Stone doesn't burn. If the fire stays in the roof and the men stop it at the wall, the counter might be intact. But you don't know, he said. Not yet. He stood beside her in the snow in his coat and his boots with one sock still halfway off his foot. and he watched the window and she stood beside him and watched it too.
It took an hour and a half to stop the fire from spreading. Matteo's men worked with bucket from the well and the snow itself, packing it against the north exterior wall to cool the heat, and Roy directed two of them onto the roof on the south side to clear the burning debris before the wind could carry it. Gideon was in it with them. She could see him in the fire light, working with his men, doing the thing he'd been doing his whole life, which was managing catastrophe through physical labor and force of will. The kitchen was damaged.
The chimney housing was gone. A section of roof approximately 8 ft across had fallen in, and everything within a certain radium is a section destroyed the ceiling boards, a section of the ceiling boards, a section of the counter beneath, the window frame on the north wall, which had cracked from the heat. But the fire was out and the south counter was intact. The croc was still on it. She found this out when the smoke had cleared enough to go back in.
Wrapped in a proper coat someone had thought to bring out. Her feet finally in boots. She stood at the doorway of the damaged kitchen and looked at the destruction, the blackened hole in the ceiling, the debris on the floor, the ruin of 6 weeks of work in this space. And then she looked at the south counter and the croc sitting on it undisturbed. Jaime was right behind her.
He went past her to the counter and put his hand on the croc. "It's warm," he said from the fire. "But it's okay. " She looked at the croc at the kid standing in front of it in the ruined kitchen in his half-on sock, one hand on the clay, making sure she had rules about what she was allowed to feel. She suspended them for about 30 seconds. Then she said, "We need to move the kitchen operations to the bunk house tonight.
The men will need breakfast at the regular time. Tonight, Emmett said from the doorway. The morning comes whether we're ready or not, she said. She looked at the damage and the workable space and did the calculation she was always doing. Mateo, is the bunk house stove large enough to heat a pot for 12?
It's not made for Matteo started. Is it large enough? She said. He looked at the stove. He looked at her with the right pots.
Then we start moving. Then we start move. They moved through the remainder of that night with the particular efficiency of people who are too tired to do anything except the next necessary thing. The she set up a working kitchen in the bunk house with what could be salvaged from the damaged room. Organized the undamaged provisions back into a temporary storage arrangement.