Mahoney was half a day ahead of the fire. If he was lucky.

It had already taken forty thousand acres, including solid old growth timber. It had taken two fire trucks, a water trailer, and the lives of three college students working the summer fire lines for money and excitement. It was heading for Ranceville, an Oregon Cascades town populated only by ghosts and elk for most of a century. And one crazy old man nobody ever thought about.

Except Mahoney. Who'd run away at age eleven from his grandfather, swearing that he'd never return. Granddaddy had been living up there since God was a boy. School, then Vietnam, then thirty years of working in the Blue Mountains and eastern Cascades had kept Mahoney's promise for him.

"Weather ain't breaking before next week," he told Pog, his Australian shepherd.

Sitting on his raunchy old blanket, Pog had his nose out the window on the passenger side sniffing the breeze that reeked of engine oil and the death of forests. And whatever else the wind had to say to dogs. Pog thumped his tail once at the mention of his name, but didn't turn.

Mahoney kept the old yellow Dodge Power Wagon on the trail by brute force. Utility crews came up here once or twice a decade to service the high tension lines. Their chainsaws kept the big trees out of the track. Even so, the truck had to bull through thickets he couldn't have walked through without a machete. Sharp, bitter-scented greenery pulped under the tires sent the truck sliding toward the edge at every bend in the trail.

He swung the truck round a fractured outcropping to a steep vista of Douglas firs and lodgepole pines footed a thousand feet below by steep walls of glacial gravel and the icy white thread of a stream. Ranceville was nose-ahead of the Dodge, or would have been if the old truck could have flown. Mahoney figured on another hour of fighting his way along the last several miles of trail to reach the rotten mine head. Not to mention the town which spread below it like so many broken match boxes.

He sighed as something thumped too loud and hard beneath his feet. Half a day, God, Mahoney thought. Give me twelve more hours..

May the second, 1863.

Jones and the second Chinee cook froze last month, but there weren't no more snow for a while after that and the diggings resumed. The first cook wailed and banged on pans until Mister Rance and I was forced to beat him to quiet him down.

We found a good seam of silver and lead here. All the white men drew straws for to see who would go down into the valley to fetch mule teams to haul out the goods. We all reckoned the man who went would have the emptiest pockets despite everybody's braying resolve to Christian sharing. As Mister Rance said silver fresh from the ground would tempt Christ himself to set aside a private share.

Mahoney took the short straw. He was in a temper ever since the Finney brothers signed up for soldiers. I reckon he misses Little Finney more than a man ought to miss another man. Mahoney offered me 8 oz. of coarse gold to switch with him, but I told him to go to the devil. After that he offered to send me to the devil in his place.

It took two more hours to reach Ranceville, at the cost of both of Mahoney's spare tires and a broken shock. Mahoney would ordinarily have abandoned the Dodge and walked, but he needed the truck to get back out ahead of the fire. Of course, he was out of tires.

The old mine head -- tower and winch above the number one adit -- still stood. It was the last one, built in 1892 after the spur line was brought in. Rebuilt from the 1881 fire, Ranceville had already by then been sliding into mossy obscurity even though the seam would remain rich for two decades more.

Even now, perhaps, if anyone cared to work it.

The rotten wood served no more than barn owls now, but it still marked the town. Just past it on the downhill side were the chutes leading to the ruins of the stamp mill.

Then the town itself, buildings clustered along the hillside beyond the mine head like goslings after their mother. The water-stressed wood was long gone to mold, moss and dry rot, but many of the structures held their shape due to some alchemy of forest and flower. Roofs once dark with shingles were shaggy green brows frowning atop bow-walled buildings. Huckleberry and bear grass and a dozen other mountain flowers spread a knee-high carpet in Ranceville's street, their only traffic bees and butterflies.

Mahoney pumped the old Dodge to a shuddering, squealing stop. His hands gripped the wheel tight, knuckles pale as the bear grass blooms, though Pog was already out the window in a joyous dance of release from the tyranny of seat and windshield. With the pinging of the engine and the dog's rustling and yips, it was quiet as a mineshaft here.

Only the smell of distant fire reminded Mahoney why he had come back.

He put his shoulder to the door and got out. Scanning the sky to the south, Mahoney could see the darkening smoke. The whole sky had a weird pearly light, like the bruise-yellow that came before a tornado. The smell was everywhere -- that cindery, papery scent of woody distress. By tonight there'd be all kinds of wildlife moving through here, heading north.

Mahoney looked around the town. It was full of buildings from a time when an ornate storefront was a thing of pride. Between some of them were shacks, jack-built from timber country poverty and tall heartwood but outlasting their proud neighbors.

Ranceville Feed and Dry Goods. Silverlode Bank and Assay. Woolrich's Stable. Finney's Stable. Best Shanghai Laundry. The jail, though they'd never had a sheriff. First Methodist. Second Methodist facing it from across the street, near identical buildings separated by forty feet of right-of-way and some long forgotten middle-class schism.

Mahoney could name every building in town, and most of their histories. He'd heard the old man tell their stories enough damned times.

His grandfather could be dead, but Mahoney didn't think so. He would have known, even after forty years apart. For one, the endless stream of minié balls, uniform buttons, mining tools and arrowheads that Mahoney seemed to find everywhere he went had not abated. Sendings, he'd always thought, from his grandfather.

The old man was a crazy bastard, and mean as snake to boot, but no one deserved to die in a fire. His father had when their trailer burned in Bend, when Mahoney was nine. He be damned if he'd let his grandfather go the same way. Mahoney looked around then cupped his hands to bellow, "Granddaddy! Where are you, old man?"

October, 1865.

I reckon the War Between the States is truly over. Just as well we was here, bringing silver and lead out by the pot full. Little Finney come back from the First Oregon last week without his brother. The boy told us he lost Big Finney somewhere in the Idaho territory but he couldn't say how. Mahoney was near to a quivering pet over the boy but Little Finney wouldn't hardly say his name.

Mister Rance allowed as seeing as how Little Finney had served with the cavalry he could tend our horses and mules. He set Little Finney up in the hay barn and had one of the lamp boys sleep there nights to keep Little Finney from doing himself a harm.

Three days later me and Mahoney and that pack of Willamette Valley farm boys Mister Rance brought up was shoveling out mine carts on account of the tip was busted again. Little Finney come up to us wearing the rags of his Union blues with a musket in his hand what had a bayonet upon it. He commenced to hollering about Nez Perce and some corporal named Jewitt or Dewitt or some such.

Mahoney damn near cried for Little Finney right there. He tried to grab hold of that rifle and damn us if Little Finney didn't stab Mahoney in the thigh. Them farm boys piled on and there was a lot more hollering and blood. Mister Rance locked Little Finney in the strong room at the mine office. Said if he could eat the silver he could have it.

Day after Big Finney come up the road with a white mule and pack full of dried beans. We all lined up to cheer which he for sure didn't cotton to. After thumping and yelling a while he explained that Little Finney had been killed in the Powder River country.

Mahoney run off to the strong room like as if his shoes was on fire. He was shouting for Little Finney. Mister Rance followed him with the key and opened it up. Weren't nothing in there but silver and the payroll chests. Weren't no sign of Little Finney nowhere except them ugly stitches Redbone Swenson put in Mahoney's leg.

Dead and buried in the War that boy was but he come back to stay a few days and stab a man. Some ghost I told Mahoney. Solid as a ham. He just swore to gut the little renegade if they ever met again in this life or the next. I don't know if Mahoney was more mad that Little Finney came back or that he left again.

Mahoney trudged around Ranceville for the better part of an an hour. Pog chased butterflies and sniffed at old deer scat and was as generally unhelpful as a dog ever could be.

There were no signs of life. The old hotel where Mahoney had lived when he was boy now had blackberries growing in the front door and a rhododendron blocking the back. The ground-floor windows were sealed with years' worth of moss and cobwebs.

No one had been in there for a long time.

He checked both stables, and any of the buildings with enough roof left on them to keep the rain out of a room or two.

No one.

No where.

Had the old man died? Granddaddy had always lied about his age, claiming to have lived through the Civil War, but he had to be closing in on a hundred by now. Mahoney remembered his grandfather as being incredibly old back in the 1950s, but as a child even his father had seemed old.

Mahoney finally found his way back out to the middle of the road. The reek of smoke was stronger, a tang that nipped at the linings of his nose.

"I know you're here," he said, this time in a quiet voice. "You're never going to die, not without me knowing it."

Something clattered, but when he turned to look it was just a hawk landing on the roof of the jail.

"You're part of me," Mahoney went on. His voice was a little stronger. "I'm part of you. I won't let you burn with this town."

"Ain't nothing in this life gonna burn for certain but a man's soul."

Mahoney turned. His grandfather sat on the hood of the Power Wagon. The rust-speckled yellow set off the old man's blue pea coat like a postmodern flower. He had a moth-eaten Union army forage cap pulled down to keep his face in shadow. One liver-spotted hand clutched a home-rolled cigarette. The butt shook, sending stuttering wisps of smoke into the afternoon air like a prophecy of the flames to come. The other hand held a rusted bayonet propped across his knees.

Get to it, Mahoney thought. "You've got to come with me, sir."

"Ain't never done nothing I had to yet. Why you reckon I'm a'starting now?"

"The fire, Grandpa. There's a big fire coming for you."

"I seen fire before. I'm still here."

"I can't let you die."

"You don't get it boy." The old man hawked and spat, or tried to, though as always he seemed dry as an old well. "I ain't never gonna die."

August 11, 1881.

Nine of us still alive. Fire swept across the mountain and took Ranceville in its grip like the hand of angry Providence. Mister Rance slapped Thom Woolrich to the floor to stop him screaming prayers. It got so hot here in the strong room that the lead sheets by the wall came soft. We lost four to that heat. Riddley Horan. Bobby Spotsworth. Bobby's sister Floriana that Mahoney had been courting at Mister Rance's say-so. Shanghai Wong's oldest boy.

They are all stacked in the corner together now. I reckon they're waiting to be set free just like the rest of us.

When the fire came I figured to hide down the mine shaft. Mahoney and Mister Rance argued against it. They said the fire would take all the air from inside there and we'd die like mice in a barrel.

Big Finney got angry this morning. Said he heard his brother crying outside. Little Finney been dead a long time but Mahoney was all for tearing the door open and heading out into the heat. Shanghai Wong and me held him back. Mahoney didn't much like being handled by a Chinaman but I reckon it beat breathing fire.

The heat fell today. We're going to open the strong when we reckon it's sundown outside. Dusk is lucky maybe. A time when the world changes and the eye don't see everything that walks.

I'm scared of seeing Little Finney. The fire might of made him into something worse.

Mahoney's grandfather hopped down off the hood of the truck. "Come on," he said, then limped away, back toward the mine head. Mahoney whistled for Pog and followed, smelling the distant fire. The smoke over the ridges to the south was darker. He could hear muted rumble, more of a feeling that a sound. And dusk was coming. A bad night to be out in the wilderness.

Eight hours, maybe. Figure four or five to get back down the trail he'd broken open on the way up. They weren't dead yet, as long as they got on the road soon and the tires held up. "Grandpa, we've got to get moving."

"I am moving. Got something to show you."

They trudged through knee-high grass and flowers, Pog yipping and dodging. As his grandfather approached the mine head, the dog hung back, whining. Mahoney paused and stared up at the building.

Was it different? He'd played there as a boy. Nothing to upset the dog.

The wood was the same white-streaked pitch stained with moss. The brambles at the base weren't much different from when he'd last been here forty years before. There was a bare spot at the office door, where hand-chiseled slabs had been laid as flagstones. They still had scorch marks from the 1881 fire.

Pog began to back away. His eyes rolled to whites, pleading with Mahoney. Don't, said the dog. Please, said the dog. Come back with me, said the dog.

The animal was too dumb -- or trusting -- to fear a forest fire, but whatever the old man had inside the mine head scared the dog to death.

"Truck, Pog," said Mahoney. The dog slunk away.

The old man stopped at the strong room door set into the base of the tower. "Did you set it?"

Mahoney was brought up short. "What?"

"The fire. Did you set the fire?"

"What? I..." He didn't even know what to say to his grandfather. Mahoney would no more set a forest fire than he would drink gasoline.

"Mister Rance set the 1881 fire. Or put Little Finney up to it, which amounted to the same thing. Too many Chinamen up here, too many Catholics. Even a family of coloreds come to town. He burned them out. He had in-su-rance to rebuild the mine." The old man drew that word out of his mouth like candy. "I figured maybe you set this one. Finish the job here at Ranceville." He looked around the long-dead town. "Ain't no in-su-rance this time."

Mahoney was familiar with his grandfather's fixation on Little Finney. He'd heard the same stories. Hundreds of times. "They were all crazy from lead poisoning from the mine."

"Like Hell." The old man tapped his chest. "I was there. I ain't crazy."

"You weren't here then, Grandpa. No one lives that long. You'd have to be over a hundred and fifty years old."

The old man tugged open the door to the mine office. In the distance, Pog howled.

June the 22nd, 1898

Mister Rance tried to shoot Mahoney last night.

No, I need to tell it like it come to me.

I woke on account of fighting in the street outside the hotel. I buttoned on my trousers and stepped outside. Mahoney's half-breed woman was on the porch with Mahoney's baby boy. The both of them was crying up a storm. And there was Mahoney rolling around on the street all set on killing the man he was fighting. I saw that it was Little Finney. He didn't look a day older than he ever had. For a ghost that boy does get around.

Mister Rance came out of Missus Loftus's house with his pistol cocked and his trousers uncocked. He yelled once at Mahoney then loosed a shot. One of them hollered like a pig but I couldn't tell you which. I saw a knife flash in the moonlight then there was blood like a mountain stream. Little Finney staggered off into the dark dragging Mahoney with him. I was all set to go after and help but Mister Rance pointed that gun at me next.

You didn't see nothing he said walking to me. I seen nothing I told him. Mahoney's woman just kept crying.

I don't know for sure what I really saw but this morning Mahoney was gone like he hadn't been here for the last thirty five years. No one said his name. No one made to look for him. His room at the hotel was empty. Every bit of cleaned out. Even his woman was gone though Janie the bar girl had care of the baby. She wouldn't say nothing about it.

I tried to follow the blood outside but it had been swept over.

Tonight when we was drinking and playing draw poker Big Finney commenced to talking about the Nez Perce and their spirit doctors and what he saw down some caves in the Powder River country. He ain't never talked about that since he come back from the War. Me and Thom Woolrich and Shanghai Wong just played our cards and for once in our lives shut up. I can't rightly write down here what was said but it ain't no wonder both of them Finneys are crazy as hares whether they be dead or alive.

And now Little Finney finally took Mahoney with him down to whatever hell pit that boy's been living in all this time. Or maybe dying in. I miss Mahoney already. I hate that crazy old bird for all he said and done but we've been shitting in the same pit most of our life.

Hate or no hate, some men love their wives less than I love Mahoney. Reckon I'll raise his boy for him.

"Come on, boy." The old man stood in the open door of the strong room, half hidden from view.

"No, Granddaddy." Mahoney could hear the distant fire roaring to itself. "Enough of this shit. This town's cinders in a few hours. I've already stayed too long."

Pog howled in the distance.

"Get in here."

Mahoney could smell something rank from where he stood, forty feet from the office door. A grave smell, or a spoiled freezer. God only knew what the old man had dug up.

"All right." Humor him, Mahoney thought. Do this one last thing, whatever the hell it is, and get Granddaddy out of here. He trudged toward the door, but Pog slammed into the back of Mahoney's legs, forcing him to stumble.

"What's the matter with you, dog?" Mahoney shouted.

Pog stood his ground, whining, then snapped at Mahoney's leg.

Mahoney shook Pog off and turned back to face his grandfather. The old man was pointing his bayonet at the dog, trembling with anger. "Get away from that beast and get up here."

Pog sank his teeth into the leg of Mahoney's jeans and tried to pull him backward.

Damned dog's smarter than I am, Mahoney thought. He reached down to gently touch Pog's head, then looked his grandfather in the eye. He could swear there were sparks there under the bill of the forage cap, tiny gleams echoing the holocaust to come.

The old man was too crazy to live. At least, too crazy for Mahoney to help. He turned to walk back to the truck, the dog slinking beside him

"History, boy," yelled his grandfather. "This country was built on what we pulled out of these mountains. What we pulled out of the west. It's your history."

Mahoney turned and yelled back, "It's going to burn!"

"This town burned before, it'll burn again. You want to be part of history or not?"

Mahoney walked away from history, back to his truck. Pog was a dancing bundle of nerves and muscle and fear. The fire smell was strong now, cinders on the air. Daylight dying in the west was matched by a false, mottled sunrise to the south. The air was electric, like before a storm.

He had stayed too long.

Mahoney started the truck, cut a circle among the flowers, and headed back out of town. He looked up the hill to the mine head and the strong room as he passed. Flames shot out of the open door, a little fire set to welcome to large.

History was burning ahead of schedule.

Inside the fire Mahoney could see two men dancing in each other's arms. It was a waltz, something slow, adagio for flames and jealousy. One was old, the other lithe and youthful. Granddaddy and...who?

The name came to Mahoney with the certainty of a landslide.

Little Finney.

He'd never separate the lies from the truth, but Mahoney knew that was Little Finney his grandfather danced with. Just like he knew he'd never find another minié ball or uniform button in his life.

"They can both just damn well burn and like it," he told Pog, finding second gear through the tears stinging his eyes. "Hell's coming for them anyway."

Pog pushed something toward Mahoney, something that been lodged under the dog's blanket.

It was the old journal his grandfather used to read aloud from when Mahoney was a boy. The history of Ranceville and the Finneys and some other man named Mahoney, that Granddaddy always claimed was him though he'd never pass the book over for inspection.

Mahoney drove into the fire, praying to make it to the distant blacktop before the fire jumped that road and came roaring toward him. Ash rained on his windshield like snow. He propped the diary on the dash so he could keep one eye on his history while watching the trail in the distant glow of the coming flames.

The End

Bio

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon with his family and their books. In 2004 his stories will appear in numerous markets, including Asimov's, Leviathan 4 and Realms of Fantasy. He can be reached through his Web site at http://www.jlake.com/.