Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [102]
Hurrying footsteps sounded and Devon rushed up panting through her open mouth, her lips slicked with a red so dark it looked almost black.
Clare stepped onto the porch where someone had laid a mosaic of river rocks. Above the door, a weathered set of elk antlers spread bleached branches.
The cabin’s interior smelled of the pine log walls. Save for metal andirons and a kettle on the hearth, the main room was empty. Irregular gaps in the wood floor showed packed earth beneath. In the other room, a potbellied stove stood close enough to cast warmth onto the bed. Looking at the rusted frame, Clare imagined that here was where her family had once lived and loved.
Her grandfather Cordon had grown up surrounded by the awesome beauty of wilderness, yet he had moved to Houston and gone into the oil business. Standing in the homestead, she wondered why anyone who lived here would leave this country. Even the flood of Asa Dean’s story should not have deterred the hardy folk of the frontier.
Of course, her try at this wild country had resulted in disaster.
“Mom,” Devon called from the main room.
“What?”
Clare looked in and found Steve watching Devon with a raised brow. Her daughter bent over in her already abbreviated cutoffs, rocking a loose hearthstone that chinked. “It’s probably buried treasure,” she suggested with childlike enthusiasm.
“Don’t be silly, the place is falling apart.”
To her surprise, Steve defended Devon. “You never know until you look.”
He pulled an andiron from the fireplace, knelt, and strained to lift the heavy rock. The powdery scent of earth emerged, along with the sharp edge of tarnish that Clare recognized from cleaning her mother’s silver tableware.
Steve lifted out a box a foot square and six inches deep. For a moment, she thought he would open it, but he offered it to Devon.
She seemed taken aback and looked to Clare as if for permission.
“Go ahead, dear.”
When Devon raised the blackened lid, the hinges broke. She looked startled, and Clare said, “It’s okay.”
Reaching in, Devon drew out a compact, leather-bound book. Gold leaf edged each yellowed page. Inside, Ex Libris and the name in spidery brown ink.
Laura Fielding Sutton.
Clare’s mother had been right about her great-grandmother keeping a journal. It was difficult to believe that the delicate book had not been ruined by rain or melting snow. The silver box’s bottom had tarnished through, making it a ruined shell.
Devon riffled the tissue-thin sheets. They were a bit warped, with a tendency to stick together. A clear round hand sprawled, occasional splotches revealing that Laura had tended to press her fountain pen too hard. How long ago must this have been written, fifty years, eighty?
With a steady look that revealed the woman she might become, Devon passed the book to Clare.
July 23, 1925
Six a.m.
From this high meadow on the Grand, dawn silhouettes the scar on Sheep Mountain where the Gros Ventre Slide took place a month ago. When the mountainside gave way, I saw curious plumes of rising dust. Trees danced and undulated and the hillside peeled away to raw earth. Finally, I heard an unearthly low rumbling as though a train passed.
When the earth lay quiet, a mile and a half long gash wounded it.
Engineers have assured that the slide is stable and that the Gros Ventre River can simply go on flowing around the side, but I wonder. There are stories of major earthquakes in just the last century and the Yellowstone country is violently unstable.
High above me on the Grand, morning kisses the highest peak with rose. The light brightens and sweeps down, illuminating more of the mountain with each moment. The sunrise comes to me and warmth touches my face.
Yesterday afternoon a summer rainstorm passed, quick cold making us reach for oilskins.