The Smoke Jumper Read Online Free PDF

away, he had felt something not far short of ecstasy. And then the slap on his left shoulder from the spotter telling him to go and the leap into blue infinity, tucking himself in and counting to five and then the jolt as the chute snapped open and there he was, suspended in that wondrous arc of silence, neither man nor bird but something of sky snd flesh and earth combined.
    The water in his canteen tasted warm and metallic. It was only the end of May but it felt like high summer and Connor figured the temperature had to be well into the nineties. It had barely rained all year and the air was as dry as tomb dust. If things kept on this way it was going to be one hell of a summer for fires. Back at the base in Missoula, some of the jumpers were already fantasizing about how they were going to spend all the overtime and hazard pay. He’d called Ed in Boston two nights ago and told him to put down a deposit on the new car he’d been promising himself. Ed and that fabulous girlfriend he’d been going on about for months were arriving in Montana the coming weekend. It was the first time ever he’d missed the start of a fire season, which only went to show what a sorry effect a woman could have on a man.
    From above him up the slope now he heard Hank Thomas, the incident commander, give the word to move on. Connor took one last swig from his canteen then fastened and stowed it. He was about to shoulder his pack when he heard a strange sound. It was only faint, like a strangled cry, and it seemed to come from over the ridge where the fire was. He looked and for a moment saw nothing. Then, just as he was about to pick up his pack, he saw what at first he took to be a flaming branch rise above the pale spine of rock. It took him several seconds to recognize that it was no branch.
    It was a large bull elk, but like no elk Connor had ever laid eyes on. Every hair of its coat had been burned and its skin was charred black. Its great rack of antlers flamed like a torch. The animal scrambled up onto the ridge, dislodging a clatter of falling stone, and just as it found its footing it saw him.
    For a long moment the two of them stood quite still, staring at each other. Connor felt like a pagan before some ancient demigod or devil summoned from a world beyond. He felt the sweat chill on his neck.
    Slowly, ever so slowly, he reached for the small Leica that he kept in his pocket and at the same time felt the wind around him lift and swirl and he saw the flames on the elk’s antlers dance and fan sideways and he heard the fire beyond it bellow as if in some dread conspiring chorus.
    The animal was in his viewfinder now and it raised its muzzle proudly as if posing for a portrait and suddenly it occurred to Connor that there was a message here, though what it was and for whom he had no idea. He pressed the button and at the sound of the shutter the elk turned and vanished and Connor stood wondering if it had all been but a trick of his imagination. Distantly he heard a voice calling him.
    ‘Hey, Connor! We got a fire to fight here.’
    He looked up the ridge. The other jumpers had gathered their gear and were ready to move off. Nearest to him was Jodie Lennox, a tall, red-haired midwesterner who’d been in the same rookie class as Ed and Connor two years earlier.
    ‘Did you see that?’ Connor asked quietly.
    ‘See what?’
    He paused. It seemed that the message, if that’s what it was, had been for him alone. He picked up his pack and swung it over his shoulder.
    ‘See what?’
    ‘Nothing. Let’s go.’
     
    That night they snatched a couple of hours sleep in a sheltered shoulder of the mountain through which the fire had already passed. They worked shifts, checking for hot spots where the fire still smoldered in roots and stumps and crevices. The beams of their headlamps sent shadows jagging on the blackened earth as they made their slow patrol among the barbed wire tangle of charred scrub, scanning the ground like ghouls and