Lake of Fire (17 page)

Why should Laura be taken aback that life was turning out the way the signs had portended?

Though Laura had to endure arch suggestions that she was becoming an old maid, along with the suspicion that Joseph Kane had been the one to throw her over, Constance seemed immune. Though she was twenty-four, everyone acted as though her single status were the result of her impossibly high standards.

Only Laura knew her cousin secretly longed to be married.

It looked like she was getting her wish.

Turning away from the Lake Hotel, Laura walked along the shore. Though she knew the family expected her to join them for breakfast, she kept moving, putting distance between her and what she didn’t want to face.

She’d been a fool to think there was something between her and a man who had rescued her in the back of beyond. He had business to deal with here in Yellowstone and a woman waiting to marry him.

When she approached the soldier station, smoke poured from the stone chimney above the log walls. A few uniformed men stood outside holding mugs of steaming coffee.

“Good morning, miss.” The speaker had an earnest face and lively eyes magnified by thick spectacles. “You’re out early.”

Something in his sincere appearance caused Laura to confide, “I slept so poorly it feels late rather than early.”

The soldier smiled. “Some nights the demons keep me from sleep, and I wake with the same feeling.” He gestured with his cup. “Coffee?”

“Perhaps.” She looked at his insignia without knowing how to read his rank. “Corporal?”

“Sergeant Larry Nevers, at your service.” He clicked the polished heels of his boots together. “Cream, miss?”

“Black. It’s Miss Fielding.”

Sergeant Nevers gestured to another soldier, who moved briskly through the door into the station. He turned his attention back to Laura. “You’re staying at the hotel with your father?”

“Yes.”

“With all its luxury, you cannot find rest there?” The other soldier returned with a battered tin cup. “Miss Laura Fielding, this is Private Arden Groesbeck.”

The red-haired young man with a freckled face pressed the cup into Laura’s hands. She hooked her fingers through the side handle to protect them from the heat and inhaled the rich aroma that reminded her of the coffee Cord had brewed on the shores of Jenny Lake.

Though Private Groesbeck moved away, Sergeant Nevers waited in a listening pose. Laura lifted the cup, blew on the hot liquid, and sipped. Fortified, she
gave him a level look. “I shall remember your kindness, Sergeant. Perhaps it shall help me find the rest I need.”

He raised his drink in salute. “Please, call me Larry.”

Laura smiled. “Very well … Larry.”

The sun was full up when she decided to take her leave. As she started to walk away, Sergeant Nevers detained her.

“The soldiers come to the hotel, nights when the orchestra plays.” He ducked his head, and she detected a blush on his cheeks. “We, that is, the military, are encouraged to dance with the ladies who have traveled far.”

Laura decided she liked this stalwart young soldier. Extending her hand, she touched his callused palm briefly. “Then when we meet again, we shall dance.”

As full sun brightened the park, Laura had no watch to tell the time. After returning the coffee cup to Sergeant Nevers, she walked for what must have been hours.

Sergeant Nevers … Larry, had spoken of night demons. Hers were now of the day variety.

The falling arc Angus Spiner’s body had defined when he toppled from the driver’s seat. A stranger’s hoarse whisper, “Where’s your gun, boy?” Sparks spiraling from a campfire. Witch Creek’s cauldrons
boiling while the outlaw spied on her bath. Now that she had described him to Pinkerton’s man, there would be handbills posted, leaving no doubt that she had been the informant.

She tried to ignore the clutch in her chest.

It must have been ten o’clock when Laura decided she was hungry enough to turn back toward the hotel. Just as she did, she spied a ruined cabin, set inside the forest.

Built of pine logs, the tired building bore a luxuriant growth of summer grass atop its flat roof. The windows were boarded, and Laura imagined the former owners taking care to put the place in good repair, but knowing they were leaving it forever to the national park.

She went suddenly still. A man approached, cutting obliquely through the woods, from the general direction of the hotel. As he came closer, she recognized Hank Falls.

He looked different this morning, wearing a suit of buckskin instead of the gray wool he’d affected at dinner last night. His blond hair was no longer Brilliantined, as though he had dressed in haste.

She almost raised her arm to hail him, but stopped, curious to see what he was up to.

Hank stalked toward the cabin, looked in all directions, and slipped inside. The leaning structure looked as if it could be no more than one room, the door hanging on its hinges.

Laura waited, but he did not come out. She considered
going up and knocking, but the thought of being with him alone after he had pressed his thigh against hers made her turn away.

Hurrying toward her was another of the hotel guests, apparently out for a morning constitutional. As he drew nearer, she recognized the young man who’d been outside the barbershop with Cord last evening.

He saw her and started, then seemed to recover and tipped his hat. “Good morning, miss.”

With a murmured, “Good day to you, sir,” Laura passed him on the trail.

She walked on, over a hundred feet. There, she paused and looked back to see if Hank had come out of the cabin. He had not, and the man she had seen with Cord was not in sight, either.

This evening she’d ask Hank what a man who managed a fine hotel and owned a luxurious steamboat could want in a disintegrating hovel. She had encountered this same mystery in Cord, who seemed at home in both the forest and the drawing room.

As she drew closer to the hotel, her pace slowed.

When she returned, Aunt Fanny would no doubt scold about her running around with her hair hanging freely over her shoulders. Father would probably grouse about her wandering alone.

Laura looked toward the stables. If Cord were a guest, then Dante must occupy a stall. Perhaps the horse, at least, would be happy to see her after the journey they had shared.

Cord walked with Constance in the woods near the hotel. He’d asked her to accompany him after breakfast, thinking he needed to set her straight about their so-called betrothal.

“I had no idea you and Uncle Forrest were both trying to buy the hotel.” She shivered as the wind in the tops of the pines dropped down. “That was terrible the way you and Hank acted last night.”

“When I met you in St. Paul,” he replied in an even tone, “I thought I was the only bidder.”

He felt as though a stone lay across his chest, while he studied the meadow stretching from the forest down to Yellowstone Lake.

“I saw a postcard of your Excalibur in Salt Lake, with its white marble portico. The crystal chandelier looked as though it came from Versailles.” Constance placed her hand on his arm. “Will you take me there when your business is concluded?” Her burgundy satin skirts whipped against his legs.

As he hesitated over an answer, she reached up to tend her hair. The wind ruffled the long grass and whipped up whitecaps on the lake.

While he was wondering how to tell her things had changed since St. Paul, her hand slid down to his. “When are we going to set a date?” She extended her other hand, showing off the ring he’d given her. “Mother and I could probably find what we need for the wedding a lot faster than the traditional six months
to a year.”

She raised her face, as though hoping he would take the hint to kiss her. A bell sounded nearby.

Cord turned toward the sound. Beneath the trees, a split-rail corral had been built to contain six black-and-white dairy cows, their generous udders full. The wind brought the smell of the animals and their droppings.

Constance wrinkled her nose.

“They’re for the tent camp,” Cord explained. “Wylie’s advertises that no tourist camper shall go without milk or cream.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered.

Looking toward the untidy cluster of small sleeping tents arrayed alongside the big striped dining tent, Cord thought of Laura, camping out with him beneath the stars. He tried to imagine Constance in the same circumstance.

But Laura had deceived him about who she was, and last night she had shown every evidence of letting her father make a match for her with Hank Falls.

Constance frowned and pointed toward a tipi at the edge of the Wylie Camp. “What’s that? Indians?” Something in her tone tipped him that she would not take kindly to knowing his grandmother Seeyakoon had been a full-blooded member of a tribe.

Cord examined the construction of poles and skins that looked remarkably like the style used by the Nez Perce. “Who knows?” He shrugged.

Constance’s hand pressed his arm; her cornflower
eyes rose tremulously. “William …” Her voice was lower and sultrier than he’d heard it, and he couldn’t help but remember the quicksilver mystery of her laugh in springtime.

If Laura were going to be with Hank Falls, he should pull Constance into his arms like he’d done the last night before he left St. Paul. See if he couldn’t forget her green-eyed cousin.

Laura stretched her arm to offer Dante one of the withered apples she had found in a barrel inside the stable door. He whickered and lowered his great black head.

“You big baby,” she crooned. Seeing him brought back everything that had happened on the trail to Yellowstone. How deep was the bond between this noble animal and the man who trusted him enough to leave the stallion untethered when they camped.

Down at the other end of the long aisle, the tackies, as the stable help were called, saddled a pair of horses for tourists. But it was largely quiet since the morning wagon tours and the stage had departed.

A scraping sound announced someone opening the stable door at the near end.

“Dante?” Cord’s voice.

His horse tossed his head, and the apple Laura had offered rolled away into the hay.

Cord and Constance approached, walking into a beam of morning sunlight that streamed through a
crack in the roof. Laura saw that her cousin’s pale face seemed to glow above her burgundy satin dress.

“I thought I knew who you were,” Constance teased in a low tone, “but this cowboy stuff is a side I never expected.”

Laura gritted her teeth.

The couple moved closer. Laura scurried into an empty stall next to Dante’s. In the muted dusty light, she pressed her eye against a half-inch gap in the boards.

While Cord stroked his horse’s nose, Constance stayed well back in the middle of the wide aisle, hands clasped behind her.

“Hello.” Cord spied the fallen fruit and bent for it.

In the dimness, Laura could have sworn he looked right at her.

He offered the apple to Dante, who took it between his lips almost delicately. But after Cord’s fingers withdrew, he crunched with enthusiasm.

Constance grabbed Cord’s arm with both hands, and he turned toward her. Her rosy lips pouted, and she wrinkled her nose. “It smells like the dickens in here, but we’re all alone …”