But he would never have confronted people with a rifle. For Toby, life had been about boundless enthusiasm. She’d always been the practical one.
Her quarry today relaxed his stance, watching her. Now that he was closer, she could see that his eyes were a clear greenish brown, like a reflection in a mountain lake. They narrowed at her.
“What are you planning on doing?” he asked. “Arresting me or shooting me for dinner?”
Toby would have accompanied the question with a good-natured grin. This man didn’t look as if he knew how to grin. Why did she have the urge to test that theory?
Kate made a show of looking him up and down. “I doubt you’d make much of a meal for my guests. Too much grit. And I generally turn game your size back into the wild to grow up a bit.”
He grimaced. “Should I thank you for that?”
Despite herself, Kate smiled. “No need. All part of the service at the Geyser Gateway.”
He nodded toward the hotel. “You must be Mrs. Tremaine.”
Now, who would have told him about her? She’d had a single conversation with his superior, who had graciously allowed her to keep her concession, for now. She hadn’t been sure about Captain Harris when he’d ridden into the park at the head of Troop M, but she’d applauded when he’d ousted D.W. Wear, the superintendent from Washington. Wear had all but washed his hands when it came to protecting the game of the park, claiming too few men and too little time. What did he know about time? Had he ever tried running a hotel?
She lowered her rifle. “I’m Kate Tremaine. Who are you?”
He took off his hat, showing short-cropped brown hair streaked with gold, and inclined his head. “Lieutenant Will Prescott. I’ve been ordered to patrol this part of the park with my men.”
So that was how Harris was going to manage the vast acreage. Since his arrival, his men had been busy battling the wildfires raging over parts of the park. Wear claimed they had been set by his enemies. She knew better, and she’d been watchful lest the same trouble start here. Having her own set of cavalrymen patrolling the natural wonders might be useful, so long as they didn’t blunder in where they shouldn’t.
“Glad to have you,” Kate said. “Feel free to stop by for dinner. But mind your step in the future. Do you have any idea how hot that mud is?”
“More than one hundred and fifty degrees,” he said with a glance at the nearest bubbling paint pot, which helpfully belched out another cloud of steam. “At least that’s what the guidebook claimed.”
Kate snorted. “Guidebook? Which one did they give you? Wylie isn’t too bad, though you have to watch his directions or you could end up going over the falls. Don’t get me started on Dabney. That man hasn’t moved off his sofa in thirty years, much less toured Yellowstone.”
He knocked mud off the heel of his black boots. Most of the cavalry officers wore spurs, the silver or brass winking and rowels chiming as they walked. His boots were bare.
“I’ve noticed,” he said. “It’s not easy to find your way around here.”
So her guests claimed. She had no trouble, but she’d lived here for four years, ever since Toby had convinced her to use the money her parents had left her to invest in the inn.
“Think of the plateau as a big circle,” she advised him. She nodded toward the inn, where a group of her most recent guests had come out onto the wide veranda to gaze at the grandeur. “We sit in the lower part of a basin filled with geysers, some twenty miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs and your commanding officer’s tent city. South another five miles, and you’ll reach Old Faithful, one of the biggest geysers in the park and the most reliable for timing. Directly east of us across the plateau is Yellowstone Lake and beyond that the Absaroka Range. To the north of it is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. And all around you’ll find crystal clear creeks, roaring rivers, and thundering falls.”
“And grizzlies, buffalo, and scalding water,” he added.
She wouldn’t let him see the chill that went through her at the mention of the hump-backed bear. A stampeding herd of buffalo and the thermal dangers of the park could be avoided. No matter how carefully she moved, she was always aware a grizzly could be waiting around the bend. Danny might chafe under her restrictions, but she wasn’t about to lose her son too.
“All that as well,” she agreed. “And you fellows better start building cabins, because those canvas tents you brought will never see you through a Yellowstone winter.”
Before he could answer, she felt it, the faintest of rumblings under her leather boots. She grabbed his arm with her free hand. “Move.”
He frowned at her, more than six feet of muscle holding him in place. “Why?”
The rumble shook her legs. Didn’t he feel it too? Kate tightened her grip and yanked. “Now!”
He stumbled forward, catching her in his arms and forcing the rifle away from them both. For one moment, their gazes touched, held, and something whooshed through her, like the pressure building under the earth. His eyes widened as if he’d felt it more surely than the rumbling beneath them.
Then Morning Geyser let loose.
The spray shot into the air, double the height of her two-story hotel. Water pattered down a few feet beyond them, hard enough to splash fresh mud on his knee-high boots. She could hear the oohs and ahhs from her guests on the veranda.
The man holding her looked as awed. She thought she must too, but it wasn’t the geyser’s power that had shaken her. She’d been married for seven years, been a widow for one. Any romantic feelings had been buried with Toby’s mangled body. God understood she had work to do, a
