Lake of Fire (35 page)

“We fought back, the battle pitched for many hours.” Bitter Waters focused on Cord. “My friend, who loved the mother of Blue Eyes, died facedown in six inches of water.”

He raised his eyes to the dark sky. “Kamiah lost our child, so my only blood family is the son of my lost
sister, Sarah.”

Cord’s breath caught at the words meant for him alone.

When it became evident Bitter Waters had finished, Cord sensed a stir, the soldiers making a path through the crowd. He heard a voice, unmistakable in its Southern softness, while at the same time hard and deadly. “Ah’ll put a stop to this. Send that Indian back to the reservation where he belongs.”

Cord raised his arms to block their way. “Didn’t the old man speak truth?” Though it was a small stand he took, it was nonetheless a stand. He looked at his uncle. “I’ll try to delay them.”

Bitter Waters’s lips curved into a smile. Though he did not speak, Cord believed he understood the message that passed between them.

In an instant, Bitter Waters did his disappearing act.

Feddors came to a halt before Cord. “You speak of truth, suh.”

He looked down at the bandy-legged posturer. What if he announced Bitter Waters was family? Put an end to the suspense of waiting to be found out?

He did not speak, but let each second of silence give his uncle a head start.

“What do you know of truth,” Feddors challenged, “when you’re nothing but a lying imposter?”

Cord’s fingers curled into fists.

Someone gripped his shoulder from behind.

He wheeled, on the defensive; Manfred Resnick gave him a warning look. “Why don’t you let me inform
the captain of the latest information on the outlaw?”

Heart pounding, Cord forced his hands to relax.

Moving away from the fire and lighted tents into darkness, his blood continued to roil. Back through the woods, and across a section of pasture, he circled and took up watch a distance from the rear of the tipi. Feddors and his soldiers had gone in the opposite direction, seeking Danny at the cabin.

Though he wanted to follow and see the outlaw apprehended, he tried to figure out where Bitter Waters might be spending his nights. Warning him about the captain’s threats was the least he could do.

Unfortunately, all the Wylie tents looked alike.

P
ast midnight in the infirmary, Laura gathered the sheaves of paper she had covered with close, cramped writing. Upon those sheets, she’d poured out both her love for her father and her need to be free of him.

A soft knock. “Miss Fielding? You may see your father now.” Dr. Upshur looked as tired as she felt.

She started to rise, then stopped. “Have you a match?”

The doctor looked puzzled, but reached to an inside pocket of his jacket and offered a small box. He watched with a frown while she pulled over the soiled plate on which Fanny and Constance had brought her dinner and laid the papers atop it. With a sharp scratch of match head on sandpaper and a sulfur stench, she placed flame to the edge of her journal. Never had she burned her words before, but this night it seemed the only thing possible.

Dr. Upshur studied her over the bright little blaze
until it reduced to ashes, then ushered her down the hall. “The bullet is out, and I’ve given him morphine. He may not wake tonight, but you may sit with him.”

With a shaky hand, Laura turned the knob. The sickroom was all white, the walls and even the wooden floor had been painted. The windows that gave onto the night looked black.

She could see herself reflected in the glass, still wearing her dusty shirt and trousers. Her hair was a rat’s nest from the sixteen-mile wagon race from the canyon, her lack of grooming forgotten as she waited and poured her heart onto the pages. Smoke lingered in the hall.

Swiftly, she crossed and pulled down another shade. Out in the darkness, Larry Nevers’s lone patrol seemed all but worthless.

Father’s face made nearly a match for the sheets. She stood back, her knuckles pressed against her teeth so hard that she tasted the salt of blood. The sting of tears ate behind her eyelids, while she peered into the dark void of death.

They’d all gone on before her: Grandmother and Grandfather Fielding, stern and forbidding folk from whom Forrest no doubt took his ways; her mother’s kin, Grammy and Papa, younger and more fun like Violet. And all of it brought back that endless night of waiting and watching for her baby brother’s birth … while her father’s face gradually set into the lines of sadness that had changed him forever. There was no timepiece in this sickroom, but Laura imagined she
could hear the seven-foot walnut grandfather clock in the great hall at Fielding House, its golden pendulum marking the seconds.

Dr. Upshur had suggested Forrest might not wake soon, but his papery-looking lids fluttered.

“Daddy?”

He lifted a wavering hand and struggled to speak.

She put a finger to his lips. “Don’t try to talk.”

He fought the drug, looking at her with sunken gray eyes. “What happened … to me?”

Laura hesitated, but he deserved the truth. “You were shot in the canyon. No one saw where it came from.”

“Whaaa … ?”

She didn’t tell of Hank’s accusation against Cord. “Maybe a poacher?”

“Hell of a thing.” He tried to lift his head. “Things … you have to take care of …”

Laura forced a brittle smile. “Nothing is as important as having you rest. Everything else can wait.”

“A telegram to Chicago … tonight. Karl Massey must come from the bank to take over.”

Karl, a stocky Indiana farm boy turned banker, was the suitor Forrest Fielding had most often pushed on her back in Chicago. Repeatedly, she’d refused Karl’s earnest but dull overtures.

Forrest went on, “Cord won’t stop trying to get to Norman Hagen.”

“The deal doesn’t matter, Daddy. Backing Hank to buy the hotels can’t be that important.”

“It is. Fielding Bank just lost one of our largest
accounts … Silver Star.”

Laura knew of Silver Star Meat, had driven past their prosperous Chicago stockyards and smelled their packing plant.

“Other clients are leaving, too,” Forrest wheezed. “Things could get so bad that we’d have to sell our house.”

“My God.” Laura took his hand and squeezed it.

Home, that solid fortress of memory. Decorating each year’s Christmas tree, Forrest and Laura always imagined that Violet worked beside them. In their dreams, she was still the slender woman with sleek brown hair drawn back in wings like an angel, frozen forever in a silver frame on the mantel.

“If we make this deal with the Northern Pacific,” Forrest rasped, “Hopkins Chandler assured me … the railroad will do their Chicago banking with us.”

“Will that be enough?” Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she didn’t let go of his hands to wipe them away.

“I believe so.” Forrest closed his eyes and, for a moment, she thought the morphine had done its work. “Promise …” he whispered. “Anything.”

She reached for a glass of water on the bedside table and brought it to his lips. Forrest opened his eyes, sipped.

“You must help Hank in any way you can,” he said with surprising strength.

When Laura came out of the infirmary, her promise to help Hank in his battle against Cord was making her stomach ache. Let that be a lesson never to make an open-ended vow.

Using a hand torch Dr. Upshur had offered to light her way, she began to trudge up the gravel path between scrub brush toward the hotel. While she had been indoors, the air had changed, becoming heavy and hot.

“Laura.”

She started at Hank’s voice. He leaned against a tree; his alert expression revealing he waited for her. “How is Forrest?” He bent his blond head over Laura’s hand.

She jerked away before he could plant another of his insinuating kisses upon it. “Dr. Upshur took the bullet out. It went through his shoulder and missed his heart and lungs, but he needs rest.”

To his credit, Hank seemed genuinely concerned. The skin around his deep-set dark eyes looked drawn.

“I have to send a telegram to Chicago, to get some help for you,” she said.

“Let’s do it now.”

He took her arm and led her across the lobby to the business office. The quartet had retired for the evening, and there were only a few people still about.

As there was no one in the office, Hank pulled down a telegram pad, wrote out the message she dictated, and sent it himself. When they returned to the
lobby, someone had switched off most of the electric lights, plunging the big room into semidarkness.

“The kitchen is closed,” Hank said, “but I can have something prepared for you. Or would you prefer to bathe first?”

She looked down at her dirty pants and lifted a hand to brush back her dusty hair, wondering if she would feel like eating tomorrow.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she forced an even tone, “could you have them send a tub to my room? I’m completely done in.”

“Certainly.” Hank put a hand on Laura’s arm. “With your father out of commission, we’re partners. You’ll let me know of anything I can do for you, and I’ll do the same.”

Across the lobby, Laura saw Cord, dressed in neat charcoal trousers and a crisp white shirt, watching darkly from the entrance to the east hall. My God, she hadn’t thanked him for carrying her father up that steep trail.

Hank shot a look at Cord, a surprising smile spreading over his sharp features. “That fellow is after you, as well as your cousin.” Before she could muster an automatic denial, he went on, “Today, I got all the ammunition I need to defeat him.”

Cord turned away and disappeared down the hall. Though she wanted to run after him, Laura managed, “What ammunition?”

“All in good time.”

At Hank’s chuckle, she fought a wave of revulsion.

“There’s just one thing before I shoot my magic bullet,” he said. “I need for you to use Sutton’s attraction to our mutual advantage.”

“What … ?”

Hank gripped her arm, painfully. “Get him to spill where he got those letters to the railroad.”

From the window of his room, Cord watched Hank leave the hotel alone and walk down toward his steamboat.

Going back into the hall, he went toward the lobby. If he asked at the desk, it was certain that the lone night attendant would be reluctant to tell him an unmarried young woman’s room number.

Setting that aside, he moved toward the stairs and took them two at a time. On the third floor, he moved down the corridor, trying not to step on any creaking boards. Up here was the Absaroka Suite, with its adjoining rooms. The doors were all identical solid wood with faceted jet doorknobs and glass transoms above.

He stared at each in turn, willing the blank boards to give up a sign. Behind this one, or that, was Laura. In his mind’s eye, he opened the portal to find her fresh from the bath, wearing a silk robe that clung to her damp skin. No perfume, just the sweet scent of her that he imagined he caught on every errant breeze.

He’d untie the slippery sash of her wrapper, a pink one to match her sun-flushed cheeks, and slide the
robe ever so slowly off her shoulders. Uncover the delicate body he’d seen at Witch Creek.

And each night when he tried to sleep.