The Renegades: Nick by Genell Dellin Page B

cloth wet.”
    These were only Callie and Mrs. Peck and her little girl, but they could do the job. As if to prove it, Callie thrust a wet saddle blanket into his hands and ran back to the wagon that held the water.
    He threw the blanket across his pommel and began pushing the Shapeshifter toward the flames. This fire
could
be turned: it was already moving west. The wind was all that gave theirpathetic little bunch any chance at all against the flames. It blew right out of the east, steady and straight, bending the edges of the fire even more toward the west. The men and boys followed him toward it, some running on foot because their mounts were too scared for them to manage.
    Nick stood in his stirrups, looked up and down the fire line, judging it one last time, then pulled some lucifers from his pocket and jumped off the Shapeshifter’s back. Positioning the men and boys with gestures, handing out the few matches he had, he managed to open himself, body and soul, to the task at hand, the way he had always dealt with danger. No past, no future—only now and what had to be done filled his mind. For the first time since that day the boys died, they left him.
    He scraped the head of one of the lucifers across the sole of his boot, bent and set the grass afire at his feet, his wet blanket ready in the other hand. Instantly, he had to use it, for the wind made a swirling shift. The others, watching, imitated him.
    Somebody yelled a warning about the wind, and the frantic fight began. The stiff breeze grew stronger and helped them, then turned treacherous, then helpful again, then undecided, and the glimpses of arms lifted and lowered, the flash of orange flames, and theblack of the burned grass became all he could see. The noise of sacks slapping against the earth and fire crackling in the air filled his ears. His body raised up and bent down, his hands held the blanket, and his arms beat at the fire with no direction from him.
    Someone thrust a wet blanket at him and he realized that the Peck boy was running back to the water barrel to exchange dry blankets for wet for the other men, also. Everyone was working as hard as he was—but everything they could do, might not be enough.
    Callie’s face and her eyes full of trust appeared in his mind’s eye to squelch that thought. He couldn’t fail her. He would not.
    In spite of their incessant beatings at the flames that tried to stray the wrong way, and his eternal vigilance at keeping track of where everyone was, a streak of fire raced toward the wagon and the women. Nick ran to beat it into submission, then glanced over his shoulder.
    Callie didn’t see him; she was busy fighting to make the Pecks’ horses pull the wagon closer to the fire. Silently, he cursed his shortsightedness. He should’ve put one of the men on the wagon, someone with more brute strength, although no man was a match for the power of a horse.
    His gut twisted with fear. Terrified horses had been known to run directly into a fire—sometimes to try to get to the barn where theyfelt safe, sometimes from pure, blind panic. Callie would be helpless if this team bolted.
    Someone yelled and he had to turn back to the fire. The next time he let himself look, she had wrestled the wagon into place and was holding the team relatively still while Mrs. Peck dipped the sack that her small son brought her. Callie stood up and braced her feet a little bit apart, watching the team, lifting her chin in that determined way she had that made him smile.
    The wind shifted firmly to come from the east once more, stronger now. Nickajack breathed a little prayer of thanks and slapped at another tongue of fire trying to creep to the east.
    What about her dead husband, Mr. Sloane? What kind of man had he been? Had he loved her well?
    The smoke thickened and swirled in the wind, which was dancing a little, threatening to change direction again, but the main danger had finally passed. Their line of burned grass had widened enough