The Man From Oklahoma. Darlene Graham
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Dave, all cozy in the rear seat, surrounded by his equipment, chewing a wad of gum, happy as a clam. The pilot was grinning from behind his aviator sunglasses. Jamie hated them both because they never got airsick.
“Not far!” the pilot hollered over the noise. “Sorry for the bumpy ride!” He pointed. “Over there’s the tallgrass prairie. Largest expanse of native tall grass remaining on this continent.”
Jamie and Dave exchanged smirks. They had nicknamed this pilot Encyclopedia Jones because of his tendency to spout arcane facts.
The sun was just coming up at their backs, casting the rolling Osage Hills in a cool lavender light. To their right, the endless Tallgrass Prairie Preserve reflected the soft peachy hues of dawn. Rising clouds in the distance promised a thunderstorm later in the day. Despite her nausea, Jamie loved this part of her job—these rare moments when she got to see the natural world from the vantage point of the helicopter window. Pure magic.
“I didn’t think old Phil was going to go for this, did you?” Dave bellowed from the back seat.
“Yeah. He’s pretty stingy with this bird,” the pilot agreed.
“I guess nothing else newsworthy is going on at dark-thirty,” Jamie joked. It had been a late night, convincing Phil Hooks that the helicopter was the only way to get out to the Hart Ranch in time to catch the search and possible arrest of Nathan Hart Biddle.
Soon she recognized the river and the landscape of Hart Ranch ahead, then made out the barns and outbuildings—and the three sheriff’s cruisers parked in an open triangle in front of the ranch house.
“They’re here,” she called over her shoulder to Dave. “Start shooting.”
“I’m way ahead of you.” He’d already begun.
The pilot angled the chopper to give the photographer an unobstructed view, and Jamie felt her stomach twist. She clutched her barf bag close. Then she saw something that distracted her. “Does that look like smoke?” She leaned toward the pilot and pointed.
In the distance a hazy column rose from the rolling hills, wavering in the dawn light. The pilot glanced once, didn’t seem to see. Dave was filming the cruisers and ranch house, now directly below them. Jamie looked down. No activity was visible. Jamie wondered if they’d pulled Nathan Biddle out of bed, wondered if he’d figured out the awful truth by now.
She glanced toward the sunrise again, and this time she was certain she saw smoke. “Go that way!” she commanded over the noise.
“Boss didn’t authorize a bunch of running around, lady. This thing eats fuel, you know.”
“That could be a fire!”
“So? Out here on the tallgrass prairie they set fires all the time to burn off that pesky Japanese grass.”
“A controlled burn? With the wind gusting like this? Besides, it’s over by part of the Hart Ranch. Isn’t that the plateau where we filmed yesterday?” She directed this question to Dave, but didn’t wait for the answer. “That’s near that old cabin. It can’t be more than a couple of miles. Fly over and check it out. I’ll take responsibility for the fuel.”
The pilot made a sour face and practically turned the chopper on its side, making Jamie’s sweet roll and coffee lurch up dangerously. He flew at full speed toward the smoke on the horizon. Jamie pointed as they passed over the roof of the old cabin, barely visible through a thicket of dry-leafed blackjacks. As they got closer to the column—large and definitely smoke—the fire itself became visible. Flames made eerie Z’s on the gray hillsides, and the pilot immediately changed his tune.
“That’s a big one, all right,” he said. “We’d better not fly any closer.”
“Holy shit!” Dave exclaimed while filming.
“That’s no controlled burn.” Jamie was already digging out her cell phone. “I’m calling it in.”
She made a hasty call to alert the station first, then she punched 911, wondering if the cruisers on the ground a mile behind them would be called into the act. She told the dispatcher who she was, that she was looking at a massive grass fire, clearly out of control, headed directly for the Hart Ranch complex. The dispatcher took careful coordinates of their location, with the pilot shouting out landmarks over the chopper noise.
Just as she’d figured, Jamie was ordered to stay on the line while the dispatcher contacted units from the nearby town of Pawhuska. She covered the mouthpiece and shot a look of disgust back at Dave. “I have to hold.” She studied the fire. “It’s definitely moving southwest,” she muttered toward the window.
Suddenly she turned her head and shouted to the pilot, “Head back to the ranch! We’ve got to warn them.”
The pilot did another sickening turn and flew full throttle toward the ranch house. They landed near the cruisers in a cyclone of dust, and immediately the sheriff came marching out of the ranch house, looking angry, waving them away.
Jamie jumped from the door while the blades were still rotating. With the cell phone pressed to her ear, she held up her free hand in placation. “Prairie fire!” she yelled. “Out of control! A mile or two northeast!”
The big man cupped his hands and shouted, “Did you call it in?” as they ran toward each other.
“Yes!” Jamie’s throat was so dry she no longer felt any nausea. “Pawhuska’s sending units. I’m on hold with the 911 dispatcher.”
“I’ll take over!” the sheriff said. “Give it to me!”
Jamie handed him the phone.
“You with Channel Six?” he asked as he held the phone to his ear, waiting.
“Yes.” Jamie paused to catch her breath as Dave and the pilot jumped out and rushed toward them. Dave filmed as they stood in a cluster, telling the sheriff as much as they could about the fire. “We may need you to go back up and call in the exact parameters of the fire,” the sheriff said. The pilot nodded.
Nathan Biddle emerged from the ranch house with the two deputies on either side of him. At the sight of him, Jamie’s pulse—already racing—quickened even more. The sheriff called out the situation before they’d gotten halfway across the yard. Biddle stopped and turned, hollered something urgent to one of the deputies. An argument ensued. Jamie could only catch the words high-strung thoroughbred over the chopper’s noise.
Biddle finally made a cutting motion with his arm, then turned and ran in the direction of the barns. The deputies trotted over to the group. One faced the sheriff and said, “The man’s got a high-dollar stud horse he wants to save and six brood mares. He says he can swim them all across the river.”
“Wouldn’t take no for an answer,” the other deputy put in.
“Nathan ain’t going nowhere,” the sheriff said dryly. “Let him move his horses. We got bigger problems now, anyways, boys. The Tulsa DA can waste his own time trying to find some old hunting knife that ain’t here.”
Jamie wanted to ply the sheriff with questions, but he was shouting, “Yeah, Sheriff Bates here,” into the cell phone.
“Okay,” he said next. Then, “I’ve got the Channel Six Skyranger helicopter out here. They volunteered to go up and provide aerial support. Pawhuska will take fire-ground command. Until we know more, go ahead and have Blackpool’s units go east on Highway Twenty.” He stopped and spoke to the pilot. “You can get close enough to provide air guidance, can’t you?”
The pilot nodded, and Jamie said, “I’m going back up with you. We’ll do a phoner. Dave can feed back video.”
A deputy passed a cell phone to the sheriff, and Jamie took hers back. She and Dave followed the pilot to the chopper. As they lifted off, Jamie looked down toward the barns. She saw Nathan Biddle, now wearing a tan cowboy hat and a dark leather jacket, mount his paint while he held three other horses on long leads. She watched him