The Man From Oklahoma. Darlene Graham
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from six towns had arrived with twenty units to battle the blaze. The wildfire was suddenly the day’s big media event.
“The fire is eating up everything in sight,” Jamie reported, while Dave fed digital pictures back to the station.
Jamie was so caught up in the moment that she completely forgot about Biddle until she spotted him again, this time riding at a hard gallop toward the old cabin up on the plateau. The horse he rode now was black, huge and powerful. Its pounding hooves created an enormous ribbon of dust in the dry morning air. The fire, snaking around the base of a hill, was making its way up to the plateau like a hot orange army on the march.
“Where’s he going?” she shouted back to Dave as she poked her finger at the glass, indicating Nathan passing below them.
Dave leaned forward. “To that cabin obviously.” He picked up his camera and twisted to get a good clean shot of the horse and rider.
“Turn around and land on that plateau by the cabin!” Jamie ordered the pilot.
“Ms. Evans, that fire is getting too close for comfort now—”
“Exactly! He wouldn’t be taking such a risk without a reason. Now land this thing!”
They circled and touched down just as Nathan Biddle threw himself from the saddle and raced full speed toward the cabin. Only then did Jamie see the old motorcycle parked under the sloping shed roof supported by two log poles. Someone was in there.
She jumped from the chopper and ran, feeling rather than seeing Dave on her heels. Up close, the cabin looked like something out of a movie about pioneers: chinked-log construction, a fat stone chimney that seemed larger than the little box of the cabin itself, drying gourds hanging on exterior walls.
“Wow!” Dave exclaimed as he filmed.
As they burst through the open door, Nathan Biddle, his jeans soaked to the skin, was standing with his back to them next to an enormous shirtless man with a long black ponytail, who was lifting a large wood-framed drawing off the rough-hewn wall. It was a yellowed charcoal sketch of a swan in profile, done in bold black lines.
Jamie sucked in her breath when she saw what Biddle held. An Osage war shield! The unmistakable white markings on stretched buckskin, the five eagle feathers hanging at the bottom, two others strategically placed at the top. Surely it was some kind of copy. No authentic Osage shield existed outside the protection of a museum these days.
Biddle turned from his task and squinted at her in horror. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We landed outside,” she explained as if anyone within a mile couldn’t hear a helicopter landing. “That fire’s closer than you think and the road’s covered in smoke. I’ve got the chopper outside. We’ll lift you both out. Let’s go!”
The big man beside Biddle said, “I will get the bound volumes. You get grandfather’s Peyote fan and crucifix.” Biddle nodded and swung around with the shield, headed for a battered old dresser. The other man crossed to some crude bookshelves in the corner, seeming to dominate the room as he moved. “Do not film these objects,” he quietly commanded Dave as he passed near him.
Dave obediently lowered the camera. “Okeydoke,” he muttered under his breath, and gave Jamie a wild-eyed look as he angled the viewfinder upward and the tape heads continued to turn.
All over the cabin were other Osage artifacts. Blankets, beaded work, paintings. And shelves and shelves of books, stacks and stacks of papers, piled on a rickety drawing board shoved under the one grimy window. Surely they weren’t trying to save all this stuff.
“Mr. Biddle, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here—” she held out her hands imploringly as she stepped toward Nathan “—but we don’t have much time.” In fact, the smoke seemed to be getting thicker in the air that gusted into the open doorway.
Biddle stopped what he was doing, turned and stared out the door. “Robert,” he called to the big man who was unplugging a laptop computer, “you must go now. I’ll stay behind and gather his papers.”
“No,” Robert answered as he pulled several oversize leather-bound books off the shelves. “I’ll stay. You go. I have the Indian.”
“And how much gas have you got in that thing?” Biddle argued. When Robert didn’t answer, he said, “That’s what I thought. And what about Bear?”
Jamie realized that the Indian must be the ancient-looking motorcycle parked out front, but who was Bear? Her question was answered when a large butterscotch-colored dog lumbered in from the back porch area. He looked part chow chow or mastiff. He’d been drawn by the sound of his name, she supposed. “You don’t understand,” she pleaded. “This fire is huge. Take the dog if you want to, but please, we must go. Now.”
“Not until we get our grandfather’s things,” Biddle informed her as he kept working steadily.
“You’re risking your life—and ours—for some dusty old books and a fake Osage shield.”
Robert never stopped in his efforts, but Nathan turned to her, and the look in his eyes could have frozen water. “Nothing in this cabin is fake,” he said.
“I didn’t mean…” Jamie faltered. “Just hurry. Please.”
But when they got outside, the pilot had bad news. He climbed out of the chopper as Dave scrambled into the back seat. He eyed Robert and pulled Jamie aside. “That guy weighs three hundred pounds if he weighs an ounce,” he told her, “and this chopper’s only designed to lift three average-size adults, plus a little equipment—and no dogs.”
“What are you saying?” Jamie asked, but she knew. Through the chopper’s window, she saw Dave, staring straight ahead, protectively clutching the thirty-five-thousand-dollar camera issued to his care. Leaving the equipment—and the precious film—behind would only save them about twenty-five pounds, anyway.
“I can’t take everybody, especially…oversize personnel.” The pilot’s aviators reflected the orange-tinted plumes of smoke beyond the ridge. “The big guy stays.”
“The hell he does.” The voice behind them was Nathan Biddle’s.
Jamie hadn’t noticed that he’d walked up. “Mr. Biddle, I—”
“My cousin goes, and so do all my grandfather’s papers and effects. And so does the dog.”
Jamie and the pilot turned their heads to look at the large man Biddle had called his cousin. He’d pulled on a grimy T-shirt and stood silently, with the volumes tucked under his meaty arms like rescued children. The large dog cowered against his thigh.
“This bird will only hold so much weight,” the pilot insisted. “It’s either you two or—”
“Then I’ll stay,” Jamie jumped in.
“We both will,” Biddle turned to her, calm reassurance radiating from his dark eyes. “The horse can swim us across the river, if necessary.”
“The boss won’t like this. Me leaving his star reporter behind,” the pilot argued.
“I won’t let anything happen to Ms. Evans,” Biddle replied.
“I’ll drop these two and circle right back.” The pilot, clearly frustrated, clearly frightened, looked up at the smoky sky. “Let’s hope the wind doesn’t shift, and the smoke doesn’t get too dense, and my fuel doesn’t run out.”
Jamie placed a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “You’d better get going.”
Biddle stepped over and grabbed the sleeve of Robert’s T-shirt. “Get in,” he said in answer to Robert’s pained expression. Then he gave his cousin a shove. Once Robert was seated, Biddle bent forward, lifting the picture and the shield, setting them gently onto his cousin’s lap. Then he lifted the old dog’s hindquarters until he got him tucked safely between his cousin’s large boots. “Take care