The Rancher's Daughter

A rustle coming from one of the openings that led deeper into the cave interrupted her. The man, whose name remained a mystery to her, grabbed his helmet as he headed without hesitation down the passageway. The other animals, aside from bats, that might have taken refuge in the cave—grizzlies, cougars and wolverines among them—had Maura snatching up her own helmet to follow him, her boots slipping in the loose rock on the cave floor. She wasn’t afraid; it might turn out that he would need her help this time.

So closely was she following him that she came up against his solid back when he stopped short several yards into the tunnel.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Shh,” he admonished with a half turn of his head. He was hunched over in this part of the cave, which had a clearance closer to her height.

Curious, Maura peeked past his shoulder to see what had brought him up short: a young deer—it couldn’t have been more than a month old—and an adult mule deer that had to be its mother, lying on her side.

The doe barely lifted her head at the sound of the intruders, and Maura realized she must be injured badly.

In a trice she’d stepped around the man and knelt beside the deer. The fawn’s tiny hooves scrabbled in the dirt as it startled backward on stick legs.

“It’s okay, little one,” Maura soothed. She sat very still, waiting for the fawn to calm. She used the time to turn her headlamp upon the doe for a visual examination.

She was no veterinarian, but it didn’t look good. The deer had suffered third-degree burns in places, the fur along its side, back and haunches singed a ruddy black. The animal’s eyes were wide with fear, her breath was coming in short, labored bursts, nostrils flaring in distress and pain.

Maura swallowed back the lump that rose to her throat. “You’re okay,” she soothed. But she knew that, indeed, the doe was not okay.

The fawn, which stood quivering a few yards away, startled again when the man dropped to a crouch beside her.

“Looks pretty grim, doesn’t it?” he said softly.

She set her mouth firmly. “We’ve got some options for making her comfortable.”

He glanced sideways at her, doubt infusing every inch of his face. “You got a horse-size dose of painkiller somewhere in your fire pack? ’Cause that’s what it’ll take.”

She cocked her head to one side. “No, but do you hear that?”

He listened, and obviously detected what she had—trickling water coming from around the curve in the passage.

“An underground spring. The water’s coolness will help ease the pain of the doe’s burns, and drinking it will keep her hydrated,” the man said with a nod toward both deer.

“How to get her to it, though?” Maura watched the rapid rise and fall of the doe’s chest. “I mean, I’ve got a bottle of water in my pack but it’s full and we’ll need it ourselves. Still, even if I had an empty container to fetch water for her, she can’t lift her head to drink.”

He glanced about as if hoping to spy a solution within the confines of the cave. Then, in one fluid movement, he stood and shrugged out of his yellow fire shirt, then peeled off the T-shirt beneath it.

Maura tried not to stare. In the glow of light bouncing off the cave walls, every muscle of his arms, shoulders, chest and torso were as if carved in stone, like a Michelangelo statue.

And as perfectly built.

“Wh-what are you doing?” she croaked.

“Unless you’ve got a better idea, I’m going to soak this T-shirt in the spring, then trickle water into the doe’s mouth as I wring it out.”

She smiled. “It’s a simple solution, but it’ll probably work as well as any,” she admitted.

He disappeared around the curve of the tunnel, and when he returned he had the sopping T-shirt in his palm. He knelt again and held the shirt over the doe’s head. Squeezing gently, he dribbled water into her mouth. At first too frightened by the sensation to do anything but blow the water out with puffs of air, the doe quickly caught on and was soon lapping spasmodically at the droplets her rescuer continued to aim into her mouth.

He was concentrating on dribbling water into the doe’s mouth, so Maura gave in to the fascination of watching him. As powerful as the strength was in those hands of his, there was also a gentleness that moved her almost to tears.

So engrossed was she in the process, it took Maura a few moments to realize what his comment of “Looks like someone else is thirsty” meant. The fawn had toddled a few tentative steps closer, nose, ears and body quivering in simultaneous need and fear.

“Here,” she said, cupping her palms under the trickle of water until she had collected a few ounces. Walking slowly forward on her knees, she held out her offering to the baby.

He skittered back two steps. His eyes were huge and dark.

“Come on, Smokey,” she cooed, spontaneously naming the youngster after the famous bear cub. “Don’t be frightened. You’ve got nothing to be scared of. See how Mama’s drinking? Why don’t you take a drink, too.”

His ears alternating between pricked forward in curiosity and flattened back in fear, the fawn was a study in the contradictory urges of doubt and trust. Maura wondered madly what reassurance to give him so he would take those last few steps toward her.

“Okay, so maybe you do have a few things to be scared of,” she said softly. “There’s a big, mean fire out there. Your mama’s pretty sick, and you don’t have a clue what’s going to happen to her…or to you.”

She extended her cupped hands an inch more. The fawn quivered like an aspen. From the corner of her eye, she was aware that her companion had stilled his movements so as not to frighten the fawn. Aware that he watched her with interest.

“I’m here now, though, along with this guy here,” she murmured, tipping her head slightly in his direction. “He saved my hide, and that was not without some doin’. I just met him, but I’ve got the feeling he’ll take care of you, too, just like he’s helping your mama.” Another inch forward. “We’ll get out of this, Smokey, I promise. But we’ve gotta stick together, okay?”

The fawn still had not moved, and the animal seemed to teeter on a precipice of indecision that had to be worse than his thirst. It tore Maura’s heart.

“Take a drink, sweetie, please,” she whispered. “Trust me—trust yourself, too—and take a drink.”

The velvet brown eyes grew larger, the black nose trembled. Then the fawn took a tentative step toward her. Maura remained motionless, her arms and shoulders aching with the effort. She knew she could depend upon the firefighter remaining still, but if the doe showed any signs of agitation right now, that would be it for gaining the fawn’s trust.

She met the animal’s eyes unwaveringly.

And then he took another step, then another, before stretching his neck forward—and taking a tiny lap at the water in her palm. His nose tickled, yet Maura twitched not a muscle. He drank all that she had to offer, then toddled backward and sank down next to his mother.

Relieved and happy, Maura let her arms drop to her lap.

“You got some kind of sweet-talkin’ ability there,” the firefighter said quietly.

“Which has its merits…and its faults,” she said pensively.

“What do you mean?”

The fawn had begun licking his mother’s ear in his own offering of comfort. “I had quite a bit of contact with wildlife during my fieldwork in the forestry program at the University of Montana,” Maura answered. “I learned then that animals should be afraid of us humans. We’ve done nothing to earn their trust. We’ve ruined their home, rather than taken care of it for them. The Rumor fire is proof positive of that. When it comes down to it, that’s why I became a volunteer firefighter. I know the NIFC is still investigating how the Rumor fire got started, but it’s pretty clear it was a person—”

“And so it’s only fitting that we humans risk our lives to stop it,” he finished for her.

“Right. And if we’re able to save even one of the thousands of animals who’ll die before it’s contained for good—” she lifted her chin a notch in defiance “—then I’m glad to have taken the risk.”

To her dismay, she found herself fighting tears yet again.

“Maura.”

She took her gaze off the fawn to look at him. Those gray eyes of his virtually glowed, fascinating her. How could a shade one normally thought of as cool and remote be so vibrant and compelling?

“Okay, so maybe there is a place for powder puffs on a major fire,” he murmured with such respect—albeit somewhat grudging—that she forgot to chafe under the nickname.