I’m not thinking about anything but Lady when I run through those flames, and duck under the smoke, and slap at the burning cinders that go off like firecrackers in the air. Except I can’t really tell what’s the air and what’s the burning part, and the stuff inside my lungs feels so hot and dry I want to stop breathing, it hurts so much.

The ground is burning and the sky is burning, and when I get there, the stable is burning, too. The way I find it is, I bump straight up against it, because I can’t see with my eyes all teared up with cinders and soot. I have to feel my way along until I come to the side door, the one that leads into the tack room. I know it’s the tack room because I can smell the leather getting hot.

The first thing I hear is Lady — the racket her hooves are making as she gallops in circles. At first I can’t figure out where she’s at, and then I find my way through the tack room into the main part of the barn. There she is, rearing up and kicking at the smoke.

“Lady!” I yell. “Come to me!”

But she won’t. She’s so busy trying to kick at the smoke she don’t even know I’m there. She’s kicking so high it’s like she’s decided to live on two legs like a human being, only she don’t quite know how to do it.

I run back into the tack room and grab the first halter my hands see. Then I’m back with Lady, waving the halter and begging her to come back to earth.

I got to get that halter on her, that’s the only way to lead her out.

We got to get out, and we got to do it quick! I can feel the heat rushing into the barn, and smoke is swirling up like the inside of an invisible chimney. It looks like thunderclouds are boiling up in the rafters, but really it’s smoke and sparks.

I’m begging Lady to take the halter, but she’s kicking at me like I’m part of the smoke. She’s afraid of everything that moves and she don’t know any better, but I can feel the whoosh of her front hooves missing me.

Now she’s crashing around, and I have to fall down and roll under her belly to get away. I can smell how crazy she is. It smells like she’s burning up inside.

All of a sudden there’s a whomp! that makes the floor shake, and everything changes. A burning rafter crashes down from the roof and lands right in the way of leaving. Fire races along the beam, and the splintered part explodes like road flares. Before you know it, the fire is inside the barn. It’s racing up the walls into the thundersmoke above.

“Lady!” I’m screaming. “Lady! Lady!”

And then I get this idea to climb up on the stalls. When Lady comes racing by, I throw myself down on her back. There’s no saddle or halter to hang on to, so all I can do is grab hold of her mane. She don’t try to buck me off, but she still won’t stop.

There’s only one way out now, and that’s to jump clear over the beam that smashed through to the floor. But Lady shies away. I get her to run at it again, but she won’t jump it. She’s more afraid of that burning beam than she is of dying. I keep trying to turn her and make her jump, but she won’t do it. The only thing she’ll do is run in circles, and the fire is running in circles all around us. It’s getting closer and closer.

I can’t breathe much and that makes it feel slow and dreamy, no matter how fast everything is happening. I almost forget how I’m trying to get us out of the barn, and for a while it seems right, the way Lady and me are just running and running. It gets so dizzy and hard to breathe it makes me think I see the grandstands with all the people on fire, waving and cheering us like it don’t hurt to burn up, like it’s the best thing in the world and don’t be afraid. Like the fire will make us win the race.

And then the smoke chokes me hard and the coughing wakes me up enough to know I don’t want to win that race, and I’m smart enough to know that the fire lies because it wants you to stay inside, but you got to keep trying to get out.

Except there’s no way out. The barn is burning up from the inside and there’s no escape anymore, even if Lady does jump the beam. We missed our chance, and now we have to stay inside the fire and do what it wants.

That’s when I start breathing in the smoke on purpose, because I figure the smoke will make me go to sleep. I’d rather dream about the race than be inside the fire.

That’s what I’m doing, breathing in a dream, when something big comes crashing through the wall.

* * *

They say that when me and Lady were inside the barn, Joe Dilly came out of the dark outside, all covered with soot except for the whites of his eyes. And when he heard I chased after my pony, he went into that big corral and found Showdown and got on his back and jumped the fence.

They say he rode through that fire like a wild man, whooping and hollering and waving his burned-up hat, and he was talking to Showdown and the horse heard him and went where Joe wanted him to go.

They say nobody ever rode a kill-crazy stallion bareback like Joe Dilly, leaping that wild horse through the running fire as they flew in and out of the smoke, in and out of the crazy light that came out of the flames.

Maybe Joe was telling Showdown what he saw in the fire. Maybe he was singing one of his stupid old songs. Maybe he was telling that horse how once he came out of nowhere in his old Ford pickup and found his beat-up little brother waiting, and how we became a family and lived on the road where nothing could catch us.

I don’t know about none of that. All I know is that Joe and his black-eyed horse come crashing through the wall. They come crashing through and the burning wood smashes into burning pieces, and all of a sudden you can see the sky where the wall used to be.

I been breathing the smoke and I think it must be a dream, but then I hear Showdown scream out that he’s hurt, and I can see where he broke both of his front legs coming through the wall. All of a sudden, there’s Joe Dilly crawling up out of the wreckage, reaching his hand up to me.

I can tell he’s hurt almost as bad as Showdown, and he’s holding himself like his legs are broke, too, but that don’t stop him grinning that cockeyed grin of his and saying, “How do, sports fans? Hot enough for you?”

“Joe, you came back!”

“Never mind about that,” he says. “You better ride this pony on out of here while you still got the chance.”

There’s fire all around us and Lady won’t listen to me. Joe strokes her face and breathes into her nose and he’s touching her like he does. He talks real soft to her, so soft and low I can’t make out what he’s saying, but whatever it is, Lady listens. I can feel the fear go right out of her. She stops trembling and shying, like something cool and calm has got inside her. Like she don’t know the world is burning up.

Joe takes his hands away from her. “Go on,” he says. “She’ll be okay now.”

Right about then the cloud in the rafters turns inside out, and there’s nothing but fire and light on the inside. It’s so hot even the smoke is burning up. The wind gets inside with the fire and the whole place starts creaking and shaking.

“You come, too, Joe! Get on with me!”

He’s shaking his head before I get the words out. “One man to a horse,” he says. “She’s too small for the both of us. Besides, I got to stay with Showdown. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.”

The stallion has quit fighting his busted legs and he’s just lying here, waiting. You can see him watching Joe, like he thinks Joe can help him.

“You can’t stay, Joe! Please!”

But Joe won’t listen to me. He can hardly stand up, his own legs are stove in so bad, but he takes Lady’s head in his hands and he kisses her and he says, “You’re a fire pony now. You just take this boy and run right through whatever it is that spooks you, and you keep on running till it’s cool and safe.”

I tell him, “I won’t go unless you come with us.” Then the rafters start falling down, and Joe grins that grin of his and before I can stop him he slaps Lady on the rump with his burned-up hat and he shouts out “Geronimo!” and Lady takes off like a race just started.

She heads right through where Showdown broke the wall, and it happens so quick that when I look back all I can see of Joe Dilly is a flame that looks his size, and then I’m hanging on for dear life like he wants me to, and Lady keeps running, she’s running faster than the fire and every time it licks us, she goes faster and faster and faster.

That filly runs past the corral, past all the other running horses, past where Rick and Mr. Jessup are fighting hard to find me, and she runs through the smoke and the sparks and the birds on fire. She keeps on running far out into the back country where there’s nothing to burn and you can see where the stars are back in the sky, and the cactus look like soldiers with their hands cocked up to say hello.

She don’t stop until it’s cool and safe, just like Joe Dilly said when he made her into a fire pony.