The Big Burn Read Online Free

knew himself. Jarrett didn't think he was a coward, but how could a person know that for sure until the time came to prove it?
    That remark Pop had made about how Jarrett needn't come back—Jarrett guessed he shouldn't have expected anything else, but until he heard it said, he hadn't realized just how final his leaving would be.
    When morning came, though, he shoved aside his qualms. He put together traveling food, wrapped spare socks and an extra shirt in a blanket, and put two dollars on the table to pay for what he was taking. It left him with only pocket change, but he'd have gone with no money at all before he'd have taken off without setting things square.
    He found the ranger station on its hillside perch above town already busy, even though it was still early. Men wearing Forest Service badges gave him a real welcome when he said he'd come for a job. One told him, "We were just talking about putting together a fire crew to send over to Big Creek." He pulled out a hiring log and dipped a pen in an inkwell. "Name?"
    "Logan. Jarrett Logan."
    The man looked up in surprise and then said, "I should have guessed it from that mop of rusty hair." He put down the pen and reached for a paper. "This message about you just got relayed down."
    Jarrett struggled to take in the words he read while the man went on talking. Finally Jarrett asked, "And you're saying you know my brother? That he's a ranger and living near Wallace?"
    "That's right. He's got the Cool Spring Station."
    The others were also looking at Jarrett curiously now. "Funny you didn't know," one said.
    "I ... we lost track of him years ago," Jarrett said, wondering if his face showed how his mind was reeling.
    The men took it as natural that Jarrett would wish to visit his brother before doing anything else. "Hate to lose you here," the man at the desk told him, "but if you still want to fight fires, you can get on in Wallace. That's where forest headquarters are anyway."
    "I'll remember," Jarrett said.
    ***
    The route north took him through the blackened area where he'd failed so badly at his job, and then into country he hadn't explored. For the first several miles, he followed rail bed carved into mountainsides high above the St. Joe River's north fork. Where the steep hills flattened into narrow benches, he slowed to look at the maintenance shacks and tiny houses that were squeezed into every available space. Spare rolling stock—crane and dump cars, shop cars and a snowplow—took up siding tracks that curved close to sheer drop-offs.
    Where the railroad spanned the canyon, he saw teams hauling earth fill for trestle bridges that were still so new their wood hadn't weathered. He stopped for a while to watch a crew bolting together huge timbers to make a snow shed at the end of a tunnel.
    Then, to make up time, he cut through a tunnel instead of going around. Midway in, the rough-sided vault curved and shut out light, and Jarrett had to feel his way along wet rock. And then, at the tunnel's far end, he and a train came dangerously close to meeting, and the engineer leaned on his whistle in a long blast of reproach.
    Jarrett's heart pounded hard a good while after that.
    He ate supper where the railroad tracks veered east to the Idaho-Montana border. Then he started up the trail that climbed north to cross the divide at Moon Pass. By then Pop and Avery and just about everything else Jarrett had known already seemed far more than a day's hike behind him.
    He spent the night high in the mountains at Moon Pass, watching dry lightning in the distance and thinking about what lay ahead.
    He wondered what kind of man he'd find his brother to be. Surely Sam couldn't be as worthless and irresponsible as Pop maintained and still hold down a job as a ranger. "He's gone and good riddance," Pop used to answer, back when Jarrett still asked why Sam had left.
    Jarrett thought about the fire-fighting job that was still his main aim. He hoped he'd be good at it.
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