Lake of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

some people, including soldiers, threw soap into the geysers for a lark to make them foam. Thankfully, enforcement of regulations protecting the formations had made that less common.
    “The geyser is a natural phenomenon,” Hank reassured Esther. “We will just have to wait.”
    Her hand pressed his arm a little more definitely.
    Breathing deeply, he drank in the sights he hadloved ever since coming to the park twelve years ago. Afternoon light shone on the valley, where meandering streams and hot pools glowed in the clear air. Steam from hundreds of thermal features rose and floated away on the breeze.
    With a clatter of hooves, a stagecoach pulled up and began to discharge passengers. The Monida and Yellowstone ran regular tours, bringing guests to the tented camps and park hotels.
    Three men on bicycles pedaled up and dismounted, removing flat caps with short bills in front. Long socks with garters displayed their muscular calves below short riding breeches.
    Several soldiers in the uniform of dark blue blouses, light blue trousers, and peaked caps watched the new arrivals. One of their major duties was to prevent tourists from defacing the formations by writing or scratching their names into the travertine. Anyone caught was forced to eradicate all evidence of his vandalism and marched to Headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs for a hearing before the military superintendent. Swift expulsion from the park was certain to follow.
    Old Faithful spit suddenly, a gush of water no more than two feet high; a gasp spread through the watchers. When only steam roiled away from the geyser’s neck, the excitement subsided.
    Hank saw Forrest look around at the waiting crowd with appreciation. “After we buy the Lake Hotel, we ought to convince the government to let us build a new place here.”
    Hank agreed, with a disparaging look at the small plain hotel near Old Faithful. When he could manage Lake without the Northern Pacific’s penny-pinching, he would be able to turn around the losses they’d seen on the property, perhaps even expand within the park.
    Old Faithful sputtered again to a rising chorus.
    Hank smiled, for it would be at least a full minute before the geyser rose to its height.
    “I wish Laura were here,” Forrest said.
    Fielding was surely pushing that daughter of his. Hank reckoned she resembled her father, built like a fireplug, with a broad face that wore a constant look of assurance.
    “When we get back to the Lake Hotel, Laura should be waiting,” Hank told Forrest. The stage would bring her south from the Northern Pacific terminal in Cinnabar, Montana, only a few miles outside the northern park boundary.
    Old Faithful blasted again, a crest of white water blowing ten feet in the air. Then steam boiled beneath the earth and the geyser blew, fifty feet, a hundred. As the hissing rush became a roar, a blowing white veil blotted out the green hill behind.
    “That’s a regular stunner,” Esther said, adjusting her hair comb as a gust of wind hit.
    A little girl of perhaps four years, dressed in a striped green dress, escaped her mother. She rushed toward the fairyland of spray, her tousled brown curls streaked with gold in the sun.
    Hank shot out his long arm and pulled her backbefore she could go farther toward the torrent.
    “Laura looked like that when she was little,” Forrest said.
    Old Faithful reached its full height of almost two hundred feet, a drapery that whipped in the wind, like the little girl’s hair.
    Hank suddenly wished that Laura Fielding might truly be a prize.

    The three men overtaking the stage on horseback wore the blue of the United States Cavalry. Forrest leaned forward to look out the open window, braving the dust on the grade that wound down from Craig Pass to Yellowstone Lake.
    They had traveled nearly seventeen miles east over mountain roads and were approaching the West Thumb of the lake, where passengers had a choice. Those going to the Lake Hotel could stay with the coach