She was about to say "All right" when something stung her hand. Thinking it an insect, she started to flick it away, but saw it was a pinpoint ash just turning from red to black. She scratched it and hurried down the road.

She had sprinted barely thirty yards into the forest when flames appeared like chattering ghosts flitting about the trees. As she slowed to an apprehensive walk the wind suddenly gusted, and a fiery exhalation of smoke and burning pine needles burst from the forest to shower the shoulder, already burned black by a previous crew, in a rain of embers. She perhaps could have made it at a dead run, but hesitated, unsure how far the fireline extended or if the Squaw Valley company had withdrawn.

Heat touched her face. She looked up to see flames crowning from tree to tree, right to the road where they paused, uncertain, before leaping triumphantly across the gap.

She retreated to the open field and said into the radio, "Chuck, I won't make it. The fire's spotting across the road."

The tremble in her voice seemed apparent, but Chuck answered calmly, "Are you near a backburned field?"

"I'm in one."

"Get to the middle of it. We'll have a 'copter there in a few minutes."

She walked back to the drip torch and waited. The sun was failing. Stars ignited in the clear sky, their fire tedious in competition with Hell's Burning, which now proclaimed itself as an angry glow to the north, a ponderous rumble, and a haze of smoke like pungent breath. Its first emissary to the field was a flaming brand which arched high on the wind, seemed about to overshoot, then stopped as if suddenly released and fell just short of the road; a pine branch of dry needles, it smoldered in the blackened grass, then went out. But more followed and, seeing the futility of alighting in the field, sailed into the virgin trees beyond the road to ignite them like enormous match sticks. Faith watched helplessly as Hell's Burning took possession of the forest on all sides.

The thrum of a helicopter fought with the fire's voice. They flew high, searching the road, and dived toward the field when they spotted her waving. She squinted into a parched squall of smoke and ash raised by the rotor blades. In the last rays of the sun slanting through the cockpit she caught sight of Chuck peering anxiously from the seat beside the pilot, and in the open door on the side stood a paramedic beside a dangling harness. The helicopter lurched in the updraft, settled, then lurched again. The harness dropped a few feet, but tossed wildly as gusts shoved the helicopter about.

Through tearing eyes she saw Chuck and the pilot engaged in a heated argument. Chuck pointed repeatedly at the field while the pilot hooked his thumb over his shoulder. Finally Chuck picked up his radio, and hers beeped. She unclipped it. "What's happening?"

"The updraft's too strong. We can't lower the harness."

She had never before heard so him distraught. For a long moment neither spoke. Then, for lack of anything better, she said, "Okay."

"Do you have your shelter?"

"Yes."

"Deploy it. Incident Command says the wind's going to get worse tonight, but it'll taper off in the morning. We'll pick you up at first light."

After another pause, she said, "Okay."

The helicopter climbed and turned. From the other side she saw him looking worriedly, not at her, but at the borders of the field, and knew they both harbored the same thought, that the field looked far too small.

The helicopter's blades had been drawing cool air from above. Unrestrained, the breath of Hell's Burning returned, a choking, heated gale which broke her into a profuse sweat. She carried the drip torch to the point where the road entered the trees, where searing heat blasting off the forest halted her. She set the torch down and hurried back to the field's center. Working against the deafening roar, the obnoxious ashes swirling in the wind, and the drifting pine needle sparks biting her face and hands, she unfurled the shelter from the pouch on her belt. Raised on the blackened grass it looked like a child's pup tent, though where it had once glittered with a metallic sheen, it now glowed and flickered with a harsh red blaze as if by sympathetic magic it had gained the inferno's attributes.

She unzipped it and crawled in backwards. The shelter at first seemed too small, more modest even than she remembered from training, but by twisting into a tight ball she managed to pull her head inside and work the zipper down. Crouching with the helmet pushed back and her face pressed to the ash-covered floor, she endeavored to wait out the storm.

They had taught her what to expect. Keep the head down and breath shallowly. Don't tense up. Anticipate excessive heat. Keep bare skin away from the walls of the shelter. Wait at least half an hour after the fire dies down, even if to all indications it has passed before that time. She had no reason to challenge them now, but for two concerns unaddressed in training.

The first was claustrophobia. As the minutes multiplied with the heat, and the fury of the fire expanded to an enraged bestial roar, the walls of the shelter pressed in on her. The coat and boots were dead weights. Sweat trickled in maddening rivulets across her cheeks.