by Linda Jacobs
“You didn’t know it was the right woman?” Laura looked horrified.
He shrugged and took another drink. “Fair bet.”
“Why did you hurt Edgar?” Cord demanded, using an angry jerk at his bonds to scoot over an inch where he could better dig at the stone flake.
“Edgar hadda bring … lousy Nez Perce.” His voice slurred.
“That’s no excuse to try to drown him,” Cord said.
“Bastard tried … fight me. On yer side …”
Danny reached with drunken precision to lift Cord’s Colt from where he’d set it on a log. He stumbled a little and then straightened up.
Cord managed to dig out the obsidian, but his nerveless fingers loosened, and it fell from him.
Danny lined up the sights, and Cord looked down the barrel of his own gun. As if from a distance, he heard Laura’s intake of breath.
Stretching, he managed to take the glass between his frigid fingers again. It was cold, as well.
From ten feet away, Danny’s dark eyes looked enormous behind the weapon.
The obsidian began to warm in Cord’s fingers, taking heat from his hand or giving it, difficult to tell. He kept his face impassive.
“Better let … army …” Danny glanced down the canyon.
Before Cord understood, he lifted the gun, pulled back the hammer, and fired it into the black sky.
Laura flinched. Cord’s ears rang. Getting a better grip, he got the sharp edge against the rope and started sawing.
“They’ll blame ya … Edgar …” Danny let the Colt down beside him.
Cord saw Laura notice. He gauged the length of the leash that held her and thought it might work.
He sawed harder.
He’d seen Bitter Waters, working a like piece of volcanic glass one night around the Nez Perce campfire. Pointing out the fires of the army scouts only a few miles away, he had declared, “God is with the white man, but not with us!” The black glass had broken in his hands, and he had thrown it to the earth.
Though the magic hadn’t worked for his uncle, Cord believed. He might have lost the piece he’d treasured for so many years, but the spirit had rewarded him with another chance on the same mountain peak.
One of the layers of rope parted. He started working the next. The posse would have been alerted by the shot and by now were mounting up.
Laura was on the move, scooting closer to Danny, who didn’t seem to be paying her any attention. Rather, his dark eyes studied Cord with drunken intensity. “I’ll … hafta leave …”
He returned Danny’s dark gaze and tried to work the sharp edge against his bonds without making it obvious. Sweat gathered in his armpits.
Laura was looking at him, questioning.
He didn’t dare look back with Danny staring at him. As a cover for his motion, Cord spoke. “The army is after me for another piece of your work.”
Danny raised a brow.
The final rope parted.
“Burning your brother’s steamboat.” Cord wriggled out of the rope while keeping his shoulders as still as possible.
“Burning his boat?” Danny put his hands on his knees in preparation to rise. “Gotta get outta here …”
Laura’s hand was within three feet of the Colt. Danny was looking toward his palomino.
“Go!” Cord shouted. He straightened his shoulders against a shaft of pain and shoved awkwardly to his feet. Danny turned toward him with a dumbfounded look.
Cord dove across the clearing, knocking him off his heels onto his back.
Laura surged to the limit of her tether but wasn’t able to reach the Colt.
“The hell?” Danny hollered, drawing a little four-barrel pepperbox from his pants pocket.
With his arms on fire from blood surging back into them, Cord slashed backhanded at Danny’s wrist. The impact felt rubbery, but the little gun flew to the side.
Danny was out from under him, staggering up as Cord scrambled to regain his footing.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Laura snatch up the weapon that had landed within her reach.
Danny didn’t see, thank God for drink. He crouched on the balls of his feet, hands out to fight Cord. The Colt lay behind him.
Cord shook out his arms, all pins and needles, and tried to bring up his fists.
Laura was studying the little gun.
Please, let it be loaded.
And let her know how to use it.
“Look out, Cord!” she cried.
Danny turned toward her voice. Cord feinted out of the line of fire, and, with the barrel only a few feet from Danny’s chest, she pulled the trigger.
The little gun went off with a sharp snap. A stinking sulphurous cloud floated up.
Blood stained Danny’s buckskins around a black exit hole Cord could see beneath his right shoulder. Grabbing Laura by the throat with one hand, Danny jerked the pistol from her and placed the barrel against her temple.
With Danny’s back to him, Cord didn’t hesitate. Pulling back his arms, he swung his clasped hands like a club, connecting solidly with the back of the outlaw’s head.
Danny went down like a felled pine.
Laura stared at him. “Is he dead?”
“Out.” Cord ran back to the sapling where he’d been tied and picked up the wedge of obsidian.
He came back to Laura and severed the rope that bound her.
Hoofbeats sounded from down the canyon, along with shouts. Men were coming, holding flaring torches aloft.
“Let’s get out of here.” Cord went to Dante’s head and untied him. He looked around, but didn’t see his Winchester, or his small pack with food. As a last resort, he tried to locate the little pepperbox that might contain three more cartridges, but it was lost in the shadows thrown by the fire.
Laura had the Colt in her hand, on her way to White Bird.
Intent only on speed, they pointed their mounts blindly into the black depths of Nez Perce Canyon.
Within a hundred yards, Dante became stuck in a bottleneck where the trees grew too closely for him to pass. Panicked, he threw himself forward, wedging himself more tightly between the pines.
Cord remembered seeing an old woman of the Nez Perce beat a stuck horse with a stick until it reversed out of the blind alley. He placed a comforting hand on Dante’s flank and spoke softly, backing him out.
Within a hundred yards, it had happened twice more.
Behind, he heard a commotion of voices as the soldiers no doubt went to Danny’s fire and found him.
Cord urged Dante on, Laura riding beside him. But the terrain forced them to proceed slower and slower, until they reached a place where deadfall blocked the horses.
Dismounting, Cord felt his way along to the right until he found passage. Dante followed, one faltering step after another.
“Cord?” Laura hissed.
“This way.” He hoped she could follow the sound of his voice.
Ahead, he made out a faint graying of the night. Straining his eyes, he moved forward.
There was open space ahead, he realized. In fifty feet, he was out of the forest. A sliver of rising moon and the Milky Way illuminated that here the cliff edge that had bounded the chasm gave way to the vast field of jumbled rocks they had seen from below. The talus pile continued up perhaps a thousand feet and intersected one of the great rock spines leading up several thousand more feet to the top of Nez Perce Peak.
“The horses can’t do this.” Laura patted White Bird’s neck with a hand that was a paler shade of gray than the night.
Cord ran his hands over Dante’s coat. In addition to the bloody furrow left by a soldier’s bullet, new wounds seeped from his frightened plunging against the trees. The big horse whimpered, a thin tentative sound.
Putting his arms around Dante’s neck, Cord closed his eyes. He remembered his first sight of the colt, all spindly legs and foam-flecked coat. Born on a crisp autumn morning, Dante had staggered valiantly to his feet beneath his mother in half the time it no
rmally took a newborn.
“What are we going to do?” Laura asked.
Cord looked back the way they’d come. Torchlight winked through the forest behind them, drawing closer.
He pressed his cheek to Dante’s velvet nose. He sensed even in the night that Dante watched him with keen intelligence.
“We’ll have to leave the horses,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “The soldiers will find them and take care of them.”
“But …” She looked back.
The Army of the United States pursued as relentlessly as they had in 1877.
Laura smoothed her hand along White Bird’s shoulder. Cord thought she was crying, as she slid off White Bird and faced the wall of rock.
Staggering beneath her bone-numbing exhaustion, Laura pulled herself up onto another boulder on the seemingly endless climb. She could barely see Cord above her, a dark silhouette against a bank of clouds streaming over the ridge from the east.
Her entire being focused onto the next rock, where she would place her hands and feet, and whether she would be able to drag her weight up. Her throat was parched, and her heart pounded fiercely.
After leaving Dante and White Bird at the edge of the boulder field, Laura and Cord had come no more than halfway up the talus pile, headed for the spine of the ridge.
“The other side is covered in forest and the going will be easier.” He reached back and helped Laura up onto the next ledge. She felt the sticky wetness of blood between their clasped palms; the sharp volcanic rocks had sliced open both their hands.
She wanted to tell him she couldn’t climb another foot, that he must go on and leave her to save himself, as they’d left the horses.
“This is a good sheltered place to stop until dawn,” he said. “We’ve both got to rest or we’ll never make it to the top.”
“What about the soldiers?”
“They must have lost our trail again,” Cord said. A study of the rock pile they’d scaled did not show anyone climbing after them.
Laura looked around. They were in the lee of the wind, but since they had stopped climbing, she could already feel the night air chilling her sweat-dampened skin. Cord had his sheepskin coat, while she wore nothing but her dress, torn and ripped from the climb. If only there’d been time to check Danny’s camp for blankets, water, or food.
Below in the canyon, Laura could see the light of the bonfire. For a moment, she thought she smelled smoke, but it must be her imagination.
Cord seated himself in a sheltered hollow. “Come
sit.”
Laura hugged herself, staring back the way they had come. “I hope White Bird and Dante …”
“Don’t think about it,” Cord ordered. “You’re shaking with cold, and in a little while I will be, too, unless you get down here and share some body heat.”
A nasty gust eddied onto the ledge, and she gave up on what was behind them. When she came to shelter with him, he slid his coat off and wrapped it around them both.
Impossible to think that only a few weeks ago Chicago had been her world: petty jealousies between her and her cousin, worrying what her aunt thought about her wardrobe, daydreaming of getting out from under her father’s thumb.
Cord’s embrace tightened, and he winced.
“Your arm hurts?” She wished she had clean warm water, fresh bandages.
He stroked her hair, gently touching the sore place where Danny had pulled some out.
Laura studied the moon, intermittently visible behind a bank of low scudding clouds continuing to sweep over the eastern ridge in waves. The flat sheen of Yellowstone Lake lay far below to the west, cool waters masking the surface of the volcano beneath.
In the Lamar Valley, the fires the soldiers had smothered sent up pale smoke.
Cord pointed. “The campfires of the People cast their glow into the cloudy skies as we moved through these mountains. Horses dragged travois loaded with precious possessions, painted hides, silver jewelry, and ceremonial breastplates …” He trailed off, seemingly lost in memory.
As Laura watched the sky, she detected the faintest crimson in the east. “It can’t be morning.”
“It isn’t. Rest while you can.”
The wind began to strengthen, its moan rising as it crested the ridge above. While night wore on, it gusted so strongly she and Cord heard the crack of trees breaking above. The leaves and pine straw in their hollow swirled and took flight.
Lightning split the sky at intervals, but there was no rain in this dry, cold front. In fact, the nagging smoke smell grew stronger, making her recall what Hank had said last evening about a new forest fire on Nez Perce Peak.
With their backs against rough rock, Cord and Laura huddled in each other’s arms, her head against his chest. Hours passed; neither slept.
Sometime before dawn, Cord bent his head and whispered, “We’ll get through this.”
Without food or water, and with miles of backcountry ahead, Laura wondered if they might not be forced to give themselves up to survive.
But Feddors and his men had already taken shots at Cord. Would the captain, who acted irrational, if not outright crazy, allow Cord … or her … to be taken alive?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JUNE 30
Laura did sleep, for Cord’s voice awakened her. “First light.”
It was hard to tell, but there did seem to be a barely perceptible brightening. Of course, the moon was overhead and perhaps that made a difference.
The wind picked up from higher on Nez Perce Peak, sorting what looked like mist into wispy trails. Across the canyon lay Little Saddle Mountain, another sharp peak ringed with treacherous blocks of talus. The air appeared clearer there.
Laura extricated herself from Cord’s arms and studied his beard-stubbled, bruised face. The fresh wound, where Constance had cut him with her ring, made a match for the ancient one. Getting to her feet, she scanned the long blocky slope of boulders that she and Cord had climbed in darkness.
At the base, two blue-jacketed army men were ascending on foot. The rifles slung over their shoulders made her aware she and Cord were armed with only a single pistol.
Cord pushed to his feet. “I don’t like the look of
this.”
Thick fingers of a strange-looking fog billowed over the top of the ridge. With them came the strong stench of burning.
They began to climb. It seemed as though it might have been better not to rest, for Laura’s muscles had tightened like a leather bridle soaked with horse sweat. The cut flesh on her palms had stopped seeping, but as soon as she stretched for a handhold, the wounds reopened. Her thirst, which had abated somewhat during the cold night, returned to her parched throat.
From his pocket, Cord brought out a flake of obsidian, smaller and thinner than his wayakin. He took the narrow edge between finger and thumb and broke off a bit. “Put that under your tongue, and it’ll help your saliva come.” He put another piece into his mouth and pocketed the rest.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Last night I found it right below my hands. Used it to cut loose.”
Laura felt the stone warm in her mouth. If his guardian spirit had sent another helper, perhaps they might get out of this.
Foot by foot, hour by hour, she and Cord narrowed the distance to the ridge. Though the soldiers came on behind, they heard no shouts to indicate they’d been spotted in the smoke haze that grew thicker as they climbed. Rather, there was an ominous sound from the other side of the ridge, like one of the Chicago trains approaching the station.
“The wildfire must be right over there,” Laura finally admitted aloud. The quaver in her voice frightened her.
Cord started to touch her and stopped, looking at his torn palms. “We can probably get around it.” He pointed east. “You can’t see from here, but the Lamar circles back around and is only a few miles down there. We’ll be drinking from the river before the soldiers even think about getting up here.”
�
��I hope so. What will we do for food, since you can’t shoot anything without giving us away?”
“Tomorrow I’ll show you how to dig camas roots.”
“What are they?” She wrinkled her nose.
“They’re starchy and not very interesting, but we won’t starve,” Cord remembered. “The Nez Perce used them for everything from making mush to eating them raw.”
“I wish we had some now.” She smiled wanly.
As they pulled toward the top, the smoke billowing above them grew darker and thicker.
“Soon we’ll be slipping and sliding down a slope of pine needles, faster than we could run,” Cord proposed. “From the sound, the fire’s to the north, opposite of the way we want to go.”
Up over the last boulder and they found themselves on a knife-edge, overlooking a steep, northeast slope studded with pines. An ancient, twisted tree reached gnarled limbs into the smoky morning sky. It seemed to grow from a cairn of boulders that men might have made; perhaps the Nez Perce had made a monument here during their passage.
But there was no time to wonder, with all the sense of accomplishment at scaling the slope, all the optimism Laura had based on the obsidian crashing.
A blast of heat hit them in the face.
The rumble became a roar. Great tongues of crimson-and-orange flame leaped voraciously upwards. Tall pines torched as the fire front threw off fireballs that rolled upward and then disappeared into the white-hot sky. Thick smoke rolled blackly off the two-hundred-foot wall of fire, sweeping across the slope toward them, faster than a horse could gallop.
Cord looked over his shoulder, back the way they had come. Feddors led Lieutenant Stafford, climbing more nimbly than Cord would have expected. Of course, the man was driven by his demons.
Thankfully, he wasn’t in rifle range yet.
Perhaps if Cord put up his hands, John Stafford would be able to influence Feddors to accept his surrender. That way, at least Laura would be spared.
He turned to her and saw she was gauging the speed of the inferno and the distance.
“No!” he cried.
She took off along the ridgetop heading up the mountain. Away from the fire, but it was burning uphill.
