She ignored it.
The stack yard ignited.
Flame climbed twenty feet.
Smoke covered half the barn.
Maren reached the door.
Heat struck her face.
For one moment, three years disappeared.
She was back at the Vanning House.
Locked hall.
Flame.
Metal.
Screaming.
Maren froze.
Then heard:
“MARREN!”
Wesley.
Inside.
She went in.
Silas stood three hundred yards away at the firebreak when Ollie grabbed his shoulder.
“The barn!”
Silas turned.
Saw the roof smoking.
Then saw a woman disappear inside.
His blood went cold.
“Maren!”
He ran.
No memory later remained of those three hundred yards.
Only fire.
Mud.
Men shouting.
Then Maren appeared.
Wesley over one shoulder.
Yellow dog beneath his arm.
Smoke behind them.
She stumbled clear.
Dropped to her knees.
Set the boy down.
“Breathe.”
Wesley coughed.
“I’m sorry.”
Maren ran her hands over him.
Hair.
Face.
Shoulders.
Arms.
“Where are you burned?”
“I’m not.”
“My dog.”
The boy clutched the animal.
“It was my fault.”
Maren’s sleeves were gone.
Burned away above the elbows.
Every scar she had hidden for three years lay visible under the red light of the fire.
Nine men saw.
Nobody spoke.
Silas reached them.
He grabbed Wesley.
Checked him.
Then looked at Maren.
“You went in.”
She looked up.
“So did Elizabeth.”
The words came without thought.
Silas froze.
Maren saw the pain.
“I’m sorry.”
Silas shook his head.
Then Maren pointed.
“Horse in the west pen.”
That snapped him back.
The barn still needed saving.
For the next six hours, nobody had time for grief.
They fought fire.
Men soaked roofs.
Maren pumped water until her palms blistered.
Wesley carried the dog and did exactly what he was told.
Silas rode horses from the west pen.
Ollie drove cattle away.
Two hands cut burning fence.
They lost the stack yard.
Forty rods of fencing.
Two wagons.
No people.
No horses.
No cattle.
Near two in the morning, the wind shifted.
Fire reached plowed ground.
Stopped.
Everyone sat around the stock tank black with soot.
Nobody had energy left.
Someone laughed once.
No one knew why.
Then everybody laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because they were alive.
Ollie approached Maren carrying water.
He could barely look at her.
“Ma’am.”
She drank.
Ollie rubbed his beard.
“I said a thing about you.”
Maren handed back the dipper.
“I remember.”
“It was low.”