The Thirtymile Fire by John N. Maclean

Author:John N. Maclean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Lord was good to me. He put wings on my feet and I ran like hell.

—Walter Rumsey, survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire

It was a pretty neat sight, thought Emhoff from his perch on the boulder. You couldn’t see much flame on the far side of the canyon because of the trees and smoke; the fire was putting up a good, thick column. Every now and then, though, the smoke parted up on the far canyon wall, and you had a real good picture of a bunch of trees torching. There was a smaller column of smoke on the near side of the canyon, but it wasn’t doing much. You could sit there and watch the two smoke columns grow darker and more intense. That was pretty neat.

He and Craven had talked it over and figured the fire would creep past them. When the fire arrived, though, things were going to get pretty tense. They had a couple of options. If flames crossed to their side of the river, they could go farther up in the scree. If flames somehow circled behind them they could head for the road. The scree wasn’t the perfect place in the world to be, but there was plenty of room to dodge around. Folks were getting a little freaky—not screaming, just tightening up.

“Don’t worry, be calm,” Craven had told everyone. “Do I look scared? When I’m scared, then you can be scared.” Emhoff had trusted Craven from the first time he met him, which is why he had followed him into the rocks. Now he and Craven worked as a team to steady the others. While Craven explained fire behavior to Weaver, Emhoff thought he would lighten the mood—by tossing his jacket over Johnson’s head, just for laughs. Rubbing FitzPatrick’s arm had stopped her chattering, but it hadn’t drawn off the tension. She had a vise grip on his leg.

The fire was going to make a spectacular sight as it passed by, Emhoff thought. The sky was dark enough that embers and flames would show up brilliantly against it. They would take some heat, but there was no need to move, at least not yet.

Then everything seemed to stop. A hush fell on the canyon. The darkness became almost liquid, and the air drew back like a wave gathering strength. Sudden gusts of wind broke the stillness. Then out of the darkness a vanguard of embers in purple, orange, and pink swept prettily across the river. A shimmering wall of flame arose above the trees along the far riverbank and sent big chunks of fire whirling across the river and into the scree.

“Hey, what’s going on?” somebody asked. “Are we going to be all right?” Emhoff and the others swatted bits of flaming debris off their shirts and pants, and off each other.

Farther down the canyon, flames began to roll in the tunnel of air above road and river. Emhoff thought it couldn’t be a true horizontal vortex, thank God, because those things had trees flying around in them.

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