Wild Fire (16 page)

She decided not to wake him. She'd leave his room 'til last. It would take a couple of hours to do her own.

By 10
A.M.
her shelves were empty, and everything was free of dust. She stuffed her sheets and bedspread into a plastic bag and spread her sleeping bag on top of the mattress cover. Two more nights. Everything was packed except for the necessities.

When she checked on Ryan, he wasn't in his room. She heard his voice coming from the kitchen. “Dad? Hey, Dad, you there?”

The radio.

She hurried through the kitchen. Sure enough, he was in the radio room fiddling with the buttons and dials. She started to yell, then changed her tone. “Ry, Dad's probably not there. He had to take Tia home, remember?”

Ryan jumped, and the hand mike went flying. She grabbed for it, but too late. The instrument crashed to the floor, breaking open the casing and exposing the wiring inside
.

She gasped. “Oh, no!” Ryan looked at her, then burst into tears. She wanted to cry herself. That radio had cost a fortune. Dad was going to have a fit. She bent to pick up the debris and realized her hands were shaking like she'd had three cups of coffee this morning instead of one.

She tried to keep her voice steady. “This is why you're not supposed to be in here.” His face flooded with fear, and she relented. “Maybe Colin can fix it.”
Let's just hope we don't need it between now and then
.

K
ARA DUSTED
D
AD'S AND
R
YAN'S
room while her brother packed his duffle bag for the trip home. At noon, she left him fiddling with a small canvas pouch he'd found in the barn. He called it his “survival kit,” and he had been storing treasures in it all summer
.

“Anne should be home any minute. I'll see what we have . . .”

A rumble of thunder drowned out her words. The front door crashed open. Colin rushed into the lodge and leaned against the door until it closed against the howling wind.

“Whoa. That's gonna be some storm. I moved Dakota to an outside stall. The barn's not all that stable.” He stripped off his work gloves and tossed his hat onto the rack by the door. “I was going to put Lily out there too, but I see Anne's not back.”

Lightning flashed. The lights stayed on. Kara said a silent prayer of thanks for the generator. But she was worried about Anne. “She should have been back by now.”

She flinched as another peal of thunder rocked the lodge. A gale-driven rain began pounding the deck, turning the huge windows into sheets of streaming water.

Colin had to yell to make himself heard. “Anne's smart. She probably saw the storm coming and took cover.”

Kara nodded, but she felt uneasy.
I just hope he's right
.

She found a can of tuna, grabbed the mayonnaise from the fridge, and mixed the filling for sandwiches. Her stomach felt too jumpy to eat, but Colin and Ryan gobbled down two apiece. Ryan had just headed for his room when she noticed the quiet.

“Storm's over.” Colin looked at his watch. “We'll give Anne another half hour. If she's not back by then, I'll go look for her.”

Kara shivered. In just the last few days she'd begun to realize how much Anne meant to her. The cook had shown her nothing but kindness—even when she acted like a jerk. What if something had happened to her? What if she had been hit by lightning? Or maybe Lily had spooked and thrown her.

But Lily never spooked. At least not from thunder. Besides, if Lily were loose, she would have headed home. Her thoughts spun like a child's windup toy. An intense ache began to spread up the back of her head.

“Colin?”

“I know.” He was standing right behind her. His fingers began to knead her shoulders, and she felt the muscles start to relax. “I'm worried too. But let's give her some time, okay?”

The front door slammed again. She jumped up and followed Colin into the dining room. But it was only Ryan standing outside on the deck.

“Hey, wow, you guys gotta see this.”

The entire yard was strewn with pine branches and shreds of bark. Two trees had come crashing down inches from the lodge. Dad had always been careful to keep thirty feet of clearing between the buildings and the woods. It was
supposed to be for fire safety, but now Kara realized there was more than one reason for the rule. Those two trees could have easily taken out the roof.

She switched her gaze toward the barn and gasped. One whole side had caved in, leaving a huge pile of wood slats and tree branches where the stalls should have been.

“Oh, Colin. Thank God you kept Dakota outside.”

Colin jumped off the deck and sprinted toward the corral. “Keep Ryan here,” he yelled over his shoulder. “It might not be safe.”

But she couldn't just stand there. What if Lily had come home? What if Anne had headed for the barn and gotten trapped? She started to order Ryan to stay, but she knew that would never happen. “Come on, Ry. But stay away from the barn. I mean it.”

Breathless, she caught up with Colin just as he was leading Dakota from one of the outside stalls. They had been built against the back of the plane hangar so the string horses could have shelter from the sun or rain. Most were open in the front, like an up-ended cardboard box. But two had been built with doors for isolating animals. They were new, solid, and safe.

“Not a scratch. He's antsy, but not hurt.”

Kara sighed in relief. “Should we check the barn?”

Colin threw a saddle blanket over Dakota's back. “Not now. I'm going after Anne.”

She could hear the anxiety in his voice and followed his gaze. A plume of thick, white smoke was rising from behind the mountains to the north.
Forest fire
. She watched, mesmerized, as the sky took on a reddish glow, then darkened as the smoke began to spread.

“It's miles away.” Colin's voice jerked her out of her daze. He held Dakota's reins in one hand and slipped his other arm around her shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze. “I'll find her, Wakara.” He vaulted into the saddle. “Get on the radio. Get Mark or your dad back in here. We might need the plane.”

Dakota danced sideways. Colin spun him around to face her. “If that fire gets any closer and I'm not back, you're out of here. Got it?”

“No way. I won't leave you . . . Colin!” But he had pushed Dakota to a full gallop. In seconds they were out of sight.

She felt Ryan's hand slip into hers. “Kara? Is the fire gonna come here?” His forehead was creased with worry as he stared wide-eyed at the rapidly darkening sky.

She ruffled his hair. With an effort she kept her voice light. “I don't think so. Colin will find Anne, then Dad will come and take us home.” Even as she said it, she remembered the broken radio mike and felt the first wild rush of fear.

After an hour she gave up trying to fix the radio. She picked up the binoculars and scanned the mountains one more time. Smoke had spread like a huge, dark quilt across the sky. In the far north, the reddish glow leaped into great orange flames, devouring the landscape like a giant tongue, lapping up everything ahead of it.

Colin and Anne were nowhere in sight.

Ryan pressed his nose against the window. “It's getting closer, isn't it?”

She didn't try to lie. “Yes.” She took a deep breath. They couldn't just sit here and wait. The flames were heading southeast along Cedar Butte. If the fire jumped the ridge, it'd be headed right for Otter Lake.

“Get your pack, Ryan, and your canteen. Extra socks and shoes, okay? And your jacket too.”

“But it's hot.”

“This is no time to argue. Just do it, Ry. Please.”

He bolted for his room.

She stuffed her compass, extra clothes, her jacket, binoculars, and a small first aid kit into her pack, then filled both canteens and two plastic bottles with water. Ryan stood still while she shoved two apples and a couple packs of raisins into his backpack.

“All set?” She tried to stay calm, but her hands were shaking and her throat felt like sandpaper.

“I'm scared.”

She turned him around and pulled him in for a hug. “So am I, Kiddo. That's why we have to get out of here. We'll find the others and go out through Pine Creek.”

If the fire hadn't already spread that far.

A
SHES DRIFTED LIKE SOOTY
snowflakes from the sky. A great plume of smoke spread across the valley, causing Kara's breath to come in gasps as she jogged down the hill. Suddenly, she slowed down, realizing that Ryan probably couldn't keep up. Forcing herself to a fast walk, she turned her head and saw him trotting just behind her. So far, so good
.

At the bottom of the hill, she picked up the pace again. Past the empty corral, past the ruined barn. What if Lily and Dakota had been in there? She didn't even want to think about that.

She turned right at the empty hangar where Dad's plane had been parked just a few hours ago. Would he come back to get them? What if he did, and they weren't there? She should have left a note, but she had been in too much of a hurry. He would understand. Anne, or even Colin, might be injured.

She paused at the edge of the runway. The stiff, brown grass was pocked by small round holes. Prairie dogs. Colin called them whistle pigs. On a normal day there would be hundreds of them perched at the entrance to their dens, barking their shrill warning. But today there wasn't any sign of the small, querulous creatures.

Come to think of it, they weren't out this morning either when she had come to see Dad off. They were hiding in their dens. They must have known.

Dad should have known. He shouldn't have left us
.

She knew that wasn't fair. If he had thought there was any danger, he wouldn't have gone.

“My bag!”

She spun around. “Ryan? Wait!”

But he was already running back toward the lodge. “I forgot my survival kit. We might need it.”

“Ryan, no!” But either he didn't hear her or was deliberately ignoring her screams. She started after him, then stopped. Better to save her energy. He'd be back before she could get up the hill.

A steady rumbling, like thunder, interrupted her thoughts. The ground began to shake. Now what? She grabbed hold of the fence post to keep her balance. Elk! A herd of at least a hundred of them stampeded toward the river. Moving at breakneck speed, they kicked up rocks and mowed down small trees like matchsticks
.

If she and Ryan had been on the runway they'd have been trampled. She watched the herd disappear around the curve of the river, then swung her head around to see where they had come from.

Bald Mountain. The dust from the panicked animals, added to the smoke, made her eyes water even more. But she didn't need the binoculars to see the yellow-orange flames leaping from one tree to the next on the highest ridge.

Ten miles away. Fifteen tops. What would happen when the fire reached the river? There wasn't enough water. Nothing would stop it.

She felt a rush of panic. Where was that kid? Then she saw him running down the hill. “Come on, Ryan!” she shouted over the lump in her throat. “We need to move.” Fire burned more slowly downhill, she consoled herself. They had time. They had to have time.

A thin layer of ashes made the ground slippery. Ryan slid the last few feet into her leg and nearly knocked her off her feet. “Whew. I got it. It was right on the table—Wow! Look at that!”

The awe in his voice turned to fear. “It's coming this way.”

Not if they went downstream. But by going toward Otter Lake they were headed right toward the fire. Still she had to find Colin and Anne. They didn't have much time. How could she get Ryan to understand without scaring him to death?

She forced herself to stay calm. It wouldn't help to yell at him. Yelling would just make him angry, then he wouldn't listen at all. She took hold of his shoulders and turned him to face her. “Ry, look at me.”