Lake of Fire (45 page)

Laura looked out the window at the growing light. From the direction of the stable came a group of mounted cavalry. Captain Feddors was in the lead, with Lieutenant Stafford, another fellow Laura recognized as Private Arden Groesbeck, and two soldiers she didn’t know. They appeared intent on their mission to find and bring Cord to justice.

Setting aside her cup and saucer, Laura rose. “I’m just going to lie down a while.”

Once in her room, she looked for her trousers. They weren’t on the floor where she was certain she’d left them along with Cord’s shirt, a pair of step-ins, and a petticoat. A search of the wardrobe revealed that housekeeping had not hung them up. No sign of them in the bureau drawers.

Laura knelt and looked under the bed. Nothing there, including her boots, which she knew she’d set side by side next to the metal upright of the frame. She went back to the wardrobe and saw that Aunt Fanny’s riding habit was no longer there.

Ten steps later, she was back in the suite’s drawing room.

“Where are my trousers? And my boots?” she accused her aunt. “What have you done with them?”

Fanny sniffed. “I made some decisions for you, Laura. You haven’t been making good ones for yourself lately.”

The grass was covered with dew, a million tiny cobwebs bridging the stems. Steam rose from the hot pools beside the hotel drive. There was no sign of the posse; they’d evidently ridden off.

But when Laura, hurrying in the green silk dress and thin slippers, had nearly reached the stable, she saw a man astride a well-blooded palomino, wearing buckskin. She ducked into the fir copse she’d followed Cord through the other night.

So Danny Falls was still about, riding openly as though he, too, had watched the men from the soldier station ride away.

While she watched, he drew rein and looked toward the dock, where an eddy of pale smoke rose from the still-floating ruined hulk. Hank stood on the bank with Alexandra. Though he still wore his torn, soot-stained white shirt and gray trousers, she had changed into a lavender dress.

Danny smirked like he had at the stagecoach when he’d discovered her little pistol and pocketed it.

Laura waited in the trees, impatient to be about her mission. But she dared not move as long as Danny was in the area.

In a few minutes, Hank and Alexandra turned away from the wreck, went up the slope and into the hotel, no doubt for the breakfast Laura was skipping. Once they disappeared from view, Danny made a clicking sound with his tongue and nudged his palomino
into motion.

As soon as he was out of sight, Laura raced across the meadow to the stable. As quietly as she could, she opened the door and went inside. This early, the interior was dim and cool.

“Help you, miss?” one of the stablemen called.

Taking a breath of the manure-scented air, Laura tried not to act rushed as she walked down the aisle. When she reached White Bird, she put out a hand and petted her on the withers. “I’d like to have this one saddled and take her for a morning ride.”

Hopefully, Feddors hadn’t put out any orders that she was not to have a horse.

The tackie, dressed in denim and a plaid shirt, hesitated. “White Bird is one of the army mounts.”

Laura tried to appear relaxed. “Yes, I know. Sergeant Nevers wanted me to try her out.”

The stableman smiled with teeth white against his chocolate skin. “Sure thing, miss. But if you don’ mind my sayin’ so, you need to wear something a lil’ warmer.”

“I’ll just walk her over to where I’m staying and change,” Laura lied.

“Sure thing. Sure thing. Jus’ take a little while.”

A few minutes later, Laura accepted the reins, along with a heavy canteen.

“You should take a lunch, too.” He offered a paper sack from a box that must have been sent down from the hotel kitchen.

“That’s a good idea, but I should be back before
long.” Nonetheless, she accepted the bag.

The first question was which direction Cord would go. North led toward Mammoth and Feddors’s fabled stockade. Southwest along the lakeshore was beside a busy road; busier with the
Alexandra
no longer in service. If Laura wanted to hide, she’d go east through the passes until she was out of Captain Feddors’s jurisdiction.

Trying to appear casual, she rode slowly until she was out of sight of the stable. Then she urged White Bird to a quicker pace, following the lakeshore trail until she reached the place where the Yellowstone River flowed north out of the water body. There she drew rein and looked around.

The path continued to the north along the riverbank. The Grand Loop Road ran close alongside.

She looked at the ground for tracks, but there was no way to tell which way Cord and Dante might have gone. At this rate, she might as well turn back.

T
he posse passed the abandoned cabin and pushed on to the north. Larry Nevers rode on the right flank, closest to the Yellowstone River.

He felt a little sick. He’d liked Cord Sutton from the moment he came into the soldier station. In his opinion, the best thing Sutton had done was publicly humiliating Feddors. Or the worst.

Hopefully, they were on the wrong track, but Larry doubted it. If the army were after him, he’d swim his horse across the Yellowstone and go east through the mountains.

Ahead on the short stretch of the Grand Loop Road they were following, there seemed to be a commotion. A tourist wagon had stopped and the group was out, pointing and staring down toward the river. When the posse drew closer, the driver stepped into the road and waved his arms.

Without slowing, Feddors ordered, “Nevers. Deal with this.”

He hated to do it. If they caught up to Sutton, he wanted to be there.

“Sir, yes sir!” he clipped out, slowing his horse. “Trouble with the wagon?” he called to the gray-bearded driver.

A nearby woman wearing a ridiculous feathered hat gestured toward the Yellowstone.

The driver grimaced. “One of the passengers hollered at me to stop. Saw what looks like a body.”

Larry handed his reins to the driver and went to the edge of the road. Down the slope to the riverbank, he side-footed until he got a look at what appeared to be a man washed up on the opposite shore.

Cord wiped sweat from his brow as he rode. He’d boldly followed the Grand Loop Road past the outlet of the Yellowstone, north along the west riverbank, and crossed where it ran placid and shallow above the rushing cataract of LeHardy Rapids. Heading back over marshy ground, he’d caught his first glimpse of the men trailing him in the broad meadow west of Ebro Springs.

Last night, he’d hidden in the trees along the shore and watched Hank’s boat burn with a fierce satisfaction. And stayed around long enough to know he’d be hunted down as the arsonist.

Now, on the east side of Pelican Valley, he angled along the southern edge of the trees at the base of Sulphur Hills, surveying the terrain and considering options. The shortest distance out of the park as the crow flew would be to head up Bear Creek on the west slope of Mount Chittenden and make it out through Jones Pass.

But the Bluecoats came on through knee-deep grass beside the shining waters of Pelican Creek. The stream meandered in tight loops, seeming to echo and reecho itself between the abandoned loops of previous courses.

His pursuers reached a particularly nasty stretch of bog that held a few feet of water and were forced to slow. But they were close, too close.

If Cord hadn’t lost his
wayakin
, would this streak of rotten luck be running?

He pulled his Colt and looked at the wax seal Sergeant Nevers had attached to it. Yellowstone’s laws against guns did not seem to consider what threats a man might find there. Cracking the sealing wax, he used his knife to cut the tape around the trigger. Then he took some ammunition from his saddlebag and loaded the revolver, one chamber at a time. One more offense wouldn’t change Feddors’s mind about him if he were caught.

Men pointed in Cord’s direction and veered toward him.

His only escape now would be the wooded slopes on the northern side of Pelican Creek. He’d never be
able to cross the open valley to get up Bear Creek.

From behind, he heard Feddors shout, “Shoot the sum bitch before he gets away!”

Cord’s shoulder blades tensed; he waited for the impact of bullet on flesh. After it was done, it would be justified as a guilty man fleeing the scene, a man who attempted to murder Hank by burning his boat.

A bullet whined past his ear. Another plugged his saddlebag.

Lying out flat along Dante’s neck, he spurred him on toward the thick forest that ringed the valley. It was just a matter of yards, but it looked like miles as another bullet grazed the side of Dante’s neck, plowing a dark red furrow.

Laura chafed against returning to the Absaroka Suite, to having a bath and dressing in the feminine clothing her aunt had left in her wardrobe. To lunch in the charming dining room with a view, while she wondered if Cord had been hunted down like an animal.

Admitting defeat was the last thing she wanted, but she was no tracker.

As she turned White Bird back toward the hotel, a sharp crack, followed by a rising pitch rang out on the other side of the river. She jerked the reins. “Sorry,

girl.”

Soldiers? Shooting at Cord? Who else had guns when the tourists were prohibited a working weapon?

Of course, there was someone else who defied all rules, cooking squirrel with his rifle propped beside the fire.

Another volley of shots went off.

Laura looked over her shoulder toward the infirmary where her father lay. As she’d written in her burned missive, at some level she loved her parent.

Even so, she turned White Bird to face the Yellowstone.

Another shot sounded.

She urged the mare to the edge of the water. The memory of being swept up by the Snake made her breath come fast … thinking of bone-chilling cold and a tangle of deadfall almost made her turn back.

“Let’s go, girl.” At her direction, White Bird waded in.

Laura caught her bottom lip in her teeth as the water rose over the mare’s flanks. She couldn’t do this … Water rose, emerald silk floating slimy against her legs.

Her knees were wet, her thighs. White Bird’s feet left the bottom. The water was around Laura’s waist and trying to float her.

She gave up sidesaddle and gripped the horse with both legs. Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around White Bird’s neck.

This wasn’t working; they were being swept downstream the way Dante had. And above the splashes of White Bird’s swimming, there came a more ominous sound. Somewhere around the blind bend of the river, there were rapids.

White Bird struggled to keep her nose above water.

Though every instinct told Laura to cling to the animal, she slung her leg back across and lowered herself into the water on the down-current side. With a death grip on the saddle horn, she made sure the reins were around her arm and took her weight off White

Bird.

Would Cord be proud if he could see her? Was he alive to care?

White Bird’s hooves took purchase on the bottom; then she was swept on a little farther.