Free Lake of Fire by Linda Jacobs

salt and jerky, and dug around and found some dried onions. However, when she mixed up the cornmeal and water and placed it on the surface of the beans, something disastrous happened.
    Instead of cooking up into a layer of golden cornbread, the paste sank into the beans, creating a mass of starch that stuck to the bottom of the pot no matter how quickly she stirred.
    Aware of Cord behind her, she dipped up the food and turned to offer him a plate.
    “Your dinner,” she murmured, ashamed.
    Cord took his plate and spoon, and ate with relish. When he made no comment on her mistake, she thought he might have been hungry enough not to notice.
    Her hope was dashed when his lips curved into a smile that peeked out from his mass of black beard. “Ah, Laura, one thing …”
    “Hmm?” She tried to force a sticky mouthful down.
    “The cornbread-on-top thing only works with the lid on. You have to get it hot in the pan like an oven. Works even better if you put some coals on top of the lid.”
    She swallowed and nodded.
    Cord gathered their dishes and scrubbed them with sand in the stream. He took the small pack containing food and roped it up into a tree a distance from their fire. “No sense tempting another bear.”
    Laura remembered her bloody shirt. If food were a bear magnet …
    She retrieved the soiled flannel and flung it into the fire.
    Cord stretched out on the ground against a log and watched the cloth burn with a listening alertness in his posture. His hands were in constant motion, worrying the piece of obsidian she had found in his pack at Jenny Lake.
    She looked into the darkness, wondering if the tall blond man lurked just beyond the circle of light. He might not have shot them, but what if he was more sadistic? What if he preferred to sneak up in the night and slit their throats while they slept?
    As though he were reading her mind, Cord proposed, “I’ll stand guard until dawn. Tomorrow I’ll put you on Hank Falls’s steamboat; it’ll take you safely across Yellowstone Lake to the hotel.”
    She’d traveled over a thousand miles to meet Hank, a man she’d imagined might meet her on her own terms, but tonight the sound of his name failed to interest her.
    Laura wrapped her coat tighter and looked up at the sky. The waning moon would not rise until after midnight, but the starlight was nearly bright enough to read by.
    Behind them in the dark woods, Dante whickered softly.
    “Have you read
The Divine Comedy?”
She thought Cord remarkably well spoken for a mountain man. Perhaps he really had named his horse for the author of the epic depiction of hell.
    “I love Italian literature,” he rejoined, leaving her to wonder, as she wondered so many things about him. A little later, he rose and pocketed his obsidian with care.
    As he moved to spread the bedroll and blankets, Laura’s face grew warm. It felt different now that she had seen the muscles of his broad chest and he had seen …
    He came and offered a hand to help her up.
    She let her own be taken into his clasp, and he pulled her to her feet. His eyes looked black in the deep forest night. The glow of the firelight emphasized leaping shadows.
    Without warning, the intensity in Cord’s gaze extinguished. He released her hand, stepped back, and dropped his hands to his sides. Though he did not bow, she imagined that he did, so formal was his posture.
    “I’ll keep watch while you sleep.”

    Cord leaned against a log and watched Laura’s eyes close.
    Reaching to his trouser pocket, he removed his precious talisman of obsidian and watched it come alive in the light from the dancing flames. The glass, born of fire, warmed in his fingers, as it had done when he first plucked it from the earth.
    As a child, he’d returned to the Nez Perce camp at dawn. The smoke from cooking fires rose, and Cord’s stomach growled as he found his way to his uncle’s camp. Approaching with his
wayakin
clutched in his fingers, Cord had found Kamiah alone beside the