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That was what you got overnight. The land stopped giving back the day’s heat, the cold settled into the low places, and anything riding in the air settled with it. They were camped in a basin, so it made sense. But the air carried the acrid smell of smoke, though no ash yet. He couldn’t see any glow beyond the hills, either. That was something at least.

Behind him, Jodie crawled out of the tent and quickly put on her boots. “Willow’s up,” she said, raising her phone to show him the text. “She’s already on the radio.”

“Good.”

She stood beside him and looked where he was looking, and he watched her do the same arithmetic he’d just done, in about a quarter of the time. “I’m going to go coordinate with her.”

Mac nodded and pulled on his shirt as she hurried toward the cluster of tents. Goblin followed Jodie for several yards, stopped, then came back toward Mac. He didn’t settle. The dog made another slow circuit around the tent, ears working, nose constantly testing the air.

Lights were already beginning to appear. A flashlight swept across the ground. Someone coughed hard enough to wake whoever the smoke hadn’t.

Hank’s porch light came on. Then the yard light, which turned the whole camp into something out of a bad dream, every tent and truck and folding table lit flat and orange, smoke moving through it in slow sheets.

Hank came down off the porch already dressed, which meant he hadn’t been asleep either. He went straight past the tents toward his barn without stopping to talk to anybody.

His horses come first. Of course they do.

Within four minutes there were twenty people in the yard, and about nineteen of them were asking the same question.

Willow appeared with Jodie, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she walked. “It’s the same fire,” Willow told Mac. “Unless something new started in the last couple hours. Last update I got before I went to bed had it west of us and moving north-northeast.”

“You have service?” Mac asked.

“Barely. Enough to refresh the incident page once every geological age.”

“It’s probably an inversion,” Mac told her. “Colder air forcing the smoke down close to the ground.”

She nodded. “The thought had occurred to me as well.” She looked out over the hills to the west, probably looking for the same orange glow Mac had tried to spot. The night sky was still dark in that direction.

“Listen up, people,” Willow shouted as she clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “This is still smoke from the Horseshoe Draw fire, not a new one.”

“You sure about that?” someone called.

“Nobody’s told me different. Give me five minutes and I’ll have better than that.”

Willow unlocked her phone and called Harold. She looked relieved to get through to him without the call dropping. It sounded to Mac like the man was already awake. After a minute of quiet discussion, she disconnected.

“Everyone, BLM is closely monitoring the situation. Harold North is already on his way over with an update.”

Which was probably why Willow was able to get him on the phone. He was surprised the man was out and about in the middle of the night, but grateful.

Fifteen minutes later, headlights pierced the haze as Harold’s BLM vehicle came down Hank’s road. Hank had returned from checking on his horses and Willow filled him in.

Harold emerged from beside the agency truck, already dressed, radio in hand. “I’m getting an update,” he shouted to Willow as he approached them.

Mac watched Hank glancing toward his barn again. The man looked like he was crunching numbers in his head. His own horses. His buildings. The veterans who used this place. A group of temporary camp residents who had arrived expecting to argue about wild horses, not evacuate from a wildfire in the middle of the night.

In the meantime, Sandra was recording it all. She raised her camera toward the moon first, then began filming the camp.

Goblin trotted up to Jodie and sat beside her. She absently bent to scratch his head and he let her. Harold’s radio crackled loudly enough to spook the dog. He shot to his feet as Jodie dropped to her knees to reassure Goblin, and he quickly settled again.

Harold and Willow walked toward Mac, Jodie, and Hank. Harold spoke briefly into the radio, waited through another burst of static, then lowered it when he got to them.

“Okay. Fire perimeter hasn’t materially moved toward us. Wind shifted earlier this evening, and they’ve got smoke settling into the low country overnight. We’re catching the worst of it down here.”

Willow released a breath. “So it isn’t closer.” She glanced at Mac. They’d been right about the inversion.

“It’s not closer. Current projection still keeps it well west of us. No evacuation notice for this area, no pre-evac order. Fire activity is down overnight. Once the air starts mixing again after sunrise, some of this should lift.”