Chapter 19
Camila
The sound of a wildfire is terrifying. Whoever has lived through one remembers it forever. I once heard that wildfires creep forward with a snake’s patience. That’s a lie. Whoever said it has never been in one, never heard death’s roar heading for your front porch.
There’s a kind of secret language on ranches when the threat is real. Jobs assign themselves, people move at the speed of light, helping however they can no matter their age or physical condition. Orders travel in murmurs and looks.
Within minutes, Liz rides off at a gallop with some of the cowboys.
Behind them, two huge tractors to open trenches, and the Herdersons’ pickup loaded with a water tank.
No one speaks more than necessary. Rosie serves coffee or something to eat to whoever needs it.
The sky has turned orange. Not the pretty color of New Mexico sunsets; it’s the color of destruction.
The tanker truck is a rusted behemoth Grandma Rosa bought a decade ago at a city auction. It’s always looked more like a museum piece than a working vehicle. It hardly gets any use in the day-to-day of the ranch, but today it might be what helps us save the buildings if the fire spreads our way.
Alba helps me fill the tank and check the valves. Water leaps from the pump, cold, while the engine complains.
“When they tell us to, we have to go around the edges of the firebreaks and then the buildings. No heroics: if the fire comes down the ravine, we run and get inside the house. Got it?” the vet reminds me.
I nod, and for a second I want to cry. But I don’t. I climb into the truck, turn the key, shift into first, and rumble south.
The first stretch is easy, almost boring: with the tank full, my top speed is only 10 miles per hour, and the road is nothing but dust and rocks. But less than a mile from the house, the world changes. Smoke sneaks into the cab and my eyes sting.
From where I am, I watch the fire line: a wall of orange crawling through the scrub.
It devours mesquites, prickly pears; even the rocks seem to boil in its wake.
The cowboys look tiny against the orange landscape.
Some are driving the cattle away from the flames, others are working shovels, helping the tractors with the firebreak trenches.
We get the order to start soaking the areas around the first buildings. We spend the next hour between water and fire. Alba on the hose, me helping however I can.
At one point, the wind shifts and a cloud of smoke wraps around us. Everything turns gray, dull, terrifying. The sound is sinister. It barely lets you think straight. The water runs out, but the fire keeps advancing. Close. Too close. I feel Alba’s hand on my shoulder, squeezing.
“We’re leaving. Now!” she shouts, motioning for me to get into the old truck.
The engine catches on the second try. I turn; the steering wheel is stiff, hard. In the rearview mirror I watch the fire consume the pastures. I think of Liz, I want to turn around and fight the blaze with her, but there’s no time for panic. Or for heroics.
At the main house, Mrs. Henderson is waiting for us with water, towels, and some coffee.
From the southern pastures come reports that the fire is under control, some volunteer firefighters have arrived, and the trenches have worked.
On the porch, Liv and the influencer from Los Angeles, whose name I can’t remember, are still streaming live.
The flames are still there, to the south, but they’re starting to shrink, to burn less intensely. The ranch is wounded, partly charred, but it’s breathing. And so are we.
Before she left, Liz told me that neither the fire, nor the bank, nor hell itself could tear us from this piece of land. Because that’s Rosa Vega’s legacy. Not the land itself, but the will to fight for it to your last breath.
On the local station, the announcer talks about evacuated areas and contained fires, about how anonymous heroes are defending the Spencer and Vega ranches from the devastation of the flames.
Outside, dawn is obscenely beautiful. The clouds have turned a gorgeous pink and the birds, confused by the disaster, sing like their lives depended on it.
Inside, the kitchen of the main building is something else: a trail of exhausted bodies, clothes that reek of smoke, people who don’t know whether to celebrate or cry.
Liz still hasn’t come back.
And sometimes, after hell, the worst arrives. Wrapped in silence, disguised as calm.
The wind shifts.
The fire leaps the ravine.
It’s impossible, or it should be. But it happens.
A tongue of fire, driven by the dry wind, jumps the creek and heads for the stables.
In the air, tiny embers drift like suicidal insects, unleashing chaos the moment they touch the ground.
The heat comes first, an invisible wall that crushes your lungs.
Then the roar, brush crackling as it burns a scant 550 yards from the house.
The horses are whinnying like crazy. Among them is Hope, the newborn filly who nearly scared me to death when I helped bring her into the world.
And out of the smoke, like a ghost, Liz appears at a full gallop on Diabla. The mare doesn’t hesitate. She knows the way, trusts the hand that guides her, the weight of the woman who has become an extension of her own body.
From the safety of the porch, the influencer from Los Angeles keeps filming. He doesn’t feel the pain, or the danger, he only sees the image.
And the image is epic, pure apocalyptic poetry. A lone cowgirl against a wall of flames, guiding the horses toward salvation.
“Incredible,” he whispers, not realizing I’m right beside him, fearing for my girlfriend’s life.
One by one, the horses stampede out, blind with panic.
I try to run to her, but Alba blocks me.
“Stay here. Liz knows what she’s doing. I don’t want you dead, Camila.”
Her voice brooks no argument. I give in and help drench walls and windows with water. All I can do is watch from afar as she leads the horses through hell, the flames throwing a macabre light over the scene.
Hope, who in her 15 days of life has never run free at those speeds, stumbles, and falls. Liz dismounts and helps her up, practically dragging her to safety.
Fire circles the yard. The house trembles. T-Lee, drenched in sweat, shoves me inside. The last thing I see before they close the shutters is Liz covering the filly with her body as the wind covers them with embers.
I don’t even know how much time passes. The world has stopped. Outside, the wail of the fire engines’ sirens arrives like a flood of joy.
“We survived,” Alba reminds me, her face still streaked with soot.
I stagger out onto the porch while our guests applaud and hug. The sky is blue again. Fire crews move across the ranch, snuffing out embers, blasting water onto the last hot spots. There’s ash everywhere, even in the air we breathe.
And in the distance, in the middle of a corral covered in mud, there’s Liz. Her clothes are in tatters as she holds Hope like a lost puppy. Both are covered in light burns that will forever remind them of what they’ve been through, but they’re alive.
I run to her, and we meet in the middle of the yard. I hug her tight, kiss her lips like my own life depends on it, while she wipes away the tears rolling down my cheeks.
That same afternoon, several news channels flood the ranch. They want testimonies, they want stories of heroism, they want to meet the cowgirl who rode through the fire to save the horses.
“It’s easy to be brave when you can lose everything,” she answers, trying to wrap it up as quickly as possible.
The influencer’s video from Los Angeles goes viral. Liz riding Diabla, slipping in and out of the curtain of fire, later saving the filly. Some say it’s the image of the year: the cowgirl who has become the symbol of the resistance of the Tularosa Basin ranches.
The ranch is still standing. The horses and the cattle are alive. But a good part of the pastures is black. Along with the debts, we all know what that means.
Even so, tonight the whole community gathers in the yard. From the neighboring ranches, they’ve brought food and plenty of beer. There are awkward hugs and many, many tears. Mine included.