by Linda Jacobs
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.
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 …”
“Laura who?”
Indeed. He had been so secretive on the trail that of course she had not volunteered a last name. Nor had he asked.
Cord held out his hand near shoulder height. “About this tall, brown hair … came in last evening.”
The woman’s faded blue eyes softened, as he blundered on, “A little slip of woman …”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know all our workers, and we don’t have anyone named Laura.”
“She’s lying.”
Captain Quenton Feddors listened to Pinkerton man Manfred Resnick, who faced him across the desk in the Lake Soldier Station. “I don’t know about what or why,” Resnick went on, “but Laura Fielding’s story doesn’t ring true.”
Feddors spit tobacco juice into a tarnished brass spittoon and wiped his sparse goatee. He balanced his straight-backed wooden chair on two legs and looked out the post window. The log building fronted an open field overlooking Yellowstone Lake, a short walk north of the hotel.
“Lying?” At last, there might be some excitement on his watch as commandant of the First Cavalry’s garrison. Since Superintendent Oscar James Brown had left the park and his replacement, George William Goode, was not due until July 23, Feddors was enjoying his month of power.
“How do ya know she’s lying?”
“The hesitation.” Resnick shrugged a thin shoulder. “The way she won’t look at me straight.”
Perhaps Laura Fielding was just trying not to stare at the bad eye. Feddors was having trouble with that himself.
Resnick crossed his arms over his chest. “At Pinkerton, we’re trained to question people.”
“If you’re so good at reading folks, suh,” Feddors said, “I should get you to help me out with the men heah.” In the months since he’d come out from Tennessee, he was finding the Yellowstone post to be the most frustrating of his twenty-year career.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s not?” Feddors rejoined.
He had found the soldiers, spread over the park in twelve remote stations, to be an undisciplined and untrained lot. And though every man carried a red book of regulations that forbade the use of alcohol, it was rampant.
“The enlisted men go AWOL to the saloons and whorehouses in Gardiner.” Feddors referred to the small rough town four miles north of Fort Yellowstone, down the Gardner River named for a different pioneer family with a distinct spelling. “The troops even bring women into the park to the stations. They know females are forbidden, except for tourists viewing the facility.”
Feddors could see by the dull look on Resnick’s ferret face that he wasn’t interested in the garrison’s troubles.
As he leaned back, Feddors’s uniform blouse gaped between brass buttons over his stomach. Reaching to smooth the blue wool together, he advanced his theory about the stagecoach murders. “Did Laura Fielding at least get a good look at them Injuns?”
“The stagecoach wasn’t attacked by Indians,” Resnick protested. “There were two white men. Frank Worth was found dead. Miss Fielding said the other one was tall and blond.”
“You said she was lying. They had Injun troubles down in Jackson. In ‘95, folks left their homes and circled up their wagons at Wilson Ranch.”
Resnick paced with small rapid steps.
Feddors went on, “One of the reasons they brought in the cavalry in ‘86 to oversee the park was because the Nez Perce came through in ‘77 killing tourists and ranchers for no reason.”
“If that were so, why did it take them nine years? The Nez Perce War is ancient history.”
Feddors’s cheeks heated. To him, it was yesterday; he’d been a boy of fifteen the summer he’d watched the Nez Perce sweep through Yellowstone.
Resnick stopped pacing. “Twenty-three years is long enough for people to forget the Nez Perce lost their homes in Washington and Oregon Territory. They’ve never been allowed back on those lands.”
“Are you defending them?” It gave small comfort to know he outweighed the young detective and could throw him over his shoulder if he cared to take the trouble. “The Nez Perce would never have been driven from their homes if they hadn’t been killing white men with their bows and arrows.”
“Worth wasn’t killed with a bow and arrow, but a forty-five,” Resnick drilled. “Maybe his partner shot him.”
Feddors dropped his chair legs to the floor with a thump. “Maybe the Indian had one.”
Cord pushed open the door of the soldier station. With his Winchester over his shoulder, he showed his pistol to a soldier behind a desk. “I need to declare these.”
“Nice-looking Colt.” The captain, by his insignia, sounded pleasant enough, but his smile did not extend to his dark eyes. He wore a waxed mustache and straggling dun-colored goatee that failed to offset his thinning hair.
Beyond him, a wiry man in a pinstriped suit leaned against the chinked log wall, hands in his pockets.
Cord placed the Colt on the table. The captain lifted it and checked the chamber. “A forty-five.” He raised the weapon and sighted at the lake through the open door. “Feddors,” he said abruptly. “Quenton Feddors. In charge of all army personnel in the park.”
With a whole sentence on the air, Cord detected a drawl, Tennessee or northern Georgia. He also noted how Feddors’s eyes followed him as he unshouldered his Winchester and set it
on the desk.
“Sutton,” he offered, “William Cordon Sutton,” giving what he thought of as the double-barreled version.
The other man observed both Cord and Captain Feddors without introducing himself.
“Any particular reason you didn’t stop by the south entrance and have these weapons sealed according to park regulations?” Feddors sounded sharp.
“My horse got lost,” Cord related with a straight face.
He was immediately sorry, for Feddors let his Colt down onto the wooden table with a clatter. “Nevers!” he called.
A young sergeant stuck his head in from the rear room. Of medium build with a broad open face, wavy brown hair, and thick glasses, he nodded briefly at Cord.
“Fix these weapons,” Feddors ordered.
Nevers turned away and came back with a roll of red tape. He picked up the Colt.
While Cord watched, the soldier tied the mechanism with the tape. Then he lit a wooden match and melted a dollop of red sealing wax onto the knot; if anyone took off the tape, it would be obvious. “Sir, anyone traveling with weapons can be stopped by a soldier at any time for an inspection.”
Feddors chuckled. “Anyone failing inspection will be marched to Mammoth for a hearing before the acting superintendent. That’s me, suh. Or if anyone leaves a campfire burning. Or defaces the formations. The penalty begins at expulsion from the park and goes up from there.” He gestured toward Nevers. “Tell the man what happened to that poacher we caught a week
ago.”
“He was force marched from near Yellowstone Lake up to Mammoth. The captain presided at his hearing and then personally horsewhipped him before expelling him permanently from the park.” He spoke in a monotone.
Cord kept his expression grave. “I don’t think you’ll have any problem with me.” He hated being obsequious, but it seemed the best way to handle the little captain’s Napoleon complex.
Feddors was studying him. “There was a stagecoach attack down near Menor’s Ferry in Jackson’s Hole a few days ago. Couple of people killed.”
Cord hesitated, then figured it was safe to admit; the man who’d rented him the rowboat this morning had talked of little else. “I heard,” he said. “A terrible thing.”