Morning Glory Murders

I’ll never forget that first sight of smoke billowing over the hills, turning the noon-day to midnight. Ma and Leona both shrieked and I ran to their side at the window and saw the plumes of black smoke pouring upward from the direction of the camp. As I raced from the house toward Ed’s place, George and Ed came barreling toward me in the flat bed. I jumped aboard and as we sped toward the sight of the fire, all of the neighbor men and boys; everybody, jumped on the back and we headed straight into that wall of smoke and flying cinders. We practically flew off the road and across the tracks, down the loggin’ road toward the camp. Lookin’ up we saw the flames devouring the trees. The camp was right in the path of the blaze. The wind came up like the Devil’s own breath out of Hell and everything succumbed…everything! I saw some of the guys with gunny sacks trying to pound out the fire in the office. Then seeing the tongue of flames lapping everything up, they ran stumbling and falling toward the truck. We turned that old Ford around, heading back out of the woods and down across the creek. We had no chance at saving anything. We hoped we could save ourselves. I guess that fire dined on the timber for about three days. We don’t know how that blaze ever stopped. It seemed it would burn all the way across the county. One thing’s for sure, it wasn’t stopped by human hands. It just stopped; burned itself out at the fork near the creek crossing by the bridge. Yeah just stopped! It was like the hand of God just held it there in the valley. What a sight! Nothin’ but black, scorched ground from the creek, up the valley, all the way past the camp and up the sides of all three mountains, the same ones that Ed, James and I have renamed the Three Friends since we formed the project. All the neighbors, and everyone from Bonner’s came out to fight the blaze, but we had no way of stopping it. Once it burned down, we all shoveled the still burning cinders over, and smothered them before they could spread out and restart. We chopped out the smoldering tree limbs and trunks to be sure it was over. Then God sent the rain to finish it once and for all.