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A cold and raging anger had Quint skidding to a stop, snapping the shotgun to his shoulder, and squeezing both triggers, even though he knew his target was out of range. But he had the satisfaction of seeing the figure crouch low before the night’s darkness swallowed him.
Quint was half tempted to pursue the man, but the shotgun blast had ignited a fresh panic among the trapped horses. He had no choice but to rescue them before they injured themselves.
By the time he got the pasture gate open and succeeded in driving the crazed and wild-eyed horses through it to safety, Empty was using a hose to pour water on the corral’s round bale and Dallas was stabbing a pitchfork into the burning edges of the tightly rolled hay in an attempt to separate it from the unburned portions.
All Quint saw in the roll of smoke and hiss of stubborn flames was the loose swing of her coppery hair when she turned her face away from the fire’s heat. He jerked the pitchfork out of her hands and shoved her aside.
“Get out of here and get that hair under a hat,” he ordered and attacked the bale, resuming her efforts without any illusion that it might be successful. To her credit, Dallas hesitated only an instant before she sprinted for the house. Quint spared a glance at Empty. “Did you get the fire department called?”
Empty responded with a curt nod and aimed the hose at the top of the bale. “They’re supposed to be on their way. Not that it’s going to do much good,” he added with a short glance at the bales along the fence line that were now a solid wall of flames. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you got the bastard that started this.”
“He was too far away.”
“I was afraid of that,” Empty muttered, then added bitterly, “Wanna bet the fire trucks will take their time getting here?”
“No, thanks.”
When Dallas came running back to join them, Quint was quick to note the feed store cap on her head and the absence of hair falling loose about her shoulders. Half out of breath, she pointed to burning bales along the fence row.
“The grass caught fire.” The alarm in her voice lent its own urgency to her words.
Quint threw a quick look in that direction, his gaze scouring the area beyond the billowing smoke and fire, and located the yellow line of fast-creeping flames. He didn’t need to be reminded that the winter grass was tinder dry.
“Forget this,” he told Empty and tossed the pitchfork aside. “Give me a hand getting the plow hitched to the tractor.” As he turned for the barn, he pushed Dallas toward the house. “Get any blankets you can f
ind, throw them in the truck along with some shovels and all the buckets of water you can haul.”
No time was wasted acknowledging his instructions. All knew time was the fire’s ally, not theirs. While Dallas ran to get the blankets, Quint vaulted the corral fence and shoved open the double doors to the barn where the tractor was housed. Empty hauled himself onto the tractor seat and cranked up the engine. Quint climbed on behind him, holding tight to the seat as the tractor lurched out of the barn and roared over to the plow that sat next to the building. With an expert swing of the wheel, Empty backed the tractor up to the plow and Quint hopped down to secure the ball hitch. The instant he was back on board, Empty took off.
The entire process took only scant minutes. And in that same period of time, the flames had advanced another fifty yards across the tinder-dry grass. Fanned by its own powerful draft, the fire was picking up speed.
It was like a living thing, leaping to devour anything in its path, its appetite never satisfied. Smoke rolled ahead of it, lit by flying embers that looked like so many devil-red eyes in the darkness.
As the tractor chugged out of the ranch yard at full throttle, the plow rattling behind it, Quint caught a glimpse of Dallas sprinting from the house, bundled cloth clasped in her arms. Then the tractor was shooting onto the ranch lane, taking advantage of the natural firebreak it provided on the east side to skirt the racing flames and charge ahead of them into the obscuring wall of smoke.
Empty kept his foot to the pedal, never slackening the tractor’s headlong pace through the smoke. At last the sting of it was no longer in their eyes.
Holding on tightly, Quint leaned close and shouted in the old man’s ear, “The dry wash up here on the right—we’ll try to stop it there.”
Empty’s answer was a short nod that signaled he had heard and understood.
The shallow wash was one that nature had carved near the base of a hill to handle the runoff from heavy rains. At its widest point it was no more than three feet across, its bed a mix of bare soil and stones of varying sizes. The wash itself didn’t reach all the way to the ranch lane, but rather started at a point some one hundred feet from it.
As the tractor approached the imaginary point of intersection, Empty slowed its speed and braked to a stop with its nose pointed at the fence. He pulled a pair of wire cutters out of his jacket pocket and passed them to Quint.
Cutters in hand, Quint swung down from the tractor and hurried to the fence post on his right. Standing to one side to avoid the whip of the wire, he cut through the top strand, heard the sharp whang of its release, and moved to the second, then the third. Careful to avoid the barbed points, he dragged all three strands out of the way, clearing a path for the tractor.
“I’ll wait here for Dallas,” he shouted to make himself heard above the revving of the tractor’s motor.
Empty waved an acknowledging hand and started through the gap in the fence, lowering the plow blades when he was nearly through.
Quint observed the struggle of the blades to dig into the hard-packed ground. The first smoke was already showing above the hilltop. For a moment he doubted that he had picked an area far enough in advance of the flames to give them a chance of stopping them. He’d know soon enough.
By the time Dallas arrived in the pickup, the tractor’s headlight beams were past the midway point in the wide swale between the two hills, and a black line of smoke showed above the rise of the first one. Once the fire crested the hill, Quint knew the wind would whip it down the slope at lightning speed.
Off in the distance, he caught the wail of the fire trucks. The sound offered confirmation that help was on the way, but he couldn’t wait for it to arrive, not with the smoke smell growing stronger every minute. As soon as the pickup rolled to a stop alongside him, Quint opened the door and hustled Dallas out of the cab.
“Did you bring some gas?” he asked as he slid behind the wheel.
