AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She grinned, then undid the ropes on the pack saddle. Packing was a mix of engineering and alchemy but, like most things, got easier with practice. Fortunately, she’d only have to do the packing in an emergency. Which made it more important to get good at it—because there’d be no time to waste.
She untied the ropes from the saddle and lowered the packs, then unwrapped the canvas and put all the camping gear back. After replacing the last of the items, she left the barn to watch Tom work his horse. But he was turning the horse very slowly, gazing up at the mountains and sniffing. His horse sidled under him, betraying his unease.
“What’s the matter?” Wiz searched up the hillside, a hand on her weapon.
“Do you smell smoke?”
Wiz sniffed. “Yes. Do you see anything?”
“No. Tell you what, let’s ride up the hill. Smoke makes me nervous. No one should be burning anything right now. It won’t be the neighbors; they’re all smarter than that, but it could be a camper left a fire burning.”
“Sure.” She saddled Blackie and mounted while Tom and Dad talked. It had been a good winter, with lots of snow, but that meant the grass had grown tall and thick. Then the summer so far had been unusually hot and dry; they’d had several fires in the lower foothills already. They’d been controlled quickly, but it took so little for a small fire to blow into a conflagration.
Tom trotted up the hill, and she followed. As they neared her house, the smoke went from tickling the back of her throat to burning her nostrils. They halted above her house and scanned the edge of the forest again but didn’t see smoke or flames. Wiz pulled out her phone and checked the security cameras on the edge of her property, but she didn’t see anything there, either. “Tom, maybe we should check from the observation deck on my house? I’ve got spotting scopes.”
“Good idea. Let’s go.” He turned and trotted away.
She keyed in the gate codes, and they cantered down the drive. She closed the gates behind them. She had an excellent fire suppression system; if there was a fire, there was no need for the firefighters to waste time on her house. And if it caught, better to simply let it burn. Things were replaceable; people were not.
Tom helped her off her horse and tied both of them in the shade. They ran inside and sprinted up the two flights of stairs, panting a bit at the top. They scanned the hillsides but spotted nothing.
“We could ride along the connector trail.” Tom pointed at the rocks denoting the edge of Forest Service land.
Wiz shivered. “I don’t know. I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Something’s not right here. There hasn’t been any lightning, we haven’t heard gunfire, there’s a ban on burning except campfires already, and there’s no campgrounds around us. I just don’t like it. Where’s Dad?”
“I’ll check.” Tom pulled out his phone and dialed, while continuing to scan the forest.
Wiz grabbed a spotting scope, set it on the half-height wall, and scanned the air right above the tree tops, searching for smoke.
Tom got off the phone. “Dad’s okay. He’s with the hands, and they both smell smoke too. They’re doing evacuation preliminaries just in case.”
“Are they armed?” A shudder ran down her spine.
“Dad says they’re all rigged out.” Tom patted the revolver on his hip.
“Good.” She scanned. The wind was coming up from the south rather than the west like usual, so she searched farther south. “I think I’ve got something. Come check.”
“Your eyes are better than mine, but I’ll look.” He crouched next to her.
She locked the scope and scooted away.
Tom put his eye to the scope, then unlocked and moved it slightly. “I think you’re right. Let’s call 911.”
“You call. Let me see if I can figure coordinates for the firefighters.” She pulled her mapping program, centered on her house, and triggered the laser range finder on the spotting scope. The haze of smoke was too far away for the laser to lock on, but she’d get a direction and guess the distance. On her map, she snapped a line from the house on the azimuth from the spotting scope, and it intersected with a forest road. She tilted the phone so Tom could see it.
Tom nodded. “Yes, we can barely see the smoke, but it looks like it might be coming from Gold Camp Creek. We’ll keep an eye out from here and let you know if we get a better view.” He clicked off. “They’re sending a fire crew out from Stevensville. Dispatch said they’ve had a ton of abandoned campfires this year. Stupid, lazy people.” He put his phone away. “It’s too dry.”
Unease crawled along her spine. “Tom, no matter what the cause, you should go help Dad. I’ll stay up here. Call if you need me. Oh, and take Blackie back. I’ll take the four-wheeler if you need help.”
“All right. Text me with any changes.” Tom kissed her and headed down the stairs.
“Be careful!” She trotted down to her office, grabbed a laptop and a tablet, then sprinted back to the observation deck. The laptop scanned the outer perimeter security cameras, and the tablet displayed the mapping program. On her phone, she watched Tom mount his horse and grab Blackie’s reins. She opened the inner gate, closed it behind him, and then opened the horse fence and secured both of them. Neither the security camera or her eyes saw anyone on the road or near her property line, but something didn’t seem right.
She returned to the spotting scope, unlocked it, and scanned north, toward her house. If this was something more than stupidity or bad luck, there might be more fires. Arson happened for a variety of reasons. Or a trailer’s security chains might have come off, sending sparks flying as they dragged along a road, or an off-road vehicle malfunction or a person chain smoking, throwing still-smoldering butts out the window.
Another plume of smoke, along the same azimuth but closer. It could be someone riding an off-road vehicle on one of the trails. She called Emergency Dispatch’s non-emergency number and updated the operator. They said more reports had come in, and the Forest Service and the local fire departments were dispatching additional crews.
Once she hung up, Wiz brought up the scanner app on her phone. Multiple fire departments were responding, and the Forest Service was requesting air support. They weren’t going to take any chances.
