Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [109]
Clare knew that predatory call. She’d heard the voice of the Shoshone when she and Steve had cowered in the lake with shards of wood showering from exploding tree trunks. At the spike camp, she’d waited for the chopper with a desperate effort at calm, all the time believing the Mink Creek screamed her name. The Hellroaring had spared her, but taken its offering when Billy Jakes had panicked.
She continued to read.
I wish I could say we were saved through action on our part, some clever sleuthing of cold cavern air, but we fell into our refuge without seeing it. In a dank lava tunnel with a cone of dirty snow unmelted from last season, smoke nearly suffocated us.
We lived, yet are guaranteed no more and no less than anyone who takes their hold on life for granted. I don’t want to remember, but these awful days after the flood take me back to when darkness nearly overtook me. A dreadful time when I believed that despite our love, Cord and I would never find a place to be together.
Clare shivered and closed the book. She’d lived alone for years, but this summer had blasted her complacency like a tree exploding from wildfire’s heat. First Deering had awakened long dormant physical needs, but it was more than that. Now her soul craved the kind of tenderness that Laura must have found with her Cord. How incredible that a single kiss from Steve could create this monstrous hunger for all that they could be to each other. The temptation to try and find him was almost overpowering.
The thought arose that they could have been together all this time. The branch tapped again and she started, conjuring ideas that he knocked . . . and an image of him leaning lazily against the doorframe, looking down at her.
She would lift her hand and beckon him inside. How his eyes would light as he came to her.
Clare lay in the lamp’s shaded glow and imagined stoking the sparks he had kindled.
Old Faithful’s parking lots were nearly empty. Thousands of day visitors had moved on, leaving seven hundred hotel guests and a few hundred employees who lived at the complex.
Steve got out of the truck’s cab. Favoring his right knee, he climbed into the bed of the pickup. From beside the shovel and axe that rangers carried year-round for fighting fires and digging out of snow, he pulled an olive drab down sleeping bag, sealed in plastic to protect it from weather. The truck bed was not exactly soft, but the front seat was too cramped for his bad knees.
Thinking of Clare, warm in bed in her cabin, Steve unrolled his bedroll and got into it. Toward morning, it would get down in the low forties or high thirties.
He lay on his back and looked at the sky. Clouds skidded past, or were they clouds? The whiffs of fresh smoke he’d been catching all evening now came with annoying frequency.
The North Fork was on its way, loaded for bear.
Steve hoped Clare would find Devon before trouble got here. Despite her animosity toward him, he’d seen the charm as well as the conflict in the child-woman. With her parents divorced and her father’s remarriage one that obviously excluded her, it was no wonder she had lashed out at her mother over him. Despite Clare’s concern, he figured she’d probably show up back at the cabin when it got cold enough.
He wondered if he had been a fool this evening. Instead of leaving, he could have drawn the paper shades and turned the bolt. He flashed on images of Clare naked—a mystery to be unveiled.
With his arms beneath his head, he watched a sliver of moon appear to fall endlessly, the billowing shadows rising to meet it.
It was like that with Clare. He felt as though he’d left his life behind, falling free like the moon through the heavens. As sleep rose to meet him he dropped into a dream in which he was not quite the fool he’d imagined.
YELLOWSTONE FIRES
September 7, 8:00