The afternoon had started out like any other Sunday in the northern Black Hills — a light wind brushing the grass, clouds stacking over the ridges, the quiet rhythm of a rural day. Then the smoke appeared, first as a faint smudge on the horizon, then as a column with a purpose, and by the time the first call went out, something in the air had already changed. The False Bottom Creek Fire had been born between Spearfish and St. Onge, about a mile west of Highway 34 near 196th Street, at approximately 3:42 p.m. on a day when thunderstorms…