Page 138 of The River We Remember

When he got out, he felt the scorch from the heat, smelled the char of the burning wood, heard the flames speaking in their crackling voices. He’d been to fires before in his capacity as sheriff, lots of them. But he’d never had an armed man inside a burning building. He thought about that single shotgun blast that had come moments after Creasy started the fire. Had the man killed Able Grange? Or had he finally turned the corner on sanity and ended his own life?

Brody crouched behind the cover of his cruiser, shotgun to his shoulder, aimed at the barn doorway, where all that came forth were rolling heaves of thick smoke. “Creasy!” he shouted. “Tyler Creasy! Come out now with your hands up!”

He got no response.

“Able Grange, you in there?”

There was no reply to that either. He glanced toward Graff and nodded at the barn door. Graff gave him a nod in return. Brody rose and ran.

He pressed himself against the wall next to the broad barn doorway. He breathed hard and fast and it had nothing to do with any physical exertion. He was simply scared. Scared so bad his legs threatened to buckle.

“Tyler! Able!” he called again. “Can you hear me? It’s Brody Dern.”

The only reply came from the fire and now included the sound of collapse from inside the building. Brody knelt and peered around the edge of the door opening. He couldn’t see anything except smoke. He signaled to Graff that he was going in and moved forward. Almost immediately, a burning board from the collapsing loft fell only a few feet from him, and he backed out quickly.

The barn was built into a hillside and constructed on three levels: the loft, the main level with its heavy-beamed floor, and the lower area, which was basically a pen and opened onto the large cattle yard in back. Brody slipped along the side of the barn, down the steep slope, and climbed the fence into the cattle yard. Asa Fielding rose to join him, but Brody waved him back. The livestock had all moved to the far railing, where they stood milling and bawling. In a separate, smaller pen, the bull that J.P. called Big Bastard paced back and forth, bellowing as if he’d love nothing better than to lower his great head and charge the fire. Brody eased to the wide rear entrance of the barn.

The fire was still above him. The lower level was relatively clear of smoke. Brody moved carefully inside. Except for the support posts and the long feed troughs, the area was unobstructed. A wooden stairway at the far end led up to the main level. Brody made for the stairway, climbed the steps cautiously, paused, then, with great reluctance, poked his head through the opening above.

The heat was intense, the barn a chaotic roil of gray and white and black smoke. At first, Brody could see almost nothing. Then he spotted what appeared to be a human form lying on the barn floor, partially obscured by the blades of a disc harrow.

“Able!” he called. “Able Grange!”

The form didn’t move. Brody left his shotgun on the stairs and crawled on all fours, trying to keep as low as possible in order to find breathable air. He did a poor job of it, and his lungs felt seared. Bits of burning debris rained down around him. He reached the body, his vision blurry, his eyes watering from the smoke, and grabbed blindly. His fingers wrapped around wrist bone, and he tugged. As he dragged the body across the floor, the air he sucked in felt as if it had come from a blast furnace. He tumbled down the stairs onto the dirt floor, hauling the body with him. He managed to pull himself up and drag Able Grange into the fresh air of the cattle yard. Then he coughed himself sick.

“You okay, Brody?”

It was Asa Fielding at his side, a hand on his arm in support.

Brody coughed a good deal more, spat up black sputum, and said, “How’s Grange?”

“All I can see is a bad bruise on the side of his face and his eye’s all swoll up. No gunshot wound. Looks like Creasy just clobbered him good. You see Creasy in there?”

Brody shook his head.

“Norm Castle wants to know if it’s safe to fight the fire.”

Brody brought himself upright and looked toward the farmyard, where two pumpers sat, lights still flashing. The firefighters stood ready, keeping at a distance that ensured a load of buckshot from the barn would have no effect.

Brody nodded. “If Creasy’s in there, he won’t be causing any trouble. Help me get Grange up to the house.”

Fielding waved an okay toward the fire trucks, then turned to give Brody a hand.

BRODY SAT ON the steps of the big Quinn house. To Charlie Bauer, he looked like a man who’d crawled through hell. His face was red, as if he’d been badly sunburned. His hair was stiff and he had no eyebrows. His clothing reeked of smoke. His shadow on the porch steps was black, like the burned man he might have become in risking himself to pull Able Grange from the barn.

Sam Wicklow was there, shooting photos of the fire, the firemen, and now of Brody as he sat hunched on the steps.

Tom Dern knelt before his brother, asking Brody questions, treating in a preliminary way the damage Brody had sustained in his ordeal. Tom had long been a member of the volunteer fire brigade out of Crescent, a small community south of Jewel that serviced the surrounding area and that often joined the Jewel firefighters on rural calls. Garnet was there, too, as were a number of the Quinns’ neighbors, who’d seen the smoke and had hurried over to do whatever they could to help. Charlie stood with them in the farmyard, watching the fire being fought.

Wicklow gestured to Brody and Tom. “You two boys mind looking this way?” His camera clicked. “Good shot,” he said. “Caption: Brothers Fight Blaze.”

Tom turned his attention back to Brody. “You need to get yourself to the hospital. You inhaled a lot of smoke. Those burns’ll need treating, too.”

Brody waved him off. “I’m okay.” He stared at the barn, where the flames had been pretty well dealt with. Although the loft and roof had collapsed, the walls were still mostly intact. Smoke and white steam rose up from inside, and firefighters were still pouring streams of water over the debris there.

Before they took him to the hospital to be treated, Able Grange had regained consciousness. All he could remember was that one minute he was bent over the disc harrow in the barn and the next he was lying on the grass in front of the Quinn house.

Charlie stood with Connie Graff, who’d finally left his position covering the front door of the barn.