a*s="Normal-epub">By the time they hit Day Five on the Deerness Fire in northern California, he’d been running at full tilt for over two weeks without a break; they all had. The Deerness finally laid down around midnight. Everyone had dropped where they stood and slept.
Now it was just coming up dawn. Clear of smoke, the pines of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest were a soft wonderland. The Black ranged across three ridges, but already deer and squirrel were nosing around the edges. A Steller’s jay c****d its black crested crown at him to see if he had any food, then flitted off with a high-pitched skreeka! of disgust when he didn’t make some offering.
“Tell me,” Akbar waved him over to help ready the gear for pickup.
“Tell you what?” Evan knew exactly what, but he really didn’t wan
