The Big Burn Read Free Page A

her own terms. In the spring, burning underbrush had seemed like an unnecessary risk, but now she was considering it.
    One more thing to argue about with Lizbeth, who said light burning might have been all right in April, when melting snow was still running down from the mountains. But, Lizbeth said, in the middle of a dry July they might as well throw flaming torches into the woods.
    Lord knows Celia hated arguing with her niece, but it seemed that's all they did these days. Maybe because Lizbeth was so much like she herself used to be, thinking she could mold the world to her liking. When Celia's sister had died, leaving twelve-year-old Lizbeth an orphan, Celia hadn't hesitated to take her in.
    But then the girls' school where Celia was working closed, and no other nearby school needed a female art teacher good at penmanship and simple arithmetic. Tom Whitcomb had seemed like a blessing, sweeping in with promises he'd take care of her and her niece. "We'll go out West," he said, "where people become rich just by living. You claim a forest homestead, prove it up, and five years later sell the timber for a small fortune."
    Celia had said, "But if we need to clear the land for crops as part of proving up, then we won't have timber left to sell."
    How he'd laughed. "We'll put in a garden just big enough to say we did. Maybe, along with a cabin, it'll take two acres out of the hundred-sixty acres I can claim. And, of course, we'll put you in for another hundred-sixty in your own right"
    By the time she learned that making people rich off timber wasn't the intent of the homestead laws, Celia was in the land office in Wallace, Idaho, officially Mrs. Tom Whitcomb.
    Tom Whitcomb had stayed around just long enough to build the poorest excuse for a house that would pass for the required improvement, and then he'd taken off on the first of his many absences.
    And Celia, alone with Lizbeth in a wilderness canyon, a long ride from town and other settlers, was left with lots of time to figure out where she'd gone wrong. She decided it must have been when she agreed to leave New England, and so gradually she fixed it in her mind that going back was the only thing to do.
    Tom Whitcomb's accidental death—if getting so drunk he drove a team of horses over a cliff could be called that—had just left her more determined. Of course, the government took back the hundred-sixty acres that he'd claimed and not lived long enough to get the patent on, but Celia still had her own land. A quarter of a square mile of the most beautiful white pine and larch growing anywhere. At today's prices it would fetch maybe even ten thousand dollars.
    Enough to return East and live for years on, and Lizbeth with her as long as her niece wanted. Although, Celia supposed, once Lizbeth began living like a young lady instead of like a farmhand with tanned skin and muscled arms, suitors would come swarming. Goodness knows, Lizbeth's fine-boned features and dark eyes made her pretty enough, even if Lizbeth herself didn't seem to know it.
    The only thing Celia hadn't foreseen was Lizbeth's mistaking this place for a permanent home.
    That, and the possibility of fire coming through. Celia had tried to put it from her mind, but there was no ignoring either the super dry ground or the rainless lightning these recent nights had brought.
    A shooting star arched overhead, reminding her of how Halley's comet had trailed through the sky a few months earlier. Some had said it portended the coming of glory, and others had said it was an omen that something bad lay ahead—very bad.
    Maybe tomorrow she'd again talk to Lizbeth about their starting some small burns to get rid of underbrush that would be fuel in a wildfire. If she kept calm, maybe for once she could make her niece see reason.

Cool Spring Ranger Station
July 13, Evening
    In the yellow light of a kerosene lamp, Ranger Samuel Logan looked at the small photograph of his parents. It showed his father, straight