Lake of Fire (54 page)

The summer evening was cooling as Laura made her way across to the National Hotel. Stars already spangled night’s canopy, and she found it amazing to be in a place without electricity in 1900. Muted illumination barely spilled from the upstairs rooms. The porch lamps were gas, as were the lobby chandeliers, their glow soft and golden.

Inside the lobby decorated with red, white, and blue bunting for the Fourth of July, Laura went to the desk. “Telegraph,” she requested.

The receptionist pointed to a closed door next to the dining room. Though Laura went and tried the brass knob, it did not turn. She knocked impatiently, garnering curious glances from guests.

Finally, the door swung open slowly. Laura felt sure that the young man wearing a rumpled shirt and suspenders had been asleep at his post. His curly red hair was ruffed up on one side, and his freckled cheek bore a crease from where he must have been lying on the desk.

Laura pushed into the wardrobe-sized office. An enormous rolltop desk dominated the room. “I need to send a telegram to Salt Lake City.” She reached for the message pad and bent over the desk to write.

Aaron Bryce

Salt Lake City, Utah

Army in Yellowstone has taken your son Cord into custody. He is falsely accused of attempted murder. Send telegram immediately Washington or wherever commander above this garrison resides. Most desperate urgency. Laura Fielding
.

“I can’t send this,” the young man protested.

Laura looked at him in disbelief. Was everyone in town a pawn of Captain Feddors? “What’s wrong with it?”

“Salt Lake is a big place. Without an address, there’s no way this could be delivered.”

“Aaron Bryce is a wealthy man. The people at the telegraph office will know who he is,” Laura said with a confidence she did not feel.

“I’m sorry, miss.” He looked nervous, as he had obviously read the message.

“Look,” she said reasonably. “What do you care if I waste my money? Go ahead and send it.”

Taking the paper, he bent dutifully over the key and tapped out her message. She watched restlessly, willing the wires to sing with her words. Surely, the Aaron Bryce who’d taken an orphaned child to his heart would be able to help him.

She realized the operator was speaking. “You’re Laura Fielding, then?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a telegram came about an hour ago,” he said, “addressed to you at the hotel. You weren’t registered …” He shrugged.

Reaching into the cubbyhole labeled with the letter
F
above the desk, the operator handed over a thin envelope.

She took it carefully, as if it would burn her. She’d never seen a telegram that brought good news.

Deciding to read it in private, she turned slowly and walked out, passing between the barroom and the hotel office with its wide bay window fronting the porch.

Taking a deep and measured breath, she slit open the telegram.

By gaslight, she read:
Arriving Mammoth tomorrow’s morning stage stop Leaving Lake at dawn stop Your father Constance Norman Hagen stop You will take afternoon train from Cinnabar to Chicago with us stop Army says you are well and that Cord is in custody stop Thank God Constance saw through him as she will marry Norman Hagen stop
.

Your loving aunt Fanny
.

Slowly, Laura stepped off the porch. She headed across to the darkened parade ground, clutching the wrinkled paper. The message might as well have come from Venus. With everything overturned in Laura’s life and now Constance’s, Fanny persisted in her straight-laced ways. She and her brother, Forrest, would clearly always be well suited to one another.

Putting this reminder of the world she used to inhabit aside, Laura looked over at Fort Yellowstone. The windows of the big houses on Officers’ Row glowed with lamplight. Farther down, the stockade made a
darker shadow beyond the Headquarters building.

Imagining Cord behind barred windows, lying on a hard cot, if, indeed, he had a bed, brought fresh tears to her eyes. Having sent the telegram into the void, there must be something more she could do.

She would go to the stockade if she thought there was any chance of Feddors letting her see Cord. Failing that, she hurried off the edge of the cleared area where the cavalry drilled. Her sore feet protesting, sage and scrub grabbing at her ankles, she crossed the road and approached the fort’s hospital, lying in a field beyond the neat layout of the rest of the fort.

L
arry Nevers was alone at Edgar Young’s bedside in the Lake Infirmary when the injured man died. If he’d known time was so short, he’d have wakened Dr. Upshur, who had bedded down around midnight in a room at the rear.

Near the end, Edgar’s eyelids had fluttered and he twisted in bed, grasping at the covers. “Uhhh.” Larry had moved closer. “Yes, Edgar?”

“Daaaa …”

“What’s that? Danny? Are you talking about Danny Falls?” Hour by hour, hoping Cord Sutton wasn’t guilty, Larry had waited for this. “Did Danny stab you?”

Edgar appeared to panic. He managed another gasp. On the exhale, he seemed to grow smaller. His chest did not rise again.

Larry shouted, “Dr. Upshur!” as the light of life in Edgar’s eyes burned out.

His military boots clomping on the wood floors, Larry rushed into the hall.

How silly to run for a doctor when the patient no longer needed his skills. In fact, there were no patients left since Forrest Fielding had been moved to the Absaroka Suite, in preparation for what would no doubt be a difficult journey home.

Once the doctor was alerted, Larry was out the door. From the soldier station, he phoned the superintendent’s office at Fort Yellowstone.

It took five rings. “Captain Feddors.”

Larry had expected a private on night duty. “Sir, Sergeant Nevers at Lake. Edgar Young has died.”

“Did he say what happened to him?”

“No sir.”

Feddors did not exactly chuckle, but made a noise that sounded over the humming wire as though attempted murder turned to the real thing gave him pleasure.

As soon as he hung up, Larry called Norris and asked them to have a fresh horse waiting when he got there. Then he hurried to the stable.

Danny Falls lay on a narrow metal cot in the Fort Yellowstone hospital.

Laura pressed her palms against the rough plaster wall, holding herself up as she had been for hours. Alexandra occupied the only chair in the room, while
Hank paced, pausing now and then to press his sister’s shoulder.

After refusing Alexandra’s shrill request to leave and mind his own business, Manfred Resnick had cited his position with Pinkerton, as well as Danny’s near-certain guilt in the matter of the stagecoach attack, and stayed. He leaned against the wall, hands in his suit pockets, his one eye bearing its usual quiet watchfulness.

Dr. Liam O’Malley, a grizzled man with white hair and ruddy cheeks covered with spider veins, shook his head. He held a flaring lamp to examine the darkened edges of Danny’s wound.

“Thirty-seven years ago I marched off to Georgia, sewing the guts back inside men after Sherman spilled ‘em,” O’Malley mourned. “When will we stop finding ways of killing each other?”

He looked over his shoulder toward the ceiling. “Live or die, it’s up to the Lord, as I’ve done all I can.”

Laura looked from Hank to Danny, thinking how uncannily alike they looked in one heartbeat and how different in the next. Hair of exactly the same shade lay damp and stringy over Danny’s brow, where he sweated with pain. Hank’s hair had been slicked back with his inevitable pomade. Both men had the same rapier-thin bodies.

Alexandra went to Danny, pressing her fingers to the pinkish froth at his lips as though she could push his blood back inside. He heaved beneath her touch and worked his mouth.

“Don’t talk,” she whispered.

Laura looked to Hank. Much as he’d denied his brother, his eyes were tear bright, as well.

“Tired,” Danny told Alexandra. He looked to Laura. “Tell what I done.”

“No!” Alexandra said. “I don’t want to hear any of her lies.”

Laura pushed off the wall. Reaching to the lavender neckline of Alexandra’s dress, she jerked forth the cameo. The delicate chain snapped, but she had her prized possession back in hand. “This belonged to my mother,” she declared. “I saw Danny rooting through my things at the stage. He took it and gave it to you.”

“That’s impossible,” Alexandra continued her denial.

Manfred Resnick came to Laura. “You sure this is the same piece?”

She let him take it. “Look on the back. It says, ‘To Violet, upon the birth of our daughter Laura—Forrest.’”

The Pinkerton man examined the jewelry. “Sure does say that.” He looked at Alexandra. “If Danny gave it to you, you must surely have known he didn’t come by it honestly.”

“I thought it was an estate piece he’d bought for me.” Alexandra’s voice trembled.

Hank stared at his sister. “When are you going to face the truth about your precious brother?”

She was looking at Danny.

The door opened to admit Captain Feddors. “Edgar Young has died,” he announced.

“I …” Danny nodded again at Laura.

“Danny killed him. I told you that.”

Feddors reddened. “That true?” he asked gruffly.

“Ye … yes,” Danny got out.

Alexandra’s violet eyes went wide.

Hank’s face flushed. “I was sure Cord tried to kill me.” His eyes sought his brother’s. “Who burned the steamboat?”

“You said you would kill Danny if you saw me with him,” Alexandra wailed. Danny looked at her.

“I asked,” Hank gritted angrily, “who burned the

Alexandra?”

Danny began to choke. Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth.

For a moment, he seemed to be having some kind of seizure, his eyes rolling up.

Feddors shouted, “Doctor!”

O’Malley appeared so quickly it was evident he’d been waiting just beyond the doorway. He moved swiftly to the bedside and placed his fingers onto the side of Danny’s neck.

After a long moment, the doctor shook his head.

Laura couldn’t breathe. She’d killed him, sent the bullet that lodged in his lung and drowned him in his own blood. She had to keep telling herself he’d been ready to murder her and Cord. Had murdered Angus Spiner.

Dr. O’Malley moved back and glanced at Alexandra. She had her face covered, her shoulders shaking.

Hank stepped forward, gathered his brother’s pale
and slender hands, and crossed them on his chest. With care, he pulled up the sheet, covering the blood and Danny’s gaunt white face.

“Captain Feddors, you must let Cord go,” Laura demanded, following the bantam officer from the hospital. Hank accompanied them, while Alexandra remained beside Danny’s body with Manfred Resnick.

Feddors kept walking without answering. In the deep silence of two a.m., not even insects seemed to be awake. The only movement in the fort was a faint wisp of steam rising from a fumarole, picked out by moonlight on the parade ground across the road. The windows of the houses on Officers’ Row were dark.

When Hank continued to tag along, Feddors turned and looked at him. “You, I can’t figure,” he said. “If I let Sutton go, you don’t get the girl.”

Hank reddened from the tips of his ears, the flush spreading across his face.

Fearing he would leave, Laura put a hand on Hank’s arm. “Don’t let him rile you. You may despise Cord, but you must tell Feddors that Danny burned your boat. Alexandra told him you’d threatened to kill him, and that’s a far more powerful motive than Cord ever had.”

Hank looked down wearily at her hand on the sleeve of his ill-fitting white shirt. Even in near darkness, his narrow face appeared to bear the brunt of the
long vigil and his brother’s death. “I may have said I wanted him to stay away from Alexandra, but …”

How typical of him to dissemble in front of the law. How like his brother.

Though it would have been satisfying to break out into renewed accusations against him for attacking her on his boat, she needed him on her side. “Alexandra may have been exaggerating,” Laura allowed. “But in there …” she nodded back toward where Danny lay, “you seemed to doubt Cord did it.”