“What height are the trees on the north side of the river?”
“Fifty feet, tops.”
Lewis checked the wind speed and slowly nodded. “If Billy can widen the break to just over a hundred feet, we might stop it.” He looked directly into Gordon’s eyes. “I say
Again, Gordon was silent. Everyone in the room looked to him for direction. This was Gordon’s timber, his mill, and his decision. Dropping men in to hand-slash a firebreak was not without its risks. Chain saws were dangerous, the terrain rugged and unforgiving. A misplaced foothold or a felled tree snagging and kicking back could injure or kill a man in a split second. Dropping a crew into an unreachable region and keeping them supplied with food and water as they worked was going to be difficult. The logistics were completely against it.
But this was not just his livelihood on the line, it was half the town as well. Without the mill, two hundred jobs would be lost and the town would suffer immeasurably. Businesses would close and families would be forced to move away. The small town of Divide would probably not survive, and the damage to Butte would be significant.
“Well, I’ve always said that there’s nothing more useless than burnt timber.” He glanced about the room at the men waiting for his decision. “Let’s do it,” he said to Billy, running his hands through his thick brown hair. “Let’s get a crew in there and try to save the mill.”
Billy Buchanan grinned. “You got it, Gordon.” He grabbed a phone from the desk and dialed.
2
Canyon Creek slashed a jagged and dangerous line through the thick blanket of Ponderosa pines. The bank on the north side of the creek was almost vertical, a sheer rock wall with few out-croppings running parallel to the fast-flowing water. This was the side from which the fire was approaching. The slope on the opposing side was gentler, about sixty degrees, but still a good test even for an experienced climber. The gorge ran for almost six miles, and access in from either end was through dense bush, thick with thorns. With the exception of a foolhardy few, this section of Canyon Creek was seldom visited.
Billy Buchanan had ventured into the gorge twice over the past six years, both times to estimate the timber potential on the southern edge. Both times he had found the outing dangerous. His past experiences stayed fresh in his memory as he expedited supplies for the crew. Time was scarce, and once the men were in, they wouldn’t be coming out until the trees were cleared. He checked the lists on the table in front of him for adequate supplies of food, water, fuel, tents, generators, and chain saws, complete with spare parts. Once he was satisfied the crew would be properly outfitted, he signed off on the list.
The process of acquiring the gear and moving it to the helicopters began. He took one last glance at the map before he rolled it up.
Once dropped into the chasm by chopper, his crew’s job would be to hand-slash an additional thirty feet to create an eighty-foot-wide firebreak. This would entail removing almost every tree from the southern edge of the water to the start of the incline that defined the river bank. Billy had two pumps being dropped in six hours after the team, to spray down the recently cut timber and the underbrush. In theory, the idea was to stop the fire when it hit the cliffs on the northern side and not allow the flames to advance up the other bank. With the creek bed devoid of fuel for the fire, the line should hold, deflecting the fire east and west and containing its advance.
In theory, anyway.
Billy rolled up the map and slipped an elastic on to keep it from unraveling. It was a forestry map, 1 to 50,000 scale, and showed every cut line, service road, and goat path that crisscrossed through the forest. Like an American Express card to a logger: Don’t leave home without it. At two o’clock, he found his crew suited up and ready. Chris Stevens, his lead hand for the task, approached him as he slipped on a pair of steel-toed work boots.
“The guys are champin’ at the bit, Billy,” he said. “They want to get cutting before dark.” Chris Stevens was a graduate student in forestry, working on his master’s in conservation. He was mid-twenties, athletic, and well liked by everyone at the mill. Billy had decided on Chris for lead hand over any one of the three foremen who were heading into the gorge, mostly to keep from ruffling any feathers. So far, it seemed to be working.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got lights and a generator coming in before sundown, but it’ll be a lot slower once we lose the natural light. The chopper’s ready, so let’s get it loaded. Pick seven men to come with me. You wait for the second trip.”
“Eight men max for each trip?” Chris asked, nodding his head at the company’s Bell 412 helicopter, sitting on the far side of the clearing.
“That baby can usually manage fifteen, but we’re taking in a lot of gear with us on each trip, so that cuts the number down to eight or nine.”
“That’s only two trips to get the entire crew in, Billy. That’s not bad.” He headed over to the group of men waiting for the go-ahead, and as he pointed at them, the men moved quickly to where the chopper was sitting, its blades just starting to turn. They loaded gear as they entered, and within a couple of minutes, the Bell 412 was airborne and moving over the treetops toward Canyon Creek.
Gordon Buchanan pulled up in his truck, killed the engine, and jumped out. “Everything okay, Chris?” he asked, moving toward his brother at his usual fast gait.
“No problem, Gordon. Billy just left with the first crew. Chopper will be back soon to pick up the rest of us.”
Gordon hung around the clearing, checking the piles of gear stacked near the tree line. He ticked off a checklist, concentrating on the fuel and food. At this point, any downtime could spell disaster. The crews, working toward each other from each end of the target zone, had to get firebreak cut inside forty hours or not bother. It was going to be tight. The thumping of the chopper’s rotors cut through the afternoon air, and once the wheels hit the ground the crew was ferrying supplies aboard. Gordon shouted a few words of encouragement to Chris and his men as they boarded the craft, watched it depart, then headed back to the main office.
The fate of the mill was in their hands.
Billy wiped the sweat from his brow and lowered his aching body onto one of the many stumps dotting the south side of the creek. Thirty hours and the two crews were within earshot of each other. They would have the firebreak cut inside the deadline with no problem. And there was good news from the weather forecasters. The winds were abating and rain was on the horizon. The fire was slowing, and if the rain fell, it would stall the flames in their tracks. He took a long draft of cold water and replaced the bottle on his hip.
“Billy?” It was Chris on the walkie-talkie.
“Go ahead, Chris.”
“We’re moving our pump forward another two hundred yards. We’ve soaked the hell out of the first thousand yards of underbrush. Even if a few burning spars come crashing down the slope, I don’t think anything will ignite.”
“Excellent work, Chris.”
“We’ve got this thing beat, Billy,” he said. There was pride at a job well done in his voice.
“I think you’re right. Gordon called about an hour ago. The fire’s at least twelve hours from reaching us. It’s slowing.”
“We’ll reach each other in less than eight,” he said. “We’ve got another load of logs ready to go. Send the chopper over when you’re done with it.”
“Roger that,” Billy said. He signed off and looked over to where the helicopter was hovering over a horizontal stack of logs, preparing to lift them out of the gorge and fly them back to the mill. Leaving the cut trees on the ground was senseless, as the fire could ignite them almost as easily lying prone on the ground as when they were upright. The logger on the ground gave the thumbs-up, and the pilot took the machine straight up until the logs cleared the surrounding treetops, then angled off toward the mill. Billy started back toward where his crew was cutting, some hundred feet distant.
In the sea of cut trees, a solitary stump stuck up three or four feet higher than the rest. Billy knew that additional height might cause problems for the crew lifting the logs out of the ravine. He picked his way through the wet underbrush and, once he reached it, threw his feller pants on the ground next to the stump. The thick material
