At her urging, Starship skittered down the side of the hill, his hooves sliding on scree. They turned into the sandy wash that led to the ranch. The air smelled of ozone and creosote, that special desert rain smell Billie loved, which had been released by even the few drops that fell. Gulliver lifted his muzzle and sniffed. Billie breathed deeply, sampling the air. She smelled Starship’s sweat rising from his body beneath her. Gulliver sniffed again, then Billie smelled it too.
Something burning. Something on fire. One of the lightning strikes must have caught a dry burro weed bush or a parched mesquite tree. She looked for smoke but couldn’t see any.
The wash wound between deep cliffs pocked with tiny caves. A white owl flew from one of the holes, swooping in front of them before soaring into the treetops. Starship froze and started to spook, but Billie kicked his sides with her bare heels, and he leapt forward to pick up an exquisitely soft trot, perfect for bareback rides. He moved beneath her with a fluid rhythm, no jarring, so smooth that she didn’t even tighten her legs to grip. She rode loosely balanced, perfectly comfortable.
Deer and javelina had made a thread-thin trail out of the wash, up between the cliffs. She grabbed Starship’s mane in one hand and wrapped her other around Gulliver to hold him to her. With a dozen scrabbling strides, Starship bounded up the cliff’s edge to the flat mesa floor and gave a little buck to celebrate. Billie nearly came off, nearly dropped Gulliver, and as she struggled to regain her balance, she dug her heels into Starship’s sides causing him to break into a canter. She struggled to keep hold of her dog, regain her balance on the horse’s sweat-slick back, and eventually to slow him.
Finally, they stopped atop a small rise, horse and human panting. As she sat trying to catch her breath, she saw smoke coming from somewhere near her ranch. She wondered if the fire would block her way home. She couldn’t tell if it was big or small.
As they got closer, it seemed to shift position. One minute it appeared to be coming from Sam and Josie’s place, so Billie wondered if their tool shed was burning, or—far worse—their house. But as she trotted around a big barrel cactus, the smoke seemed to come from the hill between Sam and Josie’s ranch and Billie’s. Brushfire flames could shoot across the countryside in seconds, leaping from bush to tree to grass where they could fan out into unstoppable walls of flame. But this was a steady plume, bending like a thick snake in the hot evening wind.
The wash dipped through a stand of huge cottonwood trees then opened onto the dirt road that first passed Sam and Josie’s house then continued on to Billie’s barnyard. And there she saw that the fire was in her barnyard. Hugging Gulliver tight to her stomach she squeezed Starship’s sides. He immediately broke into a fast canter that shifted up to a gallop in a single stride. In minutes they were racing down the driveway toward the barn, toward the fire truck. Her ranch sign lay in the dirt, clipped by the truck’s ladder as it drove underneath. It must have made a hideous metal-on-metal shriek when it hit and could have severed an arm or even killed someone when it fell. Four men and a woman sprayed her hay with high-pressure water. The barn was still standing. She thought of the horses, all of them luckily turned out in corrals and pastures, away from the fire. She vaulted off, landed running, dropped Gulliver to the ground, and spotted Sam’s pickup parked on the far side of the barnyard from the fire. Sam stood beside it, waving her over.
She raced to him. “What happened?”
“Your hay caught fire. Lucky there wasn’t more or it’d burn for days. It’s mostly out by now. But the hay you had is all gone.”
What would it cost to replace? Maybe Ty would give her credit. She saw embers under the metal roof, glowing between the metal poles.
She couldn’t take it all in. Something felt wrong, but she didn’t know what. Everything, she realized. Everything was wrong.
“What about the horses, Billie?” Sam asked.
“They’re turned out. They aren’t here in the barnyard,” she said.
Then she remembered Hope in her stall, surrounded by the hay bales that were shading her.
“Oh my God,” she said it so softly she hardly heard it herself. “There’s a horse in there!”
She spoke in a soft, flat voice, unable to scream. Powerless. Helpless, she made herself move, made herself run toward the embers.
“Don’t touch anything!” Sam yelled. “It’s hot!”
It gave off a terrible heat, and when Billie got close, an even more terrible smell.
“I’ve got to get her out!”
Sam grabbed her arm. She twisted away. He grabbed her around the waist, held her, his arms strong and old, sharp and thin as wires that seem to cut her as she fought him.
“You can’t do anything, Billie,” Ty shouted at her. She wondered what he was doing here then remembered he volunteered as fire marshal. “That horse is dead.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the stall. Couldn’t stop seeing it burn when she wasn’t here to help, Hope trapped where she had left her.
“Did the lightning cause it?” Billie asked.
“We’ll check with the weather service if there were any strikes here. They keep a record. I doubt it though. Dad and Mom didn’t notice anything.” He waved a hand toward the stall. “It doesn’t look to me like an accelerant was used.”
“My horse died in there!” Tears streaked her face. “She tried to escape, Ty. She died trying to escape.” Her voice rose to a wail.
Ty walked to the stall and looked in. “Nah,” he said.
“LOOK AT HER!” Billie knew she was hysterical, out of control.
“It’s got nothing to do with her running. It’s the fire makes them look like that. It dries the water
