Blaze (17 page)

"Go back to sleep," Hazard softly said. "We're going out." And taking Rising Wolf by the arm, he steered him through the entry. After shutting the door and carefully placing the lock in place, he said, "Come," indicating a narrow trail between the pines. Following a brush-cut path a hundred yards up the mountain east of the cabin, Hazard moved onto a small ledge cut into the rock, pointed to an artillery piece and remarked: "The newest model, uses a copper fifty-eight-caliber rimfire cartridge, capable of being loaded while firing. It's accurate at five hundred yards and… can keep anyone away from the claim."

"What is it called?" Rising Wolf asked, admiring the multibarreled weapon mounted on a gun carriage.

"A Gatling gun."

"Where did you get it?"

"A friend of mine from school knows an ordnance officer at the Washington arsenal."

"And they just gave it to you?"

"It's pretty untried yet. In fact, most of the testing wasn't too successful. None of the veteran officers support it."

"Have you seen it in action? Does it work?"

"Rosecrans tried some of these in the Wilderness campaign. The time I saw it near Burgessville, it tore the hell out of a brigade of cavalry."

"So how did you talk them into sending it out here?"

"My friend had his ordnance officer from Washington rewrite the shipping orders. It was simple; they shipped it to the railhead outside Omaha and I had it freighted overland from there."

"You mean you didn't pay for it?" Rising Wolf smiled his appreciation of the U.S. government's unknowing largesse.

"Let's say I consider it a bonus for a field officer's meager pay."

"You should have gotten more," Rising Wolf mildly chastised, his tactical mind already visualizing the effects this gun would have.

"Don't think I didn't try," Hazard replied. "Even for this one, I think I owe favors beyond the grave."

"How much ammunition do you have?" Rising Wolf asked, well aware that it was always a problem for the Indian tribes, getting enough ammunition.

"Plenty."

"It would be superb against the Lakota."

"When the gold runs out, we'll take it to camp."

"How did you get it up here?"

"I had it winched up."

"What did you tell people was in the crate?"

"Mining equipment. Everyone's used to that. It comes by the ton either overland or up the Missouri."

"You look well set up."

"As I intended. Maybe a year from now most of the gold will be in our mountain cache, securing our people's future."

"And the woman?"

"She'll never last that long."

"Meaning?" Rising Wolf questioned softly.

"Nothing ominous," Hazard quickly responded to Rising Wolfs raised brows. "Only… I'm sure her father will reach some agreement with me much sooner than that. She tells me she's an only child." A smile flashed across his dark face. "My good fortune—worth at least fifty bargaining points more."

"Forget the bargaining points, I can think of better reasons to be grateful for having that woman in your bed."

"She sleeps alone."

"Tell that to someone more gullible—someone who didn't grow up with you." Hazard's discriminating instinct for beautiful women was as legendary on the plains as it had been in Boston.

"I mean it. I don't want the problems."

"Since when is making love a problem?" Rising Wolfs grin was widened.

"Generally I'd agree with you, but…" Hazard exhaled. "The circumstances are different."

"You really mean you haven't?"

"Not lately."

"So you have. I didn't think you'd let the biahia— that sweetheart—go untouched."

"I'm sorry now I did."

"Sorry?" Rising Wolf believed in pleasure with uninhibited enjoyment. "That's a strange attitude coming from you." And he searched Hazard's face piercingly, for the memory of Hazard attending the woman just minutes before was fresh and vivid. You didn't look at a woman that way and not want her, Rising Wolf thought.

"It's complicated."

"Women always are."

"More complicated than usual. I must fulfill my vision. There's no time for pleasure."

Rising Wolf understood. A vision must be followed.

And as a visionary, Hazard's revelations had been prophetic, giving them a potency and symbolic power. Years ago, as a boy on Wolf Mountain, fasting for four days in search of his birici' sam (medicine-dream), he'd seen the white men coming for the gold already then, had seen the riders with the fire spears come down from the sky, had seen the sun darken with blood before the white men's disease had taken so many lives.

But he'd also seen a red eagle ride a black cougar over the men with fire spears. And he'd heard the animal apparitions tell him: The gold metal will bless your clan and bring it prosperity. Listen and learn and when the time comes, follow us. We give you these for your power. And when Hazard woke atop Wolf Mountain all those years ago, he'd found beside him a red eagle feather and a tuft of black cougar fur.

"Bala-ba-aht-chilash (good luck)," Rising Wolf offered.

Hazard accepted the wishes with a nod. "To the gold now. We'd better get it on the packhorses. The sun's rising over the horizon." Rising Wolf planned his trips so he arrived early, before Hazard left for the mine. It didn't take long to load the saddlebags since Hazard had rigged up a pulley to lift the heavy leather bags up the rugged cliff above the mine entrance.

"Are you coming home for the summer hunt?" Ris-ing Wolf asked carefully, filling the painted leather bag with coarse gold dust.

"I was planning to, but…" Hazard paused. "Probably not now… with the woman."

"You could bring her along."

"I'd rather not."

Rising Wolf looked at Hazard closely. The women in Hazard's life since Raven Wing had all been for pleasure. Why not bring this one along? "We're all used to yellow eyes in camp," he noted. "No one would care." Rising Wolf smiled faintly. "Except the girlfriends waiting your return, of course."

"Everyone would assume she's a paramour," Hazard protested.

"And she's not," Rising Wolf quipped. "Or at least not all the time," he added facetiously.

"Not at all anymore," Hazard insisted, casting his smiling friend a quelling glance.

"Knowing you, Dit-chilajash, treading such a fine and virtuous line may prove difficult."

"I don't need anyone worrying about my love life, Rising Wolf," Hazard admonished. "Just keep your mind on the gold."

"The question is," Rising Wolf jocularly observed, "will you be able to?"

Hazard didn't deign to answer, but that in itself was an answer.

Ten minutes later the gold was all packed and they began hoisting it and loading the horses. It took considerable time before the string of ponies were all packed and Rising Wolf was making his way up the isolated mountain trail known only to the Absarokee. Along with the gold he took with him the fascinating impressions his acute eyes had gathered about Dit-chilajash and his beautiful hostage.

"WHO was that?" Blaze asked when Hazard returned to the cabin.

"My ba-goo-ba, my brother," he translated.

"Do you come from a large family?"

"I was an only child. None of my brothers or sisters lived to walk."

"But if he's your brother…" she questioningly said.

"It's the custom in our tribe to address male relations of your wife as 'brother' and treat them as such."

"You're married?" Blaze asked, her voice not quite concealing the shock.

"Not now." Hazard said the two words very slowly as if unsure of the reality of his statement.

"What does that mean?" From her seated position on the bed where she had watched the sun rise, she stirred suddenly, all the lethargy of early morning precipitously banished by his short but uncertain reply. Long bare legs flew out of the covers and in one swift shifting impulse she was standing, face to face with Hazard, the light wool blanket clutched around her like a royal cloak. When he didn't answer, neither her question nor her sharp look, Blaze murmured in a saccharine voice, "Not now? How convenient. Maybe yesterday. Maybe tomorrow, but not now." Her glance sharpened. "I should have known. Another lecherous man of the world. I suppose all that titillating gossip I heard about you in Virginia City—the stories about Lucy Attenborough, Allison Marsh, Elizabeth Krueger, and so on and so forth, failed to mention your marital state because, after all, the double standard operates in the Wild West just as surely as it does in the East. For some reason I thought, out here in the undisturbed majesty of nature, those deceits hadn't corrupted. More the fool me," she exclaimed with a short, unpleasant laugh.

"She's dead," Hazard quietly said, very much against his will. Absarokee custom rigorously avoided any mention of the deceased. They have gone to their father, Ah-badt-dadt-deah, and like Him were sacred. But Hazard knew Blaze would continue her diatribe until he answered, so he reluctantly uttered the words.

Immediately Blaze was contrite, feeling guilty about her false accusations. "I'm sorry," she apologized, her blue eyes full of sympathy. "How did it happen?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," Hazard replied, his body rigid with constraint.

"Of course. Forgive me."

An uncomfortable silence fell.

Wrenching his mind from the circumstances of Raven Wing's death—a memory that even now, after long years, still haunted him with remorse—Hazard tried to restore the equilibrium of his emotions with mundane talk. "Rising Wolfs gone and I came in to ask you if you'd care to bathe today. I know you don't like mountain streams, but the water in the pool isn't so cool. The sun warms it."

"Do you bathe every day?" Blaze asked somewhat incredulously. She wasn't immune to the desire for nor-mal hygiene but with the easy life of socializing in Boston, daily bathing was hardly necessary.

"It's a custom with my people."

"In the winter too?"

"In the winter too."

"It seems absurd," she said with a small shudder. "Imagine, in freezing weather."

"No more absurd than some of your customs. The crinoline, for instance: seductive as it can be in a wind or, at maximum, following a pretty lady upstairs, it is hardly the most practical of guises."

"Touche," Blaze acknowledged with mild distaste. "Let's not argue nonsensically."

"Agreed. Would you like to bathe first?" he asked with a pleasant courtesy.

"I don't care to at all," Blaze said, her voice identically pleasant but firm.

Hazard's lips came together in a straight line. "You'll have to eventually."

"I don't see why."

"Surely, Boston, even you can't be that obtuse."

"Are you calling me obtuse?" she retorted with an unmistakable flush of anger.

"I just have. Are you hard of hearing as well?"