But that meant negotiating a narrow, bumpy section of the path, between piles of stones.
Nobody else was up and around, and Dean had decided to take a chance. He filled the straw against the ruined remains of the wall, with patches of adobe still covering it, then looked toward the house before lighting the fire.
The self-light had caught quickly, the wispy flame almost invisible in the startling brightness of the dawn sunrise. Then there had been a little feathery smoke, and a sound like a faintly indrawn breath.
The next moment the eleven-year-old was up on his feet, sprinting as if the hounds of Hades were at his heels, yelling for Jak and the two women.
The fire had blazed up, a few clumps caught by a gust of wind from the west, and carried into the dry scrub, which ignited instantly. Only then had Dean spotted the danger. Tufts of grass ran all along the low wall, which connected to the larger barn, where some of the livestock was kept.
It would only be a matter of minutes before the tongues of fire raced along the lee of the tumbled wall and reached the dust-dry timbers of the barn.
THEY STOPPED IT only a couple of yards short.
The thin column of smoke that had been rising into the still air was choked off and died.
Krysty threw down her scorched broom, wiping sweat from her sooty face, pushing back her fiery hair. “Gaia! Not the kind of start to a day that I like.”
“Me neither.” Mildred held a flat piece of leather nailed to a broom handle to make a fire-beater. It had worked effectively on the grass blaze, but would have been useless if the flames had traveled six feet farther.
Jak had been using a long-hafted spade to beat out the danger. Now he threw it down in the sand and wiped smudges of dirt from his white face. His snowy hair was matted with perspiration and flakes of charred grass. His eyes were as red as the pit when he turned to look toward Dean, who had dropped to his knees, fighting for breath.
“Well?”
“Not my fault, Jak.”
“Not?”
“No.”
“Krysty’s fault?”
“Course not.”
“Mildred? Me? No?”
“I didn’t know it was going to set the grass alight. It was a kind of fluke of the wind, Jak. Honest.”
The albino took three menacing steps toward the boy. “Honest! Not honest, kid! Not honest. Where did I tell light fire? Not here.”
“Not exactly. You said to take the straw and stuff over to the edge of the draw and set light to it over there. It was hard so”
“So took easy way. Could’ve burned barn. Lost animals. Know that?”
The boy stood, looking at his feet, not meeting the teenager’s angry glare. The two women watched in silence. “I’m sorry, Jak. It was triple stupe. And I’m sorry.”
“Ought to beat your ass black and blue.”
“Sure. Make you feel better. But it won’t make me feel any more stupe than I do now.”
Jak nodded slowly. “Right. Make sure all sparks out. Then come back house and all get cleaned up.”
Krysty looked toward the distant mountains, already shimmering behind heat haze. “Sure hope Doc didn’t see the smoke from up there. Wherever he is.”
Mildred nodded. “Right. It would worry him a lot. Probably spoil his trip. Send him rushing back down here to see what was wrong.”
DEAN KEPT HIMSELF out of everybody’s way for the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon. He was furiously angry with himself for having come close to causing a disaster by his own laziness and lack of foresight. If he’d been concentrating on what was happening, he would have felt the breeze and seen the threat to the outbuildings.
He had gone out alone to the edge of the ranch’s land, finding a grove of flowering cherries that stood around a muddy waterhole. Dean lay flat on his stomach and flicked pebbles at a group of red ants that were laboring together to dispose of the carcass of a scorpion.
“Hurry up home, Dad,” he said. “Been away long enough. Come on home.”