Michael Malone - Weebly

lackened brick shell. But that was the only human
structure lost, and, said the Argyle fire chief, people
ought to thank their lucky stars. The little Rampage
River had saved Dingley Optical Instruments, and so
saved Madder.
Westward, water in a storm of rain had battled fire
past dawn, had held the line at the edge of East Woods
and had defeated the flames before one touched
Dingley Falls at all.
Still, Dingleyans were stunned. For not only had
they suffered a major forest fire (and though the
vacation cabins and the little airport north of the lake
were intact, the mountain greenery looked so horrible
that Bicentennial summer tourism was bound to suffer,
too); they had also suffered on the same night a double
murder of their police chief and an active local
merchant. It was the worst thing that had ever
happened to them. Naturally enough, they had said the
same of some dozens of earlier misfortunes, including
severe winters, the spring the Rampage flooded, the
Depression, and the riots when old Luke Madder had
started a union strike in the otherwise gay nineties. But