Art squeezed into the cab beside Miranda, and we sped east on I-40 toward Cooke County.
O’Conner had told me to follow River Road for three miles after getting off I-40, then look to the right and follow the flames. He hadn’t been exaggerating; I could see the glow on the horizon even before we got off the interstate, the flames curling up the hillside and disappearing into roiling smoke, like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. I half expected to see demons and damned souls writhing amid the flames. The gravel road snaking upward into the fire zone was blocked by a Cooke County Sheriff’s vehicle, a black-and-white Jeep Cherokee that I remembered getting carsick in once, during a case a year or so before. The vehicle’s light bar was strobing, and the blue lights shot solid-looking beams into the pooling smoke.
I cut my headlights, pulled to a stop alongside the SUV, and got out. As I approached, the driver’s window slid down. “Hello,” I said into the dark interior, “I’m Dr. Bill Brockton. Sheriff O’Conner asked me—”
I was interrupted by what sounded like rolling thunder or the growl of a bear. “Hey there, Doc,” rumbled a deep voice from inside the vehicle. “Jim sent me down here to meet y’all.”
“Waylon!” In spite of my anxiety, I felt myself smile.
A massive, shaggy head loomed out of the window toward me, the coarse beard split by a crooked grin. “I heard a little something about what-all you been rasslin’ with, so I didn’t take it personal. ’Sides, we ain’t exactly been beatin’ a path to your doorstep neither. I reckon maybe we’ll forgive you.” He eyed my truck, then trained a blinding spotlight from the SUV through the passenger window. “Is that Art and Miss Miranda in there? Howdy!” he bellowed. “Good to see y’all!” Inside the truck, Art and Miranda shielded their eyes with one hand and waved the other in the general direction of Waylon and his searchlight.
Waylon—I’d never heard a last name for him—was a mountain man in every sense of the term. A hulking, homespun fellow who had heedlessly put me in harm’s way and also selflessly saved my hide during a series of Cooke County adventures, Waylon had recently traded an outlaw’s life for a lawman’s uniform. “How you like being on this side of the law, Waylon?”
He chuckled. “Hmm. Verdict on that ain’t in yet. Me and Jim’s had our work cut out for us, that’s for damn sure. Some of my own kinfolks ain’t on speakin’ terms with me no more. But mostly it feels like we’re doin’ some good. Clearing out some of the nastiest vermin, leastwise. I tell you, though, Doc, I sure do miss them cockfights since we shut down the pit.” He frowned about the loss of what had been Cooke County’s favorite spectator sport, but then the ragged smile returned, even broader, and I thought I saw a few flecks of chewing tobacco wedged between blue-lit teeth. “Hey, I delivered a baby last week, Doc, in the backseat of this-here Jeep. Lady called in a panic, said her husband weren’t home and the baby was a-comin’. Her and me was haulin’ ass for town with the siren on when she started hollerin’ that she couldn’t wait no more—she got to push right now. So I pulled off on the shoulder, and she popped a little baby boy right out in my hands. Named the little feller Waylon. That made me right proud.”
“That makes me proud, too, Waylon. You keep up the good work. Say, you think maybe we can get up this road without melting the tires or blowing up the gas tank?”
“Oh, sure, Doc—didn’t mean to keep you here jawin’. You’ll be all right up there. Ever’thin’s kindly burned itself out right around the cabin. What used to be the cabin anyways. Fire’s still climbin’ the ridge behind it, but it’ll stop when it gets to the bluffs up top. Go on up—I’ll radio Jim you’re here.”
I thanked Waylon, got back into the truck, put it in gear, and began idling up the gravel. The road meandered through what looked, in the headlights, to be stands of tulip poplars and hemlocks; twice it forded a small stream, making me glad I was driving a truck instead of some low-slung sports car. Finally, after a mile that seemed like several, we emerged into a clearing. In the glare of headlights, work lights, and the red and blue strobes of a dozen fire trucks and police cars, the smoke that still hung in the air looked thick as water. The ruins of the cabin still smoldered, and as I got out of the truck, I felt a blast of heat radiating from the splintered and charred debris. A burned vehicle was parked in front of the burned structure, a thread of smoke still curling up from it to join the larger pall of smoke hanging over the whole area.
Jim O’Conner’s short, wiry frame emerged from a cluster of deputies and firefighters to greet us. He looked tired, worried, and chagrined. “What a mess,” he said, shaking my hand. “So much for my optimistic prediction about how easy it would be.”