Breaking Point

was even in the vicinity of the old switchback trail he’d once found. He tried to conjure up a clear memory and convinced himself that he’d need to walk west, not east, along the edge of the rim to find it. The wrong choice, he knew, could be fatal.
    The problem with moving parallel to the rim of the canyon was that the fire would no longer be pushing them from the back, but from the side. The only way to escape as the flames closed in on them would be to jump and plunge into the void. There was no way he would do that. Even if he somehow avoided bouncing off the canyon wall on the way down, the impact of hitting the surface of the shallow river would kill him.
    —
    I T HAD BEEN ten years since he’d made the crossing. At that time, he was with an environmental terrorist named Stewie Woods and Woods’s girlfriend, Britney Earthshare. They were being pursued by a couple of aging hit men, and the only place to escape them was to cross the canyon. Joe had heard of the legend of the crossing. Supposedly, a band of Cheyenne Indians—mainly women and children because the warriors were hunting in another part of the mountains—defied certain death and made the crossing in the middle of the night before a murderous group of Pawnee closed in on them. No one knew if the Cheyenne knew about the location of the crossing before they were forced to find it, or whether it had been pure crazy luck. But most of the Cheyenne made it across, leaving tepee poles, travois, and a few broken bodies along the descent. Joe had originally found the location of the crossing because he discovered an ancient Cheyenne child’s doll made of leather and fur that had been discarded. The doll was displayed in his home.
    Now he wished he’d left the doll where he found it so he’d have some idea where the trailhead was located.
    More burning embers, like fireflies, floated through the air. The roar of the fire was so loud it was difficult to hear anything else.
    —
    H E REMEMBERED S TEWIE had blundered over an outcropping of rock hidden in the brush, and had nearly fallen to his death in the canyon. The rock—if he’d gone the right direction and could find it again—would indicate the mouth of the trailhead to the Cheyenne Crossing. In the intervening years, the brush had become even taller and thicker than before.
    Joe felt panic start to set in. He hoped it wouldn’t turn into mindless shock, and he shook his head to clear it while he walked. His left shoulder, side, and leg were hot from the proximity of the flames. His skin tingled with it, and he tried to maintain a stride where he could avoid letting the hot fabric touch his flesh.
    “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” McLanahan moaned. “We’re going to die in the worst way.”
    “I always thought freezing would be worse,” Farkus said, his voice muffled through the wet cloth over his mouth.
    Butch said nothing but kept prodding McLanahan along ahead of him whenever the ex-sheriff stopped to rest. He couldn’t get air, either.
    Joe dragged his right boot through the edge of the juniper, hoping to bump up against the hidden rock.
    As he’d done before when he found himself in a similar situation, he thought of his family. Marybeth had no idea where he was, or what was happening. She was likely at home, watching with horror as smoke billowed from the mountains that filled their front room window. There was likely no real information yet about where the fire started, how it started, or who was caught within it, because it took a while for official spokesmen to get organized to give statements. And it had all happened so fast.
    Joe saw the faces of Sheridan, Lucy, and April all turned toward the fire from different vantage points; Sheridan as she drove her truck toward Saddlestring wearing her waitress uniform to go to work at the Burg-O-Pardner, April scowling beside her in her cowgirl outfit, Lucy—and Hannah—bookending Marybeth in the front room. All their faces turned his direction but not knowing it.
    He wondered how far the fire had spread north. Was it burning the face off Wolf Mountain, which was the closest to their home? Had it advanced into the river cottonwoods of the Twelve Sleep Valley? Was it racing toward Saddlestring itself?
    —
    M C L ANAHAN SCREAMED, and Joe turned to find him hopping up and down. An ember had lit on his back, and his shirt was on fire. Butch slapped at the flames while McLanahan danced away, Butch yelling at McLanahan to stop moving. Farkus