Lake of Fire (25 page)

Larry Nevers, in uniform, followed. He favored
Laura with a smile that was quickly hidden from his commander.

“Please.” She focused on Resnick. “The outlaw is in an abandoned cabin not far from here. We both saw him.”

Resnick’s good eye found Cord. “You saw him?”

“Well, of course, Miss Fielding identified him …”

Resnick mirrored the captain’s belligerent stance. “I may have been in the back room with Sergeant Nevers, but I distinctly heard you announce that you yourself had seen the outlaw from Jackson’s Hole here in the park.”

Feddors lifted a hand and toyed with his moustache, a suggestion of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

Resnick turned to Laura. “How is it that Cord knows what the outlaw from the stagecoach looks like?”

She swallowed.

“Could that be because he was there?” Resnick pressed. “Was he the man you traveled with instead of some shadowy folk from Montana?”

“You’ve got to hurry.” She pointed in the direction of the cabin. “The man who shot Angus Spiner is getting away.”

Almost half an hour passed while Feddors called up some soldiers from the stable area. They mustered, armed with military issue 1892 Krag rifles and made their way back to within sight of the cabin. The afternoon sun
slanted lower through the trees, but the primeval stillness and the warm pine scent were the same.

Feddors gave Laura and Cord a hard look. “You two stay back while we handle this.”

She started to protest, but Resnick gestured her to stay put. “If there’s shooting, I want civilians well out of it.”

“He’s right,” Cord agreed, though she sensed he wanted to be in the thick of the capture. “Speaking of civilians, there was another man inside. Edgar Young is a banker in Great Falls.” He did not mention his association with him.

“Description?” Resnick clipped it out the way he had during his interrogation of Laura.

“Medium height and build,” Cord replied, “reddish curly hair. You won’t confuse him with the outlaw, who looks exactly like Hank Falls.”

Resnick looked at Laura. “You mentioned that before. How do you mean ‘exactly’?”

“Now that I’ve seen him again,” she said, “I’m sure they must be identical twins.”

Feddors raised a hand and signaled the dozen or so soldiers to surround the dilapidated structure. They obeyed, fanning out silently through the woods.

Laura and Cord stayed where they had been instructed. Anticipation made her toes curl inside her boots. She didn’t know whether to hope for a shootout … no, the thought of witnessing another killing made her throat tighten.

The soldiers closed in on the cabin. Cord took
her hand.

Feddors raised his arm. His men trained their Colts.

“You in the cabin,” he shouted. “We have you surrounded. Come out now, unarmed, with your hands in view.”

Silence reigned, save for the chatter of a chipmunk whose territory a soldier invaded.

“I said come out now!” Feddors called. “This is your last warning.”

At another signal, the soldiers began to move in. Sergeant Nevers was the man closest to the cabin door, looking back for direction. Feddors nodded, and he kicked the door open.

Gun drawn, he disappeared inside. “No one here!” came his shout.

Laura’s shoulders sagged, and she took a gulp of air, having forgotten to breathe. Cord’s fingers twisted, and she released her death grip on them.

He frowned. “Maybe they saw us coming and got out the back. Or just finished their business.”

“What business?”

“Before you came up, Danny told Edgar I had served my purpose when I delivered ‘those papers.’“ “What papers?”

“When you saw me pointing out maintenance problems … the clues to that came from some papers Edgar gave me.”

“You showed them to the railroad people?”

“I did. It’s almost as though Edgar and this Danny are both on my side.”

Laura shivered. “Danny’s not the kind of friend I’d care to have.”

Resnick came to them through the trees. He spread his hands in a “win some, lose some” gesture. With a guarded glance back at Feddors, he directed, “You two come with me.”

On the hotel’s front porch, he directed them to take seats in wooden rockers, as though they were having a casual conversation. Laura sat, attempting to tuck the dirty hem of the plum skirt under. A breeze blew through the open windows and stirred the lace curtains.

“Let’s take up where we left off,” the Pinkerton man began. “Mr. Sutton, I’ve come to believe you were at the stagecoach scene.” He pulled out his pad and pen. “The question is, what were you doing there and with whom?”

“I can tell you that,” Laura jumped in without thinking. “He saved my life and brought me through the wilderness to this hotel.”

Cord laid a gentle hand on Laura’s arm. Resnick glanced down at their contact.

“I’ll handle this,” Cord said evenly. “I was traveling from my ranch in Jackson’s Hole toward Yellowstone when I heard shots. I got to the coach and found Laura hiding out in a ravine. There was a gun battle, the man we heard called Danny today, rode away … the other man was gut shot.”

“You dispatched him with a bullet to the head.” It wasn’t a question.

Cord nodded, his focus on the wind painting
patterns on the blue lake.

“Did you think you’d be in trouble if you told your story?” Something in his demeanor suggested he referred to Cord’s heritage.

“How could he be in trouble? That’s all nonsense Captain Feddors keeps spouting.”

Resnick looked from her to Cord; she’d spoken too glibly, calling attention to Feddors’s claims rather than defusing them.

She tried again. “I asked Cord to keep our journey secret, because I didn’t think my father and aunt would take kindly to me spending three nights in the forest without a chaperone. I’m afraid I did make up the story about the couple from Montana … to avoid being labeled a ruined woman.”

Resnick studied her a moment, his gaze passing over her black eye, then nodded. “There’s plenty more you both aren’t telling me, but for the moment I’ll let

it go.”

He brushed off his pant legs, which bore some pine duff from the stakeout, and rose. “We’ll continue to be on the lookout for this Danny, and I’ll speak with Hank Falls about his ‘twin brother.’”

Left alone, Laura looked miserably at Cord. “I’ve made things worse for you.”

He got up. “I’m going to find Edgar Young and get to the bottom of this.”

She watched him go along the path in a direction that could lead to the stables, to Wylie Camp, or back toward the cabin. Still stunned at what she’d learned
about him, she got to her feet in a restless motion.

Manfred Resnick was headed toward the docks, where Hank’s steamboat lay snug against the pier. Curious to know what Hank would say about his resemblance to the outlaw, Laura hurried down the slope. Across the Grand Loop Road and down the steep wooden steps to the pier, she shadowed Resnick so inexpertly that he stopped and waited for her at the base of the stairs.

They stood in the shade of the upper deck overlooking the lake, ripples lapping the dock and evoking a sweet water smell mixed with that of damp wood.

Resnick’s one-eyed regard took her in. “Did curiosity kill the cat, miss?”

Laura bristled. Seeing “Danny” again had brought back what she’d tried for days to forget. “The outlaw tried to kill me.”

“Wasn’t the motive for the attack robbery?” he countered.

“I could have been killed,” she challenged. “Who are you to say what went on?”

Resnick gave her a reluctant salute. “Very well, Miss Fielding. With you along, the conversation with Falls might take an intriguing turn.”

They went along to the break in the rail and stepped onto the well-trafficked lower deck of the
Alexandra
.

At Resnick’s first knock, Hank opened the main cabin door. His starched white shirt was immaculate; he’d changed for the dinner hour.

Upon seeing Laura with the Pinkerton man, his blond brows arched. Spreading his hands as though offering to be cuffed, he said, “If I’m to be taken into custody, I’d prefer to be Miss Fielding’s prisoner.”

She kept her face stony while Resnick nodded toward the interior of the boat. “May we come in?”

Hank stepped back, and they entered the passenger cabin. It was spare, furnished with brown horsehair benches beneath panoramic windows. The wooden deck here was also scarred from many pairs of boots and shoes. Aft, Laura saw an ornate wooden door with a thick brass knob. The varnish was so heavy she could see an almost clear reflection of the three of them.

“Miss Fielding,” Resnick began. “Suppose you tell Hank about the man who attacked the stagecoach, whom you saw again near the hotel this afternoon.”

Hank’s backbone seemed to straighten.

Looking at him, Laura began, “When I first came to the hotel and Mr. Resnick questioned me about my ordeal … I told him the outlaw who got away on his palomino looked a lot like you.”

She could see from the way his pupils got larger that she’d hit the mark with that one. And, after the first shock, there appeared pain.

“You know it wasn’t me,” he told her. “You knew the person you saw the other day in buckskin wasn’t me, either.”

She nodded. “Then who … ?”

“We do know it wasn’t you, sir,” Resnick broke in.
“This afternoon Miss Fielding saw the outlaw again, hiding out in an abandoned cabin. The other man with him called him ‘Danny.’”

A little shudder seemed to pass through Hank.

“He looks too much like you to be anyone but your twin.” Laura looked at his mirror image in the polished door that must lead to his exclusive private quarters.

In an instant, Hank passed from defensive to enraged. “This is all preposterous.” He gestured them to get off his boat. “I have no brother!”

As soon as Laura and the Pinkerton man were gone, Hank strode across the worn floor and flung open the door to his inner sanctum.

His sister stood on the patterned wool carpet near the door. At his entry, she stepped back and almost tripped on the carved wooden leg of a divan covered with gold-threaded pillows.

“You were listening.”

Alex’s eyes, which matched her lace-trimmed lavender dress, widened. She reached to twirl a strand of her hair, a sure sign she was nervous.

Hank thought that her hair still looked like it had when she was a tiny girl, when Danny used to lift her up to ride in front of him. Danny had always chosen palominos because their manes matched their small sister’s crown of shining gold.

“How long has he been here?” Hank slammed the door.

Alex jumped, her usually pink cheeks pale. “Who?”

He stepped closer. “I asked you how long Danny has been here; my brother who destroyed all my illusions about us being two parts of the same whole.”

“A few days.”

“Well, of course, if he were down south attacking a stage and killing the driver on June twentieth, it would have taken a while to get here.”

Alex fiddled with a cameo on a gold chain around her neck. “Danny could never have done what they said,” she protested with the certainty of youth.

“You must know better. Danny admitted he was thrown out of the army for embezzling the payroll.”

Alex turned away.

He shouldn’t tell her what he never had before, but he couldn’t stand her continued denial. “You were too young to understand …”

The sting of bile rose in the back of his throat, but he told her anyway.

Hank had been with his stepfather, Jonathan, when they’d opened the barn door. The smell of sweet hay, dairy cows, and manure was pleasant in the crisp autumn air. Once inside, they passed down the straw-covered aisle toward the little room Jonathan used as an office. Payroll time after the harvest, and the men who had helped bring in a middling crop of Idaho potatoes were coming in an hour for the season’s wages.

Behind the wooden gate of the last stall, Hank
saw his sixteen-year-old brother, Danny, the person he loved most in the world, on hands and knees in the hay. Their hired man who helped in the barns, Frank Worth, knelt beside him gripping an overstuffed cloth moneybag.

On the floor was the empty metal box that had contained the payroll.