Lake of Fire by Linda Jacobs Page A

back the covers and heaved his big body up to crawl out the opposite side.
    This morning there was no bonfire, no coffee. Laura went to the river’s edge among the willows, dropped her dirty trousers, and managed to relieve herself without splashing her boots. She knelt on the bank, dipped up water to drink, and cupped handfuls onto her face.
    When she came back, Cord had rolled the bedding into a tight bundle. Without a glance at her, he whistled to Dante and saddled him.
    “We can’t both ride all the time or we’ll wear him out,” he said. “I’ll walk this morning.”
    She refused his offer of a hand and mounted without assistance. Gathering the reins before he could try to lead the horse, she earned a look of grudging respect.
    Though it shouldn’t matter, it helped make up for his telling her she was good for nothing.

    As they set out north toward Yellowstone, Cord walked ahead through the green willow bottoms. After a few miles, they began to climb into a dense and darker forest. In places, the trees grew so close together that the horse had to be turned back to find a wider path.
    In early afternoon, they came upon the brink of a steep-walled canyon.
    Cord stepped to the edge while Laura dismounted. The verge overlooked vertical black lava walls studded with pines wherever there was enough soil for growth.
    “Is that the Snake?” She pointed to the mesmerizing silver ribbon of river below.
    “The Lewis. It feeds into the Snake.”
    Lewis Canyon … They’d managed by traveling cross-country to enter Yellowstone without passing the military station at the south entrance.
    Cord paced along the precipice. Being in the park was both a relief and a worry. The fewer checkpoints he had to go through, the less likely someone would detect he was part Nez Perce. Part was as good as all for some, and he’d seen everything, from the sly rapier of ostracism to the blunt bludgeon of assault. Thefarther he got without running into anyone, the less likely he’d be interrogated about the dead men at the stagecoach.
    On the other hand, when he arrived at Lake, he’d be questioned about not checking his weapons at the park boundary.
    He took off his hat and ran his hand through his matted hair. Usually fastidious in his grooming, after their dunking in the river he’d let things go. It would make it easier later for him to turn into someone Laura wouldn’t recognize.
    Staring down hundreds of feet at the river, he thought he heard a twig snap in the thick stand of trees. He looked over his shoulder, but saw nothing save the straight trunks of lodgepole and the soft brown duff underfoot.
    It was peaceful here, with the wind sweeping up over the canyon rim and a raven soaring on the drafts. The midday sun shone through the branches, making a checkered shade that shifted and moved across Laura’s face.

    She took a half step back from Cord, but she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. His eyes reminded her of the highest part of the sky at midday, with a midnight blue ring around the iris. He had shed his sheepskin coat, and his denim shirt lay open at the neck, revealing a pulse in the hollow of his throat.
    Behind them, Dante shied. In the same instant, Laura caught the stench of decay.
    “There.” Cord pointed to some mounds of flesh and fur at the base of a tree.
    The carcasses lay piled, their arrangement assuring there had been no accident. Deer; she knew them from the woods north of Chicago, and elk, which she had seen only in books. But the massive antlers she expected upon their heads were absent; empty sockets crawling with green flies all that remained of former
    glory.
    “Poachers.” His hand near his holstered Colt, Cord scanned the woods, then returned his focus to the fallen.
    “But why?”
    He bent and pulled back the dead animal’s lip to show a gap in the jaw where the eyeteeth had been removed. “Elk ivory. It makes into jewelry and trade goods.”
    What kind of person would kill a magnificent animal