Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “I’m sorry,” he managed. “Little dizzy.”

  Gray spots started at the edge of his vision.

  Laura’s fingers trembled while she unbuttoned Cord’s soiled white shirt and slipped her hands inside. Gently she pushed the cotton off his shoulders, catching a whiff of the sweat he’d worked up during the fight.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she murmured. “I was terrified when you and Hank started slashing at each other.”

  When she tried to slip the sleeve from Cord’s arm, she found the shirt plastered to the wound. Going to the bureau, she found the manicure scissors Aunt Fanny had loaned her and cut away the material.

  Fresh blood mingled with a blackening crust, the deep puncture already growing dark around the edges. Carefully, she washed the cut with lavender soap and poured from a bottle of White Heliotrope perfume.

  The sting of the alcohol seemed to revive Cord. He shook his head as though to clear it. “I … shouldn’t,” he muttered, “have doubted you.”

  Tearing one of Constance’s petticoats to make a clean bandage, Laura tied it on carefully. Then she pushed at his shoulders for him to lie back on the bed.

  A few steps to the door and she turned off the overhead light, plunging the room into darkness relieved only by a faint glow from the night sky. Sitting beside Cord, she lit a candle on the night table.

  Then she climbed onto the bed, slid her hands into his hair, and massaged his temples with soft circular motions. Of course, he was angry and suspicious. She would be, too.

  She wanted to ask why he’d checked out and then stayed around, but she could do that later. For now, she continued to stroke his head.

  From the window, she could see Hank’s steamboat at anchor beside the dock, starlight glinting on the golden flames that topped the stacks. How vile and ugly Hank had turned out to be, not the opposite of his outlaw brother, but a mirror image.

  She looked down and found Cord watching her with renewed alertness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  JUNE 29

  A woman’s scream ripped the fabric of Laura’s sleep.

  Opening her eyes, she found a red glow suffusing the ceiling of her hotel room, and she smelled smoke. Her heart surged, but she forced herself not to move until she knew whether it was safe to get up or if she needed to crawl.

  A look around revealed the candle beside the bed had nearly burned down; its faint glow did not begin to compete with the fire she realized was not in her room.

  “Cord?” she asked of the rumpled bed beside her.

  She patted his empty place. A look around the room, which was getting brighter all the time, showed that sometime after they’d made love, he’d put his clothes back on and left.

  Getting up naked, she went to the window and parted the curtains.

  On the slope between the hotel and the lake, guests who had worn silks and tuxedos for dinner emerged from the building. Women’s hair tumbled loose from their pins, and they clutched their shawls over batiste gowns. A heavyset man worked at tucking his nightshirt into his trousers.

  Beyond the Grand Loop Road, flames from Hank’s steamboat leaped into the night.

  From next door, Laura heard Constance’s voice, “I’m going …” and Aunt Fanny’s reply, “We’ll stay here where it’s safe.”

  Laura opened the wardrobe and put on the first thing that came to hand, the water-spotted emerald silk. On with the black slippers, and she took no time to comb her hair. Moments later, she ran across the lobby, still buttoning the front of the dress.

  As she went out the door, an explosion aboard the steamboat caused fire to bellow out in a flaring arc. The flames caught a uniformed soldier in the bucket brigade.

  He staggered back, arms flailing. His shirt blazed in the brisk wind.

  Two other men, silhouettes against the fiery night, grabbed the burning man. They tried to slap out the flames, but as he began to scream, they shoved him off the dock. One leaped into the lake after him.

  A chorus of shouts cleared a path, and a group of men dragged a fire hose to the scene. In less than a minute, it was set up, the canvas hose sending a stream of lake water in a tall arc onto the burning boat.

  Even so, the dock burst into flames. Some of the rowboats and little sailing vessels went up, the heat too intense for anyone to move them to safety.

  Laura started down the slope toward the water, scanning the crowd for Cord.

  Hank awakened choking.

  He started to sit up and encountered heat. In his somnolent and semi-drunken state, he somehow managed to hold his breath and roll off his bed onto the rug.

  Christ, his boat was on fire!

  He tried a breath of somewhat cooler air and choked on the stench of kerosene, more than any spilled lamp could supply.

  He pressed his nose to the Heriz and began to crawl on his belly. He’d drifted to sleep in his gray trousers and torn shirt; the wool rug was scratchy on his bare chest.

  Though the smoke was getting to him, he had one more cabin to visit. Hank couldn’t let his little sister die.

  Despite the firefighters’ efforts, the upper deck of the Alexandra began to collapse. In eerie slow motion, half-hidden by a steam cloud, the craft came to pieces. Laura pictured the flames licking the lacquer off Hank’s Chinese screen while the black bed burned.

  Another, larger explosion aboard sent out a wave of heat that seemed to push at Laura. The deafening blast drowned the cries from the throng crowding the Lake Hotel lawn. Burning debris rained.

  Laura brushed glowing embers off her gown and slapped at the sudden hot stab when one fell onto the back of her arm.

  “Hank!” a woman cried.

  She turned to find Alexandra Falls, bundled in a violet velvet robe against the night wind. She looked even younger than Laura remembered; golden hair tousled like a child’s and smudges beneath her eyes. While her namesake burned down in the night, she stifled a sob. “Oh God, Hank.”

  Laura stared at the burning wreck, half-hoping the man who’d tried to force himself on her had died a dreadful fiery death, yet …

  She stepped closer to Alexandra. “Was he … ?”

  Alexandra turned on her. “He was asleep. He was drinking. Oh God.” A shudder went through her, and she kept looking around.

  She looked so broken up over her brother that Laura found herself comforting her. “You don’t know he didn’t get out. Wait and see before you give up.”

  It seemed to take a long time for the steamboat to burn. Bits and pieces of the structure continued to glow, metamorphosing from bright flame to crimson embers.

  Watching for Cord, Laura saw Hank before his sister did. He staggered up from the lake, wearing his torn white shirt and gray trousers, dripping wet from head to pale bare feet.

  “Hank!” Alexandra cried. Her expression froze as though she were seeing a ghost.

  “Alex, thank God!” he croaked. Shuffling faster, he winced as his feet encountered stones.

  He threw his arms around his sister and pulled her against him. “I couldn’t find you …”

  Laura took a step away, hoping he wouldn’t see her. As brother and sister embraced, she could see that Hank’s nose had stopped bleeding, but it had swollen alarmingly. Above his bruised eyes, a soot streak marred his forehead; others painted his cheeks and neck. “I searched until the heat drove me overboard.”

  The Alexandra burned down in the night with only a few feet of smoldering hull above the waterline. Hank patted his sister’s shoulder; she stifled a sob and buried her face against his chest.

  The sound of boots on the crushed stone drive announced the arrival of Captain Feddors and Sergeant Nevers. Laura wondered who was guarding her father.

  “Sir!” Feddors clipped out briskly to Hank, then inclined his head toward Alexandra. Removing his gold-braided cap, he revealed his receding hairline. “My condolences on the loss of your boat. Did one of your lamps … ?”

  “I smelled kerosene, too strongly.” Hank was stopped by a f
it of coughing that doubled him over. He spat a wad of phlegm onto the ground and took a ragged breath. “Cord Sutton … earlier … broke my nose.”

  Dread crept over Laura, as Feddors came to attention like a dog sniffing out a trail.

  “Arrest him,” Hank got out before choking again.

  “I thought Sutton was gone.” Feddors reached into his pocket and displayed an irregular dark shape on his palm. “His room was cleaned out, except for this.”

  Before she thought, Laura stepped forward, palm out. “Let me have that.”

  Feddors laughed and flung the rock into the darkness, where the scrub brush grew thick near the hotel wall. He looked toward the smoldering ruin of the Alexandra. “You may rest assured that we will find and arrest Sutton, whatever it takes.”

  Laura tried to move away casually. In the morning light, she’d find Cord’s stone, but right now, she needed to warn him. That is, if she could without leading Feddors to him.

  The captain turned back to Hank. “It’s a piece of luck that Mrs. Giles … I guess we can both call her Esther, can’t we?” He chuckled. “Good thing Thomas Bryce told her his adopted brother was Nez Perce.”

  Laura stopped. Though Cord had spoken of Thomas laying claim to Excalibur, it hadn’t sounded as if he knew his so-called brother would betray him.

  Mouth dry, heart pounding, she wandered up the slope and into the lobby, lighted in the middle of the night. All the way, she imagined she felt Captain Feddors’s eyes on her back.

  She went through the building and out the other side, past the employee dormitory. There, she lifted her skirts and ducked into the darkness beneath the trees. Though she’d been to the stable earlier and found Dante gone, she had to start somewhere.

  Laura approached the long building from the rear. All was quiet outside; it felt very different from going there by day, or when she had followed Cord through the darkness. When she pulled on the heavy wooden door, the hinges squealed, something she’d not noticed before.

  Inside, the smell of horses and hay smote her. On swift feet, she found the stall where Dante had been stabled. “Cord!” she hissed. She wished she had a stub of candle, or the lantern they’d used last night.

  “Cord!” she cried again, her eyes straining to pierce the blackness.

  At a sudden unmistakable footfall in the straw behind her, she jumped and almost shouted. She’d left the door open so there’d been no warning from the squeaky hinges.

  “Let’s see what we got here.” Laura recognized Captain Feddors’s voice.

  A match flared and illuminated Dante’s empty stall along with Feddors’s face, his sparse goatee of straggling hairs adorning his chin. Acquiring her arm in an iron grasp, he mimicked, “Cord!” in a weak falsetto and shook the match out. Only an inch or so taller than she, he appeared as a solid darker mass against the night. By the smell of smoke sour on his breath, she knew he’d brought his face close to hers.

  “Cord did nothing!” Laura struggled to get her arm free. “It’s crazy what Hank’s accusing him of.”

  She stopped short of calling the captain crazy for believing it.

  He kept his grip. “It’s no use trying to protect Sutton. He tried to kill Hank Falls earlier and came back to finish the job.”

  “That’s all wrong. Hank tried to …” Laura’s face flamed.

  Feddors pulled her along with him. “Let’s just go and talk about that for a bit.”

  Outside was black and silent. Where were the rest of the soldiers and the people who had watched the Alexandra burn?

  Beside the darkened soldier station, Feddors fumbled the key from his pants pocket. He shoved open the thick log door and dragged Laura across the threshold.

  In the weak light of a dying fire, he pushed her down into a hard wooden chair. When he trapped her, both hands on the arms, she recognized a note of liquor on his smoky breath. “You were giving Hank some trouble?”

  He had the same filthy note in his voice as when he’d spoken of Mrs. Giles. Did he, too, plan on taking Hank’s violent approach?

  “I wasn’t giving Hank half the trouble I’ll give you

  if …”

  An electric light came on in the rear of the building. “Who’s there?” Feddors swore.

  “Mr. Resnick!” Laura called, unable to keep the relief from her voice.

  The Pinkerton man appeared in the rear doorway wearing a striped nightshirt.

  “I’d forgotten you were bedding down in here.” Feddors’s tone was pleasant, as though he’d not just sworn at finding out Resnick was on the premises. “You’ve slept through a spectacle. Sutton tried to murder Falls by setting fire to his boat.”

  Resnick’s expression went from dull to sharp.

  “That’s not true,” Laura objected. “Hank was … raping me! I screamed, and Cord came to help. They fought …” She stopped, for one could interpret this as a case against Cord.

  Feddors turned away from Laura and stirred up the embers in the grate. He fed in kindling from a copper bucket beside the hearth, and the fire burst into renewed life.

  Resnick looked at her. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded … as right as one could be with all that had happened.

  He disappeared briefly and came back wearing trousers and a shirt. Crossing to Laura, he bent close, fixing her with that one eye that almost had greater impact than two. A perceptive man, he’d discerned the connection between her and Cord and must be wondering if Cord had resorted to arson in avenging her.

  Resnick glanced at Feddors, who still knelt to tend the fire, and spoke to her. “Did you help Cord Sutton burn that boat?” His voice was colder than in any of their previous encounters.

  “I was asleep in my room when I heard the commotion.”

  “Where is Sutton, then?”

  “I don’t …”

  Feddors slapped his knees and rose. “He’ll have to be tracked down.”

  Resnick did not break eye contact with Laura. “Then I suggest you gather some men and start at once. I’ll question this one.”

  Feddors hesitated, but apparently the prospect of the chase was more attractive.

  As soon as the door closed behind the captain, Resnick straightened. “There isn’t any time. Tell me what you know.”

  “Cord fought Hank, but he’d never burn his boat.”

  “Where’s he gone, then?”

  “I don’t know. Feddors caught me in the stable; Dante’s not there.”

  “Are you sure Cord isn’t guilty?”

  Laura sucked in her breath. “He was with me in my hotel room when the fire went up.”

  She believed that, didn’t she?

  Aunt Fanny sipped tea from the service she’d ordered up to the Absaroka Suite. “This is cold,” she said disapprovingly, smoothing her black dressing gown.

  “What do you expect at this hour?” Laura set her cup aside with unsteady hands. It had still been full dark when Manfred Resnick escorted her to the hotel and knocked on Aunt Fanny and Constance’s door. Now, the barest gray brightened the eastern horizon.

  Being in the family suite, safe and warm against the chill, was almost dreamlike, but two things spoiled

  the idyll.

  As hopeless as the quest might be, Laura needed to be out looking for Cord.

  The other issue was a woeful snivel coming from the divan, where Constance sat amid a pile of ruined paper handkerchiefs. Apparently, the news had spread like wildfire among the guests that Cord was accused, tried, and convicted of arson and attempted murder.

  Fanny looked at her daughter, whose turquoise robe bore tearstains. “Unlike some people,” she glared at Laura, “she’s still got her reputation to consider. After all, Constance was engaged to that lying pretender, more’s the pity.”

  Laura waited for her cousin to admit she and Cord had never been pledged, but Constance came off the couch like a little whirlwind. “I will not have you insinuating I’m the only one who made a mistake with William. We were all taken i
n by him, you more than anyone, Mother!”

  “Constance,” Laura warned. “We don’t know he burned Hank’s boat.”

  “Of course, we do. William’s motive is that he can’t stand losing the hotel to Hank.”

  “Hank’s not getting the hotel, either.” Laura bit back telling them about Hank attacking her and Cord’s rescue; she’d realized with Resnick that it set up a more heated motive than a failed business deal.

  Laura looked out the window at the growing light. From the direction of the stable came a group of mounted cavalry. Captain Feddors was in the lead, with Lieutenant Stafford, another fellow Laura recognized as Private Arden Groesbeck, and two soldiers she didn’t know. They appeared intent on their mission to find and bring Cord to justice.

  Setting aside her cup and saucer, Laura rose. “I’m just going to lie down a while.”

  Once in her room, she looked for her trousers. They weren’t on the floor where she was certain she’d left them along with Cord’s shirt, a pair of step-ins, and a petticoat. A search of the wardrobe revealed that housekeeping had not hung them up. No sign of them in the bureau drawers.

  Laura knelt and looked under the bed. Nothing there, including her boots, which she knew she’d set side by side next to the metal upright of the frame. She went back to the wardrobe and saw that Aunt Fanny’s riding habit was no longer there.

  Ten steps later, she was back in the suite’s drawing room.

  “Where are my trousers? And my boots?” she accused her aunt. “What have you done with them?”

  Fanny sniffed. “I made some decisions for you, Laura. You haven’t been making good ones for yourself lately.”

  The grass was covered with dew, a million tiny cobwebs bridging the stems. Steam rose from the hot pools beside the hotel drive. There was no sign of the posse; they’d evidently ridden off.

  But when Laura, hurrying in the green silk dress and thin slippers, had nearly reached the stable, she saw a man astride a well-blooded palomino, wearing buckskin. She ducked into the fir copse she’d followed Cord through the other night.

  So Danny Falls was still about, riding openly as though he, too, had watched the men from the soldier station ride away.