Jasper Mountain (2 page)

Jack rode to the house to get his sister and her two boys out, now.

Outside one of the smaller buildings on the homestead, Leno Santiago, a ranch hand, filled his wagon while his frightened family looked on.

“Leno, no! Leave everything! Just get the hell out of here!” Jack yelled and dismounted. But it was too late.

“Holy Mother of God.” Leno dropped to his knees. His wife stood behind him, clutching her small daughter.

Jack spun around and felt a gentle shove of hot air. Then Satan blew his breath across the ranch. A howling rose, and despite the heat, ice spread through Jack.

Fire, moving faster than stampeding mustangs, engulfed the gate. Tumbling Creek’s carved wood symbol—two horseshoes encircling a “TC”—had bridged the road proudly for decades. It burst into flame.

Jack grabbed a horse blanket from the wagon and threw it in the trough. “Get down! On the ground!” he shouted. Leno hesitated, grabbed his wife and daughter, and fell with them into the dirt. Every muscle strained as Jack lifted the weight of the soaked blanket and slung the shield over Leno and his family. He jumped into the trough.

Quiet wrapped around him, cradling him and cooling his skin. Then, a muffled roar. Light, brighter than a thousand suns.

I’m dead. It’s not so bad.

Pain squeezed across his chest. Nope. Not dead. Alive. And running out of air.
Stay under.

He’d rather drown in a horse trough than breathe in fire. Jack didn’t want his last moment on earth to be spent crying like a baby and praying for death. He would face death like a man. Well, as much of a man as he could be hiding in a trough.

Through the cool blanket of water, he thought he heard screaming. Livestock? Leno and his family? Buck or his sister, Jo? Jesus, her boys? Please, God, not the boys. If the drumming of his heart would calm a little, he might be able to tell.

Spots flashed in white light. The flashes gathered, darkened. Bees. Millions of bees. Buzzing.

Damn Buck, anyway. Stubborn old bastard. They’d seen the smoke days ago. Days wasted while Jack argued with his father to evacuate. Jack had been right. Not a coward. Right. Not that anyone would ever know. Charred corpses told no tales.

More bees. Buzzing. Louder. His chest was going to burst.

He gave up and shot out of the water, pulling in a searing gasp. And another. Breathing hurt, but much to Jack’s surprise, it didn’t kill him. Everything around him burned. Everything. Except it was snowing. Fire and snow? Lord, have mercy, he’d gone insane.

Soaking, he pulled himself over the trough and rolled onto hot dirt. Flakes swirled around him in a meandering dance. He crawled through a blizzard of cinders, and lowering his head, he drew in air tangled with dirt, ash, and heat. The taste of death coated his mouth. Bitter. So goddamned bitter.

He raised his head and looked into Leno’s face, peeking out from under the blanket. Thank you, God, Jack thought. Leno’s eyes were riveted to the main house, now a crackling skeleton, and Jack followed his gaze to experience one final horror. A shadow lurched. Someone in the house.

“Jo!” he yelled, even though he thought his voice had burned clean out of his throat. Miraculously, he rose to his feet. His sister. He needed to get her, carry her out to safety. He ran to the porch, his arms over his face, shielding his eyes from heat and flames. The skin on his arms blistered and peeled back, raw muscle screaming. He’d never known such exquisite pain. Almost unbearable. Almost impossible. Almost beautiful in its purity.

The house gave a final crackling groan and collapsed. A fist of heat slammed into him, and Jack flew backward through the air.

Those bees. They finally stopped buzzing.

Tent City.

Except
city
was too good a name for this place. Flimsy cloth stretched over poles, rock, rubble, or whatever else was available. All that was left of Tumbling Creek Ranch, tents and people scuttling between them like desert bugs. They used any and everything remaining from the fire: horse blankets, curtains, sacks, clothing, sheets. Feed bags. The result, tattered rags among ruins, was no place for humans to live, but it was the only place they had.

The landscape seemed so strange to Jack, right out of a nightmare from which he was beginning to believe he’d never waken. Lumps of black rubble rotted where buildings had stood proudly for decades. Skeletal trees reached up, trying to touch the white scorching eye of the sun. The smoke was gone, but it had lingered for days, creeping along the ground, refusing to dissipate, hanging, clinging, and reminding them all at any moment hell might be unleashed again. However, here they stayed. There was nowhere else to go.

The schoolhouse was the only building the fire had left standing. Strangely, it went untouched. They used it to house the injured and anyone with young children. Jack and the other men buried the dead right away, at least what was left of the victims. Friends and family. His sister, Jo. Fourteen in all. Shallow graves were all they managed, so they piled rocks on top to insure scavengers wouldn’t get their loved ones. The heap of stones sat just beyond Tent City, reminding them of exactly how much they’d lost.

Jack supposed he should count his blessings. Buck survived, too ornery and stubborn to die in a fire he insisted was not a problem. Jo’s boys survived along with most of the ranch children. The schoolhouse. A miracle, most said. Jack figured the wind shifted, or something equally logical had happened. He didn’t believe in miracles. Not anymore.

He clutched his book.
Tales
by Edgar Allan Poe. This book, a survivor as well, had been in Willow’s saddlebag. In the aftermath of the fire, when he battled shock from pain and loss, when nothing seemed right, he looked up to see Willow cantering in his direction. The others were just as excited to see her. One of their loved ones, home, delivering the book Jo gave to Jack on his last birthday. Seeing Willow return and holding a precious piece of his previous life gave him all he’d needed to get going again, to step back into life and duty.

Except the burning in his chest wouldn’t go away.

He flipped the book over in his hands. He couldn’t open it. Although reading Poe’s macabre tales would fit in this landscape, it didn’t feel right, opening a book when his sister would never read another word. Together, they’d shared the love of stories. Other worlds. New ways of living and thinking.

Jo. His books. His life. The ranch. All ashes. All gone.

He shook his head. Pity was for the others, not him.

Jack slipped the book back in his bag, leaving it next to his lean-to, and his bandaged arm bumped the edge of its frame. Hurt reverberated up until his teeth rattled, but the pain throughout his arm was easier to bear than the smoldering lump of coal in his chest. No matter what he did, it just sat there, burning.

This whole mess, this disaster, was his fault. Not his father’s. Buck acted, as always, like Buck. Stubborn and sure. Refusing to stand down to any threat. Jack had known it wasn’t a typical brush fire. He’d sensed, down to his bones, the fire meant disaster coming their way. And still, he’d acquiesced.

The ranch destroyed, nothing left other than piles of rubble and ash, courtesy of Jack Buchanan, cowardly son.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, why hadn’t he died with the others?

The weight in his chest expanded until breathing became a Herculean effort. He felt like one of the living dead he’d read about, bodies moving without heart, soul, or any semblance of a real life. But, there was such a huge, monstrous pain deep inside him. He supposed if he really were a body without a soul, he wouldn’t feel anything. Even though he tried to do just that. Damn it all, anyway.

“Jack, please, share our dinner?” Leno stirred a pot over a fire, which seemed to Jack to be sacrilege, starting a fire in such a place, but they all had to live, didn’t they?

“No thanks, Leno.”

Maria, Leno’s wife, popped her head out of their tent. “Jack, please, come and eat with us. You haven’t had a decent meal since the …” Her voice trailed off. Maria worried about him, Jack knew. For some reason she thought him a hero and told everyone about his bravery. She claimed he’d saved her family.

He was hiding in a trough when the house caught fire. Floating in tepid water when flames engulfed his sister. And thirteen others. Yep, hero. Bravery. That’s what came to mind.

Well, hero or not, he needed to keep everyone’s spirits whole. Almost a month had passed since the fire, and Jack spent all his time going from family to family, trying to put pieces of lives back together. Mostly he listened and reassured. To him, his words sounded empty. They all lost just about everything: possessions, clothing, and the ranch, every head of cattle, sheep, feed, storages, most of the buildings. They’d been able to salvage enough to erect Tent City, however their scant supply of food was almost gone. Right after the fire Buck headed to the nearest town for help. The once-powerful Buchanan family had next to nothing now, but he and Jack decided to spend what little they had left to help the survivors. Try to find them work, or passage out of this place.

A small puff of dust on the horizon grew, and Jack squinted. Buck? The puff solidified into a rider. No, two. They drew nearer, and Jack saw it was, indeed, his father with someone else. Despite everything, a touch of excitement flickered in him. Something was coming, and it had to be better than this mess.

The riders came closer. Jack recognized Buck’s stature. The other man wore gray and rode on a gray mount. He blended in with the colorless landscape, and for a second Jack thought a ghost rode next to Buck. A portent of death. They neared, and Jack saw the man was solid. Sure. Not a creature of gray wisps but of tempered steel.

The riders slowed, and Jack experienced a bolt of recognition. Deep within, memory stirred. Aristocratic face, strong features. The gray at his temples and in his eyes reinforced the illusion of a man forged of metal. In the midst of all the colorless clothing and hair, his eyes pierced through Jack; intelligent, cold.

The riders stopped, dismounted. The gray man’s eyes caught Jack’s, and he found himself unable to look away.

Buck broke the connection. “Jack, this is my friend, Victor Creely.”

The name resonated deep, under layers and layers of memory. Jack followed the tickle. Victor Creely. He and Buck grew up together, very poor, and were buddies and rivals both. The stories bubbled and surfaced from inside Jack’s mind. Tales of impossibly plucky and brave boys, the most loyal of friends who, against all odds, would grow to become men of fortune. Victor Creely. His father’s oldest and dearest friend. Victor went into mining to find his fortune. Buck into ranching.

Tough men. Men who fashioned the world to their will. Men who survived.

Victor stepped forward and extended his hand, his grip iron-solid, like his face, his gait. His eyes never left Jack’s.

“Little Jack Buchanan Junior. I haven’t seen you since you were a boy.” The voice. Soft and quiet, and running beneath the velvet sound, something hard and unmovable. “Buck filled me in, told me all about you. I’ve been looking forward to meeting the man you’ve become.”

Jack almost laughed. Some man. He wondered what Victor Creely was doing here, so far from his gold. “Don’t you live in the Rockies?”

“When I wired, he came. Faster than I thought possible,” Buck said.

“I heard your father needed me. I rode night and day. There are no limits when it comes to my oldest and dearest friend.” Victor’s words were warm, but a chill shuddered through Jack.

“Victor’s the president of the mining operation at Jasper Mountain,” Buck said. “Practically owns the whole goddamned town.” A desperate hope edged into Buck’s voice. “Jack, our lives, our ranch. It’s not over, son.”

Jack finally turned his attention to his father. Buck seemed so old and worn. Like a pair of spurs, dull and past the time of usefulness. Jack thought of everything the fire had destroyed—buildings, supplies, food, clothing, all the livestock. People.

“We’ve lost so much,” Jack said, soft enough so as not to disturb the nearby dead.

“We can rebuild the ranch. Victor has a proposition for you.”

“Actually, Jack, it appears you can help me as much as I can help you.” Victor Creely smiled. “I hope you’ll see our mutual benefit and accompany me to Jasper Mountain.”

Despite the heat of the day, something in Victor’s voice, or perhaps the cold calculation in the mining mogul’s eyes, turned Jack’s blood to ice.

Nebraska, 1873
Eight Months Later

M
ilena Shabanov sank to her knees before the heap of rocks. She ran her hand along the surface. Rough texture scraped and bit at her palm.

This pile of rocks. Her father’s grave.

Others in the settler party drew around to pay their last respects. The presence of these people did not comfort Milena. Sorrow grew, round and ever expanding. Pain settled heavy in her chest. Her heart hurt. “Baba,” she whispered.

Dirt and sand blew across the barren land, pelting her like a thousand tiny cruelties. Her hair whipped about, helplessly caught in the wind. She was so very tired. Too young to carry the burden of such fatigue. Baba was all she’d had left of her life, her people. She wondered, should she follow him into the refuge of death? She’d followed him to this barbaric country, the two of them fleeing from Bukovyna, their homeland. She and her father had barely escaped from the
MoortYak,
the holocaust bringing about the End of All Things. They’d had no choice but to run, the last alive of their
kampania
—their people.