He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t try grazing on the flowers.”
She laughed too. “What about you?” she asked. “What did your parents do?”
“Father enlisted in the military during the war,” he said. “Mother took in laundry and did fancy sewing after he was killed outside Atlanta.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, face puckering. “Alberta lost her husband and son in that war. That’s why she came West, for a fresh start.”
“I can understand that,” he said. This could be his opportunity! He eased into it. “Sometimes what you do, what others do, forces you to start over.”
Either he’d kept his tone more even than he’d hoped, or she hadn’t noticed the tension in him.
“Yet you still went into the military,” she said with a smile.
How could he not return that smile? “I was named after William Prescott, a famous soldier in the American Revolution. Given his name, I was destined to join the military.”
“I didn’t think I would ever leave Boston,” she said with a shake of her head that sent sunlight skipping down her hair, and he could only be glad she wasn’t wearing one of her mother’s fancy hats. “Then Toby invested in the Geyser Gateway and brought me out to look at her, and I knew this was where I was meant to be. I don’t think I could go back now.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “Boston always felt too confining. The cavalry took me places I never knew existed.”
“Where else have you been assigned?”
Another opportunity. Every muscle tightened as if to protest his intentions. “The Pend Oreille country,” he made himself say, “Fort Walla Walla, the Presidio in San Francisco, the Arizona frontier, Oregon.”
Kate gazed at him. “All over the West. Even Yellowstone must seem small.”
There was that admiration. How could he jeopardize it? “Yellowstone could never feel small,” he told her. “Kingman was right. There’s nothing like it.”
She grinned. “Wait until you see Old Faithful.”
He hadn’t convinced himself to try again before they came out of the trees a short while later to flats striped in gray, white, and orange. Kate led him toward a mound in the distance where steam rose against the hillside of pines and aspen. People were streaming out of the tents near the trees, heading for the mound.
“Come on,” Kate said, touching heels to Aster’s flank. “It’s almost time.”
They cantered up behind the group and reined in to watch. He heard the faint hiss over the murmur of voices as steam built over the mouth of the mound. Water began bubbling, climbing, growing louder. The spray shot high, higher until it splashed down across the area. A rainbow glowed in the center. Will could only stare as people around him exclaimed.
As the spray subsided, he shook his head. “Amazing.”
“You stick around,” Kate said with a smile, “and you’ll find yourself saying that a lot.”
“Lieutenant!” A corporal was moving toward them. “Trouble?”
The visitors nearest them glanced their way.
“A jurisdictional question only,” Will assured him as he came abreast. “And a chance to see this marvel.”
“She’s a beauty,” the corporal said, thumbs in his belt loops. He squinted up at Will. “So, what’s the question?”
Kate touched Will’s arm. “I’ll be at the hotel.”
He nodded, and she rode over to the dun tents clustered at the edge of the pines. He spent the next little while working out boundaries with the corporal. Then he collected Kate to start back.
“That tent hotel isn’t any better than what we saw at Norris,” she told him as the horses trotted up the road. “Though the hotel they’re building could be a good one. I just hope they strike the tents before winter, or the snow on all that canvas will snap the poles.”
“I’ll mention that in my report to Captain Harris,” he promised.
Behind them came a rumble.
“Get off the road,” she urged him. She guided her horse to one side, and he joined her on the grassy verge. A moment later, and Elijah’s coach thundered past. He doffed his hat with his free hand.
“Guests?” Will asked, waving away the dust that traveled in the coach’s wake.
“Four on their way out of the park,” Kate told him. “I had hoped to be back before them, but Alberta can welcome them for me.”
“No shortcuts we could take?” he asked as they eased their mounts onto the road again.
“None I’d feel comfortable taking,” she said, directing her horse after the coach.
“Then I suppose we should hurry.” They set the horses to a trot, covering the ground quickly. And that meant he had less time than he’d hoped to confess all. Perhaps that was to the good. No more excuses, no time to hesitate.
As they approached the bend where the road curved away from the river, he cleared his throat. “Kate, there’s something I must tell you.”
“What?” she asked with a frown, as if she heard the tension in his voice at last. “Didn’t they want you to protect the Grand Prismatic Spring?”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I . . .” He couldn’t look at her. He focused on the road, then started.
Up ahead, Elijah’s coach lay on its side, wheels spinning and horses struggling.
20
Kate gasped, but Will moved before she did. He spurred Bess, galloped up to the wreck, and leaped from the saddle to catch the harness of the flailing horses.
“Easy, hey now, easy,” he called as Kate rode up and his Bess moved off to one side.
“Elijah!” she cried, turning Aster in a circle as the mare reacted to the other horses. “Elijah, are you hurt?”
A groan from the trees beyond the road answered her. She guided Aster around the wreckage even as a shaky voice rose from the coach.
“Hello? Help us, please!”
“A moment!” Kate called.
Elijah limped out to meet her, one hand
