Jake Dillard threw the axe into the back of his truck and drove twenty-three hours to Wyoming. Few people were left in that corner of the Medicine Bow, or in that corner of his family, but his grandfather remained, on both accounts.

His headlights cut through the thickened smoke. Gray ash floated down like goosefeather snowflakes. Jake wished it was snow, but there was no mistaking the murderous gleam of wildfire beyond the ridge.

He crunched up the end of the gravel drive and parked the truck. The old man sat on his porch in a hickory chair, tobacco smoke lingering in the yellowed ends of his mustache, his sinew hands wrapped around an ancient pipe. “Come sit with me,” his grandfather summoned.

Jake squinted at the hillside. “We oughta go.”

The old man ran his hand across his jaw. “I said sit, son.”

Jake took a shallow breath, his eyes fixed on the ridge. He sat.

“We built this place with our bare hands,” the old man whispered. “Our fingerprints are cast in the chinking of these walls. I am not alone here.” His pipe ember burned. “But there . . .” he nodded over the ridge toward Cheyenne, the flames far beneath his wetted gaze. “There I am nothing.”

“We can make it. We’ve got to go, now.”

“No . . .”

“Don’t be stubborn!” Jake yelled.

The old man chuckled. “Fetch the wineskin hanging inside the door.”

Jake’s eyes darted to the cabin and back to his grandfather. The old man took a long sip, wiped the wine from his mouth, and handed it to Jake. “This was my grandfather’s, too. With every drink, you’ll know yourself.”

Jake held the wineskin by its neck. He looked again at the wild flames cresting the ridge. The old man inhaled deeply on his pipe and sent the boy away. His tobacco cloud wafted into the air toward the wood smoke in the trees, until they became one.