6
Jess couldn’t get a feel for Jill Conway-Jones. He remembered down at the wrecked engine that she’d been funny. But up here on the line, she was mostly quiet. When she spoke, it was to ask him about hotshotting.
They switched over to grubbing a twenty-foot line, which was just as exciting as it sounded. It was working the dirt with a Pulaski until there was nothing living in a swath that was hopefully wide enough to stop a fire from crossing—not even organic duff was allowed to remain. The cut trees would force the fire down to the ground, the removal of the branches and underbrush would rob it of fuels to slow it further, and the grubbed line would hopefully stop it cold.
But for everything she didn’t say, she more than made up for by doing. She’d tirelessly leaned into branches that
