Jane didn’t wait to see whether he went up to the cave. She spun the mare around and kicked her forward. The horse didn’t relish running back toward the fire, but Jane pummeled its ribs with her heels and slapped its withers with the knotted ends of her reins.
The smoke billowed up in huge puffs and hung in the sky in slowly dissipating clouds. She was glad there wasn’t much wind today. With luck, she might save the barn. She probably shouldn’t have bothered to get Pa away from the fire. But he was useless and would only get in the way, so she had made him climb up behind her saddle and quickly taken him a quarter mile away, where he would be safe. Her brother had left at dawn to trade work with a rancher ten miles away. He probably wouldn’t know about the fire until tonight.
As she forced the panicky mare closer to the inferno, she glimpsed a figure moving amid the smoky barnyard. Ben? Or maybe someone else had seen the smoke and come to help.
She leaped off the mare and didn’t try to stop her from wheeling and tearing across the range as fast as she could go. That horse wouldn’t go far, and Jane would find her eventually. Right now she had to save whatever she could of the homestead.
The house was beyond help, with the roof caved in and the studs and clapboard siding reduced to smoldering black sticks. She pulled her neckerchief up over her mouth and ran toward the barn.
A man barreled out the door, clutching several burlap sacks, and nearly knocked her down.
“Hey! Sorry!” He dropped the sacks and grabbed her arms to steady her. His face was grimy, but she would have known Crockett Hart anywhere.
“We can’t save the house.” Her voice was raspy.
“I know, but there’s a firebrand on the barn roof. I was going to try to climb up and beat it out.”
“Boost me,” Jane croaked.
Crockett hesitated, but then nodded and led her to the place where the barn roof was lowest. He hunched down. “Get on my shoulders.”
She didn’t spare him but tried not to think about the pain she caused as she climbed onto his back and then stood on his solid shoulders in her worn boots. Grasping the eaves, she pulled herself onto the roof as Crockett straightened. Pa was a lazy man, and he hadn’t pitched the roof as steep as some ranchers would. They rarely got snow here, and he figured a little slope was enough to run the rain off. She rolled onto the strips of wood Pa had used instead of shingles. Crockett tossed a feed sack up beside her.
“Here. I’ll wet another one and bring it to you.” He ran toward the well, carrying the other sacks.
Jane turned toward the slope of the roof. Above the ridgepole, a wisp of smoke rose, darker than the hazy air around it. She crawled, slipping and gasping, to the top. There was the charred stick Crockett had mentioned, in the crease where the main roof met the lean-to that sheltered the pigsty. She sat on the ridgepole and cautiously edged her way down.
When she was close, she leaned over, swinging her sack, and almost tumbled off the roof for her efforts. She caught herself and studied the situation. Maybe she could ease down a bit farther and kick the firebrand off the roof.
“Jane?”
“Yeah, Crockett.”
He was below her, at the side of the lean-to.
“If I toss this up, can you get it?”
“Maybe.”
He stooped for a moment. “All right, look out. I wrapped a rock in it to make it heavier. Here goes.”
As the wet sack thudded beside her, the firebrand caught and flames leaped up from the strips of wood on the roof below her.
“I got it,” she said, “but let the pigs out. We may lose the lean-to roof.”
She grabbed the sack, shook the rock out, and let it roll down the incline to land on the far side of the lean-to. Then she lay on her belly and inched down the steeper main roof toward the blaze. She let the rough shingles catch on her wool pants to slow her down. Within seconds she was slapping at the fire.
“Hey.” Crockett’s soot-streaked face appeared at the lowest edge of the roof. “You got it?”
“Not sure.”
He heaved himself up onto the lean-to, and Jane felt it shudder. Would the feeble structure her father had built support both of them?
Crockett didn’t stop to fret. He wriggled forward and vigorously pummeled the flames and then the smoldering wood. Jane joined him from the uphill side, and they developed a rhythm. Slap, thwack, slap, thwack. Droplets of water flew off Crockett’s sack and sprinkled her face. They felt good.
Finally, he stopped attacking the roof.
“I think it’s out.” He sat back and looked toward the ruined house. “There’s not much left of your house.”
“I could see that from the start.” Jane pushed her singed hair back from her face. “I just figured if I could save the barn, we could make it.”
“Looks like you did.”
“We did,” she said. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “I doubt it will spread from the house now, but we’d better beat around the grass for a while to make sure.”
“How’d you get up here?” she asked.
“Climbed up the pig fence and did some acrobatics.”
She laughed, but stopped quickly when pain scraped her raw throat.