Patsy worked down the line, checking in with her half of the crew—she and Jess each had nine crewmembers. For their first fire, they were doing well; not that it was a big one. It made for a perfect introduction.
The fire had climbed into a dead-end ravine. Candace had sent scouts both to left and right in case it tried to jump over to the neighboring ravines, but it wasn’t big enough to make the leap—again, just good training. They’d think to go themselves next time after checking in with her on the radio. The fire already was dying against the walls and the only ones who didn’t know it were the rooks.
The rookies saw the old hands remain calm around them—she’d alternated them down the line so that the rooks couldn’t feed off each others’ fear—and they had stayed calm in turn. Now it was just a matter of letting it burn out the available fuel in this narrow slot.
She broke out three rooks and a three-year veteran and led them back down to the base of the fire.
“Get a one-and-a-half inch hose into that stream over there. Start working this line. We don’t want to leave a single hotspot. When this is done burning out in a couple hours, we want to have the mop-up mostly finished or we’ll miss pizza back in town.”
That got them moving. Nothing like the promise of real food and a place to brag about your first fire to motivate a hotshot.
A lone figure with wholly insufficient hiking gear stood at the base of the “black,” as the charred area of a wildland forest fire was called, looking like he’d been electrocuted standing up. She considered climbing down to him, but decided to make him hike his pretty, clean gear up through the base of the black and save her the walk. It would stain up his boots and socks pretty good. Then maybe she’d rid herself of yet another gawker to worry about during future blazes.
She waved him up the hill to her.
He hesitated, unsure of himself until she signaled again.
As he approached, she recognized the face from somewhere. Oh, his eyes going wide as she stuffed his delicate pastry into her mouth like a some squirrel stuffing its face full of acorns.
She sighed. Graceful had never been one of her strengths.