by Linda Jacobs
Laura stretched her arm to offer Dante one of the withered apples she had found in a barrel inside the stable door. He whickered and lowered his great black head.
“You big baby,” she crooned. Seeing him brought back everything that had happened on the trail to Yellowstone. How deep was the bond between this noble animal and the man who trusted him enough to leave the stallion untethered when they camped.
Down at the other end of the long aisle, the tackies, as the stable help were called, saddled a pair of horses for tourists. But it was largely quiet since the morning wagon tours and the stage had departed.
A scraping sound announced someone opening the stable door at the near end.
“Dante?” Cord’s voice.
His horse tossed his head, and the apple Laura had offered rolled away into the hay.
Cord and Constance approached, walking into a beam of morning sunlight that streamed through a crack in the roof. Laura saw that her cousin’s pale face seemed to glow above her burgundy satin dress.
“I thought I knew who you were,” Constance teased in a low tone, “but this cowboy stuff is a side I never expected.”
Laura gritted her teeth.
The couple moved closer. Laura scurried into an empty stall next to Dante’s. In the muted dusty light, she pressed her eye against a half-inch gap in the boards.
While Cord stroked his horse’s nose, Constance stayed well back in the middle of the wide aisle, hands clasped behind her.
“Hello.” Cord spied the fallen fruit and bent for it.
In the dimness, Laura could have sworn he looked right at her.
He offered the apple to Dante, who took it between his lips almost delicately. But after Cord’s fingers withdrew, he crunched with enthusiasm.
Constance grabbed Cord’s arm with both hands, and he turned toward her. Her rosy lips pouted, and she wrinkled her nose. “It smells like the dickens in here, but we’re all alone …”
She brought her arms up and wrapped them around Cord’s neck.
Laura’s face went hot, and she gripped her borrowed skirt. She wanted to rush at them, but she felt frozen. Her fingernails cut crescents on her palms, and the flush that had begun on her face suffused her whole body.
My God, she would have to sit at table with him on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and watch his children grow up. She’d have to watch his lovely dark head turn silver, so near and yet forever far.
Wildly, she looked for a way out.
Lifting her skirts to prevent them rustling, she fled. Cord’s back was to her, and Constance’s face wasn’t visible behind his shoulders. Expecting that at any second one of them would see her, she kept going. The twenty feet to the exit seemed to stretch a mile.
Reaching the big wooden door, she ratcheted the metal latch. For a few interminable seconds, she struggled. Finally, she wrenched the door open and stumbled into the sun.
Outside, a family was loading their wagon with picnic supplies from the hotel store: a whole ham, loaves of bread, and a sweating jug of drink. The young mother, wearing a worn sunbonnet and carrying a baby on her hip, watched Laura’s flight with curiosity.
Without slowing, Laura rushed across the road ahead of the clattering hooves of a four-horse team. The driver atop the red-painted stagecoach sawed on the reins and swore.
Reaching the cool shade of pines and the footpath along the lakeshore, she wished she’d never left Chicago.
In the ripe warmth of the stable, William’s hands gripped Constance’s shoulders and his mouth plundered hers. All the remembered tenderness had turned dark and somehow desperate. It did not seem possible that this man had walked with her beside the lily ponds in St. Paul’s Como Park, bending his head attentively like a perfect gentleman.
A door slammed, and rapid footsteps approached. “Halloo!” a man called.
William raised his head and stepped back from Constance so quickly that she nearly fell.
The man in army blues and braided cap took in her heaving breasts. Stepping forward, he placed the flat of his hand on William’s chest and pushed him back against the creaking wood of the stall gate.
William stood perfectly still before the shorter, barrel-chested man in uniform, but a muscle in his cheek jumped. “Feddors,” he said quietly.
“Are you all right, miss?” Feddors asked without taking his eyes off William.
“Of course.” Her face flamed, and she reached to smooth her hair with trembling hands. “Mr. William Sutton is my betrothed.”
Constance saw Feddors’s dark eyes narrow above his wide, waxed mustache. He studied William’s bronzed face with its high cheekbones, and she got the distinct impression that Feddors wanted to hit him.
“Is there anything else we can do for you?” William asked.
“No.” Feddors stepped back and gave Constance a little bow she thought might be ironic. “It’s just a might strange that a fine young girl like you would take up with a … person like this.”
Grabbing her hand, William pulled her with him down the stable aisle. Her high-heeled boots nearly went out from under her as she struggled through the thick straw.
When they reached the door, William shot the latch and went through. Stunningly bright, the sunlight outside seemed to stab her eyes.
The golden grass waved; the sun made the pine smells rise just as it had before they went into the stable, but nothing felt the same.
CHAPTER TEN
JUNE 25
Laura entered the dining room late for dinner, for she dreaded seeing Constance and Cord together. Even more, she did not want to have Hank dance attendance on her.
To her surprise, she found that this evening’s meal would be shared with only her cousin, Aunt Fanny, and her father.
Forrest glared at her from beneath his graying brows. “You have missed the appetizer.”
Laura slid into a seat and unfolded her linen napkin. “Thank you for waiting.”
“Beg pardon?”
She raised her voice. “I said, thank you for waiting dinner for me.”
“Why, Laura.” Aunt Fanny sounded aghast.
She could have taken her cue, but since she’d come through the wilderness with Cord, Laura wasn’t willing to settle back into her old submissive role. “What’s the matter, Aunt? I am so insignificant that no one waits on me, while in Chicago I am expected to wait on you all.”
Constance gave her a level look across the boards. Laura couldn’t tell if she offered support.
“Where is your … William this evening?” Laura offered her own challenge. The memory of her cousin’s arms around Cord made her want to throw plates, to scratch Constance’s delicate cheeks until she drew blood.
Constance took up the gauntlet, gritting, “Perhaps he and Hank are out dueling over the hotel.”
“Girls!” Forrest’s voice cracked like a whip.
The elemental idea of Cord and Hank coming to blows did not seem far-fetched to Laura in her present mood. Unable to help herself, she went on, “Or perhaps William is waiting for you in the stable.”
Constance’s blue eyes went wide, then seemed to narrow into slits.
“What’s this, child?” Aunt Fanny looked from Laura to her daughter. “You know it is not seemly …”
Her face whiter than usual, Constance shoved back from the table and fled the dining room.
Blood pounding, she hastened away from the hotel into twilight, following the beaten path past the employees’ quarters. How could Laura know she and William had been in the stable, unless she’d been spying on them? Her face hot, she imagined her cousin peeping at them while they kissed.
Wishing she had brought her blue woolen cloak, Constance crossed her arms and hastened on, her thoughts turning from Laura to that embrace. It had been all wrong, rough and somehow forced when she’d expected tenderness. It dawned on her that William had dodged speaking of their betrothal. How dare he court her in the spring and then turn into this hard man once he returned to the West?
It really was getting cold out here, but as she started to turn back, she saw a crowd of people gathered in a clearing. Though she had fled to the woods for privacy, curiosity drew her on toward the unmistakable stench of garbage.
At the hotel dump, two grizzlies and four smaller black bears snarled and waved their paws at two soldiers bearing buckets of kitchen scraps, backed by three with rifles.
One of the soldiers flipped a pork chop toward a shaggy grizzly female with a humped back and a blond muzzle. On her hind legs, she neatly caught the tidbit, put it into her mouth, and raised her claw-studded paws in renewed appeal.
A few feet away, Constance noticed Hank Falls, standing quite close to a dark-haired woman of at least forty. His hand rested on her silk-clad elbow; her hair appeared to have been hastily pulled up and fastened by a Spanish comb.
Hank leaned closer and murmured something in the woman’s ear. She laughed, and Constance recognized Mrs. Giles, the woman she had breakfasted with her first morning in the park, having risen earlier than her mother or Uncle Forrest. Esther Giles seemed too youthful for her husband, Harold, a rotund, florid-faced man of at least sixty. Yet, despite his age, Harold seemed hale, as he planned his day fishing with a guide.
On that morning, Constance had believed William would never leave her alone like that.
Mrs. Giles giggled like a girl at another of Hank’s apparent witticisms. Maybe Harold had not been too smart to go fishing without his wife.
Several of the black bears crowded closer. Constance retreated a step, colliding with what felt like a very large person behind her. “I beg your pardon.”
“Certainly.” With that single word, Constance was reminded of the Swedes she’d met when she visited St. Paul.
As one of the grizzlies lunged toward a black bear, she recoiled once more and made a misstep on the uneven ground.
A hand on her arm steadied her. “Be careful, for I do not fancy carrying you back to the hotel.”
The sense of familiarity grew stronger. Constance turned to look up into the broad face of a blond giant whose beard was much redder than his hair.
“Or perhaps it would not be unpleasant to carry you.”
Her face grew warm.
“Norman Hagen,” he said genially, bowing over her hand in a gallant manner. “We …”
“Met in St. Paul,” she finished for him.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Devon.” Norman’s fair skin looked flushed, even with the evening breeze. His hand, still holding hers, was as broad as a board; his fingernails cleaner than those of men who made a living with their hands.
“Are you still with the railroad?” Constance remembered, while his clear eyes held hers with what could only be admiration.
“The Northern Pacific.” He spoke as though he restrained his tone to avoid scaring people. “You do remember.”
At the home of Uncle David and Aunt Florence, a string quartet had played the drifting notes of Bach. Everyone at the party was older than Constance, except for Cousin Fiona, nineteen and already sad-looking like her mother.
Constance had sought the solace of the terrace.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” The deep voice had startled her, and she’d turned to find Norman looking down at her from his great height. A man of apparently few words, he had lit a cigarette and stood next to her by the balustrade, enjoying the garden view. Golden daffodils and purple crocus cups promised spring.
When the dinner chime sounded, Norman escorted her in, his big hand placed politely at the small of her back. Whenever she looked up from her plate, his eyes met hers with a kind of emphasis that made Constance have to force her focus away.
The next afternoon she met William.
“Hello, what’s this?” Norman lifted Constance’s left hand with the garnet ring.
“I’m betrothed to William Sutton,” she said staunchly.
“Cord Sutton.” Norman nodded. Everyone but her seemed to call him that. “He was in St. Paul talking with the Northern Pacific about buying one of our park hotels.”
“Is that what you’re doing here?”
“Yes, two groups have put their name in the hat.”
“Won’t the highest bid win?”
Norman looked thoughtful. “I wish it were that simple. The railroad’s board is concerned that the best possible candidate manage the hotel, since we will still be bringing folks here by train. Though the Northern Pacific has been stymied in their attempts to build branch lines into the park, we continue to have hopes.”
“Always progress,” Constance observed.
“After all, it is nineteen-hundred.” Norman shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“For the past few days, I and the other company representative, Mr. Hopkins Chandler, have been getting to know Hank Falls and his banker, Forrest Fielding. Tomorrow, I will talk with your fiancé, and then we may have some joint sessions to see how each side will plead their case.”
Constance met his eyes. “I’m also the niece of Forrest Fielding.”
“Oh dear.” Norman smiled ruefully. “I guess that puts us both in the middle.”
Cord pulled the plats of the Lake Hotel closer, and his obsidian paperweight fell from the table and rolled. He bent and retrieved it, rubbing it between the fingers of his left hand as he scribbled rapid notes.
He’d worked through dinner, using his bed as an improvised table.
Though Cord had been discouraged by Hank’s incumbent advantage at the hotel, the documents Edgar had brought him this afternoon were the ammunition he needed. With them, he could show the railroad that Hank had not managed the hotel maintenance properly.
Eager to look at some concrete details of the construction, he checked the nickel alarm clock on the bedside table and found it nearly nine.
A few feet down the hall, he tapped on his banker’s door.
After a few minutes without an answer, he continued down the long corridor and outside. Over the hills the western horizon still glowed. It reminded him of the light fading behind Mount Moran as he and Laura ate ptarmigan, seasoned with salt from his pack and sage from the meadow.
Beneath the pines and darker firs that loomed only a few yards from the hotel walls, the day’s heat had dissipated. No attempt had been made at carving a lawn out of the rough earth, but there were footpaths, worn tracks that crisscrossed their way through the trees and volcanic boulders.
Cord stopped to examine some ugly places in the foundation. Extracting his pocketknife, he peeled a little paint from some boards and smiled, then struck out walking.
The evening fire at the tent camp blazed. Silhouettes of people crowded around to listen to a storyteller or watch a short play.
Cord cursed the proximity of William Wylie’s permanent tent camp, hoping that if he bought the hotel, the camp would not eat into his business. On the other hand, the “Wylie Way” meant the cheap opportunity for those who couldn’t afford the hotels, so perhaps it would be all right.
Drawn to the laughter and applause, Cord approached the entertainment. Taller than most, he stopped at the outer ring and looked over others’ heads.
In front of the tipi Constance had remarked upon this morning, the Wylie Camp barker waved his arms for silence. An expectant hush fell, and just as the group began to become restless, the tipi flap was thrown back.
An older man emerged, bending his back to clear the pole. His crown of dark hair was streaked with white at the temples, and a pair of long braids fell over a bare and bony chest. Bright dark eyes, his strongest feature, flicked over the crowd and came to rest unerringly on Cord.
It couldn’t be, but Bitter Waters’s arms rose over his head. Gazing at his nephew, he began a chant Cord recognized from the night he returned to camp with a hunk of obsidian in his small hand. All the elders had gathered, even Chief Joseph, to honor one of the smallest, who had braved the wilderness to find a guardian spirit.
Outrage swelled Cord’s chest. How dare Bitter Waters remi
nd him of their past?
The chant ended.
Bitter Waters motioned for silence, the firelight casting his hawk nose in prominent shadow. “Tonight, I speak a story—no, not a story, but the truth.”
Cord sucked in his breath.
In a mix of pantomime and words, his uncle began in his peculiar precise accent.
“Seeyakoon peered round the door frame at me and my great friend Tarpas Illipt. We sat on her front porch beside Oregon’s Wallowa River, playing poker and drinking whiskey.”
Cord’s nostrils flared at the name Tarpas: the man who had loved his mother before she chose his father. The one who had brought the painted hide that occupied a place of honor in his parents’ home. Franklin Sutton must have been secure in love to let her keep the piece as a memento of her prior life.
Bitter Waters paced the edge of the fire ring. “My mother claimed her name of Seeyakoon, ‘the spy,’ came from her keen eyesight.” He smiled. “But everyone said she had been caught listening at the flap of the smoking lodge by Chief Joseph’s father, Tuekakas, when she had but four snows.”
Cord could not have achieved four snows of his own when Sarah had placed him on Seeyakoon’s lap. He could still recall the smell of his grandmother, of summer flowers dried in the sun and apples from the trees on her land.
Bitter Waters seemed to be speaking directly to Cord. “The first day of May, 1877, was unseasonably warm. Seeyakoon carried out a dipper of well water that she added to the pitcher on the table. Small droplets made dark patches on her white deerskin dress. Still slim for a woman of fifty snows, she moved deftly to drink from the whiskey bottle.”
Bitter Waters rolled his eyes, and the Wylie crowd chuckled in appreciation. Cord moved forward a few feet, heedless that he was blocking others’ view. As the story continued, he imagined his grandmother’s homestead beside the Wallowa, where he’d been put down to sleep near the fire.
Bitter Waters continued to spin his tale of two young men at cards.
Tarpas crowed and threw his straight flush onto the table. “Luck is not with you today, Bitter Waters,” he observed slyly, “or skill.”