Kat came up off the bed, startled by the sound in her dream. She stood and listened and all she heard was silence. She could feel her heart pounding and slowly she sat back down on the bed. She told herself that she had only dreamt of the noise but it had been so realistic. Maybe, she thought, it could have been a crack of thunder. After all she had seen signs of a storm all day. She sat there waiting to see any signs of lightening zigzagging across the room but there was nothing. After several minutes of watching she smiled to herself and climbed back into her bed. She looked up at the ceiling and felt her eyelids slowly begin to close.
Suddenly, just outside her window, she heard the sound of a horse galloping away and she quickly jumped up onto her feet.
Kat pulled on her slippers and robe and ran to the door in the kitchen. As she pulled the door open, the whole room was lit up from the light of flames coming from the barn.
“Oh my God, the barn’s on fire! Oh, the poor horses. Paco! Paco, where are you?”
Kat ran out into the night screaming for Paco. She flew over to his quarters and banged on the door. It hadn’t been latched and it flew open without any effort. Looking around she could see that Paco wasn’t in there. She yelled over and over again but there was no answer. She turned around and ran back to the burning inferno. The fire was at the back of the barn and she felt that she could reach the horses and turn them loose before they were injured. She flung the door of the barn open and was stifled from the heat that poured out onto her body. The smoke made everything difficult to see inside the barn and Kat walked carefully over to the stall where she knew that one of the horses would be. She opened up the gate and the horse almost ran over her in its haste to get away from the fire. She took the edge of her robe and placed it over her mouth so that she could breathe without inhaling the smoke fumes. Feeling her way further into the barn she finally found the stall of the second horse and opened the gate. Again the terrified animal came within inches of stomping Kat into the floor as he fled from the flames. Her eyes were watery and burning and it was hard to see where she was going. Suddenly Kat tripped over something big lying on the floor of the barn and went sprawling. As she pulled herself back up she turned back and looked down close to the form. It was Paco.
Kat got down on her knees and tried to find Paco’s wrist in order to see if he had a pulse. She finally found it and realized that Paco was still alive, but barely. The flames and the smoke had intensified by all the hay that lay around the barn and she could feel the heat burning her face. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to carry Paco to safety so she did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed hold of his ankles and started backing up while she pulled him along. She became aware that Colette was by her side and she too was pulling on Paco. It seemed to take forever but finally they had him lying on the ground of the compound, out of reach of the burning barn.
“Momma, what happened? Is Paco dead?”
“No Colette, he’s still alive. Be a good girl and run into the house and bring out a quilt and a pillow. I can’t move Paco anymore so we must make him as comfortable as we can. Hurry, scoot.”
Colette ran as fast as her little legs would take her and in no time at all she was back beside Paco with her blanket and pillow. Kat raised Paco’s head up and slid the pillow underneath it and then she covered him with the blanket to try and keep him warm. She sat and watched as the barn began spitting off chunks of its roof and saw the red embers of it twirling in the air and then floating down. There was nothing she could do to stop the fire. She could only hope that it would burn itself out before it torched any of the other buildings. A small breeze came up, probably created from the heat of the fire and the embers began floating further and further away from the barn. When she realized that there was nothing she could do, she turned to Paco and pulled down the blanket. It wasn’t hard to see in the light from the fire that Paco had been shot in the shoulder. Blood covered his shirt and the skin was broken around the entry wound. She tried to examine it to see if the bullet was still in there but each time she touched him he cried out in pain. She finally decided to wait until she could get him into the house before she examined him. How she was going to move him, she had no idea. But she would think of something. Kat gave up a prayer of thanks that at least Paco was still alive.
For several more minutes she watched the barn burn. Who could have done this to her? Of course, there is only one person who would do this, that man, whoever he is, but why? And he shot Paco too. This person is so dangerous.
Her mind was concentrating so hard on trying to reason this out that she didn’t notice the small embers that were being blown around and suddenly they began to fall on the roof of the house.