Lake of Fire (13 page)

She’d even held her head high when some people assumed Joseph Kane had thrown her over early in the spring. After all, what woman would turn him down? That had been just before Constance left for St. Paul for a long visit with Aunt Florence and Uncle David.

Laura knew the couple well, short and round like two peas that had occupied the same pod too long. Their staunchly Presbyterian attitude would never have allowed someone even remotely like Cord to sweep in on their niece’s life.

With a sinking feeling, Laura realized she couldn’t talk about Cord. The Victorian age might be out of
vogue, with a new century of progress ahead, but it was quite another thing for an unmarried woman to spend three nights alone with a man in the mountains. The idea would shock Constance, Aunt Fanny, and her father so profoundly that none of them might ever look at her the same way again.

“I managed to hide out during the attack at the coach,” she said slowly, knowing she would have to tell whatever story she wove many times. “Then I walked thought the woods and a man and his wife picked me up and brought me. They weren’t stopping here, just going on to Montana.”

Constance sighed. “I imagined you on some great adventure. You were always the one who wanted things wild while I …” She blushed, ducked her head, and fiddled with a ring on her left hand.

Laura had not seen it before, a garnet set with seed pearls on a gold band.

Constance smiled and turned the stone; it sparkled. Her manicured hands made Laura want to hide the nails she’d broken on the trail.

“I met a man in St. Paul,” Constance confessed with a shy sort of rapture.

“Tell me!” Laura suppressed guilt at her own lack of candor.

Constance took a breath. “William is very handsome and such a gentleman.” She toyed again with the ring. “Aunt Florence and Uncle David said it was unseemly the way he gave me a betrothal ring so quickly, but who cares what they think? William asked Mother
to bring me out to see his country, and she said yes.”

“You’ve turned down many proposals. What’s different about this William?”

Constance’s expression grew even softer. “I’ve been kissed before,” she mused, “but when William held me, it was as if he were more alive than all the rest.”

A
fter Constance returned to her room, Laura still could not sleep. The little clock on the bureau ticked loudly, marking the hour as midnight passed.

Part of her felt betrayed that her father and aunt did not care enough to welcome her back with tears and hugs. Especially Aunt Fanny, who was the closest thing to a mother she had. It was as though they suspected some terrible violation a woman would keep to herself.

All right, it would make it easier to hide her secret. With each hour, she grew more determined never to reveal the complex and confusing experience meeting Cord had been.

When morning came, she would borrow clothes from her cousin and her aunt and face the world with shoulders straight. She would relate how kind the couple from Montana had been when they found her wandering after she fled from the stagecoach. But
should she say she had witnessed Angus Spiner’s murder and the outlaw’s demise, or pretend she had run blindly into the willow bottoms?

No, she should describe the outlaw and have him caught before he came after her here at the hotel, attacked some other unsuspecting person … or hunted down Cord.

She almost wished her invented story were true. If she’d never met him, she would not be imagining fanciful ways they might meet again.

Though she had not believed she could sleep, she realized she’d drifted off when a tapping inserted itself into her consciousness. It took a moment to swim up from a dream of fishing beside blue water.

Her eyes felt gluey, but she forced them open. The third-floor window she’d raised last night was still open. Instead of the evening breeze that had soothed her, this morning it let in cold air. “What is it?” she called to whoever knocked at her door.

“There’s a man here to see you!” She recognized Aunt Fanny’s voice.

“What man?”

Naked, Laura rolled over and pushed herself to a sitting position on the side of the bed. A black-and-white photograph of the Grand Canyon and the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone hung opposite, signed by photographer F. Jay Haynes. Looking at the river, tumbling as white and fast over the rocks as her emotions, she swung her bare feet to the cold hardwood floor.

“Let me in,” Fanny insisted across the open transom.

“A minute.” Laura reached with a trembling hand to the floor where her dirty trousers and Cord’s shirt lay crumpled. Banishing the thought of him, she covered herself and ran a hand through her tangled hair.

Then she stood a moment more, postponing the inevitable. Outside, a raven perched in a pine, its dark head cocked to one side. Beyond, Yellowstone Lake lay silver-gray like poured metal in the cloudy morning light.

“Laura!”

Barefoot, she went and opened the door.

Aunt Fanny smothered her in familiar softness and the scent of tea roses. “Land sakes, I was so afraid for you.”

With a sinking heart, Laura realized that despite Fanny’s acquiescence to Forrest’s wish not to disturb her last night, this morning her aunt would insist on knowing everything.

“I’m here, safe, and that’s what matters.” She hoped her tone was reassuring.

Laura’s aunt was even more buxom than her daughter. Still a pale-skinned beauty at forty-seven, Fanny had dark hair virtually untouched by gray. Dressed in a morning gown of black satin with a white collar and cuffs, she tossed her scarlet, fringed shawl onto the bed.

Squinting, she took in Laura’s trousers and wrinkled shirt. “Laws, but you could be arrested for wearing men’s clothing.” She looked into the empty wardrobe. “You have nothing to wear.”

“My suitcase was ruined in the stage robbery.”

“Thank goodness Constance brought two trunks.” Fanny recovered briskly, shaking her head and setting her gold ear drops in motion. “I can alter her dresses to fit you.”

She gauged Laura’s slender waist and hips to see how much she would have to take in the dresses designed to fit her daughter. In anticipation of dressing her niece, she seemed to have forgotten Laura’s male visitor.

“Who was it that wanted to see me?” Not Cord, for he thought she was a serving girl, and he didn’t know her last name.

A line appeared between Fanny’s black brows. “A man with the Pinkerton Agency.”

Before she could tell her aunt to put him off until she had time to work on her story, a little man broke the bonds of good manners and slipped through the door Fanny had left ajar.

“I’m Manfred Resnick, Miss Fielding.” No more than an inch taller than she, the youthful agent wore a suit with a chalk pinstripe over his wiry frame. “I’m investigating the robbery and murders near Jackson for the stage line.” He looked around at the blue-and-white china washbasin and the unmade bed. Next, he appraised Laura with the same analytical expression.

It took her a few seconds to realize that Manfred Resnick was blind on his right side, his useless walleye dull as if there were a film over it.

Thinking only of getting him out of her room, she
bent and pulled on her boots without stockings, then walked toward the door.

Aunt Fanny gathered her scarlet shawl. Beads of black jet tapped together as she followed Laura and Resnick down the hall.

At the top of the stairs, Resnick paused and ran a hand through his slicked-back brown hair. “Thank you, Mrs. Devon,” he said, with an air of finality.

He started down, apparently assuming Laura would follow.

She gripped the carved wooden rail and looked out through the oval glass window at the park visitors queuing for morning tours. In the rear yard, wagons and stages waited, while horses stamped restlessly. With a sigh, she went down the stairs behind Resnick.

He evidently did not think of offering the restorative cup of coffee Laura longed for, but led the way to a windowed alcove. A felt-topped gaming table and straight-backed chairs were the only furniture.

The investigator sat down and shuffled a pack of cards. The smooth whir of the deck falling into place was hypnotic. “You saw them die?” He spoke without taking his eyes from the cards.

Laura looked out the window at a lone rower on the lake. Something about the powerful shape of his shoulders was reassuring.

The detective waited.

“I saw two men ride up to the stagecoach,” she allowed.

“Descriptions?” She’d thought he would take notes,
but he continued to handle the playing cards.

“One of them was tall, thin, blond, wearing a long coat, he rode a palomino horse. The other, shorter, stouter, in a plaid coat and riding a chestnut. They shot the driver, Angus Spiner.”

“Did you see who killed Frank Worth?” Resnick’s tone was more kind.

“Who?” Was this the man she had watched Cord shoot?

“Your man in the plaid coat.”

“I …” She looked down at her hands. “No.”

“If you saw the tall man again, would you recognize him?”

“I’m not sure,” Laura murmured. In the same instant, the strange aversion she’d felt last night in the lobby became clear. “I’ll tell you, though … “ She leaned forward. “Even with a bandana mask, he looked a lot like Mr. Falls.”

“Falls?” Resnick pulled a pad and well-used pencil from his breast pocket.

“Hank Falls. The manager of this hotel.”

He wrote something illegible and raised his good eye to meet hers. “Who brought you to Yellowstone?”

“A man and woman.” Laura gained conviction in the telling. “They were traveling to Montana.”

“Names?”

“Oh …” She cast about, looking at the common objects surrounding them, a table and chairs, playing cards, and bright stacks of poker chips. Paging through all the names she’d ever known and trying to
choose some for the faceless people he would next ask her to describe.

“Miss Fielding?” Resnick’s pen poised.

The little room seemed stuffy, and Laura was glad for the window and the slow progress of the rower on the lake.

“I’m sorry.” She put her hands over her face. “I was so distraught I cannot recall.”

Cord stopped rowing and laid the oars in the bottom of the boat. His shoulders and back burned from the self-imposed exertion.

He wiped his brow on his blue cotton sleeve and found his tired eyes stinging from salty sweat. It didn’t help that dawn light had penetrated his room at the Lake Hotel and found him still awake, angry and resentful at having tossed for hours.

It was Laura who had kept Cord from sleep; or rather the lack of Laura, as he had drifted off repeatedly, only to awaken and find himself reaching for her. In his comfortable hotel room, bathed and sleeping on clean sheets, he had wished he were still on the road with Laura in his bedroll.

Lifting the oars, he pulled toward the dock. When the wooden boat bumped against the pier, he climbed out and secured the painter to a metal cleat.

On the dock, he took advantage of the opportunity for a closer look at Hank Falls’s gaudy steamboat.
Forward of the paddle wheel, velvet curtains covered the windows of a private cabin where he’d heard Falls lived aboard after the days’ excursions.

Cord walked across the Grand Loop Road between the hotel and the lake and tried to put things into perspective. He needed all his wits to deal with business, and a serving girl like Laura could not figure into his plans. He couldn’t imagine the midwestern beauty he was to meet shooting a bear or fishing with him. No, she was the consummate definition of a lady.

Cord pushed open the door into the Lake Hotel lobby. Last night he’d put off asking at the front desk, telling himself he was too exhausted. This morning, he had no more excuses.

With resolve, he approached the high mahogany counter and made his inquiry.

The eager desk clerk rummaged in a metal box that held a card for each of the guests. He raised his dark head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe your party has checked in.”

Cord thanked him, shocked by his profound sense of relief.

The day stretched before him like an open meadow where he might give Dante his head.

He considered a shave and haircut; the barbershop off the lobby had been closed last night, but he really must take his weapons and register them as required at the army post down on the shore.

Instead, he stepped outside.

The morning clouds lifted further, and the sun
shone onto his face. Its warmth brought back the memory of checkered light filtering down through the trees onto Laura’s hair.

Turning toward the cabins that housed the serving staff, he found his feet moving faster along the well-worn path. At the head of the row, a larger frame building wore a sign that labeled it as the laundry and administration building. Opening the door, Cord caught the aroma of starch.

Laura was probably already at her first day’s work. He imagined her in the blue-and-white striped uniform of a maid, changing linens somewhere inside the hotel or loading trays with breakfast to be taken into the dining room.

“Excuse me.” Cord approached the desk where a matronly woman sat copying figures into a ledger. “I’m looking for Laura …”