Lake of Fire (30 page)

There, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his sheepskin coat. “What’s the matter with you this morning?”

“Nothing. I am merely going to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone at Hank’s invitation.” She lifted her chin.

“Hank!” Norman had mentioned that, but, “What do you mean playing both ends against the middle?”

“Me? You came into the dining room to ask Constance to go walking with you.”

“You know what I wanted to talk to her about.”

“Do I?”

“Look,” his blood pressure rose, “I am trying to be a man of honor in letting her know that our … association in St. Paul, while heartfelt at the time, has not stood the test of separation and … meeting someone else.”

“She told me you never asked her to marry you, but you’ve played along with the betrothal. Were you perhaps planning on asking her soon?”

“For God’s sake, Laura.” His hands came out of his pockets where he’d been keeping them prisoner, and he trapped her against the wall.

She shoved against him. Her palms on his chest felt warm through his shirt.

“Stop it. I don’t want you.”

“If you don’t,” he ground out, “you should have thought twice before you …”

“Before I what? I have kissed other men, and I have seen you kiss another woman.” Her voice was taut. “The last I heard, it did not have to mean anything.”

He pressed his palms against the rough wood to keep from taking her slender face in his hands, especially after she swore it meant nothing.

Her mouth twisted. “Things happen all the time that don’t mean a thing. Last night you sent me away instead of letting me stay and meet your uncle.”

“There were things that had to be said. Ugly things.”

“I can handle ugly. I handled watching you finish Frank Worth. I handled killing a grizzly. You should
trust me, especially with what I know.”

Pledge or threat, he didn’t know. “We should trust each other, but somehow I didn’t expect that to mean you wanted to be with Hank.”

Laura kicked him smartly in the shin.

He flinched yet spoke softly. “You know some of my secrets, but there are more. Things no one else knows.” Close to her lips, he whispered, “You talked of kissing …”

From just around the corner, Forrest Fielding called, “Laura!”

She was certain her flaming cheeks must give her away, and she moved quickly away from Cord.

Constance’s voice blended with Forrest’s. “Have you seen William this morning?”

Cord’s eyes bored into hers. He had spoken of honor, and Constance had yet to be told.

Laura straightened her back to face her father. “Good morning,” she managed. She felt his sharp eyes missed nothing.

“A pleasant day to you, sir.” Cord bowed. He did not touch Laura as they walked into view of the carriages.

“Good morning, William,” Constance said sweetly, putting out her hand. Despite her brittle smile, Laura could see the knot of muscle beneath her cousin’s earlobe.

Constance’s outfit made Laura wish she had worn
something prettier than her laundered trousers and a shirtwaist. Her cousin’s starched cotton dress, white with tiny blue sprigs of flowers that matched her eyes, was topped by a darker blue pelerine, a short woolen cloak tied with silken cords tipped in rabbit fur. The long fall of Constance’s black hair brushed the back of Cord’s hand as he helped her up into the wagon.

Inclining his head to Laura, Cord offered to assist her, as well, and she felt the challenge in his eyes. Turning away, Laura saw Hank Falls approaching and smiled brightly. “Good morning.”

Hank took her hand, turned it over, and kissed it with a slow warmth that made her want to scrub her palm on her pants. He had dressed for the day in his habitual gray suit, in contrast to Cord’s denim trousers.

The driver passed out dusters to protect their clothes, and everyone donned them.

Cord swung up to sit beside Constance, giving Laura a view of the back of his dark head. Hank helped Laura into the rear seat, then pulled his lanky frame up beside her. Forrest Fielding climbed up with an effort and settled into the middle seat, his ample belly hanging over his belt. Norman Hagen joined him with, “It’s a shame your sister, Fanny, decided to stay behind.”

Cord turned to Norman. “And a pity Mr. Chandler is away.”

“Where is Edgar Young this morning?” Norman returned.

No one replied.

Laura leaned forward and put a hand on Norman’s shoulder. “It is most kind of you to amuse Constance. I saw you two dancing last night … you seem made for one another.”

Norman smiled and appeared to lose his train of thought.

The wagon started down the hotel drive. The chestnut team pulled smartly, their hooves raising a plume of dust.

For a few miles, the Grand Loop Road meandered through dense forest, redolent of pine. On their right, the shining silver stream of the Yellowstone River flashed in the sun. Yet, within an hour the peace was shattered, as they slowed beside a cauldron alternately vomiting noxious black mud and swallowing it into an underground chamber. Each emission was accompanied by a stout thud along with a background growl, as though some vile beast were trapped and trying to emerge. Clouds of steam roiled as the vagrant wind shifted, sweeping sulfurous fumes across the road.

Constance wrinkled her nose at the sharp, rotten-egg smell.

Burke Evans turned around on the driver’s seat. Nodding his round face at the group, he recited, “When the members of the Washburn Expedition came through thirty years ago, they heard the churning of Dragon’s Mouth Spring from the Yellowstone River, a quarter mile away.” Burke pointed farther up the hill, where a mud spring boiled and gave off a cloud that wafted more foul sulfur smell down. “Washburn’s
group named the Mud Volcano, as well.”

Laura wanted to get out and walk up the hill, to watch the surging ebb and flow and stand close enough to feel the heat pouring from the earth.

“Oh, drive on quickly.” Constance covered her nose and mouth with a corner of her pelerine in a gesture Laura found melodramatic.

A mile farther, thick forest gave way to a vista of broad valley, covered with a sea of grass and sage. The Yellowstone meandered across its floor, reflecting blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

Burke pulled the wagon to the roadside to continue his narrative.

“Some folks believe that thousands of years ago Hayden Valley was a lake.” He wrinkled his pug nose and pointed with evident disbelief toward the level tree line that rimmed the valley, several hundred feet above the river. “That was supposed to be the high-water level. Before that, three thousand feet of ice was supposed to be here … I can’t imagine the snow ever piling that high.”

“I believe it,” Laura said. “During the Ice Age, glaciers covered a good part of the world.”

Hank smiled indulgently and put his hand on her arm. “Look at the Hayden Valley buffalo herd.”

Laura looked at perhaps ten or twelve of the big shaggy animals, some lying in grass patches, others grazing. Their tiny-looking feet did not seem as though they could support their bulk.

Cord turned to Laura. “Not twenty years ago
there were thousands of buffalo in this valley. Now there are less than a hundred in the entire park.”

She didn’t miss how he glanced at Hank’s hand on her arm.

The carriage started off, and Burke Evans drove them to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Though the group could have lunched, as many did, in the dining room of the Canyon Hotel, they stopped to picnic at the Upper Falls.

Seated upon rocks arranged for the purpose, the party opened their boxes to find an assortment of sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs with a folded paper of salt, an apple or orange, and a thick oatmeal cookie. Invigorated by fresh air, Laura ate ravenously, noting that Cord, seated to her left, also made short work of the meal. Constance sat at a distance with Norman.

Hank, who had matched Forrest’s slower pace down from the wagon, and was just opening his box, studied the contents with suspicion. “That new Chinaman we hired as cook must have had a hand in this.”

“What’s wrong?” Laura swallowed the last of her cookie.

“I have distinctly requested that cloth napkins be provided for all picnics. There is naught but paper.”

Laura caught Cord’s eye and knew he was suppressing mirth, as she was. Within seconds, she gave in and laughed.

Cord joined in. Hank gave them a sharp look.

When they returned to the wagon, Norman adroitly escorted Constance to a seat beside him. Cord
swung Laura up and sat next to her, leaving Hank to sit with Forrest.

Burke guided the team downriver where he suggested that a rather strenuous hike would bring them to the brink of the Lower Falls.

Constance’s nose wrinkled. “How steep is it?”

“Quite, miss. In places, some folks sit and slide, and getting back up …”

“I’m not going.” Her hand rested on Norman’s forearm. “Won’t you stay with me?”

If Aunt Fanny had been present, Laura knew Constance would not have been left unchaperoned, but Forrest ignored the situation, alighting to see the wonders of the park.

Hank balked with a significant look at Constance’s ring. “Excuse me, but I was given to understand …”

Constance’s sudden laugh was the one Laura remembered from when they were both small, the one that meant she was scared but whistling in the dark. “This?” She offered her hand with the garnet, the gold band bright in the midday sun.

The silence seemed absolute, while Laura wondered who would speak next.

Cord stepped forward, leaving Laura, and took Constance’s hand. Lifting it to his lips, he kissed it. “A gift from the heart, to a lovely lady.”

“But not a promise?” Constance’s hand tugged free of Cord’s.

“No,” Cord spoke softly.

The path through the pines was steep, as advertised. The reduced party of four—Laura, Cord, Hank, and her father—followed Burke Evans as he ferreted out the most stable spots to place one’s feet. By the time the trees opened and the river above the falls was revealed, no one had resorted to sliding on their posterior.

They went down a little farther to the flattened area behind a stout rail, and the full impact of the canyon struck.

Stretching for miles, the gorge cut twelve hundred feet into rocks made rotten by the invasion of hot mineral-laden waters. Downstream, the walls of weathered rock rose in elevation so that the canyon deepened. Steep slopes topped with cathedral-like spires had been carved by wind and water into jutting shapes … here resembling busts of the heads of ancients, there a woman or man toiling beneath a burden.

Promontories capped in crimson and swathed in broad streaks of mustard, rust, and ochre marked where iron-rich waters had stained the pure white walls. As the mineral-rich zones graded into country rock, there were washes of charcoal, lemon yellow, and all shades between.

Thermal seepage from deep in the earth continued, a steaming stream of water appearing like magic halfway up the canyon wall.

The river that powered the trenching ran swiftly. High country snowmelt poured in a clean green flood
to the brink of the cliff, then plunged through the narrowed neck over three hundred feet in a white roar. Below the falls, the river continued on its way, an emerald strand woven with white water.

On the other side of the gorge, Burke informed, it was possible to take a trail equipped with wooden stairs and railings down to the base of the falls on a tour guided by “Uncle Tom” Richardson.

Laura moved to the brink of the precipice, spray dampening her face and hair.

She noted it was not Hank’s but Cord’s hand that steadied her; she laughed into the wind created by the torrential cascade. She wasn’t certain what had transpired above, but she wanted to believe Constance and Cord had parted ways.

The wind lifted a strand of her hair and blew it back into Cord’s face. She fought the urge to lean against his chest and look up at the summer blue sky through the clouds of mist, then succumbed. With his support, she lifted her face; the drifting spray made the rock walls look black a hundred feet above the falls. Constantly shifting prisms of color shimmered out of reach but seemed so brilliant she imagined flying through the rainbow like the fishing ospreys.