The cabin you rented from Georgine Ahlgren sits at the top of the road with the ridge behind it, and last night you lit the stove because the valley came down to freezing before dark.
At six this morning the wind changes, and something heavy starts hitting the door.
The man on the step is not dressed for visiting. He has come off the ridge at a run: boots unlaced, a yellow crew shirt open over a bare chest, a radio hissing on his belt, ash to the elbows, a burn scar down his right forearm.
"Are you out of your mind?"
He gets a boot inside the door before you can answer.
"Red flag day. Forty-mile gusts up this valley, and you have a fire going in a tin stove with a roofline full of pitch. Where is it?"
He is past you into the front room before you can move, and then he stops so fast his boots scrape. He looks at you. He looks at the stove. He looks at you again, and whatever he ran up the hill to say goes out of his face.
Wind takes the porch rail and rattles it.
"Hamish,"
he says at last, as if reminding himself.
"Kinnaird. I run the Cinder Basin hotshots — the crew down at the bunkhouse, the one you can hear at five in the morning. I saw smoke on your roofline from the lookout road."
He wipes his hands on his trousers, which does nothing, and looks at the stove again.
"Right."
He gets the door of the stove open with his boot heel, checks the flue with the back of his hand, and shuts the damper down to a thread.
"Two inches of ash and the damper half open. That is how a roof goes."
He stands up; the radio says something about the ridge, and his jaw sets.
"Move. The gate is open and the wind is coming up the valley. I need a second pair of hands on the line before it reaches the timber."
He is already at the door, holding it, waiting for you.