Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  Though it was still dark, plumes of smoke arose from a few morning cooking fires, while the smell of meat mingled with the nutty aroma of camas porridge.

  Tarpas stirred up the fire before his tipi, ruining Bitter Waters’s night vision. He saw his friend sit and write something by firelight; before he was through, a faint slate hue began to color the eastern horizon.

  “I do not know how or when this letter to Sarah might be delivered,” Tarpas told him, “but I have been thinking of her more often since a Bannock scout reported her with the man Sutton and a child in Jackson’s Hole this spring.”

  Fifty feet from him and Tarpas, Bitter Waters made out Chief Joseph’s younger wife outside their tipi carrying a load of firewood. She was as slender as a girl, bending to pick up another stick.

  The unmistakable crack of a rifle split the still air, reverberating through the clustered tipis. Blood bloomed on the breast of her white cloth blouse; piled sticks tumbled to earth, and she slumped on top of them.

  Bitter Waters saw the Bluecoat who had killed her, splashing through the creek into the heart of camp. He could not have been much older than she, his cleanshaven face fearful beneath his brimmed cap.

  Tarpas seized his Henry repeating rifle from inside his tipi and turned to face the intruder. He shot, and the soldier fell into the water.

  Men and women appeared from inside their lodges in various stages of undress, some towing sleepy and bewildered children. Dark shapes rushed down the hill and into the meadow where the Nez Perce had pitched their tipis. More shots rang out.

  An older man stumped past carrying an ax, calling out that he’d lent his rifle to his sixteen-year-old nephew. “Bold Heart,” he shouted, but the boy was not in sight.

  An elderly man, older than Chief Toohoolhoolzote’s seventy snows, sat in front of his tipi, a lazy curl rising from his pipe into the still morning air. A soldier approached and shot him through the chest; a faint smoke swirled up from the dark bullet hole.

  Bitter Waters tried to shake off his feeling of unreality and looked around the battlefield. Despite the din of shooting and shouting, he heard the thin wail of an infant cradled in his mother’s lifeless arms.

  Tarpas said Sarah had a child …

  A sharp shot and the baby’s cries truncated.

  Sarah … but there was no time to let sentiment sting his eyes. Not when the leaves of the nearby willows were shredded and cut by bullets, not when he and Tarpas had to throw themselves to the earth while the barrage passed.

  A soldier pulled aside the flaps of a tipi and a boy of eight or nine fired a pistol, hitting the man in the shoulder. The soldier emptied his Colt into the tent, killing all five children inside.

  Tarpas gripped Bitter Waters’s arm and gave a keening war cry. Nearly thirty of the young warriors converged on their position as they struggled up from the ground.

  “Hold them off,” Bitter Waters ordered three of White Bird’s band, while he surveyed their weapons, less than twenty rifles and a few pistols.

  Reaching to his belt, Tarpas passed his own handgun to the nearest man who was armed only with a knife. “These soldiers cannot be better than those we defeated at White Bird Canyon! Are we going to let them kill our women and children?”

  Shouting in a manner that made thirty men sound like seventy, the Nez Perce rallied, their guns making flashes in the dawn. In the creek bottom, men fought hand to hand, using rifles and stout willow branches as clubs.

  Bitter Waters saw a sour-faced soldier of the United States scoop out a shallow hole and lie down in it to hide from stray bullets. A woman of the People, already hit and bleeding, took up her dead husband’s weapon and fired, killing two of her enemy. Out of ammunition, Tarpas threw down his rifle and drew his knife.

  The sky lightened from colorless to bearing the first hint of blue.

  Bitter Waters paused beside the stream to catch his breath. All around, it seemed suddenly silent, as the hide tipis brightened in the rising morning light. Behind the hills, he could see the glow that would become sunrise.

  The last sense of unreality evaporated when Bitter Waters saw his wife, Kamiah, part the thick reeds of the creek bottom and wend her cautious way downstream away from the battle. The water came up past her knees, darkening her dress and dragging at her. He clamped his teeth against the urge to call out and draw shooting at either of them.

  Ahead of her, a clump of willow jerked. Bitter Waters could not ascribe the erratic movement to wind, even had there been a breeze. A soldier rose in her path, lips drawn back to show his teeth beneath a blond handlebar mustache. His gun pointed true at her breast.

  Five snows since Bitter Waters took her to wife. And only since they had gone to war had she revealed the new life within her. His wife and child … as Sarah was wife and had a child. Should he survive this day, he would find his sister and bring her back to the tribe.

  Staring at the soldier who threatened his wife, Bitter Waters prepared to shoot. Before he could move, Tarpas was there, leaping from the brush on the opposite side of Big Hole Creek.

  “Here!” Tarpas cried in Nez Perce. “I am here!” Brandishing only a blade, he raced through the water, long legs pumping.

  Two guns fired, almost simultaneously.

  Bitter Waters lowered his smoking weapon and ran, sweeping Kamiah under his arm and dragging her away.

  The soldier’s blouse soaked and darkened; his body floated away downstream.

  Splashing through the shallow water, Bitter Waters released his wife and dropped to his knees beside Tarpas. A seeping cloud of red stained the clear creek, while the sun crept over the mountain’s shoulder.

  “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.


  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JUNE 28

  Past 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.

  With shaking hands, Laura belted Aunt Fanny’s rose silk wrapper. Reflected in the bureau glass, her hair hung damply over her shoulders. The bruise at her eye was starting to fade. Going to the bed, she lay down and stared sightlessly at the striped wallpaper until it seemed to dissolve …

  She stood on the second-floor landing of Fielding House. Behind the door of the master bedroom, Forrest lay propped on pillows, a pale shadow of the robust man he’d once been.

  Laura gripped the smooth mahogany rail and looked down upon a middle-aged man in a banker’s suit in the marble-floored foyer. He carried a briefcase and looked around the house as if he were estimating the cost of its contents.

  She felt two spots of color burnish her cheeks.

  The man paused to straighten a Degas, a picture of a seated dancer lacing her ribboned slippers.

  “Don’t touch that!” Laura’s voice echoed in the high-ceilinged hall. Violet had chosen that painting for the occasion of her daughter’s first ballet lesson.

  “Laura.” Forrest’s feeble voice barely penetrated the closed door of his room.