Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

“Hank!” Norman had mentioned that, but, “What do you mean playing both ends against the middle?”

  “Me? You came into the dining room to ask Constance to go walking with you.”

  “You know what I wanted to talk to her about.”

  “Do I?”

  “Look,” his blood pressure rose, “I am trying to be a man of honor in letting her know that our … association in St. Paul, while heartfelt at the time, has not stood the test of separation and … meeting someone else.”

  “She told me you never asked her to marry you, but you’ve played along with the betrothal. Were you perhaps planning on asking her soon?”

  “For God’s sake, Laura.” His hands came out of his pockets where he’d been keeping them prisoner, and he trapped her against the wall.

  She shoved against him. Her palms on his chest felt warm through his shirt.

  “Stop it. I don’t want you.”

  “If you don’t,” he ground out, “you should have thought twice before you …”

  “Before I what? I have kissed other men, and I have seen you kiss another woman.” Her voice was taut. “The last I heard, it did not have to mean anything.”

  He pressed his palms against the rough wood to keep from taking her slender face in his hands, especially after she swore it meant nothing.

  Her mouth twisted. “Things happen all the time that don’t mean a thing. Last night you sent me away instead of letting me stay and meet your uncle.”

  “There were things that had to be said. Ugly things.”

  “I can handle ugly. I handled watching you finish Frank Worth. I handled killing a grizzly. You should trust me, especially with what I know.”

  Pledge or threat, he didn’t know. “We should trust each other, but somehow I didn’t expect that to mean you wanted to be with Hank.”

  Laura kicked him smartly in the shin.

  He flinched yet spoke softly. “You know some of my secrets, but there are more. Things no one else knows.” Close to her lips, he whispered, “You talked of kissing …”

  From just around the corner, Forrest Fielding called, “Laura!”

  She was certain her flaming cheeks must give her away, and she moved quickly away from Cord.

  Constance’s voice blended with Forrest’s. “Have you seen William this morning?”

  Cord’s eyes bored into hers. He had spoken of honor, and Constance had yet to be told.

  Laura straightened her back to face her father. “Good morning,” she managed. She felt his sharp eyes missed nothing.

  “A pleasant day to you, sir.” Cord bowed. He did not touch Laura as they walked into view of the carriages.

  “Good morning, William,” Constance said sweetly, putting out her hand. Despite her brittle smile, Laura could see the knot of muscle beneath her cousin’s earlobe.

  Constance’s outfit made Laura wish she had worn something prettier than her laundered trousers and a shirtwaist. Her cousin’s starched cotton dress, white with tiny blue sprigs of flowers that matched her eyes, was topped by a darker blue pelerine, a short woolen cloak tied with silken cords tipped in rabbit fur. The long fall of Constance’s black hair brushed the back of Cord’s hand as he helped her up into the wagon.

  Inclining his head to Laura, Cord offered to assist her, as well, and she felt the challenge in his eyes. Turning away, Laura saw Hank Falls approaching and smiled brightly. “Good morning.”

  Hank took her hand, turned it over, and kissed it with a slow warmth that made her want to scrub her palm on her pants. He had dressed for the day in his habitual gray suit, in contrast to Cord’s denim trousers.

  The driver passed out dusters to protect their clothes, and everyone donned them.

  Cord swung up to sit beside Constance, giving Laura a view of the back of his dark head. Hank helped Laura into the rear seat, then pulled his lanky frame up beside her. Forrest Fielding climbed up with an effort and settled into the middle seat, his ample belly hanging over his belt. Norman Hagen joined him with, “It’s a shame your sister, Fanny, decided to stay behind.”

  Cord turned to Norman. “And a pity Mr. Chandler is away.”

  “Where is Edgar Young this morning?” Norman returned.

  No one replied.

  Laura leaned forward and put a hand on Norman’s shoulder. “It is most kind of you to amuse Constance. I saw you two dancing last night … you seem made for one another.”

  Norman smiled and appeared to lose his train of thought.

  The wagon started down the hotel drive. The chestnut team pulled smartly, their hooves raising a plume of dust.

  For a few miles, the Grand Loop Road meandered through dense forest, redolent of pine. On their right, the shining silver stream of the Yellowstone River flashed in the sun. Yet, within an hour the peace was shattered, as they slowed beside a cauldron alternately vomiting noxious black mud and swallowing it into an underground chamber. Each emission was accompanied by a stout thud along with a background growl, as though some vile beast were trapped and trying to emerge. Clouds of steam roiled as the vagrant wind shifted, sweeping sulfurous fumes across the road.

  Constance wrinkled her nose at the sharp, rotten-egg smell.

  Burke Evans turned around on the driver’s seat. Nodding his round face at the group, he recited, “When the members of the Washburn Expedition came through thirty years ago, they heard the churning of Dragon’s Mouth Spring from the Yellowstone River, a quarter mile away.” Burke pointed farther up the hill, where a mud spring boiled and gave off a cloud that wafted more foul sulfur smell down. “Washburn’s group named the Mud Volcano, as well.”

  Laura wanted to get out and walk up the hill, to watch the surging ebb and flow and stand close enough to feel the heat pouring from the earth.

  “Oh, drive on quickly.” Constance covered her nose and mouth with a corner of her pelerine in a gesture Laura found melodramatic.

  A mile farther, thick forest gave way to a vista of broad valley, covered with a sea of grass and sage. The Yellowstone meandered across its floor, reflecting blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

  Burke pulled the wagon to the roadside to continue his narrative.

  “Some folks believe that thousands of years ago Hayden Valley was a lake.” He wrinkled his pug nose and pointed with evident disbelief toward the level tree line that rimmed the valley, several hundred feet above the river. “That was supposed to be the high-water level. Before that, three thousand feet of ice was supposed to be here … I can’t imagine the snow ever piling that high.”

  “I believe it,” Laura said. “During the Ice Age, glaciers covered a good part of the world.”

  Hank smiled indulgently and put his hand on her arm. “Look at the Hayden Valley buffalo herd.”

  Laura looked at perhaps ten or twelve of the big shaggy animals, some lying in grass patches, others grazing. Their tiny-looking feet did not seem as though they could support their bulk.

  Cord turned to Laura. “Not twenty years ago there were thousands of buffalo in this valley. Now there are less than a hundred in the entire park.”

  She didn’t miss how he glanced at Hank’s hand on her arm.

  The carriage started off, and Burke Evans drove them to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Though the group could have lunched, as many did, in the dining room of the Canyon Hotel, they stopped to picnic at the Upper Falls.

  Seated upon rocks arranged for the purpose, the party opened their boxes to find an assortment of sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs with a folded paper of salt, an apple or orange, and a thick oatmeal cookie. Invigorated by fresh air, Laura ate ravenously, noting that Cord, seated to her left, also made short work of the meal. Constance sat at a distance with Norman.

  Hank, who had matched Forrest’s slower pace down from the wagon, and was just opening his box, studied the contents with suspicion. “That new Chinaman we hired as cook must have had a hand in this.”

  “What’s wrong?” Laura swallowed the last of her cookie.

  �
�I have distinctly requested that cloth napkins be provided for all picnics. There is naught but paper.”

  Laura caught Cord’s eye and knew he was suppressing mirth, as she was. Within seconds, she gave in and laughed.

  Cord joined in. Hank gave them a sharp look.

  When they returned to the wagon, Norman adroitly escorted Constance to a seat beside him. Cord swung Laura up and sat next to her, leaving Hank to sit with Forrest.

  Burke guided the team downriver where he suggested that a rather strenuous hike would bring them to the brink of the Lower Falls.

  Constance’s nose wrinkled. “How steep is it?”

  “Quite, miss. In places, some folks sit and slide, and getting back up …”

  “I’m not going.” Her hand rested on Norman’s forearm. “Won’t you stay with me?”

  If Aunt Fanny had been present, Laura knew Constance would not have been left unchaperoned, but Forrest ignored the situation, alighting to see the wonders of the park.

  Hank balked with a significant look at Constance’s ring. “Excuse me, but I was given to understand …”

  Constance’s sudden laugh was the one Laura remembered from when they were both small, the one that meant she was scared but whistling in the dark. “This?” She offered her hand with the garnet, the gold band bright in the midday sun.

  The silence seemed absolute, while Laura wondered who would speak next.

  Cord stepped forward, leaving Laura, and took Constance’s hand. Lifting it to his lips, he kissed it. “A gift from the heart, to a lovely lady.”

  “But not a promise?” Constance’s hand tugged free of Cord’s.

  “No,” Cord spoke softly.

  The path through the pines was steep, as advertised. The reduced party of four—Laura, Cord, Hank, and her father—followed Burke Evans as he ferreted out the most stable spots to place one’s feet. By the time the trees opened and the river above the falls was revealed, no one had resorted to sliding on their posterior.

  They went down a little farther to the flattened area behind a stout rail, and the full impact of the canyon struck.

  Stretching for miles, the gorge cut twelve hundred feet into rocks made rotten by the invasion of hot mineral-laden waters. Downstream, the walls of weathered rock rose in elevation so that the canyon deepened. Steep slopes topped with cathedral-like spires had been carved by wind and water into jutting shapes … here resembling busts of the heads of ancients, there a woman or man toiling beneath a burden.

  Promontories capped in crimson and swathed in broad streaks of mustard, rust, and ochre marked where iron-rich waters had stained the pure white walls. As the mineral-rich zones graded into country rock, there were washes of charcoal, lemon yellow, and all shades between.

  Thermal seepage from deep in the earth continued, a steaming stream of water appearing like magic halfway up the canyon wall.

  The river that powered the trenching ran swiftly. High country snowmelt poured in a clean green flood to the brink of the cliff, then plunged through the narrowed neck over three hundred feet in a white roar. Below the falls, the river continued on its way, an emerald strand woven with white water.

  On the other side of the gorge, Burke informed, it was possible to take a trail equipped with wooden stairs and railings down to the base of the falls on a tour guided by “Uncle Tom” Richardson.

  Laura moved to the brink of the precipice, spray dampening her face and hair.

  She noted it was not Hank’s but Cord’s hand that steadied her; she laughed into the wind created by the torrential cascade. She wasn’t certain what had transpired above, but she wanted to believe Constance and Cord had parted ways.

  The wind lifted a strand of her hair and blew it back into Cord’s face. She fought the urge to lean against his chest and look up at the summer blue sky through the clouds of mist, then succumbed. With his support, she lifted her face; the drifting spray made the rock walls look black a hundred feet above the falls. Constantly shifting prisms of color shimmered out of reach but seemed so brilliant she imagined flying through the rainbow like the fishing ospreys.

  “Look there.” Cord tapped her shoulder and pointed out a hawk tracing lazy circles. As they watched, the bird flew into the gossamer veil and disappeared into a curve of indigo light.

  Hank studied her and Cord narrowly from across the observation area. His suit had dust on it from where he’d been leaning against the split-log rail. “Too bad Constance and Hagen decided the trail was too steep.”

  “Yes,” Laura’s father answered, so faintly he was difficult to hear over the falls’ roar. He’d planted his bulk on a boulder with a view, and his breathing was shallow and rapid. “I’m going to have a devil of a time getting back up.”

  Laura tried to push aside an instinctive daughter’s worry and looked into the rush tumbling over the edge. A large log reached the drop and turned end up to plummet toward the canyon floor. She reeled with a bit of vertigo and leaned against Cord.

  “It’s time we moved on.” Hank took the lead onto the upward leg of the switchback path through the trees.

  Laura went to her father. His color was bad, and he sweated in the cooling mist.

  “Are you all right, sir?” A furrow appeared between Cord’s thick brows.

  Forrest got heavily to his feet, brushing aside his offer of a hand. “I’ll have to be.”

  He tried to move faster, but his smooth-soled leather shoe slipped on a root and he nearly landed in a patch of loose obsidian gravel. Falling behind, Forrest reached with a trembling hand to steady himself on the rough bark of one of hundreds of lodgepole pines studding the slope.

  “Laura,” he called, astounded at how weakly it came out. He could have sworn he nearly shouted, but the sound seemed swallowed up as if his head were swathed in cotton.

  She did not turn. Sutton’s dark head was bent toward hers.

  Forrest looked for Burke Evans, but the young man seemed to have abandoned them.

  He bent forward and pushed himself harder up the trail. It hadn’t seemed this far on the way down. Though sweat beaded his forehead, the heat of exertion gave way to a coldness that seemed to come from deep inside.

  His doctor in Chicago had warned him. No smoking, and Forrest had chuckled at the strange notion. Get more rest, but the doctor didn’t understand that in the years since Violet died, work was the only thing that kept him going.

  Up ahead, Laura and Cord made the sharp turn of a switchback and she looked back, her green eyes concerned. “Daddy!” She sounded far away.

  He put another foot heavily in front of the other and stopped, stunned by a sudden feeling that something slammed into him and then trapped his whole body in a vise. He didn’t know how it could be, but he found himself lying on the ground with his face in the dirt.

  The rough earth didn’t seem to matter; he just needed to lie there until he could catch his breath in this air too thick to draw into his lungs.

  A hand took his shoulder and turned him over.

  Sutton’s blue eyes made nearly a match for the sky bowl above. Forrest looked for Laura in the blurred vestiges of his vision and opened his mouth to tell her of the impossible pressure that bore down and down until he felt he would be pushed into the grave.

  Strangely, he thought he heard his wife’s voice.

  “Did you hear something?” Constance asked Norman. She clutched the side of the touring wagon, her hair swinging over her shoulder, as she looked around the clearing. The sound had been high-pitched, echoing for a fraction of a second before being swallowed by the wind.

  Norman scanned the head of the path that led down to the Lower Falls. “I did think for a moment …” He shrugged.

  She compared the big Swede to William, about the same height but built more solidly, his blond hair, red beard, and ruddy cheeks the antithesis of William’s bronzed skin and dark hair.

  How dare William show her such lack of respect? This morning when he and Laura had come out from their little hid
ing place around the corner, the signs had been clear. Both of them had borne the high color and nervous look of someone caught out.

  Since she’d met Norman, he’d treated her with the utmost deference, as if she were a china doll.

  Now the skin around his eyes crinkled. “You’d turn the heads in my boyhood home of Uppsala, with your hair like black silk.”

  Flushing at the potential mention of meeting his family, Constance looked away at the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone, at least a mile upstream, cascading into the opening at the head of the Grand Canyon. A cloud of spray swelled above the green forest.

  “It’s hot in the sun,” she observed, careful to keep her voice sweet.

  “Let’s move into the shade, then.” Norman pivoted on his heel and reached up to the wagon seat. He lifted Constance free and swung her into the air.

  Along with the sudden sensation of weightlessness, she noticed the golden flecks that floated in Norman’s eyes, just at the inner ring of the iris. A sheen of moisture stood on his sunburned forehead, and Constance caught the scent of clean male sweat.

  “Oh God!”

  Norman’s hands seemed to freeze in midair, holding her, as a woman’s voice cried out again. Swiftly, he let Constance down onto the rough-packed road beside the wagon. She stumbled as he took his hands from her waist.

  Laura emerged from the trees with her hair falling over her shoulders and fresh tears flowing from already-red eyes. Behind her came Hank Falls, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder. Farther back, and looking bone tired from the struggle, William carried Uncle Forrest, a dead weight slung over his powerful shoulder.

  Constance’s fist covered her mouth, but she still screamed.

  Laura clutched the cramp in her side and tried to catch her breath, while Cord took her father to the wagon and lowered him to the floor between the seats. Huffing, for carrying corpulent Forrest Fielding was no mean feat, he straightened and wiped his brow.

  A red stain, bright as paint, saturated the back of Cord’s shirt.

  “Cord, my God. There’s blood all over …”

  “I know.”

  “I thought his heart …”

  “No.”