Welcome To The Bullpen
HOT SPOTS
Scott White
The air was heavy with soot and heat, and it tasted like ash, and dirt and lost hope. I drove the four-wheeler up to the top of the mesa to get a look. The sun was just setting into the smoke and the blaze of the grassfires that stretched across the horizon. For just a moment, the flames seem to feed off the blazing orb, turning the smoke clouds orange. It was mesmerizing. Just then a Chinook helicopter passed overhead, so low I could feel the slap of the rotor blades. The pilot waved as he headed for the fireline. I stayed and watched the chopper drop down into the smoke over the blaze and turn to fly parallel with the edge of the fire. The belly of the Chinook seemed to open and thousands of gallons of water crashed onto the burning land.
The fires that began six days earlier destroyed a reported half million acres of rangeland and now, pushed on by forty-mile-an-hour winds, threatened to consume that much more. It was ironic that this wildfire started when a small storm passed over this stretch of parched, drought-stricken ranchland dropping just a little rain but throwing off slender needles of lightning. As the clouds moved over a mesa spotted with wind turbines, the wind picked up as lightning struck a dry patch of brush and within minutes a flame began eating real estate.
I was working a firebreak along the west fenceline of the J Bar S Ranch along with a half-dozen of the other ranchhands. Using the ranch tractor equipped with a blade, we cut down as much brush and growth as we could, hoping to create a big enough gap in the fuel for the fires that we could keep the rest of the ranch from burning.
As I came down the side of the mesa, a Forest Service pickup pulled up and the driver turned off the engine and got out. “See anything good?” he asked. “Not unless you consider a glimpse of hell good,” I replied, grinning. “How are you, Mike? I heard you Forest Service guys had tucked tail and run to Amarillo.”
“You’re funny, you know that?” Mike couldn’t help but smile. “We’ve been trying for three days to keep the fire from crossing the river.” His smiled disappeared. “I guess you heard how that didn’t work out so well.”
“Yeah, I heard. It jumped the river and burned clear up to Buffalo Canyon. I heard that two houses were destroyed and somebody died. Is that right?”
Mike shook his head. “Nobody died. They got out with some bad burns, but lost a lot of livestock. It was Red and Bonnie Faust. You know them? I was just by there last week. It’s a real shame. You know, when there are these damned strong winds and with everything so dry from the drought, there really isn’t any way to control a grassfire. Especially one as big as this. All we can do is try to outguess it and set backfires, prepare fireguards and pray that the wind stops. Other than that, the boys with the firetrucks have to wait for the initial blaze to pass then they go in and put out any lingering flames. If we can we take a dozer and plow under any cactus or mesquite left burning.”
I just nodded. I was so tired I could barely keep my mind on the conversation. “ I have to get back to the line, Mike. If you’re headed back to town, could you stop by the house and tell my wife I’m still out here? I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure,” said Mike. “I’ll tell her you haven’t even got your hands dirty you’re staying so far ahead of the fire.” He grinned at me as he got back in the truck, started it up and put it into gear. “Be careful. You don’t want to let that monster sneak up on you.” He climbed back up into the truck cab, the diesel engine roared and he waved out the window as he drove off.
I watched the taillights flicker as he slowed to get up on the ranch road, then I turned the ATV the opposite direction and headed back to the firebreak getting back to the group of cowboys I’d been working with just in time to see three of the guys get into a pickup and drive off. “Where are they going?” I asked Rusty. Rusty and I grew up on neighboring ranches and had learned how to make a hand along side each other. “We decided that it might be a good time to try to get something to eat and to rest a bit, so half the fellows went back to the ranchhouse for a few hours. They’ll spell us in a bit.” Rusty looked at me and said, “And just where have you been?”
“ I went up on King Mesa for a look at the fires. You can see for more than fifty miles up there.”
Rusty just nodded and went back to cutting the fence wire so that the game and cattle could get through if any came through here. I picked up a shovel and went to work on some small mesquite bushes near a fence post. Once in a while I stopped to look at the fireline. I caught Rusty looking a few times too.
Ash was thick in the air. We both had been wearing bandanas tied around our faces, but we decided to switch to some dust masks that were stored on the ATV. As the night went on, the wind died down giving all the firefighters some relief. After a while, the other cowboys who by now had eaten, slept a little and picked up a little bobcat tractor to help with clearing brush relieved us. I said, “I’m going to take a little break and check on my house and barns. Give me a call if you need me.” Rusty said that he was going home also and would be back before dawn, unless the fires picked up before then.
I walked over to where I’d parked my old pickup and, when I turned on the headlights, noticed that the windshield was covered with black ash. I guess I was ash-covered myself by that time. I drove eastward then caught the highway south for eighteen miles to the turnoff to my spread. The house was dark when I pulled up. I live on a small ranch near Groom, Texas with my wife, Sara, a cow dog named Maggie and a whole lot of nothing for miles around. I like the solitude. It was comforting to me and things usually felt better out there. I tried living in town. I got a job at the community college and tried to get used to having people around all the time. In fact, that’s where I met Sara. It was at an IHOP in Amarillo late one night. I was there trying to find some escape from the lonely apartment I lived in for about a year and she sat down with me, telling me she was bored with the folks she’d come in with and thought I looked more interesting. One thing led to another and, six months later we moved out to some land I inherited from an old bachelor uncle.
We brought in a small herd of Black Angus cows and a couple of young bulls, hoping to build a cow-calf operation there in the rough panhandle country. We spent most of the first year repairing the old ranch house, barns and outbuildings and then settled in for the long haul. I took on day work at other ranches nearby, helping work cattle when there was work, doing fence mending, windmill repair or even barn building when someone needed help. Sara worked at the feed store in Groom. When we had time we worked on our own place. There were always fences to mend or put in and cows that needed attention. There was always something that needed doing. And things were okay for us until that year.
But then that year things got tough. Without the rains, the pastures were stressed and the grass was stunted and sparse which meant the cattle had to be fed with hay brought in from several hundred miles away which meant that we spent a lot of time trying to buy enough hay which meant that the money got tight real fast. And the wind blew constantly, bringing dust storms from New Mexico and worrying around the houses, rattling the windows and doors. Then the prairie fires started.
We thought the fires would burn out or blow around us somehow. It just didn’t seem real that in a matter of days, we could face losing everything. We listened to the news each night, marking the burn on a map spread out on the kitchen table. A cousin, who lived fifty miles north of us, lost about twelve thousand acres and thirty-four cows two days ago. A friend who owned a ranch on the New Mexico border called and told me his house was gone along with twenty sections of land. And, according to our map, the fire was headed our way.
After cleaning up and eating a very late dinner, I slipped into bed next to Sara. Maggie looked up from her place at the foot of the bed. All of a sudden I felt very lucky. I thought for a little bit about how we should move the horses to the fairgrounds in town in the morning and then open all the pasture gates so that maybe the cattle will survive. And then sleep came.
The phone ringing on the bedside table woke me. Struggling to come awake, I picked up the receiver. “What.” The word came out as a croak. “The wind shifted about an hour ago and the fire is picking up speed,” a voice said. “What?” I managed. “Wake up, the fires have shifted. It’s headed for you! Get out of there!” shouted Rusty. Slapping the phone down, I reached for Sara and shook her awake. “We’ve got to evacuate. The fire is coming!” I said as I reached for a pair of jeans. “Get the truck, we need to load the horses.” Sara, unlike me, got it right away and was up headed out the bedroom door, dressing as she went. “I’ll hook onto the trailer and meet you at the barn,” she tossed back at me over her shoulder.
Stepping out on the porch, I was almost knocked over by the wind. It must have been gusting fifty miles an hour and the air was heavy with the smell of burned grass. Looking northwest, I could see the fireline flaring up on the horizon. Sara already had the truck backed up to the horse trailer. I ran, with Maggie suddenly by my side, to the barn, flipping on the lights as I went by the switches. Flinging open the tack room door, I grabbed as many halters as I could and headed for the stalls.
We had six quarterhorses bedded down in our barn. Three of them belonged to a man in Lubbock who hired us to train them. The other three were our own working horses. We used them to work cattle, ride fence and generally ran the cattle operation off those horses’ backs. One of them, a big gray mare named Katie, was bombproof and one of the best cow horses I’ve ever met. Nothing seemed to rattle this horse and, of the three, she was the one who never seem to tire or want to go home. Between that horse and Maggie, I had a great cow-working team. Maggie and Katie had formed their own partnership when they were both pretty young. Not long after I got Katie used to a saddle and rider, I managed to also train Maggie to jump up and ride laying across the saddle. They both became so used to going out with each other that there were many mornings after I’d cinched up the saddle and turned away, I’d turn back to find Maggie already up behind the saddle horn. Both of them would be watching me, waiting to go to work. And even now I could see Maggie lining herself up to make the jump to the saddle. “I’m going to keep Katie here. I need to ride out across the canyon and make sure those cows don’t get trapped. We can load the rest, then you and Maggie can hightail it out of here with them,” I shouted to Sara, trying to be heard above the howl of the wind. Sara shook her head and yelled back, “I’m not leaving you here. What are you thinking?”
As I loaded the first of the Lubbock horses, I was close enough to Sara so that I didn’t have to yell. “I’ll be right behind you. If we lose those cows, we’ll never make it up.” “To hell with the cows, I’d rather have you than a bunch of damn cows,” Sara shouted at me. “We can get more cows!”
I pulled her inside the trailer. “Look, I need to do this. It’s not just our cattle I’m trying to save, but any others that have drifted against our fence and can’t escape. I’ll be all right. The fire is still miles away.”
Sara looked at me for a few seconds. “Why don’t you come to town with me? We’ll drop off the horses at the fairgrounds and come back here. You can use the truck and I’ll help you..”
“No. Just go on. I’ll meet you back here at the house if the fire hasn’t burned it down. Besides, I don’t want to take the truck. I heard earlier this week about some oilfield workers who died trying to outrun the fire in a car. The smoke and heat caused the engine to shut down and then the fire got ‘em. Katie knows the ground out there and I feel better riding her than trusting a vehicle.”
Sara didn’t want to agree, but we were losing time standing there. We loaded the rest of the horses and I saddled Katie. I was gathering some tools I thought I might need when Sara came up behind me. “At least take Maggie with you. She has more sense than you and can help with any cattle you find.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. Maggie would be a big help.”
Sara and I went around and opened all the nearby gates . She kissed me goodbye and drove off toward town. I rolled up the tools and gear I gathered in a wool blanket I found in the barn and tied the bundle behind the saddle. The wind seemed like it was going to tear the doors off the barn and I couldn’t get them closed, so I just left them open. I swung into the saddle, took one more look around, called Maggie and headed out. The air tasted acrid and burned my lungs.
As I rode through each gate, I left it open. The cattle we raised were so tame I could yell out and most of them came running. I tried to get any I found headed through the gate away from the approaching fire. Maggie went right to work keeping the cows and calves moving. I thought I’d try to pick up the stragglers on my way back out.
The fenceline ran just the other side of Painted Canyon and I had to cross a small playa about a hundred yards before the ground began to drop away. We had a trail we used to check on cattle that strayed into the lower grounds. Following this trail meant that I had to go down into the canyon for a short distance then back up the other side in order to reach the edge of the pasture. As usual Maggie ran ahead. Just before Katie made the last few yards, I heard Maggie barking at something. As she came into view, I could see her trying to move a cow and her calf that had run up on the fence from the other side. The momma cow seemed disoriented and was wild-eyed and breathing hard. Her calf stood by her side bawling.
I dismounted Katie, dropping the reins and reaching for the bundle of tools tied to Katie’s back. I picked out a pair of wire-cutters and sniped the barbed wire strands at a post a few feet away from the cow. Just as I moved to the next fencepost to cut the wire there I felt the wind pick up even more. I looked up and watched a dark cloud of smoke quickly moving toward me, rapidly swallowing the landscape. Through the smoke I got a glimpse of the fire. It was about that time that the strangest stampede I’ve ever witnessed happened. Jackrabbits shot past us without even giving the horse, the dog or me a second glance. A couple of skunks, some fox, raccoons, mule deer and even eight or nine coyotes ran by trying to escape the fire. Katie’s eyes were wide and she began to snort and throw her head around, but she stood her ground. Maggie and I managed to get the cow and calf turned into the opening in the fence and moving in the same direction. I looked up and down the fenceline to see if there were any more cattle. I’d heard stories of cattle in wildfires that ran into a fence, were overtaken by the smoke, and became disoriented. The fire caught them where they stood.
The smoke got real thick real quick. I began to feel the heat of the fire even though I was pretty sure it was still more than a half-mile away by now. But the winds were moving the fire along at what I estimated were fifty mile-an-hour winds, based on what I’d seen the week before. I realized I could not stay much longer. I cut another opening in the fence and turned to go back to where Katie stood. She was wild-eyed and trembling, anxious to get out of there. When I grabbed the blanket the tools were rolled up in, I dumped the tools on the ground as I jumped up on Katie. I called Maggie and when she appeared in the thick smoke I yelled, “Up, Maggie, up!” She leapt up to me and I balanced her in front of me on the saddle. Katie could hardly stand still. The smoke got thicker, I could feel the heat growing. We took off at a gallop toward the canyon, trusting Katie’s abilities to find the way more than my own sight.
As we reached the canyon edge and dropped down into it, we dropped below the smoke. But we weren’t safe. I felt the heat before I actually saw the fire. When we hit the canyon floor, I saw the fire roar toward us, almost exploding as it was funneled to the end of the canyon. I guess the winds pushed the fire around to the north which, when reaching the canyon, took on a new intensity. But we were going to be trapped if we did not reach the other side in a hurry. I kicked Katie but she hardly noticed, she was already moving. She picked up speed, laying her ears back and racing to get out of the way. We popped out of the canyon with flames licking her hooves.
The fire behind us roared onto the flat land and spread north and south. Still pushed by the unrelenting winds, the fire swung around us on both sides as if it were trying to capture our desperate trio in a deadly game of tag. I hoped to outrun it but if not maybe we could make it to the dry playa lake where it formed a small depression in the ground and there was not much grass or scrub to burn.
The heat from the fire burned the exposed skin on my neck, face and wrists above the gloves I wore. Steam and smoke rose off Katie. Maggie was hanging on for dear life, barking at the fire. We seemed to run out of options real quick. There was fire moving at us from all sides and breathing the air was like sucking flames down into my chest. Suddenly, the grass thinned. We were at the playa lake and I had an idea that would either kill us or save our hides. Katie seemed to know what I needed her to do. She slowed and stopped as I rose out of the saddle, swinging my leg over her back. Maggie jumped to ground on the other side. I pulled the reins hard to the right, twisting Katie’s head around and pulling her backwards.
Time seemed to almost stop. Probably only a minute passed but actions seemed to move in slow motion. Katie lay down on her side with her head toward the lowest part of the playa. Realizing I was still holding the wool blanket, I threw it over Katie’s head, making sure to cover her nostrils and mouth. I called Maggie to me and pushed her under the blanket next to Katie’s neck, then I crawled under there too. In the back of my mind, I was amazed at how Katie was reacting. Most horses just go wild around fire and are uncontrollable. I had never even heard of a horse staying this calm. She was trembling but seemed to know that this was the only thing to do. We could not have outrun the fire. The smoke and heat would have brought us down.
The heat was unbearable. It hurt to breath. I was afraid that when the fire finally hit us, it would take all the oxygen and we’d suffocate. If we weren’t burned alive. When the fire finally overtook our position it sounded like a freight train. I could feel my jeans burn, the smell of burning leather, hair and flesh filled my nostrils. Each breath I took burned so much I thought my lungs were on fire along with the rest of the world. The wind whipped at my exposed body and I could feel the flames against the wool blanket. I pressed my face into the dirt next to Maggie and Katie. Almost as one, we tensed and pulled closer.
Then the heat eased. The wind still pulled at what was left of my clothes, but it seemed that the worst might be over. I took one more breath and pulled my head out from under the blanket. It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. There was nothing but black, charred ground as far as I could see. A few clumps of cactus and mesquite bushes were still burning. Looking east, I saw the blaze of the wildfire as it rushed on. I looked at Katie. The saddle was smoldering and there were burns across her hip, side and shoulder where she was exposed. I started to stand, but my boots were so hot I had to kick them off before I could get up. My jeans were smoldering. The back of one leg was burnt away as was the back of my shirt. I was afraid that I was burned pretty badly. Right then, the pain was not much. I was sure that would change soon enough. The rubber heels of my boots were melted away and a hole was burnt in one. I flung the blanket back. Maggie had tried to move even closer to Katie and had even dug under her a little. Katie didn’t move. I was afraid that she had become the latest victim. I moved around to her belly, uncinched the saddle and reached for the reins. Katie stirred and then came to her feet shaking herself and flinging off the saddle. I pulled the bridle off and noticed that the metal rings had burned her face and jaw. She pulled up her back right leg, putting her weight on her left. She was obviously in pain, but took it silently. I pulled the bridle off trying to be careful of her burns. She was having trouble breathing and struggled to take a step. As soon as Katie began to move, I noticed Maggie standing and trying to cough the smoke from her lungs.
I thought there was nothing to do but try to walk in from there. I also thought about leaving Katie there, but she moved with me every step I made and I had no way to tie her to something. Besides, there wasn’t anything to tie her to that wasn’t on fire or burnt to a crisp. So we began to walk, me barefoot, Katie limping and in need of medical attention and Maggie coughing and gagging. I didn’t know how far I could make it. I wasn’t sure that the burns would allow me to travel very far.
When we reached the edge of the playa, I stopped and looked back. It seems the fire was traveling so fast that it literally leapt the dry playa lake, briefly laying a covering of fire across our prone bodies, then jumped to the other side to continue destroying grassland. And then I noticed how hot the ground was on my feet. Even though the boots had prevented my feet from getting burned, I realized that it was going to be a different story if we went very far.
While we stood at the playa edge for what seemed like an entire day, Maggie dug around and found a little cooler ground to lay in. After a while, someone called my name. Katie heard it before I did and, looking into the distance, perked up her ears. Then I saw the truck headed for us with Sara leaning out of the passenger window yelling at me. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she yelled. I could only stand there and look at her. I couldn’t even get enough breath to answer. Maggie stood up and moved near me, but made no move to approach the truck. That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up on the porch of my house lying on a stretcher and surrounded by EMS folks and firemen. And then I heard the Chinook.
I spent four days in the Lubbock hospital. Most of the time, I was sedated so it was later that I learned that Katie was transported by the vet to a clinic in Amarillo where she was expected to recover fully, though she would retain some scars from her burns. Maggie went to the same clinic so that the vet could keep an eye on her. When I returned home, I spent most of the next week sitting on the porch in a rocking chair and looking out at what the fire missed. Maggie came home and stuck to me like glue.
After a few days the story of how we survived getting overrun by the fire began to circulate around town. People I hardly knew were calling out to me as they drove by when I was near the road like they were old friends. Calls came in day and night from reporters, tv stations and radio talk show hosts all wanting to find out the “real” story of how a horse, a dog and a broke down cowboy did the impossible. When we went to pick up Katie, we had to sneak into the vet’s back corrals around 3AM to avoid the news cameras. People started just driving up to the house wanting to see the wonder horse and the sheriff caught a couple of men from Dalhart cutting my fence to get in to try to steal Katie after she came home from the clinic. The ranch became a circus.
I unplugged the phones and turned off the tv. Rusty put up a pipe gate at the ranch entrance that would lock. We didn’t dare go into town, any town in a hundred miles. Sara and some of our friends repaired the fences while I recuperated. I heard a couple of teenage boys were arrested for setting a purposefully starting the blaze that set off the wildfire. I began to get letters from lawyers who were claiming they represented the other ranchers who had been burnt out and that they were going to sue the boys’ parents for damages. I didn’t see what good could come of that. Thousands of acres of grasslands and hundreds of horses, cows and other livestock died in the smoke and flames. Many families were trying to rebuild, clearing away the ashes of what had been family homes and barns. Crushing some other family for the stupidity of their kids just didn’t seem right.
One day, when we had all recovered, I saddled Katie and with Maggie running alongside, we rode out to look at the playa. It was kind of stunning to sit there on horseback and look at all the ruined land. What was left of the blanket and the leather tack was still where we left it. I still don’t understand why Katie did what she did but I believe it saved us. Someone was really looking out for us that day.
They found only five head of our neighbor’s cattle that perished in the fire.
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