The Alpine Obituary by Mary Daheim

have to take to get there.”
    “What a scamp,” I murmured as Scott Chamoud squeezed into the office.
    “There’s a forest fire up on Martin Creek,” he said. “Do you want pictures?”
    I gazed—as always with pleasure—at my handsome reporter. “How bad is it?”
    Scott shrugged. “Not too bad right now. But the woods are really dry. Look at all those wildfires we’ve had over in eastern Washington. The arrow on the Skykomish Ranger Station sign still points to ‘extreme danger.’ ”
    It had been a terrible summer for fires, not just in Washington, but across the entire country. Until now, Skykomish County had been spared.
    “Do they know how it started?” I asked.
    Scott was loading film into his camera. “A ground fire broke out early this morning. Careless campers, maybe.”
    “They should be imprisoned,” Vida said.
    I agreed. “Go ahead, Scott, but be careful. Have they brought in a fire crew?”
    “Yes. They’re digging trenches to contain the fire. It’s only about two or three acres. Depending on how the wind blows, the fire could move northwest, right into Martin Creek.” His handsome face looked excited. Scott was still young enough to be enthusiastic about a new kind of assignment, particularly one with a hint of danger.
    “How are you going to get there?” I asked.
    Scott gave me a puzzled look. “In my Jeep. There’s an old logging road. The fire’s at the twenty-eight-hundred-foot level, just south of where Kelley Creek goes into Martin.”
    I glanced at Vida who looked blank, and no doubt sorry for it. I’d never been on that particular road, and I guessed she hadn’t either. There was nothing in the area that couldn’t be seen from a nearer, safer vantage point.
    “Can’t you get a ride up there with one of the Forest Service people?” I asked, feeling like Scott’s mother.
    Scott cocked his head to one side. “Emma, we’re not talking about a conflagration. I don’t mean to disrespect you, but it’s not like Yellowstone or one of those other mammoth fires like they have in eastern Washington.”
    “Okay,” I said, “but be careful. We haven’t had much rain lately. The fire could get out of control in a hurry.”
    Scott saluted, then dashed off to seek his thrill.
    “They intended to burn Alpine to the ground, you know,” Vida said with a dark expression. “Without Mr. Clemans’s mill, the town had little reason to exist. Thank goodness for my father-in-law and Olaf the Obese.”
    I paid brief homage to the old-timers’ entrepreneurial spirit, then leaned back in my chair and stretched a bit. “What are we doing, Vida?”
    “Research.” She frowned at me. “Why do you ask?”
    “Because I don’t think the
Blabber
or early copies of the
Advocate
are going to tell us much about Marsha Foster-Klein’s great sin. Whatever that may be.”
    I expected Vida to be annoyed, but she wasn’t. “Maybe we’ve found out everything we can from these old issues. At least we know there is a connection between Marsha and the Iversons.”
    “Which gets us nowhere.” I yawned. The afternoon had grown quite warm, and the sloping tin roof over my cubbyhole raised the temperature inside by at least ten degrees.
    “It’s a start.” Vida stood up, tugging her print dress down over the hem of her white slip. “Surely we’ll find something.”
    By five o’clock, Scott Chamoud hadn’t returned from Martin Creek. I stood on the sidewalk outside of the
Advocate
office and looked northeast. Sure enough, I could see billows of dark smoke in the further reaches between Mount Baldy and Windy Mountain. A small plane circled overhead, probably a Forest Service lookout. The wind had changed, now coming from the north. I could smell the smoke. That was not a good sign. The fire would be fanned in the direction of Highway 2 with only Deception Creek—which was very low this time of year—in its way.
    I told myself that Scott was probably having the time of his life. He’d