Susan Johnson

by Susan Johnson

  She leaned her head back against his strong chest. “No, the trip back was leisurely.” Hazard had intended it that way. He wasn’t taking any chances with Blaze’s health.

  “You have to be careful now. Don’t do too much.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “Ummm,” he agreed, hugging her close, bending his head to kiss her cheek. And he wondered, as he’d often done since she’d walked up the mountain so many weeks ago, how he’d existed before her. Which brought to mind a recurring thought much on his mind since Blaze’s announcement of the baby. Turning her around in his arms, Hazard softly said, “Now with the baby coming.…”

  Blaze’s brow crinkled expectantly when he hesitated. “Yes?” And she worried momentarily at Hazard’s serious look.

  “We should locate your father. He should know about the baby, about our marriage.” Or, Hazard thought, if he is dead, Blaze should be told so she doesn’t keep waiting for him to appear.

  “I’d like that. I know Daddy will be happy for me, for us. He’d always said ‘when you find love you’ll know,’ but until I met you I wasn’t sure he was right. Do you suppose we could send him a message somehow … with Jimmy, perhaps?”

  “I’ll check into it,” Hazard replied, certain that if Jimmy didn’t know where the Colonel was, Rose could find out. Now that he knew the Colonel was no longer using his guide, if he was alive, he would have returned to Diamond City or Virginia City.

  ON THE same evening Blaze and Hazard were settling in back at the mine, on the same evening they were discussing means of getting in touch with the Colonel, Yancy and Millicent Braddock were discussing their marriage plans.

  “We should wait a year, Yancy darling. You know what protocol demands.”

  “Millicent,” Yancy returned with a solicitous smile, “I can’t wait a year. I’ve told you before. Please don’t insist. Do you know how long I’ve searched for a woman like you?” His low voice was intimate, but hoarse now since Hazard’s knife had pierced his throat. Yancy had hovered between life and death until the hired trackers had come back to Confederate Gulch shortly after Hazard’s attack. Even drifting in and out of a coma, Yancy had heard the words: The Colonel was dead; victim, they had coarsely laughed, of renegade Indians. The news had revitalized Yancy’s spirit and he’d fought to live.

  A month later, he was recovered, and the Colonel’s body was at the mortician’s awaiting transportation east as soon as his grieving widow found her daughter.

  Millicent preened, looking up at him from under modestly downcast lashes in the way she’d been taught as a young debutante so many years ago. “How very sweet of you.”

  “It’s God’s own truth, honey,” Yancy drawled, and he meant every word. He’d been looking for a rich southern lady to marry all his adult life. “We could have been married after the funeral, if you’d let him be buried out here. No one outside Montana would know exactly how many months one way or another.”

  “Buhl Mining, love,” she prudently cautioned him. “They’re all his friends. I’d be cut dead in Boston society if we rushed into this marriage.”

  “So? We’ll be moving back to Virginia anyway.”

  “Be practical, darling. Probating the will”—she raised her pale, carefully groomed brows—“will take months. Months in Boston. Months in Boston dealing with William’s friends. Plus, the mining property is held in common with all his Boston colleagues. A return to Virginia is in the future. Right now, all the money and property are tied up in Boston.”

  “Where is the will?” Yancy inquired. As long as the conversation was so frankly candid tonight, Yancy didn’t feel obliged to feign needless tact.

  “With William’s attorney, Curtis Adams.”

  “Do you know how things are divided?” It was gently put, the new hoarseness in his voice more prominent now, in his anticipation.

  “Between myself and Venetia, I presume.”

  It was expected, of course, although it would have been smooth as silk if the troublesome girl had been eliminated also. “We really will need her, then,” he conceded. “If she’s missing, it could hold up everything.”

  “I think under the circumstances of William’s death”—Millicent looked pointedly at Yancy—“our case would appear more respectable if my daughter returned east with us. A mourning mother and daughter accompanied by my ‘distant cousin,’ rather than you and me alone returning with my husband’s body, would attract less comment. Indians generally don’t have access to new Winchesters, and suspicious minds might gossip. Venetia’s presence would be reassuring to the doubters. Then after the will is probated and the property disposed of, I’m sure Venetia can be settled somewhere on a modest stipend—perhaps Europe. If she should prove disagreeable”—Millicent shrugged her small delicate shoulders, bare tonight above nonmourning red-colored silk in the privacy of her sitting room—“we can think of something else.”

  “Your plans seem quite complete,” Yancy huskily murmured, his light eyes shrewdly approving.

  “It’s not as though I haven’t dreamt of this before,” Millicent silkily said. “But until you came along, Yancy darling, I’d no one to—ah—confide in.” Millicent delighted in Yancy, but they both delighted in the prospect of becoming millionaires much more. Although their common backgrounds drew them close, their common lack of scruples was the true bond, and at base the marriage they were discussing was decidedly practical. It was a match of passionate, resentful natures, a match of genteelly poor southerners, intent, finally, on coming into a great deal of money; above all, it was a match of limitless greed, a marriage of extreme convenience.

  “In that case, Millicent, love, I think we should immediately consider rescuing your daughter from her abductor. The longer we wait, the longer it will take to reach Boston and clear up the property matters.”

  Millicent brushed a particle of dust off the shimmering silk of her skirt and, looking up, casually inquired, “You have the necessary men assembled?”

  “Have had since the Colonel’s body was brought down.”

  “And they’re both back?”

  “Lights in the cabin windows tonight, my lookout informed me no more than a half-hour ago.”

  “At last.” Millicent sighed. She and Yancy had been waiting in Diamond City for over a week and she was thoroughly disgusted with the primitive conditions. “I don’t want her hurt. My reputation wouldn’t survive my daughter’s death as well as my husband’s. You understand,” she said evenly.

  “Of course, Millicent. I understand.” Until they were married, Yancy had no intention of countering her slightest whim.

  “Will it take long?” She was already mentally arranging the necessary orders to her maid for an early departure.

  “We should be ready to leave by midafternoon. Mid-morning, if all goes well.”

  “I’ve everything arranged.” Her mouth twisted into a faint smile.

  “Good.” Yancy’s eyes flashed with an inner fire. At this time tomorrow night they’d be on their way to Salt Lake City on the Overland Stage. In less than two weeks, with good connections and no mishaps, they’d be in Boston. And he’d be on the brink of the riches that had eluded him all his life. He got up to leave, careful of appearances in this small mining town.

  “Oh, and one thing, darling … I don’t want to hear any details about the Indian.” She’d had to warn Yancy off when he’d begun being uncomfortably explicit about William’s death.

  Yancy would have liked to tell her of his smoothly implemented plan. He was proud of how easily the Colonel’s death had been accomplished. Of course, it helped that Billy Braddock had been in the wilds, where Indian attacks as well as robberies were common. Ned Gates had told him it was like taking candy from a baby: They’d seen the Colonel and his guide from their lookout on the last butte before Virginia City. Their high-powered rifles had picked off the two men effortlessly, attack that close to town being unexpected.

  The Indian had gotten away, Ned had said, but was trailing b
lood. No one had bothered going after him, but Yancy was unconcerned. The Colonel was dead and the Indian, even if he lived, wasn’t going to come into town with any accusations.

  Millicent had appreciated Yancy’s polite concurrence to her wishes, relieved she didn’t have to be involved in any way with the unsavory details of murder.

  “Don’t forget the note,” she reminded him, gesturing toward the table near the window. If anyone investigates we want them to think Venetia left of her own free will.”

  Chapter 30

  Yancy’s small army of scum and scoundrels came up the next morning after Hazard entered the mine. A hundred of them, armed to the teeth with the latest-model Winchesters and Colts. A Blackfoot Indian, like Yancy a mortal enemy to Hazard, was guide. Because the attack, brutally heedless of Blaze’s presence, came full-scale in broad daylight, it caught him unaware. Even if the Colonel was dead, Hazard never anticipated such rash disregard for Blaze; surely some of the Colonel’s partners, his wife at least, would never risk her life so blatantly. The surprise was total and complete. Never underestimate the rapacious greed of the white man.

  The Blackfoot reached the cabin first and stifled Blaze’s horrified cry. He was holding her cruelly tight, one large hand over her mouth, when she heard Hazard scream her name in a roaring crescendo of anguish and alarm.

  And then a hundred rifles fired, an erratic, terrorizing series of crackling death, and she fainted.

  Pressed against the cold rock face of the south drift, Hazard, bleeding, his left arm shattered below the elbow, his breath labored from pain that was tearing his head apart, looked down fifty yards of tunnel with horror. Then his vision blurred. Rubbing his eyes, he brought away fingers soaked in blood. He must think. There wasn’t much time, but the pain was spreading up his arm into his shoulder, filling his consciousness. He heard the scrambling above him, saw the ricocheting splinters of rock flashing in the sunlight, the hundred rifles trained on the mine entrance keeping up a steady barrage like an unreal scene from hell.

  He shook his head and his vision cleared. He was sure now, blood dripping from his fingertips to the black dampness of the tunnel floor, a doomed sense of frustration and rage assailing his mind, that the Colonel was dead. And clearly the man he thought he might have killed at Rose’s hadn’t died. The voice was harsh and grating now shouting orders, but the southern inflections were distinctive. Yancy Strahan was in control. The Colonel was dead. Blaze was in their hands. His child was in their hands. And if the black powder he smelled was being handled by anyone even rudimentarily versed in explosives, he was about to be buried alive.

  He’d shot three of them before the heavy onslaught of rifle fire drove him back into the mine. And no one was brave enough to risk his life coming in after him.

  Hazard forced himself to move although he felt giddy and nauseated and the splintered bones grated at every twitch, the pain forcing him to stop and rest after each advance. He needed his supplies before the explosion made the tunnel pitch black. Even as he moved toward the small wooden box containing candles, the impact of the first explosion drove him against the wall.

  When the smoke cleared, half the entrance was sealed.

  He tried to hurry after that, estimating that one, no more than two, explosions more and his light would be gone. He didn’t think beyond that. He only considered the cache of candles as his goal. The pain was too intense to think clearly past that short-term essential. It was smothering his thought processes, almost shutting down his mind completely. It was one of the most appalling acts of will he’d ever performed, standing upright with the crushing agony tearing at his brain, and forcefully holding off the swirling darkness. Lurching down the tunnel, each step seemingly intolerable until, grim-faced, he took the next, he tried to focus on Blaze, knowing he had to help her. Only a hairbreadth from black oblivion, his numbed brain absorbed the frantic sense of panic her name evoked. But it was beyond forming the messages coherently, beyond deductive reasoning. Her name floated around the hazy interior landscapes at the basest level of dread, and simply echoed like a living scream down the pain-racked corridors of his mind.

  Stopping, he leaned, panting, against the tunnel wall, drawing in great labored gasps of air, absently watching the blood drip from his fingertips. Stunned, he didn’t know how long he’d been propped against the wall, his own time running out along with his blood. He shook his head twice to clear his eyes and reactivate his sluggish brain. Distantly he heard the multitude of voices, the commands, affirmations, hurried suggestions, snapped orders. And when he shook his head a third time, he realized where he was. The box of candles. The box of candles. He repeated the litany, his survival instinct badgering his half-conscious brain. Hurry, it frantically commanded.

  He compelled himself to move. The pain swamped him like a tidal wave. He grunted deep in his throat and took another step, leaning on the wall for support. Agony hit him in a fresh wave and he clenched his teeth against the shock.

  The second blast knocked him down, and it was a full five minutes before he found the energy to pull himself to his knees. He tried crawling, but his limp shattered arm accidentally dragged on the rough floor, spiraling an excruciating spasm along his battered nerve endings so dreadful and excessive that he lay shuddering uncontrollably for long moments. He tried to think of other things, tried to draw his mind aside from the monstrous hurt if only for a moment so he could rise. He was sweating profusely, his body nearly in shock, only his strength of will holding off the darkness. Inch by agonizing inch he pushed himself up the wall until he was upright. He could see the box then, a dim shape thirty yards away. The next explosion would seal him in. Don’t think, just walk, he commanded his limbs. Walk or you’re going to die.

  He was sunk in an exhausted sprawl next to the box of candles when the third explosion detonated. After that he could smell the dust settling but he couldn’t see it anymore. He was in total darkness. As if on cue, his brain released its feeble grip on its own interior light and Hazard slipped into unconsciousness.

  WHEN Blaze awoke, she saw her mother first. It was a face lit with an inner triumph, a face that gloated. A face that she recognized as her mortal enemy. “You,” she accused quietly and bitterly.

  Millicent touched the pearls at her neck. It wasn’t a nervous gesture. It was languid and indifferent. “You’ll thank me someday when you’re older and wiser. Only foolish young girls make the mistake of falling in love with undesirables.” Blaze had been calling out in her sleep, calling for Hazard, crying for him. And Yancy had described Blaze’s struggle to break free before the explosion when she’d heard Hazard scream.

  “He’s a thousand times better than you,” Blaze sharply replied, her eyes cutting like daggers. Hazard possessed qualities that people like Yancy and Millicent would never possess, that their greed couldn’t buy.

  Millicent laughed lightly. “Petulant child. You’ll change your mind once you grow up.”

  “I don’t intend to argue with you. Where’s Daddy? I want to see Daddy.”

  Millicent didn’t move, her fingers arrested on the gleaming pearls at her neck, the light of rejoicing burning brightly in her pale grey eyes. “He’s dead,” she said.

  It struck Blaze like a physical blow, so violent and brutal she had to forcibly draw her breath upward from deep down in her lungs. When she spoke it was a pained whisper. “You lie.”

  Millicent smiled then, a malignant, delighted smile. “His body’s in Virginia City. You can see for yourself.”

  “You killed him,” Blaze accused.

  “Really, how distasteful a child you are. Of course I didn’t kill him. He never came back alive from his frantic journey into the mountains to save you. Some of those renegade savages you cohabit with no doubt killed him. If you want to blame someone,” she went on, malice and resentment behind the suave tone, “you’re as likely a candidate as any. Yancy told me you insisted on going up to talk to that savage. I’d say, missy, you are as much to blame for your fat
her’s death as anyone.”

  “You bitch.”

  “I’m quite immune to your insults,” she tranquilly said, neatly straightening the lace cuff on her silk gown. “Money does that.”

  “That’s all you ever cared about, isn’t it? Not Daddy. Just the money.”

  “Well, of course, what else was there? Your father was a peasant. And it appears his blood runs true in you. Did you enjoy sleeping with your ill-bred Indian?” she silkily inquired.

  “His breeding is more pure than any Hatton from Virginia.”

  “Was, dear. He’s quite dead.”

  White-faced, Blaze was struck with stark reality. She’d been thinking of Hazard as alive despite her knowledge of Yancy, despite the swarming cutthroats that had besieged the mine. In the back of her mind, she’d been planning on leaving this bed, this room, this hateful woman, and going back up mountain to the cabin. Dear God, let her be wrong! “It’s not true!” Hysteria was a thin thread through the calm cadence of her voice.

  “He’s dead.” There was no attempt to hide the enmity now. Venom infused the pale grey eyes.

  “No. He’s alive. He must be.” The hysteria was rising into a sharp, piercing wail.

  “Very dead.”

  “No, no, he isn’t!” Blaze’s heart was thumping against her chest wall, her palms ice-cold.

  “Dead and buried in that filthy mine,” Millicent softly declared.

  “No!” It was a thin, high cry of pain, primitive and ageless. “No, no, no, no!”

  “He’s dead and under tons of rubble. Tons and tons.”

  Blaze pulled a pillow over her head, trying to shut out the coolly detached voice. But it didn’t help; each word was still heartbreakingly audible. Each word stabbed at her very being. Each word was crushing her will to live. Hazard dead. Sobs shook her slender form. Hazard, who’d become life itself to her—dead. Tears streamed down her face. And suddenly she gave up. Numb with grief, she sorrowfully thought, I’m dead.