Blaze (9 page)

He knocked over a chair getting to it, but kicked it out of the way and then moved the last few steps to the table. The fall of his splendid black hair brushed her cheek as he gently lowered Blaze onto the wooden surface and, bending low, brushed her lips with his. She clung to his face with warm hands when he tried to rise, so he kissed the graceful line of her mouth again, moving over a short moment later to trace the delicate border of her jaw and then languid his mouth slipped downward to the taut nipples achingly beckoning like extravagant wild rosebuds.

She cried softly when he touched her there, moaned little sounds of pleasure while his tongue caressed, held him fiercely to her as if she couldn't get enough of the soft savagery of his mouth and teeth teasing her nipples into begging peaks. Whenever he raised his head, she pushed it back. "Stay, please… stay," she whispered shakily, feeling the beat of her heart pulsing in strange new places, skittering in brushfire pathways from the tips of her breasts to the throbbing fire between her thighs.

But he couldn't wait forever; he wanted more than caresses. Unlocking the insistent hands, he held them aside and raised his head to taste her parted lips; with his tongue he plundered, ravaged, hungrily demanded. And left her trembling.

Swiftly his hand slid under the yards of silk and petticoats, glided up the velvet warmth of leg and thigh, and then—

Distinctly, a loud male voice shouted from quite near, "Blaze! Blaze! Where are you?"

She froze.

In the next heartbeat, she seemed to come to her senses. Sitting upright, covering her breasts with trem-bling hands, she whispered, "No!" in a small desperate voice.

"Yes," Hazard rebuffed, profoundly single-minded at the moment, reaching to recapture the soft silkiness of her bare shoulders, quite certain no one would invade the deserted summer kitchen. His mouth moved to regain hers. "Things you enjoy aren't bad for you, bia," he murmured against her lips, using the Absarokee endearment women found so reassuring. "You yellow eyes have it all wrong."

"No," she softly cried again, struggling to free herself, pushing him away with surprisingly strong hands. And before Hazard could decide whether she meant it or not, she had slipped from the table. Stunned and frustrated, he watched her run toward the door. In a few rapid adjustments she replaced the bodice of her gown, rearranged the lace drapery on her arms, opened the door, and disappeared into the summer night.

Jon Hazard Black swore into the grey shadows of the summer kitchen. He hadn't been left tormented with unconsummated desire since adolescence. Infuriated, he banged out of the building, exasperated with illogical women in general and one in particular. For a brief moment he listened to the lilting dance music coming from the glittering ballroom, and then, concluding he was past the point of civility that evening, walked back to his hotel and went to bed.

The following day, Lucy Attenborough received more attention than usual from Hazard. He had promised her the morning but he spent longer than that with her. Finally, very much later, when the heat of the afternoon had dwindled and the lethargy of a well-spent day enveloped the occupants of room 202, the only Absarokee prospecting for gold in Diamond City left the soft bed and warm woman and headed north out of Virginia City to his cabin on the mountaintop.

THE next weeks were uninterrupted slogging hard work. Up with the dawn, Hazard built sluices, dug drainage, pickaxed and blasted deeper into the mine shaft he'd carved out of the hillside. He ate briefly each noon and then worked until sunset. His body, already powerfully muscled and bright-edged from years of training, took on a new toughness. The grueling regimen continued without break, day after day. At the end of the long workday, Hazard was normally too exhausted even to think—only sleep beckoned, not contemplative musing. But on the rare occasions it took him more than thirty seconds to fall asleep, a recurring image of red-hot hair, peach skin, and ivory silk slid uninvited into his mind.

Blaze, in contrast, had considerable leisure, and those unoccupied portions of her time were increasingly tenanted by vivid recollections of a boldly sensuous man. She disliked the arresting memories; no man's likeness had ever insinuated itself so into her senses. And with his image, of course, came remembrance of the unnerving, inexplicable response he'd drawn from her. Embarrassment flushed her skin each time she recalled her astonishing brazenness, her very near fall from grace. Only her father's voice breaking into the heated rapture had saved her. Without that reprieve, she would have readily and willingly succumbed to Lucy Attenborough's—and whoever else's?—very persuasive lover.

He was a womanizer of the worst kind, she decided after listening to the licentious rumor surrounding Hazard; everyone had a story about his way with women. He was the type of man who used women like frivolous playthings, with a casual male disregard she couldn't convince herself was cultural. After all, treating women as expendable receptacles for masculine passion was not without precedent in the white man's world. It was, she ruefully conceded, very obvious in the privileged world of wealth that she inhabited.

Yet within her own world, she refused to fit neatly into the niche reserved for affluent young ladies. The need to marry well, all the frivolous irrelevance so prevalent and cloying, the tedious boredom of fashionable society, were written in her future as surely as the days dawned. And that sort of stultifying, empty existence haunted her like a grotesque specter from hell. Consciously or not, she had fought against the final resolution of a proper marriage all her life. Over the years, occasional bursts of resentful tears rebuked the nasty quirk of fate which had sent her into this world as a susceptible female. Men weren't constantly boxed in and curtailed by hundreds of punctilious rules of etiquette. It was grossly unfair.

Owing, however, to her own fierce determination and a supportive father who gave rein to her capricious individuality, Blaze had circumvented many of the hindering strictures in her nineteen years. Unlike her female contemporaries, Blaze's striking thirst for knowledge had been fostered by her father's wealth. A succession of well-paid tutors in disciplines from the ordinary to the bizarre had entered the schoolroom of the house overlooking the Charles River. Blaze was educated in the conventional studies—classics, mathematics, geography, history—as well as the more uncommon disciplines of astronomy, Arabic, biology, metallurgy, and Chinese bronzes. She was—in the spring of 1865—beautiful, intelligent, a supreme egotist, a bit defiant, and intensely bored with the fatuous society in which she lived.

After a week more in Virginia City, subjected to the daily inconsequential chatter of her mother's friends, Blaze begged her father to set out with her again into the mining camps. At least on the trail she felt alive. If she had to spend one more day in the overfussy interior of Virginia City's grand hotel, sitting through another afternoon of tea and malicious gossip, she'd explode.

Very early on a Saturday morning Blaze left Virginia City with her father, a twelve-man group of business associates, and their three guides. The following week was spent following the route of the gold strikes, talking to prospectors, buying land whenever possible, discussing gold prices, interrogating claim owners on their findings.

The thirteen men in the group had combined to buy as many lode mines as possible. They had the resources to establish reduction works and processing plants, an expense most placer men couldn't afford. They also had the expertise in practical techniques of mining from parts of the United States and Europe that would make quartz mining, a long-term kind of gold mining, feasible.

Blaze listened while her father, his associates, and the miners discussed how to trace a vein, sink a shaft, break loose the ore, hoist it to the surface, crush it, and extract the gold from the resultant mass of ground-up material. She began to understand the problems involved in ventilation, hoisting, and timbering. She discovered that improved explosives and better drilling methods were allowing small operators an easier time of freeing gold-bearing rock from its matrix. She learned about stamp mills and the more primitive arrastra, used by the Mexicans and South Americans to crush gold-bearing rock. She began to appreciate the difficulty and intricacy of gold mining.

The weather cooperated with placid temperatures, in contrast to the hot spell of their earlier trip, and the activity was exhilarating. When feasible they slept in hotels (an optimistic euphemism for four walls and a roof), otherwise they camped in the open under the stars. The country was a combination of rugged, pine covered mountains and lovely green valleys, watered by clear, rushing streams. The party followed wagon trails where possible and, in less settled areas, traveled narrow deer trails. The scent of pines was pungent in the air, underbrush scarce beneath the towering virgin forests. A carpet of pine needles covered the coarse soil and wildflowers grew in a riot of color on the rust-hued bed of fallen needles. It was paradise to a young woman who'd spent most of her life chafing at the silken bonds of Boston society. Yet although she found the outdoors rustic and healthily fulfilling, Blaze was still very much a product of her upper-class environment. In the enchantment of the wild, rugged days on the mountain trails, she never once considered how the meals were prepared or the campsites settled so comfortably or even how her horse was saddled and ready each morning. An understandable oversight for woman reared in a household smoothly run by forty servants.

Two weeks later, the group stopped in Diamond City on the final leg of their return to Virginia City. For three days everyone was busy tying up and finalizing all the loose ends of their previous purchases.

Late the following morning, Yancy Strahan, Colonal Braddock's foreman, literally stamped into the parlor of the small house the party had rented and in a disgusted temper expressed his fury at "damn Injuns" in general and "one damn Injun" in particular. "That motherfucker!" he exploded in an incensed version of his soft Old Dominion drawl. "Threatened to shoot me if I didn't get off his claim in one minute! Don't they have reservations for them somewhere out here? Damn insolent savage. Who the hell's country does he thing this is anyway!" And even in the group of shrewd and avaricious businessmen who had developed "taking" into a fine art, no one had the audacity to answer him.

"Which claim is it?" one of the men seated around the large oak table asked.

"It's 1014 and 1015. This miners camp allows two claims per man, and they're smack in the middle of our lot," Yancy responded angrily.

"What's the fellow's name?"

"Hazard something-or-other," Yancy replied hotly. Blaze caught her breath sharply, more attentive as Yancy continued. "One of those idiotic Injun names. They just call him Hazard around here and make sure they stay out of his way."

"Dangerous?"

Yancy shrugged. "Killed three men in the last month. First one was cheating at cards they say and drew on the Injun when he called him on it. Guy didn't have a chance, the story goes. Blew him away before his gun was half out of the leather. Rumor has it he's quicker than anyone in the territory."

"Can we get to him?" someone asked, the voice as ambiguous as the words.

"That depends," Yancy said drily, "on the method. The other two he killed were trying to jump his claim. Came from different directions up the hill one night. He got 'em both."

There was a general clearing of throats, and then someone murmured, "At night?"

Yancy dropped into a chair and looked around the table. "They say he never sleeps." His voice dropped a tone and he more quietly said, "But hell, everyone has their price."

"Did you try—"

"Damn SOB wouldn't let me close enough to make an offer. Any suggestions should take that into consideration."

Seated next to her father, Blaze felt her pulse continue to race with each mention of Hazard. He was still there, then. The population of these mining camps was often transitory if a claim was unproductive. And she hadn't been altogether certain he was a prospector. After seeing him in evening dress in Virginia City, confusion had clouded her previous impression of him. Evidently, if Yancy's stories were true, the man had a multifaceted expertise: a killer too, not merely a womanizer and a prospector. Somehow it was hard to visualize—the murderous side—after having felt the gentle touch of his hands. Well schooled at murder, as well, it seemed, although, God knew, rough and immediate justice was prevalent in these lawless camps. Self-defense, Blaze knew, was the first law in the territory, maybe the only law, and no one thought less of you for holding on to what was yours.3 "West of the Red River, no questions," ran the old rule.

So while the low murmur of male voices drifted around her, discussing how best to approach Hazard and make him change his mind, Blaze's thoughts were preoccupied with the remembered feel of his hard, masculine body. Almost as rapidly as these thoughts surfaced, she ruthlessly suppressed them and castigated herself for allowing such witless reflections. Hazard Black was no more than a primitive anachronism in evening clothes; under the facade was a barbarian, a killer, a brute of a man. And much as she loved the wild, untamed quality of the West, Blaze hardly considered those qualities acceptable in a man.

The conversation continued apace. Hazard's claims were the linchpin to the claims already purchased. If his land couldn't be acquired, its existence was going to cause untold problems in the future in terms of the Apex law.4 From the looks of it, the men decided, Hazard's claims embraced the apex of a gold vein. According to the existing legal status of lode mining developed by miners' law in the early years of the California Gold Rush, if a claimant had the apex of a lode within the boundaries of his claim, he might follow the vein through the side limits of his claim as far as the vein extended. If Hazard's vein extended into the claims on either side of him, he could mine the gold under their claims legally. It could mean millions. Or it could be nothing. Gold veins were capricious, but none of the Buhl Mining men cared to gamble unnecessarily.

"Wasn't he at the Territorial Ball in Virginia City a few weeks ago?" Turledge Taylor, Vice President for Consolidated Mining, inquired. "Can't be a hundred per-cent Indian and invited there." He didn't know Lucy At-tenborough had sent out the guest list.

Another voice offered, "I understand he's a chiefs son. His parent's died last winter when smallpox took so many of those Mountain Crow. Gashed himself up like they do for mourning. It's a sign of their grief. Heard he was cut-up pretty bad. Strange people." At this, Blaze's mind raced back to the mud, and their first meeting, when she'd seen the scars crisscrossing Hazard's chest.

A dozen pair of eyes observed the speaker with interest. "Where'd you hear that?" two voices asked in unison.

The man looked discomfited for a moment, and he glanced apologetically at Blaze before he answered, "One of Rose's girls mentioned it." Everyone except Blaze knew which of Rose's girls that was. One of the young prostitutes at Confederate Gulch's fanciest brothel had taken Ed's fancy. She was only fourteen and he'd delegated much of his work to subordinates the last week or so in order to stay in Confederate Gulch. "His arms and chest are covered with scars, Fay said. Rose looked after him for a while."

"We're not dealing with the usual miner, it would seem," the man to Blaze's left interjected. "If money won't buy him, should we offer an alternate claim? Or maybe we could deal him in for a small percentage. He's probably a half-breed and a shade more civilized than the others. Or at least shrewder."

"I heard he's a Harvard man," Frank Goodwin said, "if you're talking about that fellow with long hair who sat in on our card game at the Territorial Ball." His heavy brows met in a frown. "Damn near cleaned me out."

"Damn near cleaned everyone out," his partner Henry Deville groused.

"Hard to believe," Frank went on.

"Harder to take," another man grumbled.