After lunch on the seventh of March, a thunderstorm hit Mertzon, dropping the first moisture of the year in the form of big splattering drops mixed with pelting pea-sized hail. Small puddles ringed around in the dust on the front porch. I tore around the house gathering my stuff to take off to the ranch before the weather changed.

A sudden ring on the telephone solved that matter. "Monte, we have a fire in the 'House Pasture' in the draw coming from the 'Horse Trap.' Richard's getting a rain; we are getting a dust storm. I am filling the sprayer right now." I snapped into action, and told him I'd call the fire departments in Barnhart and Ozona. Also, I'd try to find one of the neighbors to help him run the sprayer until I reached there.

The dispatcher at the sheriff's office in Mertzon took down the directions to the ranch. She called the two fire departments. I caught Richard Vancourt at his outfit. He had to interpret my directions, as panic pulsation and broken nerve tip circuits jumbled the messages from my tongue to my brain. Richard's family has joined us on the south since 1932, so he knew our House Pasture and Horse Trap weren't down on the railroad north of him, like I was saying. His quandary was how was a grass fire burning in the din of rain falling on his outfit.

After a drouth lasts a few years, old hands learn to weigh each other's reports. Ring-weary prizefighters never become timekeepers after cauliflower ears and brain scramble forces retirement. The same is true of herders suffering from extended periods of weather failure. Not unusual for an acute case to try to mount his horse on the wrong side, or keep entering the passenger door of his pickup to slide over under the wheel. When the feed wagon has to roll over your foot at the first gate before you remember you failed to fill the hopper, the end is near at hand for the man, but not necessarily for his tormenter, the drouth.

The firemen stopped the fire along the county road. Dust and smoke mixed in a light mist smudged the windshields and blackened our hands with soot. Clouds hid the smoke from the neighborhood, or at least I hope that was the reason so few responded. (Ever since I saved a trapper's life down at the old ranch from asphyxiation one winter from butane fumes in the bunkhouse, my popularity has been under stress.) Once the fire trucks left, three of us patrolled the circumference of about 700 acres, plus what turned out to be a mile and eight tenths of smoldering fenceposts and old telephone poles. However, unlike previous grass fires (and the Divide is very fire-prone) winds whipped across the pasture so fast, not many stumps or cow chips burned on the periphery.

After supper, my helpers made one more round before going home. The south fire line reached 300 yards from the house. Smothered by smoke and dust, I was more comfortable sitting in the pickup on a high place keeping watch than breathing the aftermath. The cowboy further to the south promised to come in case it broke out again. Another friend smelled the smoke and also offered to give me a break.

At midnight, the skies cleared to the far horizons. Only a flicker of the storm flashed in the east. A lamb bleated in the stillness; off to the far left, the saddle horses ran into the burned area in a foolish and mysterious attraction to new ground.

My thoughts are always the same watching a fire burn down. Maybe the fences won't be as bad as you thought come morning. Maybe it'll rain next week. You could have lost your house. Going to kill some prickly pear and a few cedars. You aren't anywhere near as bad off as those folks up in Lovington, losing cattle and thousands of acres. I wish now I had sifted the ashes after the bunkhouse fire to save the conchos off Grandpa's saddle. Might have found the silver from his spurs, too.

The irony was we had been waiting for the right winds to do prescribed burns, when we had this wild fire "over the counter" burn. I had spent $2200 dollars on one fireguard and invested 36 hours of the ranch's steel track tractor time in another guard. But the lightning bolts didn't choose those plots to ignite.

Been pretty tough on the fence builders, propping the fence back, facing the March winds filled with the ash from burned grass. Also, losing the space and the old grass during lambing is hard. The prescribed burn has been postponed. I wish I had something to spare those herders up in New Mexico, who suffered the big losses.

One of the biggest lamb buyers to ever pencil shrink a sale used to console his customers by saying, "Maybe I can send you a basket of peaches next summer." But I am afraid even that promise looks hollow after a late frost hit last week.

March 30, 2000