Breaking Point

over his shoulder at the oncoming fire. They couldn’t actually see leaping flames yet, but the air was getting hotter and exploding trees signaled the approach of the flames.
    “I’m going to make my stand,” McLanahan said. “I’ll find a ditch, cover myself with dirt, and let it pass over the top of me.”
    “Fine,” Butch said. “Suit yourself. Have you ever heard of the Mann Gulch fire in Montana?”
    “The
what
?”
    “That’s right, you’re from West Virginia,” Butch said. “In 1949, smoke jumpers got caught in a situation like this and thirteen died. Those that didn’t suffocate from the smoke tried to hunker down and ride it out like you were describing. They were baked like potatoes.”
    At that moment, a long and heavily muscled mountain lion appeared out of nowhere and ran right through the three of them, threading silkily around their legs, and ran toward higher ground. Farkus was astounded.
    “He didn’t even care we were here,” Farkus said.
    “Okay,” McLanahan said to Butch. “I’ll go with you.”
    “You can stay,” Butch said. “Mountain lions have to eat, too.”
    “I’m going with you,” McLanahan said, defeated. “But no one knows how to get across. I can see us standing there on the edge as the fire comes straight at us.”
    “I know that canyon has been crossed.”
    “That’s Indian hokum,” McLanahan said. “Have you
seen
it?”
    Farkus had, that time he was hunting with Butch. They’d stood on the rim and looked down. Butch had pointed out the knife-sharp walls, a terrifying distance from the rim to the narrow canyon floor, and virtually no breaks or cracks through the rocks to assure a crossing. The canyon was so steep and narrow that sunlight rarely shone on the surface of the Middle Fork. Butch said it cut through eight different archaeological strata before it hit the bottom.
    “It’s been done,” Butch said, holding McLanahan’s eye. “Once by those Cheyenne back in the old days when the Pawnee closed in on their camp, and they did it at
night
. And Joe Pickett did it.”
    McLanahan shook his head in disgust. “He
claims
he did it. He’s a pain in my ass, you know.”
    “If Joe says he did it, he did it,” Butch said.
    “And there he is,” Farkus said, doubting his eyes, as Joe appeared on horseback through a haze of smoke and rode right toward them.

31
    “YOU’RE NOT GONNA SHOOT ME, ARE YOU, BUTCH?” Joe called out, after reining Toby to a stop. He knew the answer, though, because Roberson was lowering the rifle he’d raised instinctively when Joe appeared.
    “I don’t think so,” Butch responded, “or I’d have already done it.”
    “That’s good,” Joe mumbled aloud to himself, and nudged Toby’s flanks toward the three men who stood staring at him from within a sparse stand of twisted and ancient mountain juniper that was just a little taller than themselves.
    Through burning eyes, he noted that Farkus wasn’t dead after all, and that both Farkus and McLanahan weren’t cuffed or bound. They stood on either side of Butch Roberson, who squinted at him through the haze and waves of heat, wearing his backpack and cradling his AR-15.
    —
    H E’D FOUND THEM more by intuition and strategic luck than anything else, Joe thought. After he’d left Underwood and the agents, he’d ridden south, cutting across the face of the mountain from clearing to clearing so he could look back and down and see the progress of the fire. He tried to skirt dry grassy areas and stick to the shade and rock on the side of the meadows because he knew how fast fire could consume it and he didn’t want to be trapped.
    The fire was amazing and terrifying to behold, and as he rode he got the clear feeling that all rules had been suspended, all bets were off, all was forgotten, and it was suddenly every man for himself. Even the wildlife had jettisoned its instincts and caution, and ran across his path up the mountain with no more than a passing glance. Elk, mule deer, mountain lions, bobcats, three black bears (two with cubs), and a lone black wolf he thought he’d seen before. Only the wolf hesitated as it loped along, and locked eyes with Joe for a momentary and primal exchange of information—
run
—before vanishing into the timber.
    “You again,” Joe had said.
    —
    W HEN HE COULD SEE clearly from the edges of the meadows, which wasn’t often, Joe noted how the fire was racing up and across the mountain in what looked like reverse molten