Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  They climbed higher, first encountering snowy patches, and then rode into a blanket covering the ground, deep and soft. It was last winter’s snowcap, not yet melted in the divide at the headwaters of a rushing creek. A few yards downstream, the heat had melted the snow, and she saw the pool of the hot springs.

  “Witch Creek,” Cord said, “named for the boiling cauldrons on its banks.” Pointing up the steep slope, he showed Laura the steam rising from at least fifty craters. “The early explorers named this Factory Hill. All that smoke made it look like a New England manufacturing town.”

  She wondered if they were safe this close to the hissing vents, but risk was part of the fascination.

  “We’ll make camp here,” Cord declared.

  It seemed a hundred years since she’d awakened this morning. The long ride, the wasted carcasses left by poachers, the bear … how she longed to collapse into a dreamless slumber.

  But that wasn’t possible, for Cord was unpacking gear, letting Dante out to graze, laying a fire, and placing his deadly Colt upon the nearest rock where it was in ready reach. She helped as she could, pulling out the cooking pot and mess kit, and filling his canteen with water from the rushing stream up current from the vents.

  While she worked, Laura became more aware of her filthy state. Her blood-encrusted shirtfront felt sticky against her chest, and though the evening chill was settling in, her scalp prickled from where she had perspired earlier.

  “You look as though you could use a bath.” Cord’s gravelly voice made Laura jump.

  “What bath?” She thought of her claw-footed tub in Chicago, with the option of water falling from above like rain, and pointed at steam rising from the nearby hot spring. “That would parboil me.”

  Cord gestured at the woods. “There’s a pool over there that should satisfy any lady’s desire.”

  A few minutes later, Laura smelled the faintly corrupt odor of sulfur beside the spring to which Cord escorted her. He handed her the rough shape of a bar of homemade lye soap. “Made this myself at my cabin.”

  He walked away.

  Laura looked around at the forest, wondering about bears and outlaws. She could call Cord back to stand guard, but privacy won out.

  Only a little steam rose from this clear water, blowing away and constantly renewing itself. Just as she felt that she would have an unobstructed view of the blue depths, a tantalizing veil blew back.

  With the water inviting at her feet, she slipped the buttons of her blood-encrusted flannel shirt, took it off, and laid it on the terraced white rock that rimmed the pool. Beside it lay a clean blue cotton shirt Cord had offered.

  Even with the bloody garment off, Laura had never felt this grubby. She smelled so bad that she offended herself. Her face felt grimy from where she had sweated in the midday sun, and she itched where her ivory silk camisole had been plastered against her back. Her hair was matted with dust.

  She untied the delicate ribbons that held her camisole together in front and took off the rest of her clothes. The evening air felt cool on her skin. Easing her bare foot into the pool, she found it temperate and inviting. Wading in naked, she submerged to the top of her head.

  She couldn’t help but compare this to bathing at Fielding House. There, her tub was in a small room without windows. In Yellowstone, sculling with her hands, she breathed the almost-impossible freedom of being nude in the open air.

  She reached for the soap Cord said he had made and imagined him in a log room before a fireplace, stirring a kettle of lard and ashes. Did his soap making mean there was no woman to do for him?

  Though his bar of lye was harsher than the lavender-milled variety she was used to, she shampooed her hair and lathered her body. After sluicing the suds away, she washed her lingerie.

  Once she and her underclothes were clean, Laura started to rise but decided to linger, floating on her back.

  A moment later, she opened her eyes with the sensation that someone watched her. Surely Cord would not …

  Heart pounding, she scanned the darkening woods.

  A man stood on the hillside, not fifty feet from the pool. His hair hung lankly over his brow, but even in the dimness Laura saw that it was a lighter shade than her own brown. He wore a long coat over his tall form.

  She scrambled up, sheeting water as she struggled through the thigh-deep pool. Her feet slipped on the algae-coated travertine.

  Cord splashed water over his shoulders and took up a handful of sand to scrub his skin, having given Laura his only bar of soap. The pool in which he bathed wasn’t as warm as the one he’d offered her; nearly nonexistent tendrils of steam teased its surface.

  He could be a gentleman when he wanted to.

  In Salt Lake, where he was generally known as part Indian, mothers drew their daughters aside and let them know he was not suitable marriage material. Having lived there since he was six, he’d given up believing he’d find a wife and start a family.

  But in the spring, when he went to St. Paul to meet with the Northern Pacific Railroad, he’d been welcomed like a king in the city drawing rooms. No one had looked past his blue eyes and fine clothing to see a ragged breed.

  Especially the curvaceous pale beauty, niece of one of the St. Paul city fathers, who had danced and taken the air with him and gazed on him with admiration. Passing for a man without Nez Perce blood was the sheerest folly, but he was trying it anyway. First, to be certain his business in Yellowstone was concluded without question, and second, to have a chance at seeing the lovely young woman again. Strangely, this was the first time he’d thought of her since he’d heard gunshots in yesterday’s dawn.

  Running his hands up through his hair, he held his breath and ducked his head. No matter how rich the food, how well appointed the drawing rooms of St. Paul or Salt Lake, there was nothing like breathing the damp sulfurous scent of a hot spring. Out here, he came alive.

  Surfacing, he wiped the water from his eyes. And blinked.

  Was that a shadow in the forest or a man? Because if it was a man … he reached for his shirt, dried his face, and looked again … the bastard was stalking the pool where Laura bathed.

  Cord surged out of the water and reached for his Winchester. His hands tensed on the stock, and he strained to see into the gathering darkness. He was nearly certain that the man skulking through the brush was the outlaw who had escaped him at the stagecoach.

  He ran toward where he’d left Laura, scanning the woods as he went.

  Not a branch moved on the hillside, but Cord started up, his legs pumping. He saw again the lifeless form of the stage driver, and his blood heated with the determination to finish what he’d started.

  “Cord … be careful.” Laura’s voice, and he realized the foolhardiness of rushing into the dusk and making himself a target.

  He slid to a stop not ten feet from her.

  She wasn’t a thing like the boy he’d first mistaken her for, not with that tiny waist and rose-tipped breasts she brought up her hands to cover. Her foot slipped, and she grimaced as she stepped on something on the bottom of the pool.

  Cord started to go closer, to put out a hand and help her out of the clear water that hid nothing, then realized what he must look like to her, naked and dripping.

  “I … thought I saw something,” he explained.

  “You did.” She gave him an even look. “I think it was the outlaw.”

  With care, he picked up his clean shirt, handed it to her, and turned away.

  With trembling hands, Laura jerked Cord’s shirt on over wet bare skin, and pulled on her still-dirty trousers. She gathered her camisole, step-ins, and the ruined shirt, being sure not to leave the lye soap behind.

  Back in camp, Cord brought out a waterproof tin of matches from his saddlebag.

  “Do you think he’s gone?” she asked, handing over his soap.

  “I have no idea.” He stowed the soap in a metal tin and knelt to start the fire he’d laid earlier. As he straightened, he looked down at her
. “I should have told you earlier … At the canyon rim, after you shot the bear, I thought I heard something … like a gun being cocked.”

  She stared out into the dark woods. Though sparks danced skyward while hungry flames consumed the kindling, she felt a coldness deeper than damp skin and night air could account for. The outlaw knew he’d been seen by both her and Cord, and here by the fire, they made the simplest of targets.

  “Shouldn’t we hide out in the dark?” She put on her woolen coat and buttoned it.

  “We could,” Cord agreed. “But he’s had ample opportunity to shoot us down from cover; he could have plugged either one of us while we were bathing in the hot pools.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Cord reached for the pack where he kept food.

  She knew there were the inevitable beans, jerky, and dried fruit, but hadn’t she noted a small sack of meal when she’d looked inside at Jenny Lake? Recalling that one day at Fielding House, Giselle had served a chicken casserole with a cornbread topping, Laura figured she might impress Cord by putting a layer over the beans.

  “You said it was my turn to cook?” she offered.

  He looked dubious, but crouched back on his heels.

  In an hour, she wasn’t feeling so positive. The beans had started out all right, she’d remembered to add salt and jerky, and dug around and found some dried onions. However, when she mixed up the cornmeal and water and placed it on the surface of the beans, something disastrous happened.

  Instead of cooking up into a layer of golden cornbread, the paste sank into the beans, creating a mass of starch that stuck to the bottom of the pot no matter how quickly she stirred.

  Aware of Cord behind her, she dipped up the food and turned to offer him a plate.

  “Your dinner,” she murmured, ashamed.

  Cord took his plate and spoon, and ate with relish. When he made no comment on her mistake, she thought he might have been hungry enough not to notice.

  Her hope was dashed when his lips curved into a smile that peeked out from his mass of black beard. “Ah, Laura, one thing …”

  “Hmm?” She tried to force a sticky mouthful down.

  “The cornbread-on-top thing only works with the lid on. You have to get it hot in the pan like an oven. Works even better if you put some coals on top of the lid.”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  Cord gathered their dishes and scrubbed them with sand in the stream. He took the small pack containing food and roped it up into a tree a distance from their fire. “No sense tempting another bear.”

  Laura remembered her bloody shirt. If food were a bear magnet …

  She retrieved the soiled flannel and flung it into the fire.

  Cord stretched out on the ground against a log and watched the cloth burn with a listening alertness in his posture. His hands were in constant motion, worrying the piece of obsidian she had found in his pack at Jenny Lake.

  She looked into the darkness, wondering if the tall blond man lurked just beyond the circle of light. He might not have shot them, but what if he was more sadistic? What if he preferred to sneak up in the night and slit their throats while they slept?

  As though he were reading her mind, Cord proposed, “I’ll stand guard until dawn. Tomorrow I’ll put you on Hank Falls’s steamboat; it’ll take you safely across Yellowstone Lake to the hotel.”

  She’d traveled over a thousand miles to meet Hank, a man she’d imagined might meet her on her own terms, but tonight the sound of his name failed to interest her.

  Laura wrapped her coat tighter and looked up at the sky. The waning moon would not rise until after midnight, but the starlight was nearly bright enough to read by.

  Behind them in the dark woods, Dante whickered softly.

  “Have you read The Divine Comedy?” She thought Cord remarkably well spoken for a mountain man. Perhaps he really had named his horse for the author of the epic depiction of hell.

  “I love Italian literature,” he rejoined, leaving her to wonder, as she wondered so many things about him. A little later, he rose and pocketed his obsidian with care.

  As he moved to spread the bedroll and blankets, Laura’s face grew warm. It felt different now that she had seen the muscles of his broad chest and he had seen …

  He came and offered a hand to help her up.

  She let her own be taken into his clasp, and he pulled her to her feet. His eyes looked black in the deep forest night. The glow of the firelight emphasized leaping shadows.

  Without warning, the intensity in Cord’s gaze extinguished. He released her hand, stepped back, and dropped his hands to his sides. Though he did not bow, she imagined that he did, so formal was his posture.

  “I’ll keep watch while you sleep.”

  Cord leaned against a log and watched Laura’s eyes close.

  Reaching to his trouser pocket, he removed his precious talisman of obsidian and watched it come alive in the light from the dancing flames. The glass, born of fire, warmed in his fingers, as it had done when he first plucked it from the earth.

  As a child, he’d returned to the Nez Perce camp at dawn. The smoke from cooking fires rose, and Cord’s stomach growled as he found his way to his uncle’s camp. Approaching with his wayakin clutched in his fingers, Cord had found Kamiah alone beside the breakfast fire.

  She raised her head from where she worked over a wooden bowl of camas flour, wiped the back of her hand across her snub nose, and left a white smudge. The front of her beaded deerskin dress was also liberally sprinkled.

  Though she did not speak English, she raised her brows to ask about Cord’s quest for his guardian spirit.

  He answered by opening his hand and showing the piece of stone.

  She smiled and reached to touch the glassy surface.

  Cord gestured to ask where his uncle was.

  Kamiah pointed across the main fire in the center of camp toward the largest makeshift shelter, draped with a mosaic of soft-looking hides.

  On swift feet, Cord made his way toward the enclosure. When he drew close, he heard voices raised in acrimony. Holding tightly to his wayakin, he put his eye to a space between skins and looked inside.

  Bitter Waters was in council with the elders. The air was thick with pipe smoke, as the chiefs and their lieutenants continued a discussion that seemed to have gone on a while.

  “We did the right thing when my mother and the others were killed by white men,” Bitter Waters insisted. To Cord’s surprise he spoke in English, but then he noticed the older white man in their midst. He had heard this man, Cappy Parsons, was a miner who had been captured in the park and was being forced to guide the tribe through unfamiliar country.

  Bitter Waters went on, “We rallied the young warriors …”

  “It is not your turn to speak,” White Bird interjected. His square shoulders still looked sturdy, but his chestnut hair was streaked with gray. Small eyes in his long face admonished, and his chin, scarred from skin eruptions, lifted imperiously. “You forget that some of our youths, full of themselves on fire water, went on their own killing spree among the white men.”

  Cord made a face. This was the first he’d heard the tribe might also be at fault in starting the war.

  Though Bitter Waters had been told not to speak, he went to the center of the circle, wearing ceremonial feathers in his braids. “After the thief treaty of 1863, when the United States took much of our land, many began to question the wisdom of keeping the peace.” Quiet descended. The only sound was that of Looking Glass puffing on his pipe. Younger than White Bird, he was nearly six feet tall.

  “Joseph!” Bitter Waters turned to the chief. “Your own father renounced the white man’s religion, as well as his government.”

  Joseph nodded. “I watched him tear up his copy of the treaty with the United States and his Gospel of Matthew, a gift from the missionary who baptized me.” He stared into the fire. “The hate is high on both sides. Knowing we are pursued by both General Howard’s sol
diers and the Bannock Indians he hired, we are pitted against both white men and red.”

  Cappy Parsons, who had been sitting silent, raised his head. “That’s no excuse to kidnap me.”

  One of the younger braves started to move toward the miner, but Joseph lifted a hand. “Do not harm him. He will help us through these mountains, and then we will let him go.”

  Parsons subsided back into silence.

  Joseph went on, “It no longer matters how this war started. We are on the run from the United States Army and must not stop until we reach Canada.”

  Cord walked away from the council.

  How could he live among these people after he had seen his parents’ mingled blood? He hated his uncle and all these strange warriors, even after Bitter Waters had spoken to him in his formal English: “Sarah was my sister. I grieve for her, even as you do.”

  He might be Cord’s uncle, but if he had not come like a thief in the night, how different things might have been. While Cord’s home burned with his parents’ bodies inside, he had sat stiffly in the saddle in front of his uncle and hardened his heart.

  “You are of the Nimiipuu, the People.” Bitter Waters’s strong arms kept him from tumbling off the tall gray horse.

  “I will never be one of you!” Cord had declared.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JUNE 23

  With the first pearling of dawn, Laura raised her head to see the clearing and the surrounding woods. The campfire had burned to pale ashes, and the pines loomed large against the mist rising off the hot pools. Cord sat with his back against a tree. The collar of his sheepskin coat was turned up; he held his Winchester across his knees.

  She started to stretch her cold, cramped muscles, but stopped. A pale shape crouched at the edge of the trees, about forty feet away.