MEEKER — When a 60,000-acre wildfire is breathing down the neck of a small northwestern Colorado town, the locals don’t freeze. They follow their first instinct — to jump into action to protect themselves and their neighbors.

That’s how brothers David and Brian Smith found themselves standing at a crossroads about three miles west of Meeker just before lunchtime on Friday with two semitrailer-sized cattle haulers, along with a smaller livestock trailer and a couple of farmhands.

The Smith brothers, both ranchers, were waiting on a firefighter to escort them past a roadblock into the mandatory evacuation zone along Colorado 13. They showed up to help another rancher rescue hundreds of cattle stuck inside the perimeter of the Lee fire in Rio Blanco County.

Twin wildfires have scorched m

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