Page 92 of Second Start: Family
He came up to the truck on the passenger side.
“Miss Kenzie.” He tugged on his hat brim. “Can’t go any farther, Hall.”
“I’m going in.”
“Can’t let you. You know how it is. Sheriff said—”
“I’ll drop off Kenzie here, but I’ve gotta get in there.”
“Nobody’s getting in, Hall. The fire’s about to cross the road. There’s no way—”
“My kids are at the house, I’m going in. Kenzie, get out. Stay here and—”
“You can’t—” the man said again.
Kenzie turned to face him, leaving the other man only the back of her head. In a low voice, she said, “Just go, Hall.”
“As soon as we get the all-clear, we’ll—” the man was saying to nobody who was listening.
“You get out, Kenzie, and—”
“Right away. Just go. Now.”
Their eyes held a beat.
He floored it. The old truck lurched and bucked before the gulp of gas got into its system…
He didn’t look back.
“Nobody’s following,” Kenzie said.
“If I let you out—”
“I’ll follow you on foot. Don’t slow down.”
He didn’t.
Fire had crossed the road not far from the house, but had moved on now. They could see smoke and occasional flames off to their left. It seemed to be on the far side of the second ridgeline from where they were.
…Until they reached the house.
The smoke — no flame in sight — was closer now. As if it might have crested the second ridgeline and was working its way toward the nearer one. The one that ran not far from the house.
The yard was empty and still. No kids, no dogs in sight anywhere.
“You take the house, I’ll check the barns.”
Kenzie was out the door almost before the truck came to a stop. He yanked the brake on and headed the opposite direction, leaving the thing running.
As he sprinted across the hard, dry ground, he recognized another quality of the quiet — no sounds of horses. None in the near corral or the paddock.
He heard Kenzie calling the kids’ names inside the house, but only between his own bellows into the equipment shed, then on to the old barn. Nothing. He came out the far side of the barn into the saddling corral, put one foot on the bottom crosstie to vault over the fence and try the new barn.
“Daddy?”
He spun around. That was Molly, but where—?
And then he saw three heads above the level of the old trough outside the far end of the corral.
