Wild Inferno (24 page)

Delgado Gonzales took charge of Elaine with the rifle. “Get back in the kiva,” I said. “Get down against the wall. There's fire right up to the edge of the Great House.”

I turned to the sturdy bars of the metal gate at the base of the steps leading up to the deck of the fire tower. I pulled and shook, but the lock would not give. Again, I hoisted my right leg onto the stone wall on one side of the steps. I noticed the lower half of my brush pants was soaked with blood on one side, but I didn't heed this. The winds had died down and the sound of Mountain yelping and pounding against the glass above me was all I could think of. The twenty-two–step stairway that led to the deck had a wide wooden handrail but was open above that. I hung from the rail by my hands while I found footing on the outside edges of the steps, then maneuvered my way over the rail on my stomach. The stairs forced me to put my weight on my right foot, and after a few steps, I thought I would pass out from pain and loss of blood. I put both hands on the handrail well above where I stood and used them to help me hop a few steps, but I didn't have enough strength to do many like that. I was about to turn around and sit down and use my triceps to lift my body weight a step at a time when I heard the sound of breaking glass, and a spurt of red blood shot out into the air and spattered my face. “Mountain!” I screamed, and I half-crawled and half-scrambled the rest of the way up.

Through the sliding glass doors I saw Mountain before he saw me. He leaped into the air and yelped as he threw himself again at the window he had just broken, but it was too high for him to jump through with so short an approach. His right foreleg was matted and wet with red, and bloody paw prints decorated the floor. I yanked at the handle, but the door was locked. The wolf saw me and ran headlong into the glass, smashing against it with a powerful thump. “No!” I yelled. “Mountain, no! Stay. You stay. I'll get you out of there, buddy.”

The sunrise had brought stillness to the air, and the smoke on the observation deck was heavy. Through the glass, I could see flames licking high against the windows on the other side of the deck, and I knew I only had minutes before it would spread to the roof. I looked around for anything I could use to break the lock or the glass of the sliding glass doors. There was nothing in sight. I pressed myself against the guardrail on the narrow deck and locked my hands onto the top. I kicked hard at the glass door with my one good leg, smacking forcefully into the glass with the thick sole of my boot. The solid pane of glass rattled but it did not break. Mountain hurled himself at the door again, jumping high and leaving a bloody streak from his paw down the glass. I was too weak to keep this up for long, so I took a moment to collect myself, took a deep breath, then carefully positioned myself to do it again with the maximum power I could muster. As I prepared myself to make another jab at the door, I heard a buzzing sound in the distance. “Please,” I whispered to whatever benevolent spirit might hear me. I inhaled, raised myself up on my bent arms on the rail, coiled myself into a ball, and sent my left leg toward the glass like a cannonball. With a
thud,
the glass seemed to flex, and the aluminum frame sprung. I pushed myself away from the railing and tugged on the door handle with all my might. The door screeched and gave, and I managed to wedge it to the side a few inches. Mountain yelped and stuck his nose through the opening and tried to push his way through. The buzzing sound grew louder. “No, wait,” I told the wolf, and I pressed myself against the door to force it back on its track. I gripped the open edge and I pushed and pulled, and I felt it snap back into the groove. I hauled on the handle and the glass slid to the side. I collapsed to my knees and embraced Mountain, sobbing. “I don't know how I'm going to get you out of here, buddy,” I said, my arms around his neck. “The gate is locked at the bottom of the stairs, and I can't lift you over the handrail. Even if I did, there's a wall and no place on this side of it to go.” Mountain whimpered and pawed at me, streaking blood across my shirt. As I started to get up, I realized that the buzzing sound had become a repetitive
throp-throp-throp.
It grew louder and louder and I felt Mountain trembling with fright at this strange noise. I stayed on my knees and took hold of his collar with one hand so he wouldn't bolt in fear, and I stroked his chest with the other. “Maybe that's help coming,” I said in his ear.

When the percussive
throp
reached a deafening decibel and the fire tower began to shake with the vibrations, a man slid down a rappel line, pushed himself around the lip of the roof rim, and then placed his boots on the top of the guardrail. He jumped onto the deck and I saw that it was Kerry. But Mountain started to struggle and squirm, not recognizing him, terrified of the deafening noise and this stranger who jumped out of the sky. I held tight to his collar, but his strength was greater than mine, and Mountain wrestled himself free. He bounded past Kerry to one side of the deck and saw the flames there, then past us both again as we grabbed for him, escaping to the other corner, where he looked down at the stairs. I feared he would try to leap down them and further injure himself. “Mountain!” I screamed over the pounding
thwock
of the helicopter.

The wolf turned and looked at me, his eyes telegraphing his terror.

“Stay,” I said, holding my palm up as a visual command.

Mountain's body quivered violently, but he obeyed. Kerry eased past me, still wearing his rappel line, his palms up and open, moving slowly. I couldn't hear what he was saying over the thunder of the chopper's rotors, but I saw him talking to the wolf, then reaching out slowly and tenderly and taking hold of his collar. Kerry turned and shouted to me, “He's hurt.”

“Can you get him out of here?” I yelled back. I put my palms on either side of the doorjamb and gripped the section of wall to help myself up.

Kerry pulled out his pack set and spoke to the helicrew. “We need to lift someone,” he yelled into the radio. “He'll be dead weight, so you'll have to work him from up there.”

Mountain was so frightened by the time they began to tighten the line attached to the harness around his middle that he simply went limp and surrendered. As they slowly raised him upward away from the deck of the tower, the life seemed gone from him, and I gasped at the thought. “I love you!” I cried out to him, and he turned his head. Encouraged, I called again, “I love you, Mountain. I'll be back. I'll be back.” His ears flicked ever so slightly and I knew he had understood this last, which was something I said each time I had to leave him at home alone. I was certain that he had come to know what it meant—that even though we were about to be separated, we would soon be together again.

“You're hurt,” Kerry yelled at me. “I didn't see that”—he pointed at my blood-soaked pant leg—“or you would have gone up first.”

I started to answer, but we were both startled by the crack of a gunshot and a loud
ping
of metal, the sound so close and so loud that for an instant it cut through the deafening pulse of the rotating chopper blades. Kerry raced to the top of the steps and looked down. I hobbled behind him. Delgado Gonzales looked up the stairs as he swung the gate open. “I thought you might need some help up there,” he shouted, a crutch under one arm and the rifle under the other.

“I'm going this way,” I yelled, and I grabbed the handrail on each side and swung myself down a step. It was far easier going down than trying to lift myself up from above. I turned and looked up at Kerry.

“We should get you to a hospital,” he shouted.

“You go with Mountain. Momma Anna is down below. And Grampa Ned's killer.”

“You're in no shape—”

“I already got her,” I hollered as I lifted myself up by my arms and gingerly lowered my left leg first onto the next step.

I turned again and saw Kerry clamping a line around his waist and then climbing up onto the deck rail and pushing off with his feet. As he did so, he reached his hand up and pressed away from the roof, then ascended upward, the orange flames behind him now devouring the opposite corner of the deck.

Gonzales was wearing my radio harness. “We've got to get down in the kiva right away,” he said. “Here, hold this.” He handed me the rifle. “Now, let me help you.” Even though he had only one crutch to support himself, his strong arm lifted me by my right forearm, helping take the weight off my right foot as I hobbled toward the rim of the kiva.

Just as we started down the kiva steps, I saw the tanker coming, a cloud of red vapor forming at its tail. “Come on, get down!” the hotshot yelled at me as the SEAT thundered past, bombing the slope with slurry.

I sat on the bottom step and clutched at my calf. “She's all but over now,” Delgado said. “Air support was what we needed all along.” He bent down and ripped open the Velcro tab at the bottom of my Nomex pants. “Let's see what you got here,” he said, rolling the blood-soaked fabric back.

I looked down at my leg, at a small, gelatinous orb of red-black blood in the side of the calf filling a well-defined hole. “It's stopped bleeding,” I said. “It's clotted over.”

Delgado squeezed the leg and pulled it toward him, and I shrieked at the pain. He examined the back side of my calf.

“Sorry,” he said. “Looks like the bullet went in there and out the back, right through the muscle.” He moved his head to one side to better see the back of the leg. “There's a larger wound back here where the bullet went out, and it's still bleeding quite a bit.” Then he turned, and for the first time since I'd returned to the kiva, I noticed that Momma Anna was standing a few yards away. “Grandmother, can we use another piece of your blanket?” he asked.

Anna Santana tore two long strips of soft tan wool and Delgado used them to wrap my leg. He pulled them tightly enough to add some pressure, but not so much that they cut off the circulation to the rest of the limb.

“Where's Oldham?” I asked.

Delgado tipped his head toward the curving wall behind me. I turned in my seat on the steps and saw Elaine Oldham sitting with her back against the rock wall, her hands still tied behind her, and her outstretched legs straightened and bound at the ankles and knees, with strips of tan wool, to the hotshot's other crutch, which had been laid across the top of her legs to prevent her from bending them or getting up. Another strip of tan cloth had been tied around her mouth. “I didn't want her going anywhere while I went to see if I could help you. And she wouldn't shut up,” Gonzales said. “I didn't want this good grandmother to have to listen to her.”

As I was rolling my pant leg back down, I heard voices. I stood up and looked over the rim of the kiva. Ron Crane and two firefighters rounded the corner and came up the path. Crane looked down at the scene inside. He pulled a pair of handcuffs off his belt. “Mind if I take Dr. Oldham off your hands?” he said.

“Not at all,” I said, and I moved back to allow him room to come down the steps.

Seeing the blood on my pants, the other firefighters offered me help getting up the last two steps and onto the kiva rim. I heard the distinctive ring of my satellite phone. Gonzales, still wearing my radio harness, removed the phone from the holder and answered it, “Gonzales here.” He handed it to me. “It's for you,” he said.

Sunday, 1400 Hours

The Southern Utes began by blessing the arbor, as they called the arena in the center of the Ignacio High School gymnasium. Roy, Kerry, Charlie Dorn, and I sat in an honored, front-row position on the bottom bleacher at the powwow honoring the firefighters and their victory over the Chimney Rock Fire. Mountain lay on the floor beneath my feet. Both the wolf and I sported bandages, and had orders to stay off our injured legs. An emcee asked us to stand for the Grand Entry, and Kerry helped me to my feet. The Utes had invited four drum groups to play for the occasion, and members of other area tribes had come in full regalia to dance.

Most of the native Puebloans had gone home after their evacuation from Chimney Rock, but a few remained an extra day to attend the powwow and celebrate the warrior spirit of the hotshots and the other firefighters. Anna Santana and her nephew had stayed to dance for Knifewing, who remained in the burn unit in Albuquerque in critical condition.

A day and a half had passed since I had found Momma Anna and Delgado Gonzales in the kiva of the Great House, but I had little recollection of most of it.

A monsoon rain had blown in on Saturday afternoon, just hours after Mountain and I were rushed into Pagosa Springs for medical care. The vet who had treated the wolf said that Mountain had come dangerously close to slicing through an artery in his front foreleg, but part of the sharp blade of glass had deflected off the dewclaw and the blood vessel was merely nicked. The pressure bandage Kerry and the helicrew had applied had stopped the bleeding, or the wolf might have bled to death. As it was, he garnered seven stitches, a gauze dressing on his shaved lower leg, an Ace wrap to protect the bandage so he couldn't lick the wound, and an L-shaped cast Velcroed around his limb and under his foot to deflect the weight when he stepped on that paw. I received seven stitches, too, a curious coincidence. The bullet had tunneled cleanly through the meat of my calf, and the punctured muscle had slowly drained blood while I'd pursued Elaine Oldham.

After our wounds were dressed, I had refused to be transported to the hospital in Durango for observation because it meant being separated from my wolf, and since the vet had no place for the two of us to stay together, I opted to go back to Fire Camp, against medical advice.

Roy was enraged when he learned this and sent us to the female staff cabin to rest. I remember only bits and pieces from the hours after that. I seem to recall that—as we were being driven to the cabin—I heard whoops and hollers, and I think I even turned back to see several of the camp's support crew dancing in the rain in front of the dining tent, reveling in soaked T-shirts and drenched hair. Or I might have dreamed it.

I do remember spreading my sleeping bag out on the floor so the wolf and I could curl up together, but after that, little more. The rain continued through the night, and I woke a few times to the sound of it on the roof. I slept with my chest and abdomen pressed into Mountain's warm back, my thighs pressed into his bottom, my arm around his middle.

While Mountain and I dozed, the focus of the incident management team had turned from quelling the fire to demobing the firefighters and dismantling camp. Ground Support hustled carloads of firefighters to the Durango airport, hotshot crews packed up their boxy buggies and bumped out to their next assignment, and the hard work of tearing down a tent city and organizing all the records fell upon the remaining support personnel. Most of the firefighters had gone home as well, but a core group from the Command and General Staff remained to transition the management of the fire to the local agency for mop-up.

Those who could get free to attend the powwow had come to celebrate. We all watched as the emcee, a woman from the Southern Ute tribe, read the names of the Three-Pueblos Hot Shots into a microphone. After the reading of the names, the host drum began to play. Eight men seated around a great hide-covered drum elevated on a stand began to pound with long cottonwood sticks padded at the end and covered with deerskin. The instrument had a deep, booming voice full of strength and pride, anger, joy, and sorrow. Its mottled, tan-and-white elk hide top carried scars from the fervor of the drummers. One man with loose, long, shining black hair started a low, rhythmic
bom-bom-bom-bom
on the drum. The others joined in:
bom-bom-bom-bom,
and every few beats, the leader would strike the drum hard, making a loud, booming accent. He raised his voice to an oscillating, high-pitched cry:
“Aye-yeh-ah-yeh, way-ah-hah-ha, way-ah-hah-ha.”
The others joined in, repeating his cry in call-and-response style, their voices thin and high and sharp as knives, cutting through the pounding peal of the drum. I felt the sounds stirring me at my core, my spine tingling. I closed my eyes and listened to the song of the drum, and when I opened them, Momma Anna, Clara White Deer, and Nuni White Deer Garza stood before me.

“Come,” Momma Anna said, holding out her hand. “You must dance.”

“But my leg…”

“We will help,” Clara White Deer said, reaching out and pulling one arm as Nuni reached for the other.

“Mountain…,” I started to protest, but Kerry had already reached down and grabbed the wolf's collar.

Clara White Deer had four shawls draped over her arm. She distributed them among us, and I wrapped myself in a beautiful red and blue shawl with long white fringe. Clara took my bent right arm by the elbow, and pressed up to show me that she would offer strength. Nuni took my left arm, and between the two of them, they nearly lifted me out into the arbor. Momma Anna stepped ahead of us, as light as a fairy on her feet, shuffling and bobbing in time to the drum. With the two strong women supporting me and the comfort of the shawl around me, I relaxed into the dance and felt myself shifting carefully from my good leg to a sort of well-timed limp on the other, moving with the rhythm of the song, bending my knees deeply with each step to create the rhythmic bounce that characterized the dance, padding in time with the three ladies. I stopped worrying about my leg and began to lose myself in the hypnotic rhythm. As I danced, I heard the drum and became mesmerized by its tone, felt it in my chest, so loud, so deep, its voice moving through my body…when suddenly it stopped.

We were standing before the head table where the judges and emcee sat. Thinking the dance was over, I started to turn to go back to the bleachers, assuming my companions would turn with me and do the same. But Clara held tight to my arm. “Stay here,” she said, as Nuni let go of me and went behind the head table. She returned with several young helpers, all carrying blankets and plastic laundry baskets filled with gifts.

The emcee announced that Nuni White Deer Garza wished to perform an Honoring Giveaway, and handed her the microphone. Nuni pulled her shawl tightly around her and spoke with a trembling voice. “I wish to honor my father for giving me the seed of life,” she said. She picked up an eagle feather bound at the quill with a deerskin thong, and dangling small chunks of turquoise and short strands of trade beads. Her eyes glistened with tears as she laid the eagle feather on a folded Pendleton blanket held by one of the youths standing nearby. She picked up the blanket with its feather atop and carried it across the room to Bearfat, who was standing against the wall.

As she approached, his eyes widened, and he looked nervously from side to side.

“I have no known brothers or sisters,” she said as she offered the folded blanket to him. “But I would like to call you brother and have you accept this gift,” she said.

Bearfat stood stock-still, his hands at his sides, as if he were afraid to take the gift. He looked around the gymnasium. The crowd was silent, every eye on the transaction. Finally, Bearfat raised his open palms. “I accept this honor, my sister,” he said, and he lowered his head as she placed the blanket in his hands. I saw him swallow hard, and he kept his head down even as Nuni returned to the head table.

“Next,” she said, “I would like to honor my mother, who gave me my life.” She reached under a piece of cloth in the basket held by her assistant and removed a gleaming glass tiara and held it up in her hands.

Clara gasped and let go of my arm. Her hand flew to her mouth, and I started to wobble, afraid to put much weight on my injured leg. Momma Anna saw my predicament and hurried to the side that Nuni had vacated and grabbed my arm.

By this time, Clara was weeping openly. “My Bear Dance Queen tiara,” she said.

Nuni placed the crown on her mother's head, and I heard her say softly, “I found it in Dad's things.”

Nuni was not finished. “I would now like to honor the brave warriors who captured my father's murderer,” she said, and I felt my heart sink in my chest. If only she knew that this story was stained with the sadness of another daughter deprived of her father—a sister whom Nuni had never met, and a desperate mother with no honor and no hope for the future. Nuni's helpers came with three white plastic laundry baskets filled with presents, as she called the names of those she wished to honor:

“Delgado Gonzales.” A few minutes of near silence ensued as the hotshot struggled to his feet and then crutched across the floor to accept the giveaway. A small boy brought a basket and set it in front of him.

“Anna Santana,” Nuni said into the mic, and Momma Anna pressed her lips together into a half smile as the youngster set a basket in front of her.

“Jamaica Wild,” she said, and a young girl handed me a folded blanket with beautiful horses in the pattern. Momma Anna took my elbow while I extended my arm and the girl draped the soft wool over it.

“And Mountain,” Nuni announced, “the wolf.” There was a ripple of laughter, but Mountain raised his head and flicked his ears when he heard his name. Kerry held tight to his collar as a small girl scuttled across the room with a laundry basket filled with rawhide bones, dog cookies, and squeaky toys.

Nuni handed the mic back to the emcee and the Southern Drum began to play.

As we were leaving the gymnasium, I saw Bearfat outside talking to the young girl he'd been with on the first day I met him. She saw me coming and edged shyly away. Bearfat turned to me and beamed. “That's a good blanket you have there. Have you looked at it?”

“No, not yet,” I said, unfolding it with his help. A string of horses adorned the blanket with a stylized row of tipis and moons along the edges.

“It's a Cheyenne Horse Legend blanket,” Bearfat said. “Very special. Very good choice for you.”

“It is?” I asked. “It's certainly beautiful. I love it.”

“This blanket,” Bearfat said, holding out one corner, “tells the story of a great warrior who had a beautiful shining brown horse. This horse was brave like the warrior, but one day the stallion was wounded in battle. The brave loved the horse so much that he stayed on the battlefield with the stallion, dressed his wounds with willow bark, and sang songs to draw the spirits to him. And in a few days, the horse was well enough and the two walked home. In return for his love and healing, the horse created a sacred tipi for the warrior, a place of love and magic.”

“That's quite beautiful.”

He scratched Mountain's ear and the wolf nuzzled his hand. “I think it is a perfect blanket for you, Miss Jamaica Wild.”

“You got a blanket, too,” I said. “What is the story of your blanket?”

“It is a family blanket. I have a sister,” he said.

I thought about Bearfat, with his constant string of female companions, and I thought about the riddle that Jimmy Johns had given me to solve. And I thought that—if I had solved the riddle correctly—Bearfat was about to learn that he had
two
sisters. “I was wondering if you would help someone,” I said.

“You? Sure. Just name it.”

“It's someone who needs to get her rightful share of the Southern Ute Growth Fund.”

He screwed his face into a frown. “Who is it?”

“A young girl lies in a hospital with Down syndrome,” I said. “She is the daughter of Ned Spotted Cloud, and her mother is now in the custody of the FBI.”

Bearfat's eyebrows shot up.

“She needs family. The tribe. The support of the tribal growth fund for her care.”

Bearfat swallowed again, as I'd seen him do inside the gymnasium when Nuni honored him as her brother. “I'll talk to J.J.,” he said.

“J.J.?”

“Jimmy Johns, the tribal attorney. He knows all about how to do that. I know that together we can help this girl.”

I was in the war room, putting the last of my paperwork in the brown expanding file for the documentation unit, when Ron Crane came in the ICP. “Hey, I've been looking for you,” he said.

“Agent Crane. What can I do for you?”

“I had two things, actually.” He looked around. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I think the mess tent is closed,” I said. “But there might be some coffee down the hall in the little kitchenette.”

He gestured for me to lead the way. “I have the I.D. on your ghost caller.”

“Ghost caller?” I started to walk gingerly down the hall, favoring my injured leg.

“Hey, I can get it. Just tell me where to go.”