Lake of Fire (48 page)

“It’s Danny Falls,” he whispered.

Laura had thought having one’s heart leap into one’s throat was a saying. But hers felt like it was choking her, its wild erratic beating like the wings of a captured bird. She stared at Cord, unable to make a sound. That was a good thing. Inside her head, she was screaming, while it all flooded back: Angus Spiner’s slow-motion fall from the high seat to his last bed in the spring snow; Danny’s satisfied smile when he pocketed her little pistol; his avaricious sneer as he pawed through her things.

Her hand tightened on Cord’s Colt. Danny was just there; she’d gladly go and shoot him.

“I thought about it.” Cord touched her shoulder. “That’s what separates us from outlaws.”

He looked back the way they’d come, where the
soldiers camped. “We’ve got to get past him tonight. Get up into the high valley between Little Saddle and Nez Perce, where the going’s easier.”

The last thing she wanted to do was to move.

“If he comes toward us, we’ll both blast him,” Cord directed.

Laura managed to nod.

They set off. She followed Cord and Dante, leading White Bird with a slack rein while they picked their way over the broken ground by feel. They couldn’t afford to loosen another stone.

Though they hugged the right side of the canyon, as far as possible from Danny’s camp, the smell of roasting meat made her mouth water. She didn’t see anyone beside the fire.

Slowly and silently, one step at a time. Cord was keeping to where the earth was soft and duff-covered in order that the horses’ hooves not make noise. Laura tried to place her feet where he did. It seemed to take forever, but at last, the firelight began to fade behind them. Relieved, she looked down to find the next quiet place to step … from the corner of her eye she saw a shadow flit between trees.

It must be an owl.

The incline steepened. Her dress clung to her armpits where she sweated, even in the night wind. In the hand that wasn’t holding White Bird’s reins, she clutched the Colt.

Ahead, Cord stopped and put out a hand. Laura went still, and both horses stopped. White Bird’s hoof
touched a stone with an audible scrape.

From the corner of her eye, Laura once again caught motion. Before she could turn to see what it was, something seized her.

It took a fraction of a second to know it was a man’s long arm, sliding around her throat. And a laugh that sounded like Hank when he’d pinned her on his bed.

Heart racing, her knees turning to water, Laura nonetheless clutched the Colt and tried to point the barrel up over her shoulder at his head …

“No, no, no.” He disarmed her with a single move and pressed the barrel hurtfully against her temple.

She sensed Cord trying to bring his Winchester up.

Beside her ear, she heard the hammer being pulled back, one click …

Two.

Laura wanted to shout at Cord to shoot.

Three.

Even if she was at risk.

Four.

Cord lowered the Winchester.

“Let’s all go over to my fire, shall we?” suggested Danny Falls.

I
t must have been past midnight, as the night chill came down in earnest. Cord sat with his head tilted back against a sapling, his arms bound behind him and around the trunk. His sheepskin coat lay nearby; he wished Danny had let him give the wrap to Laura, who lay huddled in a miserable bundle too far from the fire to get any warmth.

Danny had feasted on roasted rabbit he must have shot earlier in the day, but had offered neither food nor water to Cord or Laura. He’d tethered Dante and White Bird near his palomino.

Tilting a compact ceramic jug that smelled of liquor, Danny drank, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, one, two, three times. “Tracked you all day,” he said. Four times.

“Got the jump ahead in the boulders and deadfall.” He moved with deliberate steps toward Laura.
“Shouldn’t have brought a woman to slow ya.”

She struggled to a sitting position. Her hands were not tied, but a loop around her waist secured her to a fir.

Danny reached to twine a lock of her hair around his finger. “Pretty.” He spoke softly, eyeing Cord.

Laura’s knotted hair clung to Danny’s finger, and he jerked, yanking the hank out by the roots. In the firelight, Cord saw tears shine in her eyes.

With a chuckle, Danny traced the curve of her breast beneath filthy green silk, still puckered after being wet earlier. She kept her head averted.

“Take your hands off her,” Cord demanded. He imagined that he threw Danny to the earth and ground his boot into his face.

“Got to you with that?” He turned from Laura, seeming to lose interest in her. “The shoe’s on the other foot.” His face was ugly. “You killed my partner, Frank. In fairness, I should return the favor.”

Cord started to speak, but Laura burst out, “Was it fair what you did to the stage driver? For a paltry valise of women’s clothing.”

“You think Frank and I are small-time operators who go around robbing stagecoaches?” He shook his head. “No, no, no.”

Cord shifted his aching shoulders and tested his bonds as he’d been doing for hours. His knife had gone into Danny’s pack. This time, as he swept his bound hands across the ground, he uncovered the tip of something hard and sharp.

Danny drank again. “I’m not as dumb as Hank thinks. I set my high-livin’, too-good-to-talk-to-his-twin brother up to lose his fancy Lake Hotel.”

“I guessed that much,” Cord said.

“Got eyes and ears all around. Frank was in a bar in Jackson, found out from the fellow runs the stage station that a Laura Fielding would be on the Yellowstone run.”

Cord craned his neck trying to see the ground.

“Queer,” Danny mused, “gal traveling alone, but that name matched the bank the railroad told Edgar was backing Hank.”

There. Cord felt the adamantine surface of obsidian.

He strained, his shoulders aching, and managed to touch it with the tips of his fingers. It wasn’t a knifepoint or arrowhead, but a piece of material that had been worked into a single sharp edge and then abandoned without being finished.

Danny’s laugh was a chilling arpeggio. “What better … dis … discouragement for a man investin’ than to lose … his daughter?” The drink was getting to him.

“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.