Susan Johnson

  The circling began slowly, both men narrow-eyed, crouching, advancing in progressively smaller arcs. Then, like a snake striking, the Lakota lunged and caught Hazard in a death vise. The steel embrace locked and then pressed, and Hazard was lifted into the air like a trapped animal. Blaze looked away, her face gone white.

  Hazard was fresh yet and before his breath was choked from his lungs launched his knee upward with all his strength. You could hear the impact of the blow. A smaller man would have fallen, but the Lakota grunted and stumbled, easing his grasp enough for Hazard to break free. Or half-free, for as he twisted away the Lakota’s splayed right hand dug into Hazard’s shoulder and managed to slow him enough to gain a hold. As he slammed into him, they both fell flat on the ground, Hazard underneath. The crowd murmured its approval; a hubbub of talk circled the area.

  Hazard’s legs were free and, drawing in a breath, he heaved his weight up, taking all the force of the drive on his thrusting legs. The dead weight atop him barely moved, but twisting under the slight lift, Hazard’s hand flung out and wrenched hard on the coiled braids. The Lakota emitted a thick roar, and Hazard flung himself free. One fall. No pin.

  In utter silence they faced each other again and this time the Lakota came at him with great speed, an out-thrust thumb aiming straight for Hazard’s eye. Hazard’s head jerked aside to protect himself, and this time the Lakota filled his hand with Hazard’s hair and pulled him to the ground. Hazard landed on his knees, his outstretched hands catching his face only a hairbreadth from the dirt, and the Lakota was on top of him, trapping him in a classic hold. Hazard knelt on the packed dirt, breathing in fast, gasping breaths, setting his muscles in an attempt to hold off the grinding effort to press him into the ground. The pressure mounted breath by breath, the heavy body atop him crushing him downward, the Lakota’s sweat dripping past his face. As the leverage increased, Hazard began slowly inching his hand toward the moccasined foot planted like a post near his knee.

  He touched it, wrenched his body toward it with his last ounce of strength, and with a grunt, grasped, twisted, and heaved so the Lakota rose, turning in the air, and fell crashing to the ground. His head bounced once hard and a second time lightly, and then he was still.

  With well-bred passivity, the crowd absorbed the shock.

  Blaze turned her eyes around at the stifled silence and saw Hazard swaying slightly, coming to his feet … but alive … and, her spirits quaking, she managed a tentative breath of relief. His eyes searched the crowd for her and, finding her, he favored her with a flickering smile.

  Now for Yancy. More intent on murder, he had chosen knives as their weapon. Silently, Hazard welcomed the choice.

  Hazard’s body was glistening with sweat, and now he held a knife in his hands. It felt slippery in his grasp, but solid and comforting on this, his day of reckoning. He glanced at Blaze, a hurried half-glance to see that she and Trey were still safe. Flexing his knees on a deep inhalation of breath, he relaxed for a moment and thought: Now he’d test Yancy’s spine, if he had one. Balancing the knife, a reassuringly familiar gesture, he swept the sweat from his eyes with his free hand and moved into the offensive.

  It was as though he’d waited for this moment all his life, as if the time had come to claim some small share of satisfaction from those who would take his land, his wife, his child and future. As if Yancy represented all the greed and stupidity that was forever altering his and his people’s world.

  But Yancy hadn’t survived so long in the aggressive world without developing some properties of self-defense; he was fit, hardy, and a shade more ruthless than most. His massive sandy head sat squarely on broad shoulders, and he was braced on legs sturdy as tree trunks. “I’ll take her home with me after you’re dead,” he snarled, “to share a bed with her mother and me.” His eyes were filled with hate, but they met only a chill, dark glance and open contempt.

  “Somehow,” Hazard said, looking every painted inch the vision of his black cougar spirit, “I don’t think you’d survive the experience. She knows how to kill now. Since,” he said gently, “the Powder River.”

  Incensed at the gentle disdain, furious that a savage would dare bait him, Yancy hurtled forward like a charging bull, slashing upward with his knife. Hazard hurled himself sideways in time, almost in time. Yancy’s blade drew first blood, leaving a trail of crimson down Hazard’s side.

  The crowd gasped with delight, Blaze smothered a cry of alarm, and Hazard swore softly. Lunging at Yancy before he had time to fully complete his turn back, Hazard’s knife ripped up the fabric covering Yancy’s arm, slicing deep into the muscle. Yancy grunted hoarsely like a wounded boar, and blood wet his white shirt, but feinting to the left, his own thrusting arm raked down Hazard’s side as he passed. Hazard stumbled but recovered and stood braced, a man’s length from Yancy.

  “Someone’s going to have to teach you a lesson, boy,” Yancy growled, his injured arm inciting his fury.

  “But not,” Hazard levelly replied, “you.” He spoke clearly although he was breathing hard; the wrestling match had taken its toll, and blood was pouring from his newest wound. He waited watchfully, his knife hand steady, and took Yancy’s next rush with a swirling turn, spinning away with extended arm and blade. Yancy’s big sweating frame bore another red slash.

  He heard the scream of warning, Blaze’s voice, a second too late. Then a tooled leather boot spurred with a large Mexican rowel thudded into his groin, offside and diagonally. But at least the warning had started him moving in time. Had the kick been straight on, he’d never have gotten up again. A stabbing spasm tightened his stomach, and then the agonizing pain came rushing in, doubling him over, settling him to his knees. With a blinding crash the spurred boot swung into his ribs. He rolled away, but the pain, ricocheting through his skull like a hot branding iron, followed and he struck the ground on his fresh wound, knocking the breath out of him. He dropped his knife.

  Kicking it aside, Yancy towered triumphantly above him.

  He was barely conscious, and it seemed, in his pain, that he was looking up through a tunnel of light surrounded by a bordering darkness, a shapeless monster with red-rimmed eyes looming over him.

  “Take a last look at them,” Yancy gloated. “I think I’ll leave the bastard to the Sioux.”

  Hazard’s head cleared and Yancy came back into focus.

  “The hot little piece I’ll take back with me.”

  Hazard only had one chance. The next time he went down, he knew he wouldn’t get up.

  “I wonder what it’s like with a stepdaughter.” Yancy chuckled.

  Hazard’s blood began to pound, adrenaline blasting heat and pulsing blood through his veins. It warmed him. He could feel the surge clear down to his toes. For a moment there was only the sound of Hazard’s labored breathing, and then, his eyes half blind with pain, he came up from the blood-soaked ground so fast Yancy didn’t have a chance to move away. Hazard caught him in the groin with a crashing fist, doubling Yancy over. The sequence that followed, fists and feet and a chopping blow to the back of the neck, finished the fight in four seconds more. Yancy’s neck was broken just above the spine. His mouth dribbled foamy blood across the crushed grass, his body slowly settling into an open-mouthed sprawl, the head loose, like a broken toy. Hazard stared briefly at the face turning blue, then gradually sank to his knees, short of breath, his hair streaked with dust and sweat, blood coursing steadily from his wounds. “You … can’t … have … them …” he said at last, with cold, exhausted finality.

  Yancy was dead and with him the swagger, the rapacious greed, the most overt threat to Hazard’s property. Yancy had been the epitome of all that was most base in human nature, of the worst of free enterprise and the pioneer spirit. Would that it were possible to deal so finally with all the enemies confronting his people and his life.

  A sudden weakness came over him, dulling his gaze until the ranks of Lakota merged in one dim, formless mass of staring eyes. He shook his head to clear it, ex
haling a deep, shivering rush of breath that sprayed sprinkles of blood. Then the weakness passed and his head cleared. Hazard moved from his knees, back on his heels, slowly, testing his body’s responses, then laboriously pulled himself to his feet. As his legs took his full weight, he swayed, then forced himself to stand perfectly still. He must walk to Blaze, put her and the baby up on the pony. Somehow mount himself. It seemed a daunting prospect. He hurt; he stifled the moan deep in his throat.

  The Lakota warriors watched the Absarokee chief hold himself upright with obvious effort and tentatively take a step. The second limping step was accompanied by a sharp gasp of pain, and he dully hoped he wasn’t overestimating his strength. He was still panting, his arms hanging limp. Looking up, he saw Blaze, then his eyes closed and he wished he had something to lean on. Blaze, his tired brain repeated down the lacerated corridors of his mind. And Trey. It wasn’t over yet. He had to move. Not just stand. He had to walk. He opened his eyes.

  Summoning the will from reserves he’d never plumbed before, Hazard took a step toward Blaze standing on the rim of the crowd clutching Trey. She hadn’t moved. No one had moved. No one but Hazard, as if this was the last test of his courage. They waited silently to see if he would fail.

  He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, sweat and blood in glistening rivulets mingling with the vivid war paint on his chest and arms and face, every muscle in his fine-tuned body taut with the simple effort of standing. And when he took his next step, collective breaths were held. Would he manage another?

  He did finally, and then several more—painful, unnerving to watch, slowly traversing the twenty yards that separated him from Blaze. She wanted to run to him and help him, but she was afraid to move. “Jon,” she breathed when he was close enough to her, the single word full of hope and fear and courage.

  His eyes caught hers briefly and his lips formed her name, but he made no sound; he was using all his breath to walk.

  As he drew near, his hand reached out to grasp the palomino’s mane, and he hung there panting, his bloody fingers laced through the gilded mane. “Leave now,” he murmured at last, and loosening his grip, he bent to give Blaze a leg up. He swayed unsteadily, then, marshaling his strength, stabilized himself. “Up,” he said. With the baby in one arm, Blaze placed her foot in Hazard’s cupped hands, gripped a handful of mane, and felt him lift her. The effort nearly felled him.

  Straightening, he leaned against the pony until his ears stopped ringing. Feeling powerless and distraught, Blaze reached toward him. “I’ll get down,” she said, “and help you.”

  He nodded his head side to side in a slow movement, his forehead resting against the palomino’s neck. It was a full minute before his head lifted. “Don’t fall,” he said very low and very slowly. “I’m coming up.” And he hauled himself up shakily behind her.

  They rode out, the palomino restive with the smell of Hazard’s blood in its nostrils. Hazard held the reins lightly in one hand, the other high around Blaze’s waist, steely-tight, holding her close. And on the way out it was she, as anchor to his viselike grip, that kept him upright. Leaning against him, she could feel the rapid beating of his heart, his warmth. Trey’s small form was cradled in her arms, a light evening breeze ruffling his soft dark hair.

  “Don’t look to the left or right. Keep your head up. We’re going out slowly.” Hazard’s instructions were quiet, low, the strain of the past hour harsh in his breathing.

  She felt rather than saw the blood trickling over her arm, the rhythm of the drops sliding down her skin. Hazard was savaged with oozing knife slashes, dirty with blood and sweat and earth. He shook his head once, his long hair swinging across his shoulders, to clear his vision from the wound bleeding over his right eye.

  Miraculously, as if his future were indeed secured by his father’s bloody and devoted courage, Trey slept peacefully in his mother’s arms.

  They were halfway through the village now, Hazard’s grip tightening reflexively each time the palomino sidled and pranced restlessly, hauling her back in line, forcing her through the staring crowd, holding her in with the pressure of his hand and legs. She wanted to bolt, her eyes rolling, her ears pressed flat to her skull.

  Blaze sat rigidly erect, Hazard’s efforts to control the pony forcing his wounds to bleed more freely. “Are you all right?” she asked, fearful of the extent of his injuries, uncertain whether he had the strength to see them through the camp.

  “Damn pony’s not trained for war—the blood’s panicking him.”

  “Are you all right?” She reached back and touched his arm.

  “I’ll make it.” And he swore softly, wrenching back the palomino’s wildly tossing head.

  “Will they truly let us go?”

  “A step at a time, bia-cara … that’s all I know.”

  It was a slow, ticklish gauntlet, a lifetime in the balance. But at its end, the prairie stretched green and wide, the twilight sky met the rolling hills in the lilac kiss of evening, and freedom beckoned. At the furthest lodge, a dozen yards past the last group of Lakota, Hazard nudged the palomino with his heels and set him into a canter.

  He held the pony to an easy rhythm, displaying a fearless confidence to the end.

  They talked about him for many snows around the Lakota fires. And about his flame-haired woman who’d come down with him to save their child; they told of his boldness, how he had ridden in alone, whipped off his pony; they painted the story of his combat on their lodges as a commemorative chronicle. Hazard the Black Cougar was always painted larger, like a spirit-god, and in the course of time the tale grew into folklore.

  Chapter 47

  After they reached Rising Wolf and the rest of the party, they didn’t dally, uncertain how long the Lakota feelings of cordiality and respect would last. Hazard transferred to Peta and Rising Wolf took Trey; once the initial congratulations were offered they rode fast and hard and silently until they reached Absarokee land.

  Hazard helped Blaze down, carried Trey to her and then cradled his family in his arms and kissed them. At last they were safe. Moments later, after he had seen them comfortably settled, he collapsed. He had lost too much blood, had pressed on too long beyond the last pulsing beat of his straining heart, and the last thin light of his considerable will wasn’t enough.

  Hazard lay, eyes open and sightless, bloody from head to foot, and there was no comforting Blaze’s terror-stricken cry until Rising Wolf looked up from where he knelt opposite her and said across Hazard’s body, “He’s alive.”

  They sewed and stitched and washed and bathed and did all the gruesome patching while he was unconscious, and then they waited. Blaze anxiously watched his shallow breathing, uncertain whether he was asleep, in a coma, or worse … and Rising Wolf couldn’t be trusted to tell her the truth. But Hazard’s respiration was stronger by afternoon; the wounds eventually stopped bleeding and when she touched him tentatively once, afraid of hurting him, his dark, smudged eyes opened and far down in the tired eyes a smile shone. “Love you … home,” he whispered, then fell back to sleep. After that they all slept, except the warriors on guard.

  When he woke several hours later, he insisted on washing himself in the icy mountain stream nearby. It was a ritual of their medicine, but he returned very pale. His two worst wounds were bleeding again; one high on his left arm was open and oozing, the other—tracing an arc over his ribcage—was ghastly-looking, like an angry red painted line. They remained there two more days until Hazard was strong enough to ride home. Scouts had gone out ahead, so the entire village was out to greet their triumphant arrival, and the victory celebration lasted through the night. Red Plume, too, was on the mend after anxious days when he had hovered near death, and Hazard’s first act on arriving home was to present his young nephew officially with his first coup stick in recognition of his defense of Trey.

  Hazard excused himself and Blaze from the festivities when the morning star first came up pale in the east. They walked back through the camp of reveling m
errymakers and returned to their lodge. Blaze placed Trey snugly asleep in his cradle suspended on swinging rawhide ropes. Hazard, coming up behind her, drew Blaze into his arms, and they both stood silent and proud and thankful above their sleeping son. Trey’s fluffy lashes rested on silky plump cheeks, and he smiled faintly in his sleep as they watched him.

  “I didn’t think I could love anyone as much as I love you, bia-cara, but in a different way I do. He’s you and me and also specially himself, and I want to give him everything. Unrealistic … but a father’s dream.” Bending his head, he slowly rubbed his chin against her hair, fraught suddenly with a rush of random doubts.

  “And a mother’s dream,” Blaze whispered back, twisting around in his arms so she was facing him. “We can give him a life in these mountains. A life of freedom and worth. We can.”

  Hazard smiled a little. “My determined angel.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “But we’ll try.” And he vowed to himself to protect them always.

  “When do we go back to the mine?” Blaze asked.

  “You say a very assured ‘we.’ ”

  “Why not? Yancy’s gone, so we’re safe again.”

  “As safe as we’ll ever be,” he ambiguously answered.

  “So don’t even think of going back there alone. We’re coming with.” And she glowered at him as only she could, until, knowing that she’d won, her wonderful smile took over.

  Hazard’s arms tightened around her and they both felt the peace. He returned her smile slowly and leisurely. “Are you telling me you’re going to be in my pocket the rest of my life?”

  “The rest of your life, Jon Hazard Black, so what do you think of that?” Love welled up between them, incomprehensible, uncontrollable, but like a quiet victory in a world tarnished with madness … theirs alone.

  His smile warmed his eyes. “I think,” he said, very, very gently, “I’m a remarkably”—and he tenderly emphasized the word, giving just the proper inflection to the American slang—“a remarkably lucky man.”