Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “That’s no good!” Cord shouted. “Laura!” He realized she could not or would not hear him. He ran after her.

  The terrain fell away so steeply on either side that the pines on the slope seemed to be growing on a vertical wall. A sudden wind shift brought the smoke sweeping up over them in a choking cloud.

  The dragon’s roar grew ever louder, punctuated by the sharp snap of limbs exploding and the louder reports of tree trunks blowing apart.

  Cord’s thigh muscles ached as he ran uphill after Laura. Catching her was harder than he’d thought, but from the terrified look of her face when she glanced back at the fire, she was running on pure adrenaline.

  A sudden sharp whine near his ear. My God, Feddors was within range.

  Cord found his own surge of pure terror, caught Laura’s hand, and plunged off the ridge onto the forested slope. Immediately they were knee-deep in a patch of coarse, icy snow.

  He saw Laura’s ridiculously thin slippers sucked from her feet with the first two steps, but he dragged her on. They half-wallowed, half-fell down the sixty-degree incline.

  A dead limb caught Cord in the face. He kept pulling her.

  He smashed a shoulder into a tree and grunted in pain.

  Heat at their backs told him they weren’t going to make it.

  Unless … a cluster of lava boulders at least thirty feet on a side. He stumbled down to the landmark, threw Laura into the lowest crevice, and fell on top of her. They’d probably be cooked, their hair afire and the liquid boiled out of them, but it made the only shelter in sight.

  The wildfire raged, roaring through the treetops. Below on the slope, a fir exploded. Burning bits of wood showered them.

  Cord rolled over and clawed at the loose pile of rocks. Impossibly, the gale force wind felt freezing cold as it swept toward the inferno.

  The wind shifted, and became a hurricane. The banshee wail crescendoed while ovenlike temperatures came down on them. Cord held his breath; his next one would draw searing gases into his lungs.

  Frantically, he worked at the rocks on one side of Laura, trying to burrow out a place for her, even though he knew it was hopeless. The fire’s glow grew so intense that he closed his desiccated eyes and saw brilliant orange through his lids.

  Even blind, he kept on digging.

  Suddenly, he felt a shift, as though the earth tilted. Laura fell away beneath him.

  The plunge felt endless. She fought a sickening weightless feeling that reminded her of when she fell out of an apple tree at Fielding House when she was twelve. In a fraction of a second, she landed on her chest and stomach with the breath knocked out of her. Then, instead of lying flat on solid earth like the lawn beneath the apple tree, she slid headfirst down a cold and slippery slope.

  Crashing to a stop, she felt a sharp pain and wondered if she had broken her arm. The blood pounded in her head, and she stared up at the glowing light.

  “Cord!” she screamed.

  Only the dragon answered.

  Sudden heat flared on the back of her legs, and she twisted her head to find her skirt aflame.

  Before she could move, a heavy weight crashed into her. “Jesus, Laura!”

  Cord leaped up to roll her over, packing wet snow over the burning cloth and the backs of her legs. The stench of singed silk mixed with the smell of smoke.

  Within moments, the air grew warm and suffocating.

  Cord yanked her up and struggled away toward the darkness. Her twisted right arm was agony as he dragged her farther into what Laura felt certain would be their grave.

  Stumbling barefoot over jumbled blocks of scoria that cut like knives, she gasped, “I can’t make it.”

  Cord tripped over a boulder and they went down together on the rough, rocky floor.

  Laura worked her pained arm and felt the heat of the burns on the back of her legs. She tried to speak, but her throat was raw.

  Cord swiveled his head toward the light of the flames that still roared. The look on his sooty face was of defeat, something she never thought she would see in him.

  It grew hotter and dryer as the fire sucked the air out of the cave. Gauzy gray gathered at the edges of Laura’s sight, turning rapidly darker. She reached weakly for Cord.

  He lay still beside her. Had he blacked out?

  She put a hand onto his chest and felt every muscle tense. He raised a hand. “Feel that?”

  The faintest hint of cool air barely brushed her face. Gradually, the breeze picked up to become a steady wind blowing from the depths of the cave toward the fire.

  “There must be another entrance,” Cord murmured.

  Laura drank in the sweet air in great gulps, filling her parched lungs. For a long moment, they lay catching their breath, then pushed up to sit on the rocky floor.

  “What is this place?” She eyed the dark rock walls and piles of boulders on the cavern floor. It seemed to go off in one direction only, a long tunnel leading deeper into Nez Perce Peak. The walls and ceiling of dark rock had an odd smooth texture.

  “A lava tube,” Cord answered. “Molten rock flowed through and left the tunnel behind.”

  Within minutes, the firestorm had passed. Yet, they could hear it rumbling on through the forest like a freight train.

  With the cave air clearer, though still smelling scorched, Laura struggled to her feet and picked her way barefooted back to the cone of ice on which they’d landed. It appeared that winter snows had sifted in through the hole in the roof and accumulated in a drifted pile. The insulating effect of the porous lava was such that the fire above had softened the snow, but not melted it.

  Cupping both hands, she shoveled the coarse dirty coldness into her mouth. Cord dug in and took a huge bite, then rubbed some on his face, smearing the soot into streaks. Reaching again, Laura soothed the cuts on her feet and the burns on the back of her calves with handfuls of crisp iciness. She decided her arm wasn’t broken, as the first acute agony diminished.

  Cord came to her and pulled the piece of obsidian from his pocket. “It’s the closest thing I have to a knife.”

  Bending, he used the sharp edge to saw what remained of her skirt off at the knee. Then he ripped off the puffed peplum that covered her behind and fashioned two wrappings for her feet.

  He helped her to sit on the rock floor, avoiding the roughest patches. Now that the fire had burned past, a damp chill came from the partly melted cone of snow. The walls of the lava tube were cold against the burns on the backs of her legs. Though she’d eaten snow, her stomach was painfully empty.

  “By now, Feddors and his men must believe we’re dead,” Cord said.

  “If they do, they’ll be well on their way back down the mountain. Especially, if Danny survived, they’d need to get him to a doctor.”

  Gently, Cord drew her closer. “If we make it out of this hell, I don’t want to live without you.”

  Her chest grew tight. “When we get out of this, I’m not going back to Chicago.”

  “I wouldn’t let you.” He smiled and smoothed his hand down her back. “We’ll have all the time we need. To watch the sun set on Blacktail Butte after the shadow of the Tetons has brought dusk to the ranch.” His eyes gazed fondly upon that faraway scene.

  She wanted all that, and more. But she happened to look at the cone of snow and take in what the fire’s heat had done to the height of the icy mound. The top was at least six feet below the jagged edges of rock. The ceiling inside the tube was smooth where liquid lava had slid past.

  Getting out of here was going to require wings.

  “Don’t worry,” Cord soothed. “We’ll figure something out.”

  He wished he felt as confident as he tried to sound, while he looked around and thought. Pushing to his feet, he peered up at daylight through the hole they’d fallen in, no more than four feet wide and a little longer. If they didn’t get out before nightfall, even starlight would not penetrate the darkness below.

  “I think maybe before we get too upset, I’ll do a little
investigating for another way out.” Cord wished for another torch, but the embers he’d seen above had gone dark. He had no matches; they were in his small pack, left behind at Danny’s camp.

  Laura started to get up, but he put a hand on her shoulder. “Without shoes, you should stay here.”

  Without the benefit of light, Cord began to feel his way down the dark stone corridor. He kept one hand on the wall and one on the ceiling, moving forward one careful step at a time.

  The illumination that picked out differences in topography on the cave floor and walls gradually dimmed, then vanished. This was where a man had to ride hard on his demons.

  He reached to his pocket and touched the obsidian that had saved him and Laura beside Danny’s fire. Surely, it would help get them out of here.

  The blackness ahead became absolute. Cord turned to look back and found that the gentle curve of the tunnel had taken him out of sight of the light.

  Men weren’t supposed to get nervous in the dark, and he normally did not. So why did he feel as though his next breath was so difficult to draw?

  Ignoring his claustrophobia as best as he could, he forced himself to stoop and go on when the rock ceiling lowered. But though he poked and crawled around in total darkness for at least an hour, he could not find a way through the narrowed opening. Had he been thinner, perhaps he might have shimmied on his belly into the tunnel, but with no light, he did not dare enter what was most likely a blind gut.

  At some point, he realized the obsidian he’d found in Danny’s camp was no longer in his pocket.

  Defeated, he turned back. As he went toward where he had left Laura, he saw first a spark that might have been imagination, then a steady dot. Finally, the walls on either side of him began to silver.

  When he could see Laura, she was on her feet. “Any luck?”

  “Air gets through. We don’t.” He shifted his feet and some loose lava rock made a hollow clinking.

  Looking away toward the cone of snow and the dead pine, he noted that she’d been busy while he was gone. Signs of a struggle were evident in knee-deep prints in the icy slush and the little tree lay canted at a different angle.

  “I tried to set it upright to make a ladder, but it kept getting away from me,” she said.

  “Let’s try together.”

  With the thickest part of the broken pine jammed into the ice for stability and the top resting against the side of the hole above, about two feet protruded into daylight.

  “You go up first,” Cord told her.

  She shook her head.

  “Go on,” he said. “It might not hold my weight.”

  With a shudder, she refused again. “I want you at the top to give me a hand up. And if it breaks under my weight, I don’t have the strength to pull you up.”

  “All right.” He checked to make sure his Colt was secure in his holster.

  With determination, he stepped up onto the cone. His leg went in to above the knee. Painstakingly, he climbed up another few feet until he was at the apex of the little snow mountain.

  He grasped the trunk in one hand. The dry bark tortured the cuts on his hands. Grimacing, he transferred his weight from standing on snow to dangling from the ridiculous little dead Christmas tree.

  Hand over hand, he made it up another few feet. The trunk was now less than three inches in diameter, something he could easily break over his knee. He looked up; about four more feet and he could get his elbows onto solid rock and drag himself home.

  Three feet.

  He braced himself for what he would see outside. Charred forest … ash … Captain Quenton Feddors with his gun trained.

  Two feet, the same number of inches the pine trunk had narrowed to. He tried to feel lucky.

  One foot.

  Crrrack!

  “Oh God!” Laura said.

  “No!” cried the six-year-old inside him.

  The pine snapped in two and dropped him on his hands and knees in dirty slush. He crouched there, taking in the reality of being doomed to slow starvation.

  Without hesitation, he drew his Colt.

  “What are you doing?” Laura’s eyes went wide.

  He raised the muzzle and drew the hammer back the trademark four clicks. “If anyone’s left on this mountain, we have to signal them.”

  “Cord …”

  He fired through the hole into the sky.

  Hours passed. Each time Cord shot to attract attention, there was a “discussion” between him and Laura. By the time the light was fading from the sky and they were facing their first night below ground, she finally agreed that, even captured, Cord stood a better chance than he did in this premature grave.

  “It’s too bad we can’t burn some of the pine,” he said. “Get some smoke rising.”

  “Why can’t we?”

  “No matches.”

  Laura reached to the bodice of her dress and drew out the small piece of obsidian he’d given her to hold in her mouth. “Can you use this as a flint?”

  “Perhaps if I chipped it against my belt buckle.”

  Laura moved to help him snap the dead pine into kindling.

  With a fire laid, Cord removed his belt and turned his attention to some thin slivers of bark. He knelt with his face close and chipped the glass against metal. Nothing happened.

  The second time, there was a small spark.

  Cord tried again; this time the spark flared to brief life on a fragment of bark and sputtered out.

  He sat back on his heels to rest a moment.

  Then he leaned down and starting chipping obsidian against metal rapidly, while blowing a light, but steady stream over his work. A few more flashes … a piece of bark flared and settled into a diminutive flame.

  Laura sat against the wall and watched as the pile of pine caught. Smoke eddied and curled, then finally coiled up and out the hole.

  Cord restrung his belt and sat beside her, but she could feel his restlessness. She tried to start a conversation about what they’d do when they got out of here; it fell flat. Finally, she leaned her head against his shoulder and let the fire’s hypnotic influence fascinate.

  So beautiful and so deadly. It gave warmth and life … but did Cord see his parents’ cabin inside every flame? Would some part of her forever cringe back because of the dragon whose breath had almost seared them?

  For good or ill, their little beacon did not last long. The pine snapped as the fire’s teeth devoured it, until nothing remained but orange, then crimson embers. Finally, she and Cord sat before a bed of cooling white ash.

  What were the chances their signal had looked any different from the smoke that was probably still rising from the remains of the forest?

  The light faded, and the chill from the rocks began to be uncomfortable.

  Cord pulled out his Colt again. “Last one.”

  As Danny had fired one shot to attract the soldiers before, now the fifth and last bullet in the revolver exploded into twilight.

  Sending up their final signal to the world on the surface seemed to take the heart out of Cord. Laura, seated on a relatively smooth patch of rock floor, gestured for him to join her.

  When he moved slowly to sit beside her, she wished she could tell him it would be all right. But what were the chances the soldiers were still out there? Even if they were on the mountain, the sound of the Colt must be muffled from down here.

  “We’ve done what we could,” he said, putting an arm around her and drawing her against his side.

  Defeat came with exhaustion. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.” The last hint of light was suddenly gone, and they were in total darkness.

  “Must be cloudy tonight,” Cord observed, without interest.

  She put her head against his chest and closed her lids to stop her eye muscles from straining. His heartbeat beneath her ear was strong and steady.

  This floating feeling of unreality reminded her how she’d slept against his shoulder on horseback after the stagecoach attack, wrung o
ut in the aftermath of terror.

  This time, instead of sleeping, she sat awake while minutes and then hours ticked past. No sounds came from above, save the occasional crack and thud of a burned tree succumbing to the roving wind. Sparks of color played tricks on Laura both when her eyes were open and closed, but no torchlight appeared to brighten the blackness.

  Once, as they waited for a dawn that seemed forever in coming, Cord’s lips brushed her hair, and she knew he was awake, as well.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I knew I’d fallen for you,” he replied, “when I couldn’t bear to put you on Hank’s steamboat. I needed those last hours beside the lake before never seeing you again.”

  How long did they have this time? He’d spent their last bullet …

  She’d heard people could live for a number of days, maybe close to two weeks, without food. And they had the slush pile to drink from, however long it lasted.

  All she wanted was go to sleep and hide there while death crept up on them both. If she went first, she’d have someone with her … but how could she leave Cord to set her lifeless body aside and curl up alone to die?

  Tears sprang to her eyes. It wasn’t fair; having finally found each other, they should have their whole lives to look forward to.

  Cord’s chest heaved; he was weeping, also. Mourning those sunrises and sunsets on his ranch, giving up wondering what ancestors their children might resemble, saying good-bye to being a part of the human chain that linked each parent to immortality.

  Knowing he loved her was the cruelest irony, when they had no hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  JULY 1

  Constance woke at dawn in the room she shared with her mother at the Lake Hotel. If she had once believed Cord was the man for her, she now saw the error of her ways. With him, there had always been a sense of something held back, while Norman embraced her with what felt like his soul.

  Throwing back the covers, she got out of bed and went to the window. The lake was just beginning to reflect the palest gray from the eastern sky. Out there somewhere, Laura and Cord were being hunted, while she remained here doing nothing. It made her ashamed of the way she and Laura had fought since coming to Yellowstone. Sure, there had always been a tension between them, their spats and jealousies …