Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [126]
A jacket . . . when it might already be too late.
They rode in silence for miles. Clare felt sorry for Steve who grimaced each time the worn out suspension took on a pothole.
Garrett tuned the truck’s radio to the press conference that North Fork Incident Commander Duncan Rowland was conducting at Old Faithful. With a deeply obvious sense of relief, Rowland revealed the inn’s narrow escape. He reported the loss of fourteen cabins along with a gasoline tanker truck and storage shed, and gave thanks that no one had been seriously hurt.
When the press conference ended, Garrett shook his big head and snapped off the radio. They left the fire behind and drove through the false twilight of smoke.
Leaving the park’s deep forest and broad meadows beside the Madison River was as startling as plunging into cold water. West Yellowstone shone with neon signs advertising Exxon, the Red Wolf Motel and the Saloon next door. When he passed Fire Command, Garrett did not slow. “I thought we’d go on to the hotel. We’ve got a block of rooms.”
From Yellowstone Avenue, he turned onto Dunraven Street, passing two troop transports. Farther down, the Stagecoach Inn, with Swiss style dormer windows on the second floor, covered an entire block.
Inside the high-ceilinged lobby, a group of uniformed military had staked out the conversation pit before the fireplace. From the hotel bar came the raucous talk and laughter of enlisted men and firefighters. Business boomed even if the townsfolk were livid about lost revenue from the fires.
Garrett shouldered his way to the check-in and doled out keys. Clare noted that Steve’s was 218 to her 220. Nodding toward the bar, Garrett said, “We can get something to eat in there after we freshen up.”
Clare turned to speak to Steve, but he was limping toward the broad staircase without saying whether he would meet them. Garrett caught up and assisted him while Steve leaned with one hand on the polished wooden rail. She started to follow, but figured on seeing him later.
Caught without belongings for the second time in three days, Clare bought toiletries and a T-shirt with a grizzly logo in the small shop off the lobby. After a moment’s deliberation and weighing her own negative reaction to Deering’s coming prepared to Mink Creek, she picked up a discreet small box of condoms. She wasn’t sure yet about sleeping with Steve but a powerful wave of temptation surged.
With the box in her bag, she wondered if Steve had been a Boy Scout.
Going upstairs, she appreciated the Stagecoach’s rustic flavor with its western style artwork and bronzes, imagining a visit when the carpet was not stained by the tramp of sooty boots.
As she put her key to the lock, she noted that Steve’s room was indeed the one next door. Once inside hers, she heard the rush of his shower through the connecting door.
Clare placed Laura Sutton’s diary carefully on the chest of drawers. She pressed a hand flat to it as if communing and thought how nearly she’d come to losing her tenuous connection to her great-grandmother in this afternoon’s fire. Her hand came away a little sooty so she got a tissue and wiped the leather.
Stripping off her dirty clothes, she went into the bathroom.
Back in July, her reflection had stared at her in the College Station Ramada Inn. At the time, she had believed her day running training sessions at Texas A&M had been a difficult one. Her cheeks had been pink and full from the day’s heat, her muscles reasonably fit from lifting weights at the fire station. They had called it an emergency when Jerry Dunn of Toro Canyon had been burned, a minor second-degree blister.
Tonight the woman in the mirror was a stranger.
With skin as nut-brown as her Nez Perce ancestors, her face had gone gaunt and the cords