At Christmas the mercury was stagnant at twenty below and the sky had been clear with Northern Lights for a week. Hazard brought in a small pine tree for Blaze, and she trimmed it with ribbon bows and strings of berries. On Christmas Eve, Blaze insisted he unwrap his present first and, like a young child, eyes alight with the pleasure of giving, she watched him carefully undo the small fur-wrapped package. She had unstrung her black pearls and sewn them in a flower pattern on Hazard’s ceremonial tobacco pouch. The stitches were irregular and knotted in places—she had never acquired the necessary skill as a child, much preferring less sedentary pursuits—and all the imperfections of her rudimentary sewing technique were candidly exposed on the fine light leather. Hazard touched the asymmetrical flower, the petals tilted slightly lower on one side than the other, ran his slim fingers lightly over the precious black pearls, and looked up at his beloved wife, her expression expectant with anticipation, and softly said, “It’s the most beautiful tobacco pouch I’ve ever seen. When I wear it at the ceremony in the spring, everyone will be green with envy.” She was radiant with happiness, and he had never loved her so much. “Open mine,” he gently prompted her, nodding at the large deerskin-wrapped bundle he’d placed beside her. It hadn’t been intended as a Christmas gift, but when Blaze started very early talking about Christmas, he’d saved it to give her then.
In her excitement, she struggled with the leather ties until Hazard calmly helped undo the knots. Seconds later the deerskin was tossed aside and even the millionaire’s daughter was momentarily at a loss for words. Silently she unfurled the lush ermine until it was spread in a large opulent drapery across her lap. “It’s magnificent,” she whispered at last. “Absolutely magnificent.” Hundreds of skins had been sewn, with stitches so fine they were invisible, into a flowing hooded cape, lined in black velvet embroidered in traditional Absarokee geometric patterns.
“Put it on. I hope it fits.” Standing, he scooped it up and held it out for her.
It fell gently around her shoulders. Grasping it under her chin, she swung in a slow circle before Hazard, the supple fur gleaming in the firelight.
“It fits,” he drily commented, “my Boston princess.”
“How did you ever think of it?” Blaze asked, burying her chin in the plush softness.
“Couldn’t have my princess cold this winter. There’s something in the pocket, too,” he added.
Blaze slid her hand into the deep inner pocket and pulled out a small birch-bark box. Lifting the cover, she found a tiny pearl on a gold chain lying on soft green moss. “It’s very lovely,” she said, lifting the locket out.
“Do you recognize it?” Hazard asked.
She looked at him, faintly perplexed. Although she had pearls in her jewelry collection, she’d never had a single pearl. “Should I?” she asked.
“It’s from your dress.…”
“The Territorial Ball!”
“I found it after you fled from the summer kitchen. I don’t know—didn’t know why I saved it then. The spirits must have known even that night how our lives would turn out. It was the first time I kissed you. Do you remember?”
She nodded. “No one had ever kissed me like that before.”
“I’d never kissed anyone like that before,” said Hazard, the man who had been a favorite of all the women in his life.
“Show me again,” she impishly said, moving a step nearer.
“With pleasure,” he murmured, taking her in his arms. “Merry Christmas, bia-cara. And may we have a thousand more.”
“Next year we’ll have another person to buy presents for,” she reminded him.”
“How nice,” he said simply, but his heart was overflowing with his love of her. “Now kiss me and I’ll see if you’ve improved,” he teased, “since that June night in Virginia City.”
“You know I’m the best you’ve ever had,” she retorted with sweet arrogance.
“I know,” he said very, very softly, and kissed her.
IT WAS a night early in March with a blizzard blowing in over the mountains when Blaze woke Hazard and said, “I feel funny.”
He was fully awake before she’d finished speaking. I shouldn’t have given in to her, was his first panic-stricken reaction. We shouldn’t be up here alone, with the midwife at Beaver Dam. “What feels funny?” he calmly asked even though his pulse was racing.
“I don’t know. I can’t sleep. My back aches.”
“Let me rub it. Turn on your other side … here? Does that feel better?”
“Ummmm, better.”
Hazard remembered Yellow Shield’s words. “Her back will ache, down low. You’ll know then, it’s started.” They’d both talked to the midwife, the medicine woman in their village, last fall. She had explained what to expect, had given instructions on the birthing. Blaze had been the one who wanted to be alone, who wanted Hazard to deliver the baby, who didn’t want some stranger alone with her when she gave birth. Hazard had tried to talk her out of it, had seriously argued with her about it, didn’t feel competent to handle the procedure. But he’d given in eventually when he saw how important it was to her. After the time Yellow Shield had come to the lodge and described what would happen so he and Blaze would know what to do, Hazard had walked the old woman back to her own lodge. “Now tell me about the problems,” he had said. “If we’re up there alone, I have to know.” So she had. Hazard had written everything down and memorized it. Since then he’d gone over Yellow Shield’s advice a hundred times in his mind. He’d made all the preparations weeks ago, digging away the snow and gathering the sweet sage and ground cedar they’d need, making sure they had plenty of containers for warm water, checking and rechecking the soft furs the baby would need.
Soon they were both sure Blaze’s contractions had started, and Hazard lifted her to her feet. “You have to walk now.”
“I don’t much feel like it. Tell me everything’s going to be fine.”
“Everything will. Walk now, bia. Please. Lean on me.” So they walked, stopping occasionally for Hazard to rub Blaze’s back and legs, and when the pains came too fast and hard and Blaze couldn’t walk anymore, he carried her over to the buffalo robes stacked between the two stakes driven into the ground. Lowering her to a kneeling position, he leaned her against the robes piled up before her. “Hold on to the stakes. Put your elbows on these robes here. I love you.” Oh, damn, he thought, terrified, how in the world were they going to manage?
Now, Yellow Shield had said, you can feed her the medicine. Hazard had asked for something to relieve the pain. “She’s healthy,” he had explained to the old medicine woman, “but not used to hardship, not raised like us to withstand pain and discomfort. I want something to help her.” So he spooned the juice of the batsé kice weed into Blaze’s mouth a spoonful at a time to mitigate the pain.
After that, Blaze existed in a pleasant, misty haze, neither celestial nirvana nor the harsh aching hurt of moments before, but something midway between and manageable. The medicine tasted of licorice and took away all sense of fear. Hazard was with her, she was healthy and strong, and whenever she opened her eyes from the internal world in which she was floating, Hazard was there to smile or kiss her or murmur words of love. It was his spirit in her, their child she was bringing into the world and, like its father, there was a gentleness now, even in its journey into life. She had heard much about the pain, the horror, the danger, had felt the first licking daggers of agony. But little of it continued for her now.
“Another spoonful, bia,” Hazard would whisper, his breath warm on her cheek, his fingers smoothing the curls away from her face. And when she’d open her mouth, he’d spoon in another portion of the sweet syrup. “I love you, angel. You’re doing just fine.”
He’d been warned about the dosage, so he watched her eyes and pulse and timed the contractions. But he didn’t want Blaze in misery, didn’t want to be the cause of any hurt, so he carefully balanced on the fine line between too much and too little. Occasionally, he
’d say, “Open your eyes, love,” so he could check her pupils, and Blaze would languidly obey, her lashes sweeping slowly upward, revealing deep blue, velvety eyes.
“I can feel the baby,” she’d say. “We’re going to have a baby.” And she would smile and ask to be kissed.
If Hazard could have given her the world and the sun and the stars then, he would have. She was in his heart, inhabiting his soul, more important to him than his own life. He’d kiss her with a quiet intensity that sang through both their senses.
“I can feel your love, too, and the baby’s. Aren’t we lucky, Jon?” Her heavy lashes rose, and blue eyes warm as sunlight gazed out at him.
Hazard blinked back the wetness stinging his eyes. Lucky—it was such an American word, effortless, genial. Less than what he felt, puny and small against the fullness of his senses, but he smiled back into the radiant eyes and obligingly agreed. “Lucky … the luckiest people on earth,” he whispered.
And at the end, when even the sweet syrup couldn’t smother the stabbing torment that gained over mind and tissue and nerve like an avalanche, Blaze was suddenly afraid and screamed for him.
Hazard, gripped by his own panic, forced the words to be soothing. “I’m here, love. Open your eyes. I’m here.” But for all his calmness, he was frightened for the first time in his life. He could lose her. Terrifying memories whispered through his mind. “I’ll never leave you, bia-cara. I’m here.” And when his fingers gently touched her brow, her taut, frenzied body relaxed.
When the baby’s head appeared, Hazard’s heart was pumping so furiously he could feel the blood coursing through his veins. Blaze was panting, her pale hands grasping the stakes tightly, her mind focused on the corroding, clawing contraction. And then a small shoulder slid free and, moments later, Hazard measured off three fingers on the wet umbilical cord, cut through it, and held his son. He was small, perfect, lazily sucking his thumb, his eyes tightly shut, immune to the world he had just entered, content and placid. Hazard smiled at the wet scrap of humanity, small enough to sleep comfortably in his two large hands, smiled his own smile of contentment, and whispered, “Welcome, barā’ kbatsë, to your world.”
Wrapping him temporarily in a small lambskin, Hazard settled Blaze comfortably on the bed of robes and waited for her to open her eyes. “We have a son,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
He presented the boy to Blaze, who instantly said, “He’s the handsomest baby in creation, and the strongest and the best, the most wonderful. Don’t you think?” Her eyes were soft with love.
“Absolutely the best, bia-cara. A miracle that’s entered my life, like you.”
“Don’t ever leave me,” Blaze whispered, suddenly frightened by so much happiness.
“Never, kitten.”
She gazed up at him and felt as though her heart would burst. “Tell me things will work out … for our son.” She needed the reassurance. Alone with Hazard, away from the fractious world, she knew unadulterated bliss, and she wanted as much for her son.
“It will. I’ll make it work.” His voice was low and determined. Then he smiled faintly. “Remember, Boston, with you at my side, we can take on the world.”
They laughed together, feeling, in the afterglow of their son’s birth, warm and blessed and invincible.
Blaze gazed down at the baby at her side and said half in astonishment and half seriously, “He’s awfully small.”
Hazard’s lips twitched. “Something you should be grateful for, child. Your labor was as long as I would ever care to endure.”
Blaze looked up. “Were you frightened?”
“I’d rather face a thousand Lakota. Does that answer your question?” His voice was without its familiar mocking irony. “You’re very courageous, darling,” he said softly, reaching out a hand to touch her cheek. “Thank you … for our son.”
“You’re very welcome, now that it’s all over,” Blaze replied. She was holding a tiny hand in hers and tugged it gently. “Do you think he might open his eyes soon?”
Hazard laughed at the artless naiveté. “You can be certain of that, love.”
“I’m going to sit and watch him. Will it take long?”
“Why don’t you sleep while you can? When he does wake, he’s going to want to be fed.”
“Oh,” Blaze said, then smiled and added, “I knew that.”
Hazard’s grin was enchanting. “Good, because I can’t do that for you. Cooking and cleaning I can manage, but you’re on your own there.”
“Will you help?”
“Yes, lazy child,” he gently replied, his glance warm. “In any way I can.” Then he bathed Blaze and put her to sleep near the fire.
While Blaze dozed, he carefully bathed his son, greased him and dusted him from his hips to his knees with a fine powder Yellow Shield had given him. Conscientiously following the instructions he’d memorized in the preceding weeks, he next put a layer of buffalo hair all around the child’s body and wrapped him in soft buckskin before laying him on a strip of stiff buffalo rawhide to keep his little head from falling backward. After that, he wrapped his son in tanned calfskin and held him in his arms, talking to him, firelight illuminating one dark head bent over another, very much smaller one.
It was nonsense and baby words, part low crooning spirit song and some quiet spoken promise. “There will be no Trail of Tears for you, barā’ kbatsë, my son. The land of your ancestors will be yours. The rights and privileges of a chief’s son will be yours.” Hazard’s face was filled with pain and resoluteness and a desire, strong-willed as his heart. “I will not fail you.” The hunger of his ambition for his child was fused with a restless yearning that his country and people could spring free from the exploitation and struggles he knew they faced.
And he allowed himself to dream for a moment—his cherished dream, a dream of unity in which all races could live in peace. It comforted him at the moment of his son’s birth even though he knew it was an unlikely vision of the future. Peace would come at a heavy price, he suspected, to be paid yearly and daily until the spirits called.
But he dreamed his dream anyway, in the glowing happiness that inundated his senses. And all the time he’d been speaking to his son, telling him of his love and wishes and hopes, he was unaware his face was being bathed by unheeded tears. “Beloved son,” he whispered, and bending his head kissed his small son softly. They were a family.
THEIR child’s name came as gently as his birth. He was the treasure of their hearts, the sum and differences of their spirits melded into one being and unconditionally loved. He became Baula-shela, Golden Treasure—abbreviated very quickly with everyday usage into Trey. His eyes when he opened them several hours after his birth were neither dark like his father’s nor sapphire blue like his mother’s. They were, when they steadied themselves into a constant color several weeks later, a pale silver warmed with scintillating flashes of hazel. His hair, although dark, was downy silk now, not yet the heavy black satin of his father’s. His small nose was straight and pure refinement, and he favored his father in bone structure and size. But the silver eyes were like restless tides as he grew, and the silken brows and thick lashes framing them held the bold sensuousness of his mother’s.
“He’s yours, all right,” Blaze remarked the first time he demanded his supper.
Hazard was sprawled out near the fire. “I never once considered denying paternity, love. And haven’t I been a perfect father?” he teased.
“Personally, I find perfection revolting, so don’t expect any compliments,” Blaze cheerfully retorted.
“What can I say? You yellow eyes just don’t come up to our high standards,” he mildly challenged with a gleam in his eyes. While a facetious comment, it was true that Hazard’s personal standards had always acknowledged only the exceptional.
“Maybe not, but some of us yellow eyes make beautiful babies, you must agree,” Blaze brightly returned.
Hazard eased himself out of his lazy sprawl and sat straight-backed acro
ss the fire from Blaze, holding Trey to her breast. “No argument there,” he quietly said, adoration in his eyes. “Absolutely none.”
EACH night all Trey’s dressing was removed, he was washed, greased again, and left to kick up his heels while his mother and father played with him and talked to him and he talked back in irresistible gurgles. They marveled at his eyes, bright and alert in the firelight, exclaimed over the perfection of his tiny fingernails or toes or lashes, and decided, unanimously, that he really was a treasure.
“Are all babies so adorable?” Blaze wondered aloud.
“I think it helps if they’re related to you,” Hazard replied with a smile. But they both agreed he was the most perfect baby in the world.
Chapter 45
Spring came very late that year, but it seemed to them all too soon. Warm suns melted ice and snow, buds came out on the bushes, in the low places grass showed green, and every run was babbling with water leaping down to the plains.
The mountain passes were open last, and then their first visitor reached them.
Rising Wolf became unofficial godfather to Trey and, in the way of Hazard’s clan, a substitute father. He was suitably impressed with his new godchild, to please the two most doting parents he’d ever set eyes on. “May his moccasins,” he said to Hazard, “make many tracks in the snow.” Blaze smiled at Rising Wolf’s wish of long life for Trey.
Hazard gripped his hand and softly said, “Your heart and mine have always spoken as brothers and always will while snows continue to fall upon my head. Thank you from my son.”
Rising Wolf brought other news as well, in addition to his congratulations on their new son. He told Hazard of it the afternoon of his first day, when they strolled away from the lodge to check the melting ice in the creek.
Yancy Strahan was back in Diamond City. The winter had driven him back to Boston, but he had returned in mid-April and set out a week earlier with a Cheyenne scout for Lakota territory. “Should we go after him?”
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