A phone rang. Fritzi ignored it; a deputy picked it up. "Well," Fritzi went on, "you don't have to decide right now. But I'll handle it that way with your county back east."
"Excuse me, sheriff," the deputy said, "it's Onni Hautala. That fire on Devils Creek has crowned and crossed the ridge; spotted all over the next drainage. He says he's got a bad blowup on his hands, and wants you to shut down all the logging in the county till we get some rain."
The sheriff stood and took the phone. "Onni," he said, "you really think it's that bad?… That will make problems-hundreds more people not working. Hundreds more eating on credit or the county, or not eating at all… All right, if it's that bad, we'll shut them down. Maybe the state will hire them to fight the fire… Okay, I'll tell them you said it."
Fritzi hung up and turned to Macurdy. "So now the logging is shut down for a while, and you got to find something else. Probably fighting fire day and night. The deputy job is yours if you want it, unless we find something wrong. Now I've got a lot of phone calls to make. Come to my house at 6:30 for supper, and we talk."
Macurdy bought a watch, and it was 6:30 sharp when he knocked on the sheriffs door. A girl answered, in her late teens he thought, fair, blonde, and slender, not remarkably pretty, but nice-looking in a flowered print dress. Her eyes in particular took his attention. They were blue, with a tilt that reminded him of Varia's, though she'd hardly have Varia's pointy ears.
"I'm Curtis Macurdy," he said. "The sheriff told me to be here at 6:30."
She stepped aside, motioning him to enter. "Come in, Mr. Macurdy. I'm Mary Preuss. Dad just phoned. He'll be here in a few minutes." She was poised, her voice quiet, her aura reflecting-not self-deprecation, just modesty, he decided. And maybe a little shyness around men she doesn't know. An elderly woman stood in the living room, square-framed like Fritzi, wearing an apron, her gray-blond hair braided and coiled. She nodded, then exchanged words with Mary in a foreign language. His name was part of it.
"My grandmother doesn't speak English," Mary told him matter-of-factly. "Her name is Klara Preuss; she's dad's mom. She came from Germany-East Prussia, actually-after my mom died. To keep house and take care of me." She gestured toward an upholstered chair, straight-backed with wooden arms. "Won't you sit down?"
Macurdy sat. Mary took a similar chair opposite, while her grandmother chose a wooden chair close to the kitchen door, as if to keep an eye on the stove. For an awkward moment no one spoke, then Mary broke the silence.
"Dad told us what you did, the day before yesterday at Severtson's camp. That was pretty remarkable."
"So's your dad. Getting shot and his arm broken like that, and back at work again already."
The girl turned and spoke to her grandmother in quick German. The old woman grinned and spoke German back to her, then turned and looked at Macurdy, sharp-eyed but smiling. "She says," Mary told him, "that you're a bloodstopper-a kind of magician. That's something country people believe in where she comes from. Dad said when you touched his arm, the bleeding stopped, just like that. To her, that makes you a bloodstopper. And to him too, but he'd never put it that way."
Uncomfortable with the subject, Macurdy shifted away from it. "It's a good thing your dad's tough. He's had a lot to do today, with that big fire. I hiked out to Severtson's office; they've sent their whole crew to fight it. I'd have gone, too, except I'm supposed to talk with your dad this evening."
The two of them talked for nearly thirty minutes, with occasional brief pauses while Mary summarized in German for her grandmother. They talked about the Hard Times and Roosevelt, the PWA and the NRA. Macurdy knew little about government programs; his parents, to save money, had stopped subscribing to the Louisville paper. And of course, he'd been out of the country till four months earlier, though he said nothing of that.
He decided Mary was older than she seemed. Her looks suggested seventeen or eighteen, but her poise and maturity suggested several years more than that. "What do you do?" he found himself asking. "You sure know a lot about what's going on."
"We get the Portland paper, and my grandmother can't read it, so she has me read the major parts to her. In German that is, translating. She's really interested. She…"
There were footsteps on the porch, then the front door opened and Fritzi came in, slumped and gray-faced. "Hello, Macurdy. Hello Mary. Heda, Mama. I'm sorry to be so late. All hell has broke loose in the woods. It is already the worst fire since 1910, and no one knows how much bigger it will get."
Klara spoke curly to him in German and disappeared into the kitchen, Mary following. Fritzi lowered himself painfully, awkwardly into a wingbacked chair. "It looks like Severtson's camp will get burned out."
Macurdy thought of those magnificent trees, that awesome volume of timber. Fritzi talked briefly of other fires he'd known or heard about, then Klara called them to supper. The food was plain but good, like his mother's, Macurdy thought. Now that Fritzi was home, Mary left the talking to him. Macurdy wondered if it was the custom in Germany that the man of the house did the talking to male guests. When they'd finished eating, Fritzi got down to business.
"One question I got to ask. I should have asked when we talked in my office. Do you get drunk sometimes?"
"No sir. Never."
"Good. Earl asked Lars this morning, and Lars said he didn't think so. At least you never went to town."
Briefly they talked about the deputy job, and Macurdy agreed to take it. As soon as Fritzi heard from Washington County, hopefully the next day, the hearing could be held. After that he'd begin his training, on probation. Meanwhile he was to find a place to live, and move in. One of Fritzi's sisters-in-law was looking for a boarder.
Fritzi closed the conversation then: "I'm sorry, but I got to take my pills and go to bed. I hurt like hell. Be at my office at one." They got up from the table, and the last thing anyone said to Macurdy, except goodbye, came from Klara. No one interpreted for him, but Mary blushed brightly.
Walking back to his room in the Nehtaka Hotel, he wondered what the old woman had said. Something about him, he was sure. Whatever it was, he had something to think about, something that shook him, because he was strongly attracted to Mary Preuss. She wasn't beautiful like Varia, or sexy like Melody, but there it was as close to love at first sight, he admitted to himself, as he was likely to experience. And it troubled him, worried him, because so far he'd had no luck with love. Or actually he had, up to a point. Varia had been a wonderful wife, for the weeks they'd been together, but he'd lost her. And Melody had loved him passionately, until she'd drowned.
And there was his life expectancy to consider. And Mary's age: Fritzi had mentioned her high school graduation as having been that spring; she was as young as she looked. But in a dozen or so years she'd probably look older than he would.
Maybe, he told himself, he was making a mistake, staying in Nehtaka. Maybe he should go somewhere else. But he knew he wouldn't. He'd stay and see what developed.
6
A Strange Courtship
Depositions by Fritzi, Axel, and several of the jacks who'd witnessed the death of Patsy Hannigan, all supported Macurdy's testimony. Not that there'd been any doubt, but now the law was satisfied. No charges were filed against him, and for a few days he was a local celebrity. It would have been talked about more, had it not been for the giant Cedar River Fire, busily devouring some quarter million acres of prime timber.
The last embers had hardly cooled before salvage logging began, with crews at first living in tent camps. Macurdy didn't envy them. On Saturdays they came to town telling of work clothes hopelessly blackened from charred bark, and of clouds of ash that rose each time a tree was felled. It was, they swore, the worst kind of logging in the world, even worse than logging blowdown.