Lake of Fire (55 page)

She twisted the lavender handkerchief she’d found in the pocket of Alexandra’s purple dress, then realized she was knotting the chain of the cameo she’d also stashed in there.

Feddors picked up his pace as though finished listening.

Laura hurried after him to the red-roofed frame building of the stockade, with its barred windows. He opened the front door to a small spare room with a desk, wooden chairs, and a potbellied woodstove. A sleepy-looking enlisted man sitting guard gathered himself to his feet, tucking in his rumpled shirt.

Feddors regarded him with disgust. “Soldier, you are out of uniform.”

The young man grabbed his cap from a nail and put it on.

“Ah get so tired of lack of discipline …” Feddors went on.

“Captain!” Laura said from the door. “I have not finished speaking with you.”

With an angry glance at her, Feddors told the soldier, “Wait outside.”

Fearful of being alone with Feddors, Laura glanced behind her and was actually relieved to find Hank still with them. Perhaps Alexandra was right that in his warped way, Hank was still after her. For, with the same insinuating manner he’d showed in formal dining at the hotel, he put his hand at the small of her back and escorted her to one of the straight chairs.

“You know, Captain,” Hank said evenly, “I owe Laura here an apology.”

“How’s that?” Feddors asked.

“I may have been a bit … enthusiastic when she came aboard the
Alexandra
for supper. I’m sorry if she misconstrued …”

“Sorry that
I
misconstrued is not what I’d call an apology.” Laura’s cheeks heated. “Feddors should find a place for you in his stockade for what you did to me …”

Hank’s back straightened, and she knew she’d lost whatever advantage she might have had with him.

The captain pulled open a drawer at the bottom of his desk. “Damned women,” he cursed, bringing up a small silver flask. “Driving me to drink in the middle of the night.”

Hank pulled out his pack of Old Virginia Cheroots and offered it to Feddors, who took one. Hank lit his own, elegant hands moving deliberately, and reached over to give Feddors a light.

Continuing their exaggerated little ballet, Feddors passed Hank the flask; he drank.

“So what’s your verdict, Hank?” Feddors retrieved his liquor and tipped it up. “Your brother burn the boat or that Injun I’ve got locked up?”

“Danny never admitted it.”

“He died in the middle of being asked!” Laura leaned forward. “You saw Danny confess to murdering Edgar. I watched him kill the stage driver in cold blood, so we know what kind of criminal we’re dealing with.” She turned to Hank. “He not only came to Yellowstone with Edgar and a plan to thwart your dreams … the stagecoach attack was aimed at killing me … so Father wouldn’t want to invest in the West where his daughter died.”

“You expect me to believe Danny told you all that?”

“Edgar told Cord about their plot to discredit you. And yes, Danny said his partner found out I’d be on that coach and intended to kill me. Just ask Cord.”

Feddors slapped his palm on the desk and Laura jumped. He looked at Hank. “She and Sutton had days in the wilderness to perfect their story. Of course, they’d both say the same thing.”

Hank shook his head. “Even if Danny decided to murder me, he’d never have risked it with Alex aboard. She was the only person he ever cared about.” He looked pained, for weren’t identical twins supposed have the ultimate bond? “All this talk of the boat is moot. Your lover killed my brother.”

She took a breath. “I shot Danny.”

Feddors burst out laughing.

Hank gaped. “You?”

“He was drinking. And left the little gun he stole from my valise at the stagecoach within reach of where he tied me,” Laura argued. “You’ve got to let Cord go. It makes no sense to hold him without evidence.”

“Hank,” Feddors said, “you ever heah such nonsense?”

Laura’s desperation grew. She turned on Hank. “You’re just doing this because you hate Cord for knocking you out of consideration for the hotel, because he fought you …” she ticked her fingers, “and because you have some cockamamie idea that if Cord is out of the way, you do ‘get the girl.’”

Hank inhaled smoke.

“And you …” Laura turned on Feddors. “You don’t know anything about Cord except that he’s Nez Perce. Why do you hate the Nez Perce so?”

“You want to know why I hate those murdering savages?” Feddors drank again. “Ah’ll tell you.”

On the other side of a cell door, Cord lay looking at the barred sky through a window and listening. Though he’d known Laura was tough, having weathered two harrowing treks through wild country with him, he’d not realized how fiercely she’d fight for him.

It drove him crazy to be pinned up, so close to her and yet behind that invisible barrier between his father’s world and his mother’s. Feddors believed in his heart that Cord was a “murdering savage,” and he was
telling Laura and Hank why.

For over an hour, Cord listened to Feddors plow the ground he’d gone over beside Yellowstone Lake while he held a pistol on Bitter Waters. The tale of how an innocent lad was frightened beside a waterfall by a pair of Nez Perce braves riding bareback, wearing the spoils of war and carrying Army Springfields, of how he rode to Mammoth to sound an alarm and found Lieutenant Hugh Scott securing the site of the murder of musician Richard Dietrich.

But there had to be a better reason for Feddors’s hate, unless he was truly a madman.

Cautioned by Lieutenant Scott to be careful, Quenton rode down Gardner Canyon toward Bart Henderson’s, where he and his father were staying. Fast water rushed over his calves when the mare reluctantly swam the river. On either side of the stream, towering cliffs of buff volcanic rock rose. The shelf of loose talus narrowed, the rock wall rising nearly straight out of the riverbed, and Quenton was forced to ford again.

Ahead, the valley opened onto the broad plain where the Gardner joined the course of the Yellowstone. The small rough outpost of Gardiner sat at the juncture of the two rivers. Riding down the dusty street, Quenton thought the cluster of log stores and saloons looked deserted.

“Best get inside, boy,” a voice called from behind a
wooden shutter. A rifle barrel protruded from a narrow slit. “Injuns about.”

Quenton urged his mare into a gallop out of town toward the northwest. He rode along the flat grassland beside the incised valley that marked the Yellowstone until he found the cutoff where Stephens Creek joined the larger river. He turned his mount to follow the slower-moving waters. Clear and shallow, the stream meandered through open land toward the wooded slopes bounding the valley.

Quenton’s heart pounded as he recognized the rough cairn of stones that marked the corner of Henderson’s land. Here along the watercourse, towering cottonwoods grew close to the edge. He rounded a bend and stopped.

Curling tendrils of smoke rose from the ruined hulk of the ranch house. Though Quenton cupped his hands and shouted, the sound seemed to flatten and be swallowed up by the waving golden grasses.

The only answer was the cry of a hawk.

Dismounting, he moved quietly through a copse of trees toward a saddled but riderless horse cropping grass beside a leaning outhouse.

If the Nez Perce were about, he would probably end up like Dietrich. The .25-20 he carried wouldn’t be a match for the Army Springfields he’d seen in their hands.

At twenty-five yards, Quenton became certain the lone horse was Nellie, the chestnut his father had been riding for the past few days.

A creaking sound came from the wooden outhouse beneath a lone cottonwood. The wind moved the door on its tired hinges. Dry mouthed, Quenton approached and saw something on the ground, keeping the door from closing.

He crept closer, clutching his rifle in trembling hands. A man sprawled facedown where he had fallen from the seat. His trousers bunched around his ankles, the white of his buttocks contrasting with the crimson stain that covered the back of his blue cotton shirt. Quenton would have known the black hat with silver braid anywhere.

“The Nez Perce shot my father!” Feddors shouted. “Killed him in the goddamned crapper! While I was standing there over his body, they swept back through the field and took Nellie away with them.”

Though Laura had a lump in her throat at the end of Feddors’s reminiscence, she couldn’t let that matter. “They could have killed you, then, but they didn’t.”

Feddors shook his head.

She kept trying. “The Nez Perce, what’s left of them, have never been able to go back to their homes in Wallowa Valley. They were treated shamefully, and you should be satisfied that they’ve been punished. Killing Cord won’t bring back Richard Dietrich … or your father.”

Feddors looked to Hank. “She doesn’t understand.
A Southern man never forgives … or forgets.”

Laura bowed her head. A single tear escaped and ran down her cheek. “Just let me see Cord. That’s all I ask.”

Hank pushed back his chair with a rasp and unfolded his long frame. He walked out, his leather heels making sharp sounds on the wood floor.

Feddors pushed to his feet and came to Laura. “Let’s go.”

She started to move around the desk toward where the cells were, but he took her by the arm and turned her. Trying to pull away, she said, “I thought you were taking me to see Cord.”

“I am merely escorting you out.” He propelled her to the door. “I really cannot stand a woman’s tears.”

As she went out into the deepest part of night, Feddors addressed the soldier who stood at attention when he came out. “Private, I need for you to round up six men with their rifles. There’s going to be a hearing this morning, and there may be a sentence to carry out.”

L
aura went up the stairs to the rear porch and let herself into the Staffords’ kitchen. At three-thirty a.m., all was dark, but someone had left a candle and matches on the clean kitchen table. A little heat spilled into the chilly room, the banked coals waiting for morning.

She lit the candle and started down the hall toward the front bedroom where she’d bathed and dressed. Halfway there, she stopped before the door of a room that served as a combination parlor and office. The pigeonhole desk was open, paper and an inkwell in view, along with a cup of pens.

Being sure to move quietly, Laura went to the desk, took down writing materials, and began to journal what had happened since she and Cord left the Lake Hotel. Time passed without her noticing, and at half after four a faint light was coming through the lace curtains.

Another hour passed, and the morning light overpowered the candle. Laura blew it out and kept writing.

The sight that greeted us on the east side of the divide was astounding. Like the raging heart of a furnace, fire swept toward us through the tops of the trees, leaping from one to the next in the space of a single heartbeat. I know not how far we ran along the knife-edge to the north before we dropped down onto the steep slope. Trees exploded as though hit by cannon fire. Sound poured over us like nothing I have ever heard, a full-throated hollow roar that struck terror
.