Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [134]
Hadn’t she challenged him to embrace life again?
He stared hard at the helicopter. “I’m going too.”
Clare looked out the Huey’s left front window at the park’s staggering beauty. Despite the nearby ravaging by fire, the unburned banks of the Madison teemed with game. In a few minutes Old Faithful passed beneath, the jumping off point for the search.
In the pilot’s seat, Karrabotsos turned his helmeted head from side to side, scanning. Steve sat in the rear seat with a hand on Clare’s shoulder. She wasn’t sure if he offered support or was holding on because of his own uncertainty.
Yellowstone Lake reflected the gray sky. There was the scorched shore between Grant Village and West Thumb where she’d found Steve. His hand tightened as they flew over.
The mosaic of burns slid past beneath the aircraft, a grim reminder of the fire reported on Nez Perce when Deering flew out. If they found the wreck of a chopper, would she have the strength to go in as a medic, checking for survivors when it might be Devon lying bleeding and battered?
Or worse.
The Absaroka Range rose before the chopper’s windshield, mocking her with its remoteness. No rapid Life Flight to the Houston Medical Center. No world-class trauma ER ready to receive.
From behind Clare, Steve pointed out the grassy meadows alongside meandering Pelican Creek. Just downstream, the waterway joined the broad expanse of Yellowstone Lake. “Those flats down there are prime grizzly habitat,” he told her through the headphones.
It was a good front and she suspected how much it cost him.
“I’m glad you came.” She raised her hand to his and squeezed.
Karrabotsos flew east. He talked on the radio with the other pilots helping in the search.
They swept up over a low, treed pass and into what Steve pointed out as the Lamar River Valley. “The Nez Perce camped in the widest meadow where two rivers come together. Plenty of pasture for their horses.” Half hidden by haze, the valley might have been a pleasant place, except where the Clover-Mist Fire had left it blackened.
They lost altitude and the valley came into sharper focus. There was no sign of a helicopter on the open ground.
Ahead, a massive peak loomed. Its crest was sharp, with great spines of dark rock sticking out from the summit like stiff fingers. “Nez Perce,” said Steve. The west slope of chock-a-block boulders must have been where Laura Sutton wrote of spending a cold and uneasy night. Her journal remained in Clare’s room at the Stagecoach.
They flew nearer and Karrabotsos studied the terrain. “I don’t see anyplace a helicopter could land.” The jumble of great, dark rock looked even more treacherous up close.
Clare’s stomach swooped as the Huey banked and flew along Nez Perce’s deeply forested east flank. It was here that the Clover-Mist, the largest fire in the park, actively cut a swath through the trees. Smoke roiled up from the flame front.
“See that?” Steve pointed above the fire near the ridge crest. “The way the trees there are not quite as tall?” There was at least five feet of difference in the trees’ height, along a curving line up a ravine. “There was a forest fire here in 1900,” he went on. “Looks like it’s going to burn again.”
My God, that was where Laura Sutton had been trapped with fire sweeping up toward her. The pilot flew low enough that the ridge crest was above them. “It looks to me as if Deering isn’t here,” he said.
Outside, the haze grew thicker.
“I’d like to look around a wider area,” Karrabotsos suggested.
Clare felt as though bands squeezed her chest, keeping her breathing shallow. She tried a deeper inhalation, but had to force it. They flew north toward the rocky summit of Saddle Mountain, barely visible through the smoke.
Karrabotsos radioed Johnny Arvela of Eagle Air. “What’s the vis up your way?”
“No good,” Johnny’s voice came over the air. “I’m gonna have to set down at Cooke City and hope the fire doesn’t come through town. They almost lost Silver Gate yesterday and they’re not in the clear yet.”
“I don’t like the looks of this here,