Wild Inferno by Sandi Ault Read Free Book Online Page B

oil leases and our casino.”
    â€œSo why do you still work at the school?”
    â€œI’ve been teaching music here on the reservation since I was a young girl. I needed the money back when I started, and for a long time after that, before we got our tribal growth fund going. But now I do it because I love it. I love the kids.”
    â€œDo you have any children?”
    She smiled. “I have a beautiful daughter named Nuni. She went away to school, married a boy from another tribe, and after a long time away, she and her husband have moved back to the reservation.”
    â€œAny grandchildren?”
    She lowered her head. “No. No grandbabies,” she almost whispered. When she raised her head again, I thought I saw moisture gleam in her eyes.
    I considered asking Clara about her husband, but I noticed that she was not wearing a ring.
    We started to scoot out of the booth. “You said you asked Grampa Ned for one thing,” I said. “What was it?”
    Clara White Deer looked at me, then stood and gathered her purse from the seat of the booth. “It was something he stole from me,” she said.
    I got up and tugged at my Nomex pants to straighten them. “He stole something of yours?”
    â€œYes. A long time ago. And—wouldn’t you know it?—after all these years, I finally asked him to give it back, but he wouldn’t do it. And now he’s gone and gotten himself burned up.”
    â€œWe don’t know that,” I said again.
    â€œI’m sure of it. I saw him drive in there when I was on my way into Pagosa Springs this morning. They found his truck. No one’s seen him. The sheriff said the fire burned right down to the road where he parked. It’s just like that old man to die and deny me the one thing I ever asked of him.”
    â€œWas it something of value?” I asked as we strode toward the cash register.
    Clara White Deer plunked down a twenty-dollar bill for the two lemonades and waved at the waitress, calling, “Keep the change.” She started toward the door and I followed.
    When we got out on the sidewalk, a gust of 106-degree air blasted us. She looked at me in my BLM T-shirt, my Nomex pants, and my smoke-jumper boots, and said, “You must be hot in that getup.”
    â€œI’m used to it,” I said. “The winds are picking up. I better get back to the ICP. Thanks for the lemonade.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out a card. I scribbled the number of the satellite phone on the back of it. “Here’s a phone number where you can reach me while I’m on this fire. If you ever need anything, if there’s anything I can do for you, just give me a shout.” I held it out.
    Clara White Deer was slow to open her hand and take the card. She was looking at me with a curious expression. “What Grampa Ned took,” she said, “meant a lot to me. Maybe not to anyone else, but it was priceless to me.”
    I studied her face. “Do you have any idea what Grampa Ned might have been doing in that area where you last saw him?”
    She shook her head, obviously finished with the conversation.
    And then my sat phone rang.

8
Dead and Alive
    Wednesday, 1745 Hours
    The burn area was still smoldering as we walked in our heavy boots through smoking duff and charred embers. Specially trained wildland medical crews worked on a high rock outcropping well up the slope of the mountain at a flat place used for a helispot. The Three-Pueblos Hot Shots, the elite Type 1 hand crew whose members all came from the three Tiwa-speaking pueblos—Taos, Picuris, and Tanoah Pueblo in northern New Mexico—had been found alive but in varying stages of serious to critical condition. Area hospitals had dispatched two emergency medical helicopters to airlift the victims to the nearest burn unit in Albuquerque. The medics had just finished shuttling the last of them on sleds to the choppers.
    A member of