Wildfire Read online

  WILDFIRE

  Ralph Cotton

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58708-9

  Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  A DEADLY TRAIL

  Why had they ridden into the fire?

  Because they had laid out their escape route before ever riding into Phoebe, he answered himself. Somewhere up ahead, they had fresh horses waiting for them. That was all it could be. When he worked out the miles from here to Phoebe in his head, he realized they wouldn’t have attempted to make it as far as Bagley’s Trading Post without a change of horses. The trading post was still a twenty-six-mile ride from here, most of it over dry, rocky, leg-breaking terrain.

  Fresh horses? Good enough. He’d stick with that notion until something proved otherwise, he decided, staring up along the rocky, winding trail. He had their tracks. He’d catch up to them and take them down. He only hoped none of the fire had jumped across the chasm and rekindled among the pine woodlands in front of him. It was the season for wildfires, he thought, dry, hot, deadly—there was nothing he could do about that. His work had to go on, wildfires or not. He cradled the rifle in his arm while the horse stood drawing water beside him.

  For Mary Lynn . . . of course.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART 2

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART 3

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Excerpt

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Arizona Territory

  Wildfire raged.

  The young Ranger, Sam Burrack, sat atop a rust-colored barb on a bald ridge overlooking a wide, rocky chasm. With a battered brass-trimmed telescope, he scanned beyond the buffering walls of boulder and brush. Long, rising hillsides ran slantwise heaven to earth, covered by an endless pine woodlands. He studied the blanketing fire as it billowed and twisted its way north to south along the hill lines. He watched flames the color of hell lick upward hundreds of feet, drifting, blackening the heavens.

  Through the circle of the lens, he spotted four wolves sitting next to one another along a rock ledge, winded and panting. Their pink tongues a-loll, they stared back at the wall of smoke and fire as if numbed, overpowered by it.

  At the bottom of the hills, where the woodlands came to an end at a chasm, Sam saw a large brown bear stop in its tracks, turn and rise on its hind legs. The large beast stood erect with its forearms and claws spread wide and raged back at the fire, ready to do battle. Yet even so powerful a beast looked helpless and frail beneath that which lay spoil to its domain. At the end of its roar, the bear dropped back onto all fours as if bowing in submission, and loped on.

  The Ranger shook his head, noting how little caution the other fleeing woodland creatures paid the large beast as they darted among dry washes and gullies and bounded over brush and rock with no more than a reflex glance in the roaring bear’s direction. Even the barb beneath him paid no mind to the bear’s warning until a draft of hot smoke swept in behind it. Then the horse skittered sideways and chuffed and scraped a nervous hoof.

  “Easy, now . . . ,” the Ranger murmured, tightening on the reins and collecting the animal. “We’re not going to get you cooked.” He patted a gloved hand on the barb’s withers. “Me neither, I’m hoping,” he added, closing the telescope between his hands. He looked down at the sets of hoofprints he’d been tracking for three days and gave the barb a tap of his boot heels.

  But the barb would have none of it. Instead, the animal grumbled and sawed its head and stalled back on its front legs.

  The Ranger picked up his Winchester from across his lap. He gave another, firmer tap of his boot heels, this time reaching back with his rifle and lightly striking the barrel on the barb’s rump.

  “Come on, pard, we know our jobs,” he said.

  This time he felt the barb take his command and step forward onto the down-winding path toward the rocky land below them. But even as the animal did so, he gave a chuff of protest.

  “I know,” said Sam, “I don’t like it either. . . .”

  * * *

  Four hundred yards down, the meandering dirt trail hardened into rock and left the Ranger with no sign to follow other than the occasional broken pine needles where one of the four men’s horses had laid down an iron-ringed hoof. But that gave him no cause for concern—the old overgrown game trail lay down the rocky, deep-cut hillside. And now that the fire had moved in across the thick woodlands, there would be no other logical way north at the bottom of the hills except to follow rock chasm to its end.

  He knew the bottom trail would stretch fourteen miles before coming to water—twenty-six miles fa
rther before reaching Bagley’s Trading Post. By then, the men he followed would need fresh horses. They wouldn’t rest these horses out before riding on. That took too much time, he told himself. Men like Royal Tarpis, Silas “Red” Gantry, Dockery Latin never wasted time when they were on the move. Out in the open this way, these men instinctively moved as if someone was on their trail, whether they knew it to be a fact or not.

  Men with blood on their trail . . . , Sam told himself, knowing there was a younger man leading the gang these days. That man was the Cheyenne Kid, and he was known to be ruthless. But now the Kid was wounded, bleeding. He’d shot and killed two men in Phoebe, a bank teller and the town sheriff. The sheriff had managed to put a bullet in the murdering young outlaw before falling dead in the street. Sam had picked up the men’s trail the following day, and he’d been on it ever since.

  Sure, they knew someone was coming.

  Sam drew the barb to a halt at a break in the trail and looked to his left, across the chasm where the fire roared, smoke filling the sky. He took off his left glove and felt the barb’s withers. The horse’s coat was dry—hot to his touch. So was his own left cheek, he thought, raising his palm to his face, feeling the prickliness of his beard stubble, noticing the stiff scorched sensation along his cheek line, the dryness in the corners of his eyes as he squinted them shut for a second, gauging the heat.

  Untying the bandana from around his neck, Sam fashioned a curtain of it beneath the brim of his sombrero and draped it down his left cheek. It would help some, he thought.

  “I hope I didn’t lie to you, pard,” he said to the horse, recalling his earlier words to the animal.

  He picked up his canteen hanging from his saddle horn, uncapped it, swished a mouthful of water around in his mouth and spit it out along the left side of horse’s neck. He leaned forward in his saddle and poured a thin stream of water down the horse’s muzzle and along its left side, taking in his own leg and back along its flank. The horse shuddered and chuffed and reached its tongue around to lick at its side.

  “That’s all for now,” Sam said.

  He capped the canteen and rehung it. All right, it was hot, but he’d expected that, he reminded himself. Three miles ahead of him, give or take, he saw the fire had waned on its push southward. In the wake of the billowing inferno stood a few bare and blackened pine skeletons.

  But he and the horse were safe. He had calculated the risk before putting the horse forward onto the trail. Had the wind made a sudden shift and blown straight at them before they’d reached the trail’s halfway point, he would have turned back and raced to the top again before succumbing to the heat. Halfway down the trail, he’d realized there was an end to the fire a few miles to the north—the direction he was headed in. From that point, had the wind changed suddenly, he would have raced down the trail.

  Whichever way, they’d make it.

  And oddly enough, he thought, owing to the rise of heat, it had been hotter atop the trail than it was here below. Still, it had been risky, said a cautioning voice that often admonished him at times such as these.

  Yes, it had, he admitted. But . . . He let out a breath of relief.

  “‘Life is naught without its risks,’” he quoted to himself.

  Who had said that? He shrugged as he nudged the horse forward. He didn’t know. Probably some obscure penny dreadful author who had stood, or imagined himself to have stood, on just such a trail as this.

  He started forward along the lower end of the trail, where he knew the heat would be less intense. As he rode he shook his head. Leave it to men like these to ride into a wildfire, he thought.

  Why had they done that?

  But as he asked the question, he had to remind himself that he had followed without hesitation—so closely that he’d had to water both himself and his horse down to keep up his pursuit. What did that say about him? He didn’t want to think about it right now.

  He rode on.

  Four miles farther down along the chasm trail, he felt the heat on his left begin to wane. A mile farther the temperature had subsided enough that he was able to take the bandana down from his face. Beneath him the rusty barb rode at a stronger gallop. Along their left, beyond the buffer of boulders, dirt and shale, the woodlands lay blackened and ruined, smoke still rising. It was slower now, less intense, but nevertheless engulfed them in a gray, suffocating haze.

  Now he had another problem.

  He stopped the horse and stepped down from his saddle. He listened to the barb wheeze and choke, its labored breath rattling deep in its lungs.

  “Easy, boy,” he said, rubbing the horse’s muzzle. He stepped back to his saddlebags, rummaged out a shirt and shook it out.

  He tied the sleeves up around the horse’s head and made a veil of the shirt. The horse resisted a little and whipped its head until the Ranger took the canteen and poured water down the horse’s face and threw the shirt onto its parched muzzle. He held the wet shirt in place, letting the animal breathe through it. When the horse felt the good of what the Ranger was doing and settled, Sam took his hand off its muzzle.

  “Good boy.”

  He poured water onto his bandana and tied it across the bridge of his nose. He led the horse forward by its reins, feeling the thickness of the smoke with every step.

  “I make it . . . seven, eight miles to water,” he rasped, as if the winded horse understood his words and took comfort in them.

  Three miles farther, he noted the smoke had let up, enough that he could make out the blue of the sky. Underneath him the horse breathed easier; so did he. Stopping, he took down the warm canteen and lifted the shirt from the horse’s muzzle. He kneeled in front of the horse and took off his sombrero like a man given to a vigil of prayer.

  “You need this worse than I do,” he said, pouring the water into the upturned hat.

  The horse lowered its muzzle into the sombrero and Sam let the wet shirt fall around the ensemble.

  When the horse finished the water and tried chewing at the hat brim for more, Sam stood and pulled his wet sombrero away and placed it atop his head. Canteen in hand, he climbed back into the saddle and gave the horse a tap of his heels. On their left, among boulder rocks and dry washes, antelope, deer, coyote and an assortment of smaller creatures still skirted in the same direction, slower now that the threat of death inched farther into the distance.

  “It’s up to you now,” Sam said to the horse as the barb galloped forward, the air, the ground and the atmosphere already turning cooler around them.

  For the next five miles he gave the barb its head, the horse keeping up a strong, steady pace, moving farther away from the raging fire. With the wind in their faces, even with the lingering odor of pine char and brimstone in the air, Sam felt the horse surge with a renewed energy when the scent of water managed to reach into its nostrils.

  The last few hundred yards he had to rein the barb down to keep it from bolting toward the rock runoff tank lying below a steep hillside to his right. The barb muttered and blew and shook its head in protest, but it followed the Ranger’s command.

  Thirty yards from the water, Sam saw a panther and two cubs begin to slink back from the water’s edge. Grudgingly, with a large-fanged growl, the big mother cat crept backward to the shelter of boulders as the Ranger stepped the horse forward. He noted the upper half of the mother cat’s left ear was missing. Dried blood caked down her neck and shoulder. Mimicking its mother, one of the cubs raised its back toward him and let out a hiss—showing its small and helpless fangs. The Ranger smiled sadly, nudging his horse forward.

  Across the water Sam saw the rumps of a small herd of elk move away into the growth of pine and juniper mantling the rock chasm still running alongside his trail. A moment earlier a young bear had stood up on its hinds and looked at him and the horse, then dropped and turned away as the Ranger scanned the rock tank fro
m fifty yards.

  Odd, he thought, elk, mountain lion and bear, all watering within less than thirty feet of one another. Yet odder still was that all three species had cut short sating their thirst at the glimpse of man. The only animals to remain as the Ranger rode closer were birds of all size and variety. They sat along the rocky water edge, preening themselves of the smell of smoke, and drinking fearlessly, as if knowing that in an instant they could be up and gone should man try any of his dark shenanigans.

  A few of the smaller birds fluttered up and away as the Ranger and the horse filed past them at less than fifteen feet. But the larger birds only stared and squawked and continued attending to themselves.

  “Don’t mind us,” he murmured, riding past.

  When he had looked all around the water hole and satisfied himself that he and the horse were the only ones there representing their species, he swung down from the saddle, rifle in hand, at the water’s edge. The larger birds sidestepped away from him, making room for him and the horse, but giving up no more of their spot than they had to.

  Where he stepped down from his saddle, he saw the hoofprints of the four horses in the sandy dirt among the rock. On one of the half-sunken rocks, he saw spots of dark blood and he stooped and took off his glove and touched his fingertips to it while the horse lowered its muzzle and drank.

  All right, Cheyenne Kid, how far ahead are you? he asked, rubbing his fingertips on the spots and then examining them for any sign of red moisture.

  “Bone dry,” he murmured aloud, as if any of the creatures of the wilds were interested. He stood and looked back and forth along the trail, first at the smoky distant trail behind himself, then along the rocky, winding trail ahead. Now to the earlier question he’d asked himself, he thought.

  Why had they ridden into the fire?

  Because they had laid out their escape route before ever riding into Phoebe, he answered himself. Somewhere up ahead, they had fresh horses waiting for them. That was all it could be. When he worked out the miles from here to Phoebe in his head, he figured they wouldn’t have attempted to make it as far as Bagley’s Trading Post without a change of horses. The trading post was still a twenty-six-mile ride from here, most of it over dry, rocky, leg-breaking terrain.