by Regina Scott
“Caleb, come help!” Danny urged.
In answer, Caleb ducked around the corner of the inn.
“Five minutes to gather ammunition,” Will called. “Then the battle commences.”
Kate made sure Danny was scraping off only the top layer of the snow before packing her own pile. Glancing over, she saw Will and Waxworth doing the same. Will caught her gaze, and his smile hitched up. Blushing, she returned to her task.
“Time!” Mrs. Pettijohn bellowed, and Miss Pringle gave a little squeal.
Will and Private Waxworth hefted a ball each.
Kate bent beside Danny. “One throw, then follow me.”
Danny nodded.
Kate threw. The white flattened against Will’s broad chest. Danny’s snowball struck Waxworth in the knee.
“Now!” Kate cried, scooping up an armful of balls and running for the inn. Danny scurried after her.
“Is that all?” Miss Pringle asked as they rounded the corner.
“Not in the slightest,” Mrs. Pettijohn declared. “After them!”
The next quarter hour was a mad scramble from the barn to the chicken yard to the front of the hotel. Kate hit Will twice more and Waxworth three times. Danny hit someone every time he threw, though not always his opponents.
“Hey!” Alberta called as a ball sailed past to explode against Caleb’s shoulder. “Watch out for the spectators.”
In the end, Will surrendered, hands up, in front of the veranda.
“Terms,” he begged, snow salting his hair.
Kate narrowed her eyes. “They are at our mercy, Danny. What should we do with them?”
“Feed them pie!” Danny shouted before running for the stairs. With a grateful smile, Private Waxworth followed him. The others started into the inn as well.
Will joined Kate. “I can see I’ll have to watch myself this winter.”
The light in his eyes, the tilt of his smile, combined to make her quite warm indeed. And she knew she was the one who would have to watch herself this winter, to keep from falling in love.
The snow sparkled in her hair. Her gaze danced with merriment. Was he mad to see something more, a longing as deep as his own?
Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow he would tell her all. But the thought of seeing that admiration fade kept him up part of a cold night in his tent.
The blanket of snow ebbed away quickly the next morning, leaving puddles glistening on the road as Will headed for the inn. Miss Pringle and Mrs. Pettijohn were already out on the veranda as he rode in.
“Where are your men, Lieutenant?” Mrs. Pettijohn said with a stern look. “One of them should help a lady onto her horse.”
Will followed Miss Pringle’s gaze to where Kate was coming around the inn, leading one of the riding horses. His heart gave a leap as he swung down. “That’s my pleasure, ma’am.”
Kate met his gaze as she stopped, then nodded, and he put his hands on her waist and lifted her into the saddle. For a moment, he stood, face uplifted, gazing at her. He probably looked like a wildflower turned to the sun. Cheeks pinking, she gathered the reins, then released the button on her skirt, sending the material cascading down the side of the horse like a waterfall.
“Oh, how fine,” Miss Pringle enthused as Will went to remount. “I must get a skirt like that.”
Her sister nodded. “Excellent suggestion. We’ll take up riding when we return. That could lead to our next adventure.”
With a smile, Kate led Will out of the yard.
The road to Old Faithful was an easy path that crossed from pine forest to chalk-and-rust-striped drainage basins before he and Kate reached the area around the Grand Prismatic Spring. Waves of steam crested the road, parting as they came through. Beyond, swallows darted over the marshes. A falcon dipped on the breeze that brought the scent of pine and sulfur.
This was the perfect time to tell her, but he couldn’t seem to find the words.
“Where are my manners?” he asked instead. “I should have made the introductions days ago.” He patted the mare. “This is Bess.”
Kate regarded him, then the horse. “Funny. I would have thought you’d name your horse Thunder or Hurricane. Danny certainly doesn’t approve of Buttercup.”
“Bess was her name when the Army assigned her to me,” Will explained. “I never saw the need to change it. But I can’t blame Danny for his opinion. Who names a horse Buttercup?”
“His father,” she confessed. “You would think someone from Boston would find more patriotic names. The others are Marigold, Aster, and Balsamroot. I had to talk him out of naming Aster here Pansy. We already have one Pansy at the Geyser Gateway.”
“You mentioned Boston,” he said. “Are you from there too?”
“Yes,” she said, guiding Aster over a bump in the road. “I thought I heard a bit of a twang when I first met you.”
“You can’t seem to lose it no matter how long you’re away from it,” he agreed. “What did your parents do?” Was he chattering? No, not really. He wanted to know everything about her.
“My father was a cobbler,” she answered, gaze going off over the braided curves of the Firehole River to their right. “My mother made the most beautiful hats—all ribbons and flowers and net. The ladies of Boston loved them. Can you imagine what the bison would think if I wore one here?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t try grazing on the flowers.”
She laughed too. “What about you?” she asked. “What did your parents do?”
“Father enlisted in the military during the war,” he said. “Mother took in laundry and did fancy sewing after he was killed outside Atlanta.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, face puckering. “Alberta lost her husband and son in that war. That’s why she came West, for a fresh start.”
“I can understand that,” he said. This could be his opportunity! He eased into it. “Sometimes what you do, what others do, forces you to start over.”
Either he’d kept his tone more even than he’d hoped, or she hadn’t noticed the tension in him.
“Yet you still went into the military,” she said with a smile.
How could he not return that smile? “I was named after William Prescott, a famous soldier in the American Revolution. Given his name, I was destined to join the military.”
“I didn’t think I would ever leave Boston,” she said with a shake of her head that sent sunlight skipping down her hair, and he could only be glad she wasn’t wearing one of her mother’s fancy hats. “Then Toby invested in the Geyser Gateway and brought me out to look at her, and I knew this was where I was meant to be. I don’t think I could go back now.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “Boston always felt too confining. The cavalry took me places I never knew existed.”
“Where else have you been assigned?”
Another opportunity. Every muscle tightened as if to protest his intentions. “The Pend Oreille country,” he made himself say, “Fort Walla Walla, the Presidio in San Francisco, the Arizona frontier, Oregon.”
Kate gazed at him. “All over the West. Even Yellowstone must seem small.”
There was that admiration. How could he jeopardize it? “Yellowstone could never feel small,” he told her. “Kingman was right. There’s nothing like it.”
She grinned. “Wait until you see Old Faithful.”
He hadn’t convinced himself to try again before they came out of the trees a short while later to flats striped in gray, white, and orange. Kate led him toward a mound in the distance where steam rose against the hillside of pines and aspen. People were streaming out of the tents near the trees, heading for the mound.
“Come on,” Kate said, touching heels to Aster’s flank. “It’s almost time.”
They cantered up behind the group and reined in to watch. He heard the faint hiss over the murmur of voices as steam built over the mouth of the mound. Water began bubbling, climbing, growing louder. The spray shot high, higher until it
splashed down across the area. A rainbow glowed in the center. Will could only stare as people around him exclaimed.
As the spray subsided, he shook his head. “Amazing.”
“You stick around,” Kate said with a smile, “and you’ll find yourself saying that a lot.”
“Lieutenant!” A corporal was moving toward them. “Trouble?”
The visitors nearest them glanced their way.
“A jurisdictional question only,” Will assured him as he came abreast. “And a chance to see this marvel.”
“She’s a beauty,” the corporal said, thumbs in his belt loops. He squinted up at Will. “So, what’s the question?”
Kate touched Will’s arm. “I’ll be at the hotel.”
He nodded, and she rode over to the dun tents clustered at the edge of the pines. He spent the next little while working out boundaries with the corporal. Then he collected Kate to start back.
“That tent hotel isn’t any better than what we saw at Norris,” she told him as the horses trotted up the road. “Though the hotel they’re building could be a good one. I just hope they strike the tents before winter, or the snow on all that canvas will snap the poles.”
“I’ll mention that in my report to Captain Harris,” he promised.
Behind them came a rumble.
“Get off the road,” she urged him. She guided her horse to one side, and he joined her on the grassy verge. A moment later, and Elijah’s coach thundered past. He doffed his hat with his free hand.
“Guests?” Will asked, waving away the dust that traveled in the coach’s wake.
“Four on their way out of the park,” Kate told him. “I had hoped to be back before them, but Alberta can welcome them for me.”
“No shortcuts we could take?” he asked as they eased their mounts onto the road again.
“None I’d feel comfortable taking,” she said, directing her horse after the coach.
“Then I suppose we should hurry.” They set the horses to a trot, covering the ground quickly. And that meant he had less time than he’d hoped to confess all. Perhaps that was to the good. No more excuses, no time to hesitate.
As they approached the bend where the road curved away from the river, he cleared his throat. “Kate, there’s something I must tell you.”
“What?” she asked with a frown, as if she heard the tension in his voice at last. “Didn’t they want you to protect the Grand Prismatic Spring?”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I . . .” He couldn’t look at her. He focused on the road, then started.
Up ahead, Elijah’s coach lay on its side, wheels spinning and horses struggling.
20
Kate gasped, but Will moved before she did. He spurred Bess, galloped up to the wreck, and leaped from the saddle to catch the harness of the flailing horses.
“Easy, hey now, easy,” he called as Kate rode up and his Bess moved off to one side.
“Elijah!” she cried, turning Aster in a circle as the mare reacted to the other horses. “Elijah, are you hurt?”
A groan from the trees beyond the road answered her. She guided Aster around the wreckage even as a shaky voice rose from the coach.
“Hello? Help us, please!”
“A moment!” Kate called.
Elijah limped out to meet her, one hand pressed to his head and blood running down his cheek. She had never been so glad to see him.
“I’m all right,” he assured her, holding up his other hand as if to keep her from dismounting. “My passengers? The horses?” He glanced around, blinking as if the sun had grown too bright.
“We’ll settle them,” Will promised.
“Give me a moment to check on your passengers,” Kate told Elijah, “and then I’ll come have a look at that gash.”
He sank unsteadily onto a boulder at the side of the road.
Will unhooked the last of the harness, yanked out the long straps of the reins, and pulled the team to the trees. Kate dismounted, tied Aster to a tree, and went to see to the passengers. Riding skirt buttoned high, she had to clamber up the wheels and lay on the door panel to peer inside. The interior was a jumbled mess, bodies strewn about and on top of each other. She refused to look away.
A young woman, hat askew, gazed up at her. “Can you help us?”
Kate swallowed, hating to ask the question. “Are the others alive?”
Elijah’s passenger nodded. “I think so.”
Will must have returned to the wreck, for she heard his voice behind her.
“Status?” he asked.
She glanced back at him. His face was pale, his stance stiff, as if he were ready for bad news.
“Two women, two men,” she told him. “Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale, their son, and his wife, I believe. Only the younger Mrs. Barksdale is sensible at the moment.”
“No, no,” the young woman protested. “Peter is coming around. Peter, darling, speak to me.”
“What happened?” The male voice was decidedly groggy.
“If you tend to Elijah,” Will said, “I’ll get them out.”
She slid off the door to land on the road, skirt pooling. “Thank you,” she said before going to see to her driver.
It took a while, but eventually Will had the four visitors out of the damaged stagecoach and at the side of the road. Elijah, riding on the outside, had been thrown clear and taken the worst of the impact. Kate managed to bandage the gash on his forehead with her handkerchief and a ribbon the younger Mrs. Barksdale offered. He seemed to be answering sensibly when she addressed him. But she couldn’t like the lump on his head under his tight curls or the swelling on his knee visible through the rip in his trousers.
“I don’t understand,” the older Mrs. Barksdale, a large matron, said in a trembling voice as they all sat in the shade of the pines. “What happened? Did we hit a rock?”
Her husband, a gray-haired titan of industry, shook his head. “Or perhaps a buffalo?”
“We didn’t hit anything,” Elijah said, pressing a hand to his makeshift bandage. “Something cracked. The stage tilted. I couldn’t do anything except control the horses.”
Peter Barksdale, a younger version of his father, drew himself up. “I must say, I expected more of this fine park. The accommodations the last few nights were atrocious, and now this shoddy equipage nearly cost us our lives.”
“My stage,” Elijah said in ringing tones, “isn’t shoddy. I inspected it myself last night.”
As long as she’d known Elijah, he had had the same routine of checking his coach, his harness, and his team before setting out. Unfortunately, it hadn’t stood him in good stead this time.
“This is a harsh environment,” Kate told the young man. “Everything wears out faster than you would expect.”
“That’s not what happened,” Elijah insisted, lowering his hand. “Nothing wore out. You look at it, Lieutenant, and you’ll see.”
Kate and the others turned to Will. He went to check the wreck. Kate followed.
Of the wheels now resting on the ground, one had several spokes that looked cracked, but the damage could easily have been caused by the crash. Surely Elijah would have noticed if the wood had been splintered before he started out from the Geyser Gateway. Will crouched as if to peer closer at the leather straps and wooden strips that made up the bottom of the coach.
“It could have happened to anyone,” Kate said at his elbow.
“An accident, yes,” Will agreed. “But this accident, no.” He pointed to the long wooden strip that ran from wheel to wheel. “It was cut partway through. You can see the marks.”
Kate stared at it, then at him. “What are you saying? Was this deliberate?”
Will nodded, rising. “Someone didn’t want Elijah and your guests to reach the Geyser Gateway.”
Kate was still fuming when they rode into the yard late that afternoon. Her guests were perched on the coach’s horses, the women with legs over one side and arms clinging to their husbands. The men hadn’t looked too co
mfortable riding bareback either, but they had managed at a slow walk. Elijah had ridden one of the other horses, face pale and breath rapid, while Kate had led the fourth horse and Will the fifth and sixth. Alberta and Pansy immediately set about making their guests and coachman comfortable.
“I’ll go to the Fire Hole,” Will said, turning Bess after Caleb had taken charge of Elijah’s and Kate’s horses, “and send word to Old Faithful and the other guard stations about the wreck on the road. My men and I will clear it up tomorrow.”
All Kate could spare was a “thank you” before hurrying inside.
The older Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale had been settled in a room at the front of the hotel, their son and daughter-in-law across the corridor. Alberta had apparently dissuaded Miss Pringle and Mrs. Pettijohn from nursing them or Elijah.
“But our things,” the senior Mrs. Barksdale said from one of the beds when Kate checked in on them. “Someone will steal them.”
“We have very little of that in the park,” Kate assured her. “But I’ll send my man Caleb with our pony cart to fetch the luggage. It should be here in a few hours.”
Mrs. Barksdale collapsed against the feather pillow. “We should never have come out into the wilderness.”
“Now, now,” her husband said with an apologetic look to Kate. “We’ve seen some marvels and had a little adventure. Nothing to be concerned about.”
Kate couldn’t argue with the glare his wife shot him. “I’m terribly sorry this happened,” she told them both. “But Alberta has dinner almost ready, and we’ll do all we can to make the rest of your stay safe and comfortable.”
Mrs. Barksdale nodded. Her husband looked relieved.
Kate excused herself and headed up the stairs to see Elijah.
Danny was with him in his room on the staff corridor on the top floor of the hotel. During the season, he spent four nights a week at Kate’s and three in his own home with his wife, Elnora, and son, Markus. A simple iron-framed bed, side table, chair, and trunk were all that graced the room, but Elnora had sewed the red-and-blue-patterned quilt across the bed, and Kate had seen where some of the stitches spelled the word love.