On the canyon floor below, he knew, were the flatlands and farmland of unincorporated Linda Vista, where the Sierra Madre mountain range tapered away into the Crescenta Valley. Here, the present-day—ice delivery, telephones lines, legal services, electricity—was subservient to the agrarian past of citrus belts and moldering, red-tile ranchos; farmers, working their plots in a checkerboard layout; harvested and exported lemons, blood oranges, tomatoes, grapefruit, tangerines, mandarin apricots, and twenty other cash crops. Question was: would these flames render them all scorched history?
