Cards, Matt, Yangtree, who’d celebrated—or mourned—his fiftyfourth birthday the month before, and Gibbons, whose bad knee had him nearly hobbling those last yards.
Cards wheezed in with three seconds to spare, with Yangtree right behind him. Gibbons’s face was a sweat-drenched study in pain and grit, but Matt? It seemed to Rowan he barely pushed.
His eyes met hers. She pumped her fist, imagined herself dragging him and Gibbons over the last few feet while the seconds counted down. She swore she could see the light come on, could see Matt reaching in, digging down.
He hit at 22:28, with Gibbons stumbling over a half second behind.
The cheer rose then, the triumph of one more season.
“Guess you two wanted to add a little suspense.” L.B. lowered his clipboard. “Welcome back. Take a minute to bask, then let’s get loaded.”
“Hey, Ro!” She glanced over at Cards’s shout, in time to see him turn, bend over and drop his pants. “Pucker up!”
And we’re back, she thought.
2
Gulliver Curry rolled out of his sleeping bag and took stock. Everything hurt, he decided. But that made a workable balance.
He smelled snow, and a look out of his tent showed him, yes, indeed, a couple fresh inches had fallen overnight. His breath streamed out in clouds as he pulled on pants. The blisters on his blisters made dressing for the day an... experience.
Then again, he valued experience.
The day before, he, along with twenty-five other recruits, had dug fire line for fourteen hours, then topped off that little task with a three-mile hike, carrying an eighty-five-pound pack.
They’d felled trees with crosscut saws, hiked, dug, sharpened tools, dug, hiked, scaled the towering pines, then dug some more.
Summer camp for the masochist, he thought. Otherwise known as rookie training for smoke jumpers. Four recruits had already washed out—two of them hadn’t gotten past the initial PT test. His seven years’ fire experience, the last four on a hotshot crew, gave Gull some advantage.
But that didn’t mean he felt fresh as a rosebud.
He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching his palm over bristles from nearly a week without a razor. God, he wanted a hot shower, a shave and an ice-cold beer. Tonight, after a fun-filled hike through the Bitterroots, this time hauling a hundred-and-ten-pound pack, he’d get all three.
And tomorrow, he’d start the next phase. Tomorrow he’d start learning how to fly.
Hotshots trained like maniacs, worked like dogs, primarily on highpriority wilderness fires. But they didn’t jump out of planes. That, he thought, added a whole new experience. He shoved a hand through his thick mass of dark hair, then crawled out of the tent into the crystal snowscape of predawn.
His eyes, feline green, tracked up to check the sky, and he stood for a moment in the still, tall and tough in his rough brown pants and bright yellow shirt. He had what he wanted here—or pieces of it—the knowledge that he could do what he’d come to do.
He measured the height of the ponderosa pine to his left. Ninety feet, give or take. He’d walked up that bastard the day before, biting his gaffs into bark. And from that height, hooked with spikes and harness, he’d gazed out over the forest.
An experience.
Through the scent of snow and pine, he headed toward the cook tent as the camp began to stir. And despite the aches, the blisters—maybe because of them—he looked forward to what the day would bring.
Shortly after noon, Gull watched the lodgepole pine topple. He shoved his hard hat back enough to wipe sweat off his forehead and nodded to his partner on the crosscut saw.
“Another one bites the dust.”
Dobie Karstain barely made the height requirement at five six. His beard and stream of dung brown hair gave him the look of a pint-sized mountain man, while the safety goggles seemed to emphasize the wild, wide eyes.
Dobie hefted a chain saw. “Let’s cut her into bite-sized pieces.”
They worked rhythmically. Gull had figured Dobie for a washout, but the native Kentuckian was stronger, and sturdier, than he looked. He liked Dobie well enough—despite the man’s distinctly red neck—and was working on reaching a level of trust.
If Dobie made it through, odds were they’d be sawing and digging together again. Not on a bright, clear spring afternoon, but in the center of fire where trust and teamwork were as essential as a sharp Pulaski, the two-headed tool with ax and grub hoe.
“Wouldn’t mind tapping that before she folds.”
Gull glanced over at one of the female recruits. “What makes you think she’ll fold?”
“Women ain’t built for this work, son.”
Gull drew the blade of the saw through the pine. “Just for babymaking, are they?”
Dobie grinned through his beard. “I didn’t design the model. I just like riding ’em.”
“You’re an asshole, Dobie.”
“Some say,” Dobie agreed in the same good-natured tone.
Gull studied the woman again. Perky blond, maybe an inch or two shy of Dobie’s height. And from his point of view, she’d held up as well as any of them. Ski instructor out of Colorado, he recalled. Libby. He’d seen her retaping her blisters that morning.
“I got twenty says she makes it all the way.”
Dobie chuckled as another log rolled. “I’ll take your twenty, son.”
When they finished their assignment, Gull retaped some of his own blisters. Then, as the instructors were busy, taped Dobie’s fresh ones.
They moved through the camp to their waiting packs. Three miles to go, Gull thought, then he’d end this fine day with that shave, shower and cold beer.
He sat, strapped on the pack, then pulled out a pack of gum. He offered a stick to Dobie.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Together they rolled over to their hands and knees, then pushed to standing.
“Just imagine you’re carrying a pretty little woman,” Dobie advised, with a wiggle of eyebrows in Libby’s direction.
“A buck-ten’s pretty scrawny for my taste.”
“She’ll feel like more by the time we’re done.”
No question about it, Gull mused, and the instructor didn’t set what you’d call a meandering pace along the rocky, quad-burning trail.
They pushed one another, that’s how it was done. Ragged one another, encouraged one another, insulted one another, to get the group another step, another yard. The spurring fact was, in a few weeks it would be real. And on the fire line everyone’s life depended on the other.
“What do you do back in Kentucky?” Gull asked Dobie while a hawk screamed overhead and the smell of group sweat competed with pine.
“Some of this, some of that. Last three seasons I doused fires in the national forest. One night after we beat one down, I got a little drunk, took a bet how I’d be a smoke jumper. So I got an application, and here I am.”
“You’re doing this on a bet?” The idea just appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.
“Hundred dollars on the line, son. And my pride that’s worth more. You ever jump out of a plane?”
“Yeah.”
“Takes the crazy.”
“Some might say.” Gull passed Dobie’s earlier words back to him.
“What’s it feel like? When you’re falling?”
“Like hot, screaming sex with a beautiful woman.”
“I was hoping.” Dobie shifted his pack, winced. “Because this fucking training better be worth it.”
“Libby’s holding up.”
“Who?”
Gull lifted his chin. “Your most recent bet.”
Dobie gritted his teeth as they started up yet another incline. “Day’s not over.”
By the time it was, Gull got his shower, his shave, and managed to grab a brew before falling facedown on his bunk.
Michael Little Bear snagged Rowan on her way into the gym. “I need you to take rookie training this morning. Cards was on it, but he’s puking up his guts in the john.”