He removed Samson’s saddle, blanket, bridle, and saddlebags, then set them to dry in the tack room. He curried Samson’s russet coat to get rid of the sweat and dirt before giving the horse a big hug and fresh oats in his stall. All done, Trey pulled his bottle of water out of his saddlebag, took a long drink, then got out his phone.
He saw he’d missed a text and a message. He checked the text and got a jolt. Fire alert! He felt his heart rate speed up. If he hadn’t meandered across the pasture, he’d have been here to get the alarm first thing. As it stood now, he’d be late, but he knew other volunteers would already be in place and putting out the fire. He’d get there as fast as possible and help any way he could once he saw the situation. On his way out of the barn, he grabbed a couple of stained but clean towels just in case he needed them.
As he jogged to his truck, he listened to a message from Hedy. There’d been a computer glitch, so the fire alarm was late going out. Slim Norton lived on the farm adjoining the fire. He’d noticed the smoke first, but when he’d called 9-1-1 he’d gotten no answer. He’d driven to the fire station and arrived about the same time as Hedy, who’d fixed the problem and notified volunteers. As luck would have it, Kent and Sydney had been in town, so they’d piled into two rigs and headed for the blaze.
Trey was relieved to hear his cousins were on the job. He jerked open the door of his pickup, tossed the towels on the shotgun seat, and grabbed the keys from the floorboard. He set his phone on the center console, inserted the key in the ignition, backed out, and made for Wildcat Road.
Soon he joined a line of trucks heading hell-bent for leather to the fire. He wasn’t the only one in the county who’d just gotten the alert. He watched a plume of white smoke rise into the western sky. From its location, the conflagration looked to be at the Winston farmhouse or nearby pasture. If the blaze got loose and turned into a widespread brush fire, they’d have a major disaster on their hands.
When Ole Man Winston had died a few years back, his Dallas family had stripped the house’s furnishings and sold the acreage to a local businessman. Bertram Holloway had let the house turn into a dried-out husk, more firetrap than anything. Good thing the place was uninhabited, so there was no chance for loss of life—as far as he knew. Trey’s greatest concern was fire containment.
He turned onto a gravel road and bumped along behind the other pickups. They sent up a line of dust in their wake. He strained to see ahead so he’d know what they were up against, but the fire area was on a rise and he was down below it. Still, he could already smell smoke.
When he reached the top of the rise, he saw the fire and felt his belly unclench. House, not pasture. The blaze would be more containable. Better yet, Sydney and Kent were on the scene in full gear and had help from four other firefighters. They were dousing the house with water from the engine and the booster.
Volunteers ahead of Trey parked their vehicles and raced toward the fire. They carried fire extinguishers, axes, and shovels. Some had thrown on protective firefighter helmets and jackets. Others wore cowboy hats and jean jackets. They wouldn’t enter the house, so they didn’t need full turnout gear.
He stopped his truck behind the other pickups and jumped out. Smoke and heat lashed his face. And damn it all, he could smell accelerant. Somebody had set this fire with gasoline. He jerked open his back door, reached inside, and pulled out a high-visibility orange and yellow firefighter parka. He shucked on the jacket and tucked leather gloves into his pocket.
He jogged toward the fire, knowing all the bake sales and benefits had been worth it. Their new red engine had a two-thousand-GPM pump capacity and one thousand gallons of water with thirty gallons of Class A Foam. Their smaller red booster truck had a three-hundred-GPM pump capacity and a two-hundred-gallon water tank. He figured they had enough water so they wouldn’t need to pump from a pond or stock tank because there were no fire hydrants in the country.
He watched Sydney expertly wave the nozzle of the engine’s large-diameter hose and expel high-velocity water on the house. Two firefighters wrestled with the hose to keep it stable, so it didn’t twist, turn, and buck like a wild rodeo bull. Kent kept up a steady flow with the line from the booster’s water tank. Smoke and steam rose upward from the house as the streams of water fought to bring the fire under control.
Suddenly the windows exploded outward in self-ventilation, sending out shards of glass and other debris. Kent and Sydney staggered backward and went to their knees. Trey sped up to go to their rescue, thinking of little Storm’s pain if her mother was hurt. But Kent and Sydney got back on their feet and kept the water barrage going on the house.