Susan Johnson Read online

  HAZARD lay half on his side on the narrow bed, holding Blaze close. His mouth brushed against the tousled mass of flame-red curls. “You’re a damned serious negotiator,” he teased lightly. “If Buhl Mining is utilizing this bargaining method with any frequency, no wonder everyone’s selling.”

  She dreamily murmured into the curve of his shoulder. “I was only going to talk to you.”

  “Your dialogue is utterly charming, Miss Braddock.”

  “Blaze,” she offered, totally enchanted by the feel and taste and scent of him. “And you’re to blame, Mr. Black. Has anyone ever mentioned how skilled you are at seduction?”

  He modestly didn’t reply.

  Lifting her face, she looked from under sleepy cat-eye lashes into his amused dark eyes. “Well … have they?” she softly demanded.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling indulgently at her artless question.

  “Oh,” she responded in a small, startled voice, realizing suddenly, as she met Hazard’s amused glance, that she’d been naive. Chagrined at her gaucherie, she quickly changed the subject. “Do you have another name or should I continue calling you Mr. Black?”

  “I’ve quite a few other names, but most people call me Hazard. It’s simple.”

  “And appropriate?” she said carefully.

  “Not really,” said Hazard at length, equally carefully, “since I go out of my way to avoid trouble.” But he knew very well he was regarded by most as a kind of human ultimatum.

  “You killed three men lately.”

  So she had heard. Brave of her to come up here in spite of the stories. “They all drew on me first,” he said pleasantly.

  “Would you have killed Yancy this morning if he’d threatened you?”

  “Not unless he’d raised his rifle and sighted in on me.”

  “Some of the men were afraid you’d kill me.”

  He laughed. A warm, resonant sound. “Hell, no, not when more interesting options are available. Besides,” he said charmingly, “you’re no threat—only a distinct pleasure.”

  “You will consider selling though, won’t you Hazard? They’ll give you a good price. Whatever you want, I’m sure. You can take the money and live well for a long time.” Blaze hadn’t intended any of this to happen; the past hours were a fantastic, inexplicable deluge of passion and feeling which had simply overwhelmed her. Hazard seemed like a reasonable man; her offer was more than reasonable. Generous, in fact. She was sure he’d accept. At the moment, basking in some blissful paradise of contentment and well-being, she wasn’t thinking beyond that.

  Passion quenched, half reclining beside the beautiful woman who had so recently been his, the shadow of chill reality reminded Hazard what had brought her here. “My claim’s not for sale,” he said. His voice was completely without timbre, his face wiped clean of expression.

  There was a moment of complete and cataclysmic surprise.

  Then, as if stung, Blaze struggled up on her elbows, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Why not?”

  There was a distinct pause while remote black eyes, heavy with cool sarcasm, scanned her from her creamy throat to her small bare feet. “Why should I?” His voice was deceptively mild.

  Her dismay had brought her seated upright in the wreckage of the bed. “Well, for money, of course!” she retorted.

  “I’m not interested in selling my mine, but I’d be interested in buying you. Do I have to negotiate with Buhl?” he asked, a slight edge to his voice, “or are you a free agent?”

  “I’m very much a free agent,” Blaze snapped, hot with resentment. “I’m also Colonel Billy’s daughter.” She said it with a deliberate arrogance, expecting it to make a difference, as it had all her life.

  It did. Hazard was profoundly astonished. Everyone in the mining camps had heard of Colonel Billy B. He headed the group buying all the gold claims in Montana. He didn’t think Buhl Mining was that desperate. Concealing his surprise, Hazard said in a voice dry as ash, “In that case, I don’t think I can afford you.”

  “Are you in the habit of buying women, Mr. Black?” Blaze contemptuously inquired.

  “No, you’re the first. Bad luck your hot little body is out of my price range.”

  With a quick gasping breath, Blaze’s arm flew out to strike, but his hand was there long before she reached his face, catching her wrist in a bone-threatening grip. As they breathed quiet anger, each resentful of the other’s guile, a rifle shot rang out. Slamming Blaze down, Hazard ordered, “Stay there. Don’t move,” with soft, frightening venom, thinking what a fool he’d been to trust those bastards. Kicking his way out of the shambles of the bed, in seconds he was on his feet and standing at the side of the window, naked, his holster looped over his shoulder. His body was tense. No one. “Is it a signal?”

  Blaze shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  He turned to her, his suspicions palpable. “Don’t move,” he repeated, “or I may have to kill you.” Pulling on his leggings, he picked up his rifle and walked to the door. Dark hair tumbled, eyes blazing brightly, his nostrils were flared in anger. With one hand on the latch, in a voice devoid of emotion, he said, “If you come out of this cabin, I will kill you. I mean it.” It was a cold brutal tone he’d never used with a woman before. “Stay in bed and keep your head down.” His eyes drilled into her. “If this is part of your performance—” He broke off. Turning abruptly in a movement of extreme violence, Hazard pulled the door open, slipped through it, slammed it shut, and was gone before the frightened look had fully crossed Blaze’s face.

  It didn’t take long for Jon Hazard Black to make his plans known to the men at the bottom of the hill—the men with rifles, the greedy men, thirsty for his land or blood. His phrasing was precise and unequivocal, but spoken in a voice bell-like with anger. He stood there silhouetted against the shot summer sky, dark as the devil, capable, brutally rude, and no one in the group standing at the base of the mountainside was even fleetingly inclined to doubt what he said. “My claim is not for sale. I’m keeping Miss Braddock as a hostage just in case any of you seriously consider taking me on. I’ll kill her at the first sign of treachery. Good day, gentlemen.”

  The words, stentorian and raised to pass down the long distance, reached the cabin as well and each word was etched like flame in Blaze’s horrified mind. He was keeping her here? He couldn’t, she thought, but knew as instantly, he very well could. How could he, she heatedly considered next, and then, with a spark of annoyance, knew he would find it infinitely easy. She was out of the bed and halfway across the room when he came in. “No! Damn you, you can’t!” she irrationally screamed. “You can’t keep me here!”

  Taking a cotton shirt of his, from a hook near the door, he tossed it at her. “I’m not asking your permission,” he quietly said, “and if you could have repressed your female inclination to meddle,” he added, cuttingly, “you wouldn’t be here right now, ravished, naked, and my hostage. Whatever it is that drives you, Miss Braddock, to interfere in a man’s world, to interfere, once too often, in my life,” said Hazard, his voice brittle with hard-controlled temper, “that fixation is what put you where you are right now. Don’t blame me. Blame yourself.” Willing his eyes away from her lush nakedness, so striking it made him uncomfortable, he ordered austerely, “Put that shirt on; you’re distracting as hell.”

  Her flesh breathed sweetness and warmth and her magnificent breasts, round and still rosy from lovemaking, lay high and ripe for the taking. Naked, trembling with fury, he found her a heady, irresistible provocation. Lord, she looked good. Fiery, disdainful, haughty, and … too damned inviting. Restraining himself with effort, he cautioned himself against succumbing to her lure, as he had so easily before, when all his lofty principles had been burned away with a touch of her lips. He turned to slide his rifle back on the tack above the door.

  “You bastard! You can’t keep me hostage!” Blaze cried with white-hot rage, launching into a volley of obscenities, to which Hazard listened, his back uncompromisingly
rigid. “… You can’t do it,” she finished in a breathless frenzy, standing stiff, pale, unyielding, clutching his shirt in one hand, refusing to believe what was happening.

  Hazard turned sharply and stood, considering, across the small distance separating them, an ominous glint in his eyes. “Good God, you fool. Can’t?” he said and laughed, a short unpleasant sound. “But I just have, Miss Braddock, and if you’d put a lid on your irreducible ego, you’d realize you’re not out East now with your Papa and his friends and all their connections. There’s no one here but me to enforce can or can’t. So you can argue mountains into desert sand over how or what or why, but as long as I’m on the right end of my rifle,” said Hazard with simple truth, “I can do anything I want.”

  There was a sickening silence. It was what unnerved her most—the unassailable self-esteem. “My father will kill you,” she whispered finally, her hands shaking on the tightly held fabric.

  “Not likely … if he fancies you alive. You’ve been promised a spectacularly close view of my rifle barrel should anyone get too near me.” The ominous glint suddenly became hard as flint. “Now, put that shirt on, dammit, you conniving, avaricious little bitch, or I’ll fuck you right where you’re standing. Naked females have a predictable effect on me. Of course,” said Hazard with a mockery of a smile, “that’s what you came up here for, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t care to disoblige Buhl Mining’s concept of business ethics. Just what were your orders—three times? four? How much was my claim supposed to be worth?”

  Blaze hurriedly slipped the shirt on and fumblingly buttoned it under the dark, contemptuous eyes raking her. When she finished and was covered now to midthigh, Hazard said, suddenly impatient with trivial argument, “As long as you’re staying we can haggle over the numbers later. Right now, we might as well lay down the rules. I spend most of my time outside …”

  Blaze’s face was unflinching. “I’ll run away.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t notice,” Hazard remarked impassively, “there’s a lock on the door. If you’re going to be troublesome, I’ll lock you in.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she curtly snapped, still dumb-founded at the idea of captivity.

  He exhaled slowly and silently counted to ten. “I would and I will, if you insist on running away.”

  “I can’t imagine how you can possibly make me stay,” Blaze disdainfully retorted, her whims having ordered the world to her perfection for nineteen years.

  A cold, impersonal gaze assessed her briefly. “Then your imagination is uncommonly poor. I know a score of ways to make you stay, Miss Braddock, and several of them aren’t pleasant. I won’t go into detail. It would upset your digestion.”

  “You’d abuse a lady?” she breathed in astonishment.

  “My apologies, of course,” said Hazard with ironic politeness, “but I don’t remember inviting you. Under the circumstances, it’s up to you how you’re treated. I expect my orders to be obeyed, that’s all.”

  “You are a damned petty tyrant.” Each word was lapidary and brittle with cold.

  “No,” he said, forbearingly, with a quiet sigh, “only a man trying to mind his own business. I think petty and tyrant more aptly apply to Buhl Mining, with their small nastinesses and autocratic iniquities. But we can argue economics some other time. All my evenings are free. Now,” he went on in an uninflected, flat tone, “I’ll expect you to make the meals, wash the clothes, and keep this cabin in some kind of minimum order.”

  “Are you mad? I’m no servant!” A lifetime of privileged wealth rang through her words.

  “If you don’t,” and his voice sharpened for a moment beyond its level deliberate tone, “I’ll make you infinitely sorry. If you’re going to be here underfoot, you’ll have to make yourself useful”—icy black eyes stared back at the pale, affronted beauty—“in all the usual ways.…”

  Blaze stiffened, avoided the innuendo, and said mutinously, “I can’t cook; I don’t know how to wash or clean. All I know how to do is offer sherry or cognac and keep the conversation moving.”

  “Ah, well,” Hazard said affably, “at least we’ll be pleasantly drunk until you acquire the knack of domestic skills. I’m sure you’ll manage eventually. In the meantime, it might be wise to have a case of cognac sent up.”

  She glared at the arrogant man. “Do you really intend to keep me here?”

  Jon Hazard Black inclined his head.

  “For how long?” she harshly asked.

  “However long it takes to convince that bloody mining company I’m serious about not selling,” said Hazard flatly.

  Hard and fast as a richochet, she viciously shouted, “I hate you, you despicable savage. Everything they say about Indians is true. You have no honor, no decency.” Frustrated already in her captivity, never weak or yielding, Blaze allowed her temper full rein. “You’re cruel—barbaric. I wish they’d kill every—”

  He listened, rage flaring into his eyes, for an acid five seconds before he was on top of her, his fingers biting into her shoulders like steel talons. “You can despise me all you please,” he gritted out bitterly, “but I won’t have you sullying my people with your ignorant epithets. There’s more honor and decency in my small tribe than in the entire United States. And their values and beliefs are upheld daily at the risk of their lives. You yellow eyes only wreck and cheapen everything you touch.” His breathing was harsh, his dark eyes brutally cold, soulless, his sickened understanding showing. “Now, you spoiled pampered bitch, listen to me and listen well,” he went on curtly, quick-voiced and restless with repressed rage. “You’ll do as you’re told, when you’re told. And if I hear another scornful word against my people,” his voice suddenly cooled to its familiar irony, “I’ll whip that luscious bottom of yours so you won’t be able to sit for a week, or worse.”

  For a moment, she stood, her clear-eyed, angry gaze on Hazard’s impervious stare. Furious as she was, Blaze, tight-lipped, decided not to test his ultimatum with its implication of violence more frightening than the threat. She was certain he meant it. The challenge died in her eyes.

  “Very smart, pet,” said Hazard, smoothly filling the pause. “You’re learning fast.”

  “It’s not as though I have any other goddamned choice,” she acidly capitulated.

  “A Mexican standoff.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We both get off alive for the moment,” he said mildly, reaching out to lightly pat her cheek. When she flinched, he only smiled. “Do you think,” he blandly queried, “killing for personal principle ranks higher in virtue than killing for profit?” He shrugged fastidiously. “No doubt we’ll find out soon enough. An edifying experience awaits us, Miss Braddock, don’t you think?”

  “You are a killer,” she said softly. “They were right.”

  For a second, the line of anger between his heavy brows showed, then it was gone, control restored. He spoke quietly then, as he did in extreme anger. “At the moment,” Hazard affirmed grimly, “I’m predominantly concerned with living rather than dying.”

  “You expect to die?” She was incredulous. “Over this claim?”

  “I’ve learned to expect the worst when dealing with the white man’s notion of civilized land development, and I’ve rarely been disappointed.”

  “Buhl’s different,” Blaze said in reproof, having, since childhood, participated in her father’s business affairs and never, to her knowledge, known of a killing.

  “As far as you’re concerned, you may think so. I, however, do not,” he replied with simplicity. Hazard was sensibly paranoid about the white man’s treachery and put little stock in a virginal young woman’s idealism. “In any event,” he went on evenly, “I intend to prove more troublesome than anticipated. I don’t want to sell.”

  “You’re a fool, then,” she retorted with some of her old defiance.

  “Think what you will. I’m past the age where I have to prove myself to anyone. I have my own reasons,” he said with the same weary courtesy, “for wantin
g to stay alive and keep my claim. So I’ll fight for it, however necessary.”

  “Even if it means more killing?” Blaze pressed, never long in fear of anyone. And suddenly, he didn’t seem so dangerous. Only tired.

  Hazard took a long, soft breath and then expelled it. “Don’t be naive, Miss Braddock,” he said with cold, exhausted irony, “about Buhl’s record on brutalization. They kill or I kill, and the loser gets a free pass to another life. The winner, of course, travels through this uncertain world a very rich man.” His eyes were remote suddenly, and he moved away from her to the small window near the door, his profile rimmed against the brilliant sky. It was true. Only one winner was allowed, and on his worst days, he had terrible visions of defeat, convulsive and limitless, the land inundated by crushing tides of westward progress. Stretching lithely, he placed both long-shafted hands above the window and stared out at the scene below, empty now of the group of frock-coated men. His eyes were dark and lightless, his face strained with a private and difficult torment.

  Hazard had no illusions about the ruthlessness of Buhl Mining Company and its officials. He’d seen them come in and take the land they wanted one way or another, without principle or pity. He’d seen them grappling for power, seen the desire in the men without ideals, to annihilate opponents rather than simply depose them. He knew, as well, they’d be aided by many of the territorial officials who were, more often than not, men of flexible conscience and limited concepts of social responsibility. But he knew how to fight as ruthlessly as they did and knew victory was as abruptly possible as defeat. He needed the claim which promised to be rich; he needed it for his people. As heir to his father’s chieftainship, it was his responsibility to see to the clan; it had been ingrained in him in all the years of his training, his sacred duty to his clan, and he adhered to this trust now that his father was dead.

  Since the Treaty of Laramie in 1851, unsigned by any ABSAROKEE,6 but signed by forty chiefs of the Northern Plains, the beginning of the end of the old ways was signaled. His father had known it, understood that passively waiting for their territories to be taken piece by piece was as foolish as waging war against Washington. That was why Hazard had gone East to school, out of respect for his father’s visionary dream for his people. He was to acquire the practical knowledge of the white man’s world, so his clan could adapt to the inevitable changes in their way of life. And when his father died, he’d come home to take his place, to serve his people unto the essential finality of death if need be. Pride drove him in his special kind of commitment and necessity and an isolated dedication.