Lake of Fire (24 page)

Sergeant Nevers gestured the red-haired soldier toward the stable. “Private Groesbeck, could you bring me a lead?”

Groesbeck returned with a leather halter that Larry slipped over White Bird’s head. As he started to take her into the stable, Laura stopped him. “Could you let me have her for a few minutes?”

Nevers hesitated.

Cord recalled her mounting Dante without fear, her sure seat and good hands. “They’ll be okay.”

Nevers handed Laura the lead rope. She walked away, White Bird at her heels. They took two turns about the paddock; Laura did not even look down at the mud and muck she walked through, the skirt of her habit trailing. She led White Bird alongside the fence and, before Cord could divine her intention, put a leg up on the boards and vaulted astride the mare’s back.

“Watch out,” he couldn’t help but caution, “she’s been sorely mistreated.”

From her bareback perch, Laura reached to stroke the long gray neck. “That’s precisely why she needs to know all riders aren’t like that.”

Something swelled inside Cord’s chest. His grandmother’s gift with animals was long ago and far away, but it did his heart good to see Laura’s way with the mare.

From behind the barn strode a tall, slender man in uniform, wearing the insignia of a lieutenant.

The sergeant saluted his superior. “Lieutenant Stafford, sir. This is Mr. Sutton, a guest of the hotel.”

Gray eyes were warm in a sun-bronzed face. “Welcome to the park, Mr. Sutton.”

“Call me Cord.”

“I’m John. My wife, Katharine, and I live up at Headquarters by Mammoth Hot Springs … I get down this way during the high season.”

Cord wondered if the park’s second-in-command was here hoping to keep Feddors in check.

Turning to Larry, Stafford spoke in a lower tone. “Everything all right here?”

One of the soldiers must have told Stafford what had gone on with Feddors. Where a subordinate like Sergeant Nevers might hesitate, Cord dared to speak. “As you can see there on the mare’s cheek, your Captain Feddors was a mite enthusiastic with his quirt.”

Stafford’s eyes met Cord’s. “The damage to a piece of good horseflesh is regrettable, but I was referring more to the scene between Feddors and one of the tourists.”

“I am that … tourist.”

Stafford looked surprised. “I was given to understand he was baiting …”

“Captain Feddors has a theory that I am of Indian descent.”

Nevers made an impatient gesture. “Ridiculous. Anyone can see …” He studied Cord’s features and stopped.

The silence in the corral was broken only by the wind soughing through the pines behind the stable. In his peripheral vision, Cord noted a pair of buzzards circling overhead.

“The captain has an ax to grind,” Stafford said. “Right or wrong, he tells the world the Nez Perce murdered someone dear to him.”

Cord tried to keep his face neutral. Men and women had died at the hands of the tribe, that was established.

Stafford went on, “Sometimes it … ah … colors his view of life. Hopefully, when our new superintendent arrives, Captain Feddors will subside back into the ranks without incident.” He touched the brim of his cap. “Mr. Sutton.”

At this sign of leave-taking, Sergeant Nevers sprang to attention. The lieutenant returned his salute.

When Stafford was out of earshot, Nevers turned to Cord. “What an understatement. Feddors is the worst officer I’ve ever seen. Acts as though all the men are worthless instead of saving it for the few who are.”

Though they were alone, Nevers glanced around before going on, “I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he gets shot by one of his own men.”

W
hen Cord approached to assist Laura in dismounting from White Bird, he wore a guarded expression, almost a look of shame.

It must be true, then. Though she’d wondered if he had Indian blood, with his bronzed skin and prominent cheekbones, she had discounted it because of his beard and blue eyes. Flushing at the memory of calling him a savage, she accepted his hand and got down from her bareback perch to the broken ground.

She gave White Bird a last pat on the withers, and Cord passed the mare off to Larry, who spoke of putting some balm on the mare’s wounded cheek. She thanked the sergeant for the invitation to ride, and it seemed understood she would go with Cord.

While he escorted her across the muddy paddock with a hand at her elbow, Laura imagined Larry watching them go.

Once away from the stables, they veered along the
shore in the opposite direction from the hotel. She didn’t ask, but he answered.

“My grandmother Seeyakoon, ‘She Who Spies,’ of the Wallowa Nez Perce, loved a white man and bore my mother, Sarah, ‘Falling Water.’”

Laura stopped on the path between a pair of eroded-out roots.

Cord halted and faced her. “Though Sarah was courted by Tarpas Illipt, a man of the People, when my father, Franklin Sutton, passed through the mining district—lands stolen from the Nez Perce—it was clear she favored him. A conflict erupted, and her own brother, Bitter Waters, helped drive her from the village.”

“My Lord.” She looked toward the Wylie Camp. “There’s a sign … a Bitter Waters tells stories in the evening.”

“My uncle.” Cord’s shoulders squared. “I heard him speak last night before I saw you. He told how Seeyakoon’s murder by a white settler helped start the war in 1877.”

“Murder.” Laura’s breath caught. “Surely not …”

“Run down in the road.”

Her eyes stung. “Did you talk to Bitter Waters? Does he know who you are?”

“He knows me.” It came out flat. “But when I tried to speak with him after his … performance, he pulled a disappearing act.”

Laura touched Cord’s blue shirtsleeve, the garment a twin to the one he’d loaned her. “Take me
with you tonight. Together, we can be sure he doesn’t get away without talking to you.” She let her hand rest more firmly.

His arm muscles hardened beneath her fingers. “Why would you want to do that? Now that you know about me,” he pulled away, “you’ll want to tell your cousin what a narrow escape she had. And, when you tell Hank and he lets Hopkins Chandler know, he and your father will win.”

“Why would I … ?”

Cord took a few steps off the path as if to leave her, then swung back. “Have you seen that abomination of a poster in the meeting room?”

She had taken a look into all the public rooms of the hotel and been repulsed by the image of the fallen Indian.

“The railroad won’t do business with a Nez Perce.” His voice gave away how deep his desire to own the hotel, when she’d seen it as a simple business deal.

“You’re three-quarters white,” she argued.

“That makes no more difference here than it does for a Negro in the South. Even an octoroon is still viewed as touched by the tar brush.”

“What about Aaron Bryce? Even in Chicago, I’d heard of him. Surely he can make them see …”

“Aaron couldn’t fix it so I owned Excalibur, without putting my adopted brother’s name on the title,” he said bitterly. “Besides, Aaron doesn’t know I’m trying to buy the Lake Hotel. I wanted to do this without his help.”

They walked a little farther, toward the sod-roofed ruin ahead near the path. Silence once more lay between them, while Laura struggled to absorb what she’d learned.

Lord, if her family knew Cord’s heritage, Father would have apoplexy. Aunt Fanny would need her salts for an attack of the vapors.

More importantly, what would Constance do?

Away from the path, stepping over fallen logs, Cord and Laura headed deeper into the dappled shade of forest. He gave the sagging log structure he had noticed earlier a second look. Grass on the sod roof waved in the breeze, inviting one to pause and rest within.

It made him wish he had the right to be with Laura, to take private shelter behind the log walls where no tourist’s eyes could pry. How he wanted to tell her he’d given Constance the ring as a keepsake, only a hope of what might develop … but honor prevented him from speaking before he’d set things straight with her cousin.

“Look,” she breathed.

He did. A drift of smoke rose from the sagging stone chimney.

“No, there.” She pointed back toward the hotel.

Edgar Young hurried toward them along the beaten path, his focus on the cabin.

“I saw him out here before,” Laura whispered,
“after Hank went into that building.”

Cord grabbed her arm and drew her down with him to kneel behind a deadfall. Her wide eyes told him she knew to keep quiet.

Edgar looked around jerkily, his focus passing over them in their hiding place. Cord wanted to duck lower, to put his hand on top Laura’s head and press her down.

His banker kept walking toward the ruin, pushed open the door, and disappeared inside. When the sagging door shut as far as it could in the off-square door frame, Cord pushed to his feet.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Laura and began sneaking toward the cabin, taking cover from tree to tree. He was pleased to note the windows were boarded; no one could glance out and see him.

On arriving beside the log wall, he crouched. Inside, he detected an indistinct voice.

A look around and he moved toward the rear. As silently as possible, he duckwalked to a section of wall that had begun to collapse, leaving chinks between the

logs.

He put his eye to a hole and heard, “You damned

fool!”

It was Edgar, gripping the back of a cane chair with a broken seat.

“Some would say.” Hank Falls, wearing an improbable suit of buckskin, had his back to Cord in the dimly lit space. He bent to put another log on the fire beneath the leaning chimney.

Edgar stood and watched the taller man thrust at the coals with the end of a charred stick.

“Getting sentimental about your partner?” Something ugly lurked in Hank’s tone. “I held off cleaning up loose ends, but he served his purpose when he delivered the papers.”

The papers that had cast doubt on his own qualifications?

A twig snapped behind Cord, and he almost shouted. He turned to find Laura, too late to tell her to go away, for he dared not make a sound. She sidled up alongside and peered into the cabin.

Hank, the man who ordered fine wines for the dining room, squatted on his haunches, tending a crude pot of stew suspended on a rack over the fire.

Edgar sniffed the cooking smells. “Squirrel?”

“Killed it this morning.” Hank chuckled. “It’s against park regulations to hunt.”

In that instant, Cord knew that whoever this was, it could not be the elegant Hank Falls.

“You take a lot of chances,” Edgar said.

“More than you know.”

Edgar reached into his coat pocket and drew out a bottle of Jack Daniels. He removed his outer garment and threw it on another sagging chair over a long black duster.

Cord felt Laura stiffen beside him, as they both remembered the outlaw’s garb.

Edgar uncapped the liquor and offered it. “It’s too dangerous for you near the hotel, Danny. If Hank
were to see you …”

Hank’s mirror image, except for his garb and demeanor, drank and kept the bottle.

Laura tugged Cord’s arm. Getting out of there was a damned fine idea; a rifle leaned against the hearth, no doubt loaded and ready.

Lifting the skirts of her riding habit, Laura lagged by the time they raced out of the woods near the soldier station. Her heart pounded, and sweat ran down her back and sides.

Cord reached the door first and slammed it open. “The outlaw who killed those people in Jackson’s Hole. I saw him here in the park.”

Captain Quenton Feddors’s drawl came to Laura through the open door. “Let me guess, suh. Were you perhaps looking in a mirror?”

Laura shoved past Cord through the tight doorway and confronted the bandy-legged officer. “How dare you? Mr. Sutton has given you no reason to suspect him, yet you insult him at every turn.”

She scanned the office, made dark by bark-covered log walls. “Where is Manfred Resnick? We have information for him.”

“Here, Miss Fielding.” Resnick’s voice filtered from the back room. He came out, dressed in his chalk-striped suit.