Susan Johnson

by Susan Johnson

  “And I’d cry at the redhead bitch’s funeral,” Yancy gloated, and laughed. A smug, pleased laugh, the laugh of a man already counting his money, if Millicent Braddock was sole heir.

  “You might change your tune when the Colonel comes back and cuts off your balls,” Hazard softly replied, watching the flush rise up Yancy’s neck at the rebuff.

  “Shut up, mother-fucker!”

  “You might keep it in mind,” Hazard provoked, his gaze intent on the shotgun’s trigger, gauging the distance between himself and Yancy.

  “I can take care of the Colonel.” The liquor was talking now—Yancy’s tone was bourbon-charged bravado. “Along with the Colonel’s lady,” he boldly added, his future fortune within grasp. After all, if the Colonel was still alive, that could be remedied without much trouble, and with the Colonel and this Indian out of the way, Yancy’s intoxicated brain contemplated, the ladies would be easy enough to handle. When he married Millicent Braddock, whether the daughter liked it or not, he’d have the Colonel’s fortune. “Get a pen,” he ordered Rose. “And paper.”

  Rose looked at Hazard, her expression remarkably collected.

  Hazard, raising his brows, glanced down at his long hands. Then his dark eyes came up and he nodded his head in assent.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Rose declared, her eyes cold and dismissive. “Some miners don’t like your strong-arm tactics.”

  “Shut up, bitch, or I’ll cut your throat.”

  No man had talked to Rose like that since she’d fled Natchez. Pride stiffened her back, and only Hazard’s soft murmur broke through the noxious loathing surging through her brain. “Steady, love. Get the pen and paper.”

  She looked at Hazard for a moment before she focused on him, before the quiet words registered through the violent repugnance. And only Rose, who knew him so well, heard the controlled rage behind the flat tone. He smiled reassuringly and winked, the knife blade sheathed on his calf warm against his skin. His fingers flexed lightly, an unconscious gesture.

  She nodded, a charged current passing between them, then pulled the desk drawer open and reached for the perfumed lavender paper.

  When Hazard sat down at the table in the center of the room, he chose a chair facing the door and Yancy. Pen poised over the paper, he waited.

  “Put down the date,” Yancy commanded.

  Hazard wrote the date, his dark, heavy script like a sword slash across the pastel, scented paper. Then waited again.

  “I agree to sell claims …” Yancy hesitated. “Put in the right numbers,” he added.

  Hazard wrote.

  A voice shouted through the door. “Are you all right, boss?”

  Hazard willed Yancy’s answer with every nerve in his body. Against several men he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Everything’s fine,” Yancy drawled, his voice full of success.

  Hazard was silently thankful and began breathing again.

  “… to Yancy Strahan, S-t-r-a-h-a-n,” he spelled. “Then sign your name.” Yancy’s southern voice held a mellow hint of elation.

  Damn greedy sucker, Hazard thought, knowing it was Buhl Mining who’d bought all the other claims. Evidently Yancy was going to do some privateering against his employers. Some people don’t have sense enough to know when they’re ahead, he decided, and dropped the pen on the floor in an apparently awkward stroke.

  “Clumsy bastard,” Yancy declared, only mildly perturbed. Everything was falling into place with the perfection of clockwork and he was feeling pleased with the night’s work. This Hazard everyone was so frightened of was just another dumb Indian. Adjusting his stance, he waited for Hazard to pick up the pen.

  Hazard leaned over slowly, feeling for the pen with his hand before he lowered his head sufficiently to see under the table, in a balanced pattern of motion detached somehow from his thoughts. The embossed gold pen had left a path of black liquid splotched on Rose’s carpet, Hazard’s mind idly reflected, his adrenaline already surging. Where to strike, he fleetingly debated, the assessment of Rose’s carpet already replaced by matters of logistics. Yancy’s belly, groin, barrel chest. Each was considered, then rejected, in an exercise involved yet uninvolved, motionless for a suspended moment of time. If Yancy wasn’t killed instantly, no easy task with a knife, he must at least be silenced. The neck, Hazard decided. Possibly lethal if the jugular was hit; incapacitating in terms of a scream in any event. He felt his breath go out, released from the tension of decision.

  Ostensibly reaching for the dropped pen, Hazard’s lean dark fingers touched the slender horn knife handle, its texture comforting like a friend’s voice. Sliding the honed blade from its sheath into his palm, he came up from his bending posture in a powerful, smooth arc; the stiletto point of steel cupped in his fingers was aimed directly at Yancy’s throat. The flashing blade caught the light for a glittering spasm before it buried itself into Yancy’s fleshy neck. Wide-eyed terror convulsed the flushed face and a terrible gurgling sound came from his gaping mouth as he clawed at his neck.

  From dropped pen to hideous choking sound, mere seconds had elapsed. A moment later, Yancy Strahan fell to the floor.

  Both Rose and Hazard glanced briefly at the body. Rose spoke first. “Go, and hurry.” She kept her voice down.

  Hazard didn’t move. “Will you be all right? Any problems with the body?”

  “Are you kidding? We have fights here every night. Besides, Judge Faraday is a loyal ally since I donated twenty-five thousand dollars to his election fund last year.”

  “He might be dead.” Hazard indicated the bleeding body.

  “I hope like hell he is. Now go,” Rose hissed, giving Hazard a shove.

  “If you’re sure you’re OK.”

  “Hazard!”

  “Bala-ba-aht-chilash [good luck], then,” he said, smiling, and shouldered the leather pack. Picking up his rifle, he carefully eased his body through the brocade draperies. He stood in the shadows between drape and balcony door for a moment, surveying the street below. A cluster of men milled outside the main entrance but there was no one on the balcony, he noted with relief. Opening the door only enough to slip through, he stepped out. The drapes billowed briefly with the small rush of air, then Rose heard the door quietly click shut.

  She glanced at the gold clock on her desk, then at Yancy bleeding on her carpet. If the guards didn’t come in, she’d scream in five minutes. By then, Hazard would be out of town, provided he eluded all the hired guns.

  His back pressed against the glass-paned door, Hazard paused for the briefest moment, giving his eyes a second to begin adjusting to the dark. He scanned the roof next door. Empty. Relief pulsed through his sharpened senses. Sliding his rifle across his back, he checked to see that the leather pack was secure, then soundlessly swung up onto the balcony railing. From this point until he reached Malmstrom’s chimney, if anyone looked up, they’d see him. Taking a deep steadying breath, he reached up to the roof, found a fingerhold on the scant inch of protruding millwork, and pushed away from the balcony railing. He swung free for an instant before one foot caught the roof edge and he hung in the reflection of the saloon lights for a fragment of a breath, gathering the second surge of power he’d need to pull himself completely onto the roof. The pack didn’t help any; it was heavy and awkward. Calling on his reserves, he gripped his precarious hold tighter, contracted his muscular shoulders, and slowly drew himself up over the narrow eaves. Flattened on the shingles, he lay still and listening … waiting to hear if he’d been spotted. Nothing. Only the normal night sounds of a mining camp in the evening: the saloon pianos, the low roar of raised voices, the sounds of fiddles and banjos in frightful discord, ribaldry, profanity, and an occasional fight. Raising himself to his knees, he carefully looked north and south where the patrols might be. He saw several of the hired guns, huddled in small groups, smoking and talking, but no one was looking up. Good. He tensed his legs to jump the six feet to the lower roof next door, centered the pack on his shoulders
, settled the rifle in place. And jumped.

  He was in midair when he heard Rose scream.

  He was scrambling up the roof of Shandling’s Hardware when he heard the balcony door splinter open.

  He was hurtling over the ridgepole of the roof when the first bullet whined over his head.

  Twisting slightly at the apex of his flying tumble down the far side of Shandling’s roof, Hazard caught a split-second vignette of a man sighting down a rifle barrel, his form outlined by the golden glow of lamplight from Rose’s suite.

  Tearing over the remaining five rooftops, he caught snatches of shouted orders from the street below. But the voices were always one or two buildings behind him. If he didn’t break a leg, he thought, landing hard after a flying leap over a darkened alley, he could stay ahead of them.

  He didn’t pause at the chimney to uncoil his lariat. He only had time to swing his legs over the side, hang by his fingertips to his full length, and then drop the last twelve feet to the ground. The fall jarred his spine, spiraling pain upward like stabbing knife blades. He rested on his knees briefly absorbing the worst of the clawing spasm, but the nearing shouts brought him to his feet. He sprinted toward the darkest shadows, in the direction of the creek.

  He knew where he was going. They didn’t. He should be able to outrun them. All the races of childhood came back now in a rush of memory—all the images of young boys dashing across windblown prairies, their long hair streaming out behind them, their bodies wet with sweat, moccasined feet flying over verdant greenness. And the tallest youth always outstripped the others, fleet as an antelope. Hazard smiled at the vivid imagery, warmed by the poignant memories of his growing up time, when this land was Absarokee land. And now white men called it theirs—wanted his blood. He laughed in a flurry of high spirits and accelerated in a burst of speed.

  Not tonight, he thought, his soft-soled moccasins skimming across the last street of Confederate Gulch. They wouldn’t be having his blood tonight.

  Chapter 22

  He stopped to collect two of his horses at Pernell’s mountain pasture. The ponies quietly whinnied when they caught his scent. He tapped them lightly on the nose to silence them, and after looping his lariat into a makeshift bridle he led them away. When he was sufficiently away from the ranch, he vaulted onto Peta’s back for the trek up the mountain. He led the buckskin on a short lead and quietly talked to them on the journey to the mountain cabin, telling them they’d be back in the high mountain valleys for the summer hunt. They seemed to understand the exhilaration in his tone; their heads lifted, their ears came up and their nostrils quivered in soft answering snorts. Hazard walked the ponies the last rough mile up the twisting trail, but Peta kept nudging him in the back with her nose as if impatient to be home. “So the summer hunt appeals to you, too, Peta,” Hazard murmured, and laughed when she nudged him again in apparent response. “We both want to go home,” he buoyantly retorted. “Home,” he murmured with quiet joy and swung up the last steep stretch of path as if it were a paved roadway.

  It was grand pleasure to think of going home. He hadn’t been back in three months, and with the exception of the few days in Virginia City, he hadn’t had a break from the arduous drudgery of mining in as long. Home. It conjured contentment, solace, good sport, genial friends.

  BLAZE glanced at the clock for the thousandth time. Two, three hours, he’d said. It was nearing on five.

  I suppose he’s having too good a time at Rose’s to notice. I might have known, she thought. Here I am worrying and fretting and he’s probably finishing his fourth brandy. Or worse, her unsure brain whispered. “Or worse,” she said aloud and rose heatedly to her feet one more time to stamp over to the window commanding a view down the mountain. She’d nearly worn a path there already in the last two hours.

  At half past nine, she’d gone out on the porch thinking she’d heard a sound. The moon was sliding through a break in the clouds, and for the short minute it lit up the landscape, she’d strained her eyes. Nothing. And no more sounds.

  He didn’t care that it worried her sick, his going into town. Her abduction was public knowledge. He had to be a marked man. Her father couldn’t control everyone in town. She wondered sometimes how much control he had even over bullies like Yancy. Hazard didn’t care that she was sick with fear, all for some dresses. Damn male possessiveness. As if a few inches of her leg showing were worth a suicide trip into Confederate Gulch. Blaze supposed he’d only be satisfied when she was properly covered in front of his friends. She had a mind right now to tear those damn dresses into shreds when he got back. It would serve him right for all the grief he was causing her.

  She’d stayed out on the porch listening for a long time, thinking a dozen times she’d heard his footfall. But he didn’t come and the chill night air finally drove her in.

  She glanced at the small brass clock on the mantle. 10:20. Good Lord, where was he? Damn you, oh, damn you, Jon Hazard Black, if you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed over some trifling dresses, I’ll never forgive you. “Never,” she breathed, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. She sat for the next hour in the armchair, stiff and nervous.

  11:30. I should just go to sleep. That would be best. All this worry and he’s probably rolling in the hay with Rose. Don’t be stupid, Blaze Braddock. Here you’re half in tears with fear and he’s probably whispering sweet nothings in some whore’s ear while they’re all tucked in, cosy as two turtledoves in her fine warm bed.

  I’ll just go to sleep.

  If I could.

  Well, I’ll pretend to sleep.

  What was that? Loose gravel was tumbling down hill. That couldn’t be Hazard. It sounded like horses. Was that a horse nickering? He’d walked into town. He wouldn’t be traveling with horses.

  She flew to the window.

  Hazard!

  Oh, sweet, good, dear, kind God, it was Hazard!

  HE HAD a wide smile on his face when he walked into the cabin, and Blaze was running to him before he’d taken two steps inside the door. Throwing herself into his open arms, she clung shamelessly to him, her fear in his absence terrifying in its conjecture, the sweet joy of his safe return, instant delirium. She covered his face with kisses and he smilingly kissed her back, tasting the innocence of her delight. After long, blissful moments, Hazard gently pried her arms away and, holding her so he could see her face and read her reaction, asked, “Would you like to go to the summer hunt at Arrow Creek?”9 His smile was infectious, his dark eyes warm with lazy affection.

  “Yes,” Blaze replied instantly. “Yes, yes, yes. When?” Now that Hazard was back, perfection had returned to her life—perfection and contentment and a happiness she had stopped trying to understand.

  “No patience?” he teased.

  She cast him a sparkling glance from under heavy lashes. “Remember to whom you speak,” she reminded him with a vivacious smile, “when you mention patience. The woman who seduced you twice in this very cabin.”

  He laughed.

  And she said “When?” again, a little more emphatically.

  He took her face gently between the palms of his hands, bent his head down so he was at her eye level, kissed her mouth very softly, and said, “Now.”

  She squealed with delight. His hands fell away when she danced two small steps of elation, and she saw the blood for the first time. “You’re hurt,” she cried, reaching for his hands.

  “It’s nothing.” He sidestepped to elude her. The palms of his hands were ripped from the rough shingles and his need for haste.

  “There’s blood!”

  “Scratches, that’s all,” he explained, then added, “We should leave.”

  “If we don’t leave here very soon”—it dawned on Blaze, looking at him squarely, at the bloody torn hands so plain to see, although Hazard denied the severity of the wounds—“might it make a difference in the state of our health? And damn you, Jon Hazard, don’t lie to me.”

  Her deep blue eyes were watching him intently
, and he discarded the notion of dissembling. “It might.”

  “Who’s after you, as if I didn’t know?”

  “I may have killed him.”

  “Where?”

  “At Rose’s.”

  “May?”

  “I left in a hurry.”

  “Can they find their way up here in the dark?”

  “No, and at base, I don’t think they’ll risk your life to come up here at all. But—”

  “What?”

  “Suddenly I want to go home. No terribly rational reasons. Maybe I’m tired of people shooting at me. I need a rest cure. And you wanted to go anyway. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Mind? she thought. I wouldn’t mind living on the Earth’s most blighted square of space if you were with me. Mind? Going to see your home, your relatives, the way of life that made you the splendid man you are? All she wanted, now that he had safely returned, was never to have him leave her again. “No,” she calmly said, instead, sure he’d be terrified at the real intensity of her need, “I don’t mind at all.”

  Hazard packed two more sacks with clothes, food, and fur robes, carried them out, and arranged them comfortably on the horses. Coming back in, he asked Blaze what he probably should have asked sooner: “Can you ride?” And then looked at her in the context of a rider for the first time. Attired in one of his shirts, she wouldn’t last an hour on the trail. The light cotton dresses he’d just brought back from Rose’s were, ironically, no longer useful.

  “Yes,” Blaze replied simply. She’d spent most of her youth on horseback. It was the only pastime allowed women of her class that had any element of excitement.

  “Traveling at night can be dangerous. The horses occasionally stumble.”

  “I’ll manage.” She smiled at his concern.

  His dark gaze taking in the unsuitable shirt, he hesitated another moment, then walking over to the storage shelves, took down a doeskin envelope, large, flat, and tied with elaborate beaded bands in stark patterns of black and white. He placed it on the table. “Wear one of these,” he said. “For riding,” he gruffly added. And, turning abruptly, he walked back outside.