Blaze (50 page)

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 father'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.

TWO days passed and she'd hardly moved. Huddled under the covers, she mourned her loss. The tears were over. She couldn't cry anymore, but the pain had worsened. Hazard filled her mind, every moment, every breath, and the poignant memories turned the melancholy into agonizing torment.

On the afternoon of the second day, a weakness pervading her mind and body, she was easily convinced she should accompany her father's body back to Boston. She wouldn't talk to her mother or Yancy, but Hannah reminded her of her duty to her father and his memory. She'd whitened out her mind to avoid the pain of Hazard's death and foreshortened her thoughts deliberately. "I'm coming back then, Hannah," she said, her voice hardly sounding like her own. "As soon as Daddy's properly buried, I'm coming back." She wanted their child born where Hazard had been born. She wanted to raise their child in the country Hazard had called home. She didn't tell Hannah that, but her old nurse understood her grief for the man she'd loved.

"It's a fine and fair country to come back to. And you will. But for now, you should go home."

"This is my home." Pale and lethargic, Blaze looked very small in the large carved bed, but her eyes were burning fiercely, and Hannah was reminded of the small girl in a large bed in a cavernous room on Beacon Street. Even then, she'd known what she wanted.

"I know, child, and you will be back," Hannah soothed, just as she'd soothed so many childhood tears in the past. She wished, though, with all her heart, this sadness could have been as trivial. She'd known Millicent Braddock for too many years to blandly accept the story about an accidental explosion. And Yancy had struck her from the first as a ruthless hoodlum, however grand his family lineage.

She couldn't change what had happened. She couldn't bring back Blaze's love. But she would give to Blaze what she always had: love and comfort.

ON THE day Blaze left Diamond City, Hazard started hacking at the greenstone in the ceiling of the east drift, no small achievement considering the periods of dizziness which still plagued him.

He'd made a makeshift splint for his left arm, wrapping two boards from an old powder box with rawhide strips from his leggings. The procedure had taken half a day because he'd fainted repeatedly from the pain. His arm, swollen to monstrous size, made every jarring movement torment. He watched the color of his arm change from pink to red to angry magenta that day, and he knew from experience that if his fingertips turned blue, he'd lose his arm. That first day after he'd managed to get the splint in place, he lay in a half-faint, his body's message that it required rest to recoup its strength after the ravaging it had suffered. He'd only light a candle for a few moments when he awoke, check the mounting color in his arm, and then blow the candle out.

He had a vague plan that was incubating even as he slept. In his lucid moments he'd review it, cast and recast it, allocate his time against his candles, against his lack of food and water. He had to rest; his body demanded it be easing him into unconsciousness whenever he overexerted himself. But he'd have to move soon. With no food and only the moisture collecting on the rocks for drinking, he didn't have a lot of time to hack his way out. Each day his reserves of strength would diminish. But if there was a way out, if there was a way to rejoin Blaze and their unborn child, he would find it. Or die trying. It was inherent in his spirit, in his code as a warrior. It would be his ultimate test and he knew it. Jon Hazard Black versus Death.