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Fire Dancer

By Colleen Coble

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Prologue

October 1991

Nibbling on a strand of strawberry blond hair, Tess Masterson lay on her stomach on the canopy bed with her eyes glued to the pages of the book. She barely breathed, transported to a world very much like that outside her bedroom window—sage, pine, and the sharply rising escarpment known as Mogollon Rim. The scent of the creosote bushes outside her open window added to the sensation that she was living the story right along with the characters, riding on the back of a horse with the wind in her face.

Her mother’s voice barely penetrated Tess’ concentration. “Tess, you need to feed. It’s way past time.” Willa Masterson’s voice held a note of indulgence.

Tess tore her gaze from the book. “Okay, Mom, but can I finish this chapter? I’ve only got a page.”

“Never mind, little bookworm. I’ll do it for you. But only because it’s your birthday.”

Tess glanced up at her mother’s smiling face. With her blond curls and eyes as blue as an Arizona sky, Willa Masterson still turned heads when she went to town. Tess often despaired of having a figure or attracting any male attention when she looked at her mom and big sister. She glanced at her chest and wondered if she’d ever be as shapely as her mom.

“Which book are you reading?” Her mom settled on the foot of Tess’ mattress.

Tess held up the front cover of the book. Riders of the Purple Sage was her favorite Zane Grey novel. Her dad thought she read too much, but Tess didn’t know if there was such a thing as reading too much. “I should start at the beginning of the set, but I couldn’t wait to reread this one.” Her gaze went to the stack of new books on the floor by the wall. She’d squealed when her dad brought out the entire collection of Zane Grey books. It was a grand present for her fifteenth birthday.

“I’m so proud of you. You’ve worked hard this past year.” Her mother patted Tess’ leg then stood and went to the door. “Read your book. You deserve an evening off.”

“Don’t bother currying Pepper. I want to take Aunt Doty some cake.” Tess frowned and studied her mother’s face. “Why wouldn’t she come to my party? Is she mad at me?”

Her mother looked away. “You know your aunt. She’s always been a little different.”

She’d neatly skirted the issue of why Doty hadn’t come to the party, but Tess decided not to press it. “I’ll ride over there in a little while.”

Her mother nibbled on her lip. “I’d rather you didn’t. Not until they catch the arsonist. I’ll run you over in the truck.”

Tess wished they’d catch the guy. Since someone had begun torching hay fields and meadows at the beginning of summer, her parents had curtailed her freedom. The fires were front page news at least once every couple of weeks. About the time Tess was beginning to think the fire spree was over, a new blaze would appear. There’d been talk of getting a vigilante group going to patrol the back roads and catch the culprit, but nothing had come of it yet.

“Okay, Mom.”

Her mother grinned at Tess’ suffering tone. “Let me know when you’re ready to go.”

Tess stuck her nose back in her book, but she couldn’t concentrate. She knew her mother shouldn’t have to do her job, and Pepper would be disappointed if Tess didn’t come with the expected sugar lumps. Sighing, she put her book aside and crawled off her bed. Pictures of Johnny Depp papered the wall over her bed, and she stuffed the latest edition of Teen magazine under her bed with the rest of her stash. The tower of new books waylaid her on the way to the door, and she stopped a minute to admire them. Just as she started toward the door again, the phone rang.

She talked to her best friend, Crystal, for a while, and when she hung up, she realized her mom was probably done with the chores. She’d been gone nearly forty-five minutes. Twilight lay outside her window, brushing the sky with purple and pink. Tess thrust her feet into worn cowboy boots and hurried down the hall. As she neared the back door, she became aware of a strange sound: crackling and an odd popping. Was that smoke? Maybe the cowboys were branding. She banged open the back screen door and stepped out into the backyard. The sound and smell intensified as she jogged past the chicken coop and through the orchard. She stepped out of the cover of trees toward the back paddock.

Black smoke roiled toward her in a malevolent spume, the scent of kerosene in the wind. Hungry flames shot through the barn roof and leaped into the sky, just beginning to darken to indigo. Tiny sparks floated around the barnyard and caused the chickens to run squawking for cover. Tess stood frozen in place, not sure what to do. She wanted to clap her palms over her ears to block out the horrific sound of fire devouring dry wood. Her mother was in the barn. Her horse too..

She started back toward the house to call for help and realized there was no time. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she ran to the pump house and grabbed the hose. The water faucet resisted her effort at first, then she managed to get the water flowing. The hose caught in a loop, and she untangled it then ran toward the barn with it. “Mom!” she screamed. “Help, somebody help me!” She aimed the nozzle at the fire and pressed on the lever.

Water sprayed toward the barn, but it was like dropping a thimble of water on the fires of hell. The fire laughed at her attempts. She screamed for help again and saw several ranch hands running toward her from the back pasture. Then with a deafening roar, the roof collapsed. Flames licked their way toward Tess, and she had no choice but to back away. The scent of kerosene was stronger now, choking her.

“Mom,” she sobbed, sinking to her knees. Cinders fell from the sky in a swirling black rain that singed the hair on her arms and marked her forever with the scent of fire.


One



“You’re not pigged in.” Tess Masterson spoke above the roar of the DC-3’s engines. Today’s spotter, Cooper Johnston, known as Coop to the rest of the smokejumpers, looked back at her and nodded. He attached the pigtail of his restraining line to the clip, then took a firm grip on the cargo door handles.

“Guard your reserves,” Coop said as he opened the door. The jumpers all put a protective hand on their spare chute. The sudden influx of air had been known to inflate a reserve parachute and sweep the hapless jumper out of the plane and to his death when the lines tangled.

The rush of mountain air blew through the plane filled with smokejumpers and their gear. Tess peered past the spotter. Below her was the jump target, a heavy pine forest atop Horse Mountain on the northern cusp of Hell’s Gate Wilderness. A wisp of smoke wafted up through the pine tree tops. A clearing broke through the trees, and she could see a line of fire crackling toward a cabin. A man on a small tractor was plowing up the meadow in an effort to stop the blaze, an effort that showed he knew something about fighting wildfire. He needed help though, and fast.

Tess watched Coop throw out the drift streamers to determine how the air currents were moving. The faint scent of smoke came to her nose, and the odor revved her adrenaline. She shuffled as she checked her lines. It was unusual to have a fire this late in the season, and all the smokejumpers were ready for some R and R. She’d been looking forward to it too, until her sister’s call.

“Ready to get home?” Boone Carter asked.

Tess frowned as she glanced up into her friend’s face. A wilderness outfitter in his other life, Boone had been a rock for her during her initial training and on the subsequent missions they’d flown together. Behind her the rest of the smokejumpers shuffled as they prepared to jump. Ten smokejumpers, a tightly-knit cadre of firefighters—all men with the exception of Tess and April Stinson—who had become a real family to her.

“I still don’t know what she wants,” Tess said.

“You have to go,” Boone told her.

He always did that to her. Read her mind before she said a word. She’d often wondered why there were no romantic feelings between the two of them when they were so attuned. He and Flint were the brothers she’d always wanted. .

“Want to place odds that she’ll think of an excuse?” Flint Montgomery joined her and Boone. He and Tess were two of the few full-time Forest Service employees in their number. The rest of the group worked at various other jobs when their temporary firefighting gigs were over. Some were with the Forest Service and others were employed by BLM. Raised by his Apache mother when his cowboy father died, Flint was the quiet one of the group.

Flint grinned and nodded toward the door. “You’re in the first stick out, second jumper,” he said. “There’s time to decide on the visit later. Let’s go.”

The firefighters jumped in twos, referred to as “sticks”. Tess forced her tight facial muscles into what she hoped was a cheeky grin. She pulled on her helmet, snapped the chin strap and pulled down the wire-mesh mask. Tugging on her Nomex gloves, she followed April to the open doorway. Her vision filled with the glory of the landscape’s panorama. She could see the world moving by below in a kaleidoscope of umber earth and the vivid green pine tops. She prayed she would acquit herself respectably today. The other sticks lined up behind them. Five sticks in all—ten jumpers—and she had the luck to be in the first group out the door. As one of only twenty-seven women among the more than four hundred smokejumpers in the country, the responsibility always rode heavy on her shoulders.

“Stay out of the water,” Coop admonished. “I don’t want any drownings this year.” He mothered them all, fussing over them like they were kids. About forty, his blond hair was a golden mane he usually kept corralled in a band, and the crags and planes of his face added to his lion-like appearance. The tough, sinewy muscles under his bronzed skin were still hard and taut. He pointed at the streamers. “Looks like there’s about two hundred yards of drift.”

The streamers helped the jumpers determine wind currents so they knew when to jump to hit the target. Tess nodded and lowered herself to the plane floor, dangling her feet into the slipstream. The heat from the fire below warmed her face. From the corner of her eye out past the wire cage of her helmet, she saw April lean forward and tumble from the plane. Coop slapped Tess hard on the shoulder. She propelled herself forward with all her strength.

As the roar of the wind rushed past her ears, she began to chant off the count. “Jump-thousand.” The world and the sky blurred together as she tumbled through the air. At ninety miles an hour, the air rushed past her in a howl that blotted out other sound. “Look-thousand.” She glanced back to see Flint tumble from the plane. “Reach-thousand.” Her hand reached for the green rip cord. “Wait-thousand.” Even though she’d jumped hundreds of times, she always had to resist the impulse to pull the cord now.

The seconds seemed to stretch out to minutes. “Pull-thousand.” She pulled hard and her hand snapped back to her side with the handle in it. She felt herself tip forward and a tugging sensation rippled across her shoulders. The drogue was out and struggling to open. Air filled her chute, and the resulting jerk lifted her. She looked up at the gleaming rectangle of orange and white above her. Silence settled over her as the rushing air slowed to a gentle glide. Riding on the wind, she had a bird’s eye view of the fire below.

She checked the rear corners of her chute for tension knots, then began to steer toward the jump spot by tugging on the steering toggles. Whooping, she swung suspended between earth and sky. Right now there was no problem waiting her at the ranch, no other duty but the one to stamp out the wildfire below.

April waved to her, and Tess waved back. The women floated toward the drop spot, a clearing two hundred yards from the fire’s head. It looked like it would be a perfect jump until the breeze shifted. The wind caught their chutes and began to blow them toward the trees. “Pull right, pull right,” she screamed to April. She could see April leaning hard into her right toggle, but the gusts of wind drove her toward a stand of tall Ponderosa Pine with trees that reached upwards of a hundred and fifty feet.

Tess managed to twist in the wind and pulled on her toggles, somehow resisting the current that had caught her partner. Tess landed hard, her knees bent to take the brunt of the impact. The chute billowed around her, and she lost sight of April. Fighting the yards of fabric, she got her lines disengaged and dropped her chute behind her. Where was April? Her gaze scanned the treetops, and she caught a glimpse of white. There, caught in the top of the biggest pine in the forest. April’s chute hung snagged while the young woman dangled nearly a hundred feet from the ground. She was fighting with her harness, but the movement made her tangled lines slip from their tenuous grasp on the tree.

Tess heard April scream as she slid about two feet down the tree. How could she help her?

“Tie off, tie off!” Flint shouted, heading toward them. Standard procedure was to let yourself down, so long as the chute was securely snagged, but with the hold so precarious, April needed to attach a stabilizing line to the tree.

“I’m coming down. It will hold me.” April’s voice trembled, and her white face peered out of the foliage down at Tess as she reached the bottom of the tree. She reached for her letdown line.

“Hurry!” Tess shouted.

Flint shot her a warning glance. “Tie yourself off first!”

By now several of the other smokejumpers had joined Tess at the base of the tree. Tess dropped her pack and unzipped it. She took out her climbing gear. “I’m coming up.”

“I can’t wait. It won’t hold that long,” April called down.

“Tie off,” Flint called up. “It’s not stable.”

April was doing just what Tess would do, though it was a shortcut that was a no-no. Standard procedure was to tie off to the tree for stability and then rappel down, but none of them liked to do it because they’d have to climb back up to retrieve the chute.

“I don’t want to have to climb back up for my chute.” April reached into the pocket on the outside of her right leg. She took out about six feet of rope and passed it through the D rings at the waist of her pants.

Was the chute slipping? The fabric seemed to be sliding in tiny degrees, though it was hard to tell with the swaying pine branches. “Give me your chute,” Tess said, turning to Flint. “Let’s rig up something to catch her. I don’t think she’s going to be able to rappel down without falling.” Her gaze followed Flint as he jogged over to his parachute. Before he could bring it back, Tess heard a ripping noise. Her horrified gaze shot upward just in time to see the tree release April’s chute.

April uttered one heartrending shriek, then fell straight down, toes pointed to the earth. She hurtled through the air in the space of a heartbeat, the chute wrapped around her like a mummy. The thud when she hit the ground was mingled with the sickening sound of breaking bones. Even before she knelt beside her friend, Tess knew there was no way April could have survived the hundred-foot fall.

Tess fell to her knees beside her friend. Gently peeling back the chute, she stared down into April’s face. She pressed her fingers against April’s neck, but there was no pulse. Tess buried her face in her hands. She’d talked April into taking the smokejumper training. This was her fault.

The rest of the smokejumpers were gathered on the field when the helicopter landed with April’s body. The tightly-knit group would all grieve one of their own. When word that a smokejumper had died raced through the ranks of firefighters, it was like losing a family member.

“We’ve still got a job to do,” Coop said, his voice heavy. “There’s nothing we can do for April. Tess, you ride back in the chopper with her.”

Tess barely noticed him herd the other firefighters off through the brush. She managed to hold her tears until she got to her barracks after delivering April’s body to the paramedics. She sat on her bunk and put her face in her hands. Each of them lived with the possibility of death every day, but when it came it was always a shock. Her eyes burned, and her throat felt thick.

April had been the only one to share the women’s barracks with her, and her friend’s things were piled around the next bunk. Tess stood and went to April’s bed. She picked up the koala bear on the neatly made bunk. The bear had one eye missing, and the fur was matted and tattered. It had been given to April when she was five, and she had taken it with her everywhere. Her parents would want the bear. She curled up on the bed with the bear in her arms and closed her eyes. She doubted if she could sleep, but it was dark when a tap on the door awakened her.

“Come in,” Tess called. She sat up and put down the bear..

Coop stuck his head in the door. “You okay?”

The scent of smoke drifted in with him. “I’m fine.” Tess blinked rapidly and got control of her emotions. “Are we getting sent out again?”

“No, the fire’s under control. I hope it’s the last of the season. I just wanted to check on you and give you your assignment.”

“My assignment? I thought I was going to the Casa Grande station.” Tess had been looking forward to the thought of throwing herself into something interesting like the cataloguing of the pueblo artifacts.

Coop shook his head. “We’re keeping you here to help repair equipment. I heard your sister needed you at home, and you’re close enough to stay at the ranch if you like.”

She didn’t like. In fact, it was the last thing in the world she intended to do. “I see.” She could guess where he’d heard the gossip. Blabbermouth Boone. He’d been after her to make peace with her past. “I don’t know that she needs me at home. She just asked me to come see her. I’m only staying the weekend.”

A long pause followed. “You’re welcome,” Coop said finally. “I can see you’re thankful I pulled strings. I thought you’d like to stay at the fire camp. You generally love working on equipment.”

“Sorry. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the work. All winter?”

He nodded. “We’ve got lots of parachutes to repair as well as routine maintenance and repair on the buildings. You won’t be bored.” He hesitated and glanced at April’s bed. “I already called her parents.”

She hadn’t thought about how difficult this was for Coop. He herded them around like they were his own little chicks. “That had to have been rough.”

“It wasn’t as much fun as freefalling toward the drop site. Her mom took it pretty hard.”

“I’ll get April’s things together for her parents to pick up.” Why did the scent of smoke always accompany death?

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