors would be coming as they saw smoke, but these were the only ones close enough to be of immediate help. Judy and Kathleen threw sacks, shovels, and water jug into the truck bed and climbed inside, barely having time to take a seat before Curley spun around in the circular drive and was back on the county road, heading for the fire. Brad jumped out to open the gates, throwing them aside, leaving them open for the fire trucks. Curley’s truck bounced precariously over the rough ground, pushing its way through the thick grass. Judy felt a new fear, concern that the manifold from the truck would ignite even more fires. Curley drove around the fire and directly to its head, just as Judy and her father had done before on the two small fires she’d fought. Then as now, neighbors came together to face a common threat. Both fires were out before the Dulson County fire trucks arrived. She prayed the same would be true this day. Judy, Kathleen, and the Kentons jumped from the truck, grabbing sacks and shovels as they did so. Curley yelled something unintelligible and drove away; Judy assumed he would wait for the fire trucks and lead them through the complex of gates from the main highway to the field.

  Like Berserkers, they fought fire. Brad and Harold took sharp shovels, doing the heavy work of chopping out the tufts of grass too dense to be beaten into submission. Judy, Kathleen, and Martha used gunnysacks and shovels to beat at the flames, moving foot by foot to extinguish the dry tender of dense prairie grass. For a time, all went well. They made real progress. Unfortunately, nature can be a real bitch.

  Prairie winds are a fact of life. Their caresses on the blades of the ubiquitous windmills made possible settlement of this rich cattle country where surface water is as rare as hen’s teeth. Prairie winds bring the rain, pump the water, and make the hot, dry days of summer just a little more bearable. In the 1930s, prairie winds yanked farmers by the scruff of the neck, letting them know the consequences of applying wet land farming methods on the semi-arid prairie. The winds could be friend or foe, depending on many things, especially the foolishness of humanity in thinking it can out guess nature.

  The winds changed direction and speed, and the battle turned.

  No one said a thing, but they all knew it was time to run for their lives. Half-burned grass where they thought they’d won that battle line suddenly reignited and a wall of flame threatened to swamp them all. Shovels and sacks were dropped, and they ran, coughing at smoke and all taking the same path, around the phalanx of the fire and toward the side where the wall of fire did not extend, into a small break and to relative safety in the black where the fuel was already consumed. No one can understand that moment unless they’ve been there, in the urgency and confusion of a life and death moment, caring for yourself and yourself alone not because of a choice, but because all that’s real in that second is the two feet in one’s immediate vicinity and the reflexes that determine whether a person will live or die.

  Forty years earlier, Harold Kenton had been star quarterback for the Dulson High School Wolves. His senior year, he was a month away from a college scholarship when they made the play that changed his life. He’d been sacked before, but this Blarneyton Fighting Irish nose-guard was big and as they went down, Harold’s knee bent in a way no knee was intended to bend. They carried him off the field that night, ending his football days. Surgery put everything more or less back where it was supposed to be. He’d barely noticed his handicap in the decades following, able to work and ride and do anything a rancher needed to do. He’d barely noticed until making the most important run of his life, a run not from a defensive lineman, but from fire itself. He could see past the smoke and to the safety beyond when that forty-year-old injury said no more and the knee gave way. Harold went down like a ton of bricks. Instinct set in and he crawled to a small area that was more dirt than grass. He curled into a ball, pulling his weathered Stetson tight onto his head, then putting his arms over his face and tucking his hands beneath him. He waited.

  Strange thing, the human mind in crisis. As he lay there in those moments that seemed like eternity, all he could do was try to remember the name of that long ago nose-guard. Damn, Harold thought. It’s awful not to remember the name of the man who killed you.

  The others coughed and sputtered as they caught their breath in the relative safety of the blackened grass. Martha dropped to her knees and retched from the coughs she could not stop. Brad knelt beside his mother, holding her up by the shoulders. He wiped away his smoke induced tears, streaking even more the soot that covered his face and looked around, assessing the situation.

  “Where’s Dad?” Brad asked.

  Judy and Kathleen joined him, looking around in panic for their missing neighbor. That’s when they heard the screams.

  “No!” Brad yelled and started to run toward his own demise in the flames. Judy tackled him just a few feet from the fire and Kathleen jumped into the fray, helping her lover hold down the determined son. Brad
threw a punch, catching Judy in the right eye, inflicting what would be an awesome shiner and making her see a whole night sky full of stars.

  “Brad, stop! You can’t help him yet,” Martha yelled.

  Brad halted his struggle, hearing his mother’s words.

  Grass fire moves quickly. It seemed like an eternity before the flames passed the spot from which they heard screams then groans. In reality, it was less than a minute. As soon as the fire passed that spot, they were all there, kneeling beside the still curled Harold, horrified at the blackened color of his shirt, even the skin beneath. His Stetson was blackened and smoldering, but still seemed intact. He groaned softly.

  “Harold, honey, how are you?” Martha said, kneeling beside her husband.

  Harold curled tentatively out of his fetal position, straightening his legs, careful not to roll onto his burnt back. They all knelt in a semi-circle around their burned comrade.

  “Troy,” he said. “His name was Troy.”

  “What the hell you talking about, Dad?” Brad demanded.

  “That’s the name of the man who…well, I guess he didn’t kill me,” he said, a note of surprise in his voice.

  Kathleen looked beyond the tight group, her attention drawn to a flash of light. She spotted the red lights of firetrucks, Curley’s pickup leading the rescue caravan.

  “Thank God, they’re here,” Kathleen said. Judy and Brad hooted when they too spotted the welcome site.

  Curley pulled his truck near the small group and jumped out of the cab.

  “What the hell? Harold, damn it. Harold, you okay?” Curley asked.

  Harold groaned and tried to sit up.

  “Just lie still, honey,” Martha instructed, and Harold obeyed.

  “No, Curley old man, I’m not okay, but at least I’m only medium rare instead of well done.”