“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” McLanahan moaned. “We’re going to die in the worst way.”

“I always thought freezing would be worse,” Farkus said, his voice muffled through the wet cloth over his mouth.

Butch said nothing but kept prodding McLanahan along ahead of him whenever the ex-sheriff stopped to rest. He couldn’t get air, either.

Joe dragged his right boot through the edge of the juniper, hoping to bump up against the hidden rock.

As he’d done before when he found himself in a similar situation, he thought of his family. Marybeth had no idea where he was, or what was happening. She was likely at home, watching with horror as smoke billowed from the mountains that filled their front room window. There was likely no real information yet about where the fire started, how it started, or who was caught within it, because it took a while for official spokesmen to get organized to give statements. And it had all happened so fast.

Joe saw the faces of Sheridan, Lucy, and April all turned toward the fire from different vantage points; Sheridan as she drove her truck toward Saddlestring wearing her waitress uniform to go to work at the Burg-O-Pardner, April scowling beside her in her cowgirl outfit, Lucy—and Hannah—bookending Marybeth in the front room. All their faces turned his direction but not knowing it.

He wondered how far the fire had spread north. Was it burning the face off Wolf Mountain, which was the closest to their home? Had it advanced into the river cottonwoods of the Twelve Sleep Valley? Was it racing toward Saddlestring itself?

—

MCLANAHAN SCREAMED, and Joe turned to find him hopping up and down. An ember had lit on his back, and his shirt was on fire. Butch slapped at the flames while McLanahan danced away, Butch yelling at McLanahan to stop moving. Farkus looked on as if paralyzed.

Joe ducked around Farkus and threw himself at McLanahan and rode him down to the ground, where he landed on his side. Both Joe and Butch flipped the ex-sheriff to his belly and threw handfuls of dirt on McLanahan’s back. As the man writhed, they whacked at the flames with open hands until the fire was out. The flesh on the ex-sheriff’s back was wet crimson, and large yellow blisters were blooming. The tatters of his shirt were scorched black.

As McLanahan moaned beneath them, Butch looked up with a red-eyed squint and said, “Joe, I hope we’re getting close.”

—

BECAUSE THE FIRESTORM CREATED its own ecosystem, occasionally the wind reversed for a few seconds. When it did, the air cleared and the intensity of the heat was reduced, and Joe could see ahead along the rim.

After McLanahan had staggered to his feet again, his face a mask of pain, the wind stopped blowing for a moment. Joe cautiously pushed through the juniper to peer into the canyon itself. The palms of his hands stung on contact with the brush because he’d burned them slapping out the fire on McLanahan’s back. But he managed to part the branches and poke his head through them. He wanted to drink in and remember every feature of the canyon before the smoke came roiling back.

When he looked straight down, he could see the river, which looked like a twisted thin strip of sheet metal in the shadow of the canyon floor. How cool it must be down there, he thought.

And when he looked ahead a quarter-mile upriver from where he stood, he could see a number of tepee poles scattered haphazardly along the side of the cliff. They looked like silver toothpicks because of their age, and they were still there ten years later, just as they’d been there for the previous hundred and fifty years. He’d chosen the right direction.

“Found it!” he hollered back.

“The trailhead?” Butch asked hoarsely.

“Yup.”

“Thank God.”

Joe said, “There’s still the ‘getting down’ part.”

As if to highlight his statement, the wind whirled around them and resumed blowing south and the flames roared toward them, advancing by jumps from tree to tree.

—

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES, the toe of Joe’s boot thumped against the rock he’d been looking for. It had been completely obscured by the juniper bush. Edging toward the abyss, Joe parted the brush until he could locate the two-foot ledge just over the rim. He recalled Stewie standing on the ledge after he’d tripped on the rock.

Only half the ledge was there—a one-foot-by-two-foot outcropping. The other half had fallen away. That would make it difficult to lower themselves down the face of the wall to where the trail actually began.

“Oh, man,” Joe said.

“Hurry, hurry,” McLanahan cried in full panic.

Joe looked back and saw why. The fire was less than ten feet behind them, and tendrils of it were shooting across the ground toward them, igniting pine needles and tufts of dried grass.

“Listen to me,” he said, trying to stay calm. Three sets of bloodshot eyes bored into him from masked, soot-blackened faces.

“There’s a flat rock down here no bigger than the top of a stepladder. You’ll need to use it to lower yourself off the edge to the trail below. Stay tight to the side of the wall, because the trail isn’t any wider than a foot or so. Drop down to that trail and keep your balance. Got that?”

Nods. Scared-but-frantic nods.

“I’ll go first,” Joe said. “I’ll try to steady each of you when you lower yourself down. Don’t panic, and don’t start thrashing around or you might take both of us over. Okay?”

“Just fucking hurry,” McLanahan said through his mask. Joe could tell his teeth were clenched as he said it.

“How far is the drop to the trail?” Butch asked.

“Seven feet or so, if I remember,” Joe said. “But it will seem farther when you’re dropping through the air.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Farkus moaned.

—

JOE GRIMACED as he lowered himself on the shelf to grasp the ledge. His legs and back weren’t as flexible as they’d been ten years before. Even if he dropped safely to the trail cut into the canyon wall, he had no idea if stretches of it—like the ledge itself—had dropped away. He tried to not even think of what it would be like for the four of them to be isolated on the trail itself with no way to get down, their only other choice being to try and work their way back to the top and burn to death.

He turned to face the wall and reached down on either side to grasp the sharp edge of the rock, and backed off until he dropped and was suspended. While he hung in the air, he looked down his shirtfront to confirm the trail was still there below him. It was. Joe said a prayer and let go.

The soles of his boots hit the surface of the trail with a heavy thump, and his knees screamed from the impact. He didn’t remember that from ten years before. Far below, he heard something smack against the rocks, and he realized the phone had fallen out of his jeans from the jump. He wouldn’t be able to call Marybeth for a while, and he cursed.

“Hurry!” McLanahan shouted.

“Okay,” he shouted up. Because of his angle, he couldn’t see the other three above him. “You can come on. The trail is here, and I’m standing on it. Come one at a time so I can help steady you and guide you down when you let go.”

A few seconds later, Joe recognized Farkus’s Vibram-soled work boots dangling above him. Even though the fire was roaring and snapping on top, Joe could hear Farkus mewling with fear.

“It’s okay,” Joe said, reaching up until he could grasp the back of Farkus’s belt. “You can let go.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Farkus cried, still hanging.

“Let go,” Joe shouted.

Farkus dropped and landed clumsily on the trail, and Joe kept a grip on the belt so the man wouldn’t lose his balance and plunge into the canyon.

With Farkus now standing and hugging the wall, Joe shinnied carefully around him. He could feel Farkus trembling.

“Move a few feet down the trail so I have some room to work,” Joe said to him. Then to McLanahan and Butch: “Next!”