"I can guarantee that. I've been practicing survival for twenty-six years. This is a lark compared to Vicksburg and the Wilderness Campaign."
"You really enjoy it, don't you?"
In the half-dark of the shadows where Hazard lay, she could only imagine his smile. "Horse raids are amusing sport. Now tell me you'll miss me."
"You know I will; I just hope," she murmured, her mouth pursing in a brief moue, "it won't be permanently."
Hazard laughed, then kissed the tip of her nose. "Would I risk my life when I've you to come back to?"
"No, I guess not," Blaze replied, a smugly mischievous smile lighting her face.
He laughed again, pleased her plaintiveness had disappeared. He much preferred her playful arrogance. "If you need anything while I'm gone… besides that," he amended viewing her half-raised brow. "And keep in mind," he facetiously went on, although dead-serious at base, "my ideas of territorial rights are decidedly primitive."
"Is Little Moon going along?"
"I don't know."
"Keep in mind, if she should," Blaze firmly stated, "I have notions of territorial rights as unequivocal as yours."
"You have my word of honor," Hazard solemnly pledged. And when his strong arms closed around her, she felt the love of the universe was hers.
AT THE last moment, though, she wasn't admirably brave when he left, throwing herself weeping into his arms. He kissed her tenderly and, far from thinking her tears foolish, felt like crying himself. It was their first separation.
"You will be careful?"
"I'm always careful," he lied.
"No heroics!"
He kissed her rosy cheek and smiled. "None."
"Are you sure you need more horses?"
"Need?" He gave her a startled look, as if sure she should have known. "It's a game, bia. Need doesn't signify."
"How about my need?"
"That," he said, his voice warm as an August sun, "is another matter." Their eyes met, like two small children on a lark. She'd remember the magic all her life. "Red Plume will take care of you. Be good."
"And if I'm not?" Azure eyes were saucy.
"Why do you think I'm taking Spirit Eagle with me?"
"Don't you trust me?"
"Of course," he soothed.
"What if I'm bored?"
"I'll be back before the boredom is fatal. My word on it." He pulled an eagle feather from his headpiece and tucked it behind her ear. The Absarokee considered the eagle feather a sign of success. Hazard looked down into the face of his woman, looked long, for he might never see her again. Then he kissed her and he was gone.
HAZARD and twenty braves with their guns and their knives and war clubs and sticks, their saddlebags of meat, dressed in full war regalia, rode their ponies away toward the High Blue Mountains.
Hazard's heart sang as he rode along through the vast, lonely, still plain. There welled up within him a deep love for this land of his, the land his people had fought and died for. Miles of sagebrush and greasewood, miles of waving buffalo grass, rustling softly, buttes and hills and rivers and plains. Cottonwood trees and quaking aspen and willows and pines. Widespread, still distances under the blue skies hovering close. And the majesty of the mountains so much a part of his youth, so vital to his background, he couldn't imagine he'd lived in Boston without them.
Rising Wolf, keeping pace beside him, flashed a smile. "Two horses says we overtake them before the Mussleshell."
It was joy to be riding with his best friend at his side. Like the voice of the night wind which one could not understand, could scarcely hear, could only feel, Hazard was imbued with pleasure. "You're on." His own smile was cheerfully assured. "Not a mile closer than the North Slope. And that horse you're riding will do for one."
"Remember, I talked to the wolves this morning and you didn't. You were too busy being all gooey-eyed with your woman."
"Gooey-eyed?" Hazard pronounced the word as if it were a new taste.
The new expression had struck Rising Wolf forcefully when he'd watched Hazard and Blaze say goodbye. His grin was ear to ear.
Hazard's own smile was untarnished benevolence, as only that of a man in love can be. "For someone who's spent the greater part of two days sweet-talking Breeze of the South Wind down by the river," Hazard retorted, cheerfully at peace with himself and the world, "I'd be careful about casting the first stone."
"I may have sweet-talked, but"—Rising Wolfs eyebrows rose—"I don't think anyone heard me mention marriage. That's for gooey-eyed smitten men," he teas-ingly mocked.
"I had my reasons for marrying her."
"Sure, and anyone looking at her knows them," Rising Wolf drily replied.
"They were cogent reasons."
"Delude yourself if it salves your rakish soul, but it's gooey-eyed to everyone with clear vision."
"Call it what you like," Hazard replied with serene imperturbability and a tranquil smile, "but it's as close to paradise as I've ever been." His brow lifted sardonically. "Might I recommend it to your libertine sensibilities; it's a unique sensation."
"If she has a twin sister, I might be persuaded," Rising Wolf waggishly retorted. "Otherwise the marriage trap's not for me. I like variety."
"Someday you're going to find someone to change that."
"Just so long," Rising Wolf said with a wicked grin, "as it's not too soon."
IN THE next two days Blaze alternated between blind faith in Hazard's ability to survive in any situation and mind-numbing fear. If she were to lose him after knowing so briefly such love and fulfillment, she didn't know how she would cope. For a woman who had always felt only supreme confidence in herself and her own sufficiency, Blaze now reckoned her life as only half of a whole—only complete with Hazard by her side.
And she had another fear as well, adding to her sense of insecurity, an anxiety still hovering on the fringes of certainty. An anxiety which became less avoidable with each passing day. If, as she thought, Hazard had put life in her body, would he, she hesitantly wondered, welcome fatherhood? Would he, after this raid, even be alive to ask? She sent up her own silent prayer for his safety.
"He will be back, won't he, Red Plume?" Blaze had asked within minutes of Hazard's leaving. "There's nothing to worry about, is there?" Blaze only wanted the right answer. And if the truth was different, she didn't want to know.
Red Plume understood the pleading in her voice. He'd seen the love and fear in her eyes when Hazard said goodbye. "Dit-chilajash will be back," he assured her. "He has the power with him." It was true. Hazard had always led successful raids, but Red Plume knew, with an inherent fatalism, that their enemies were numerous and the spirits unpredictable. He'd seen it happen when he rode against the Lakota with the great chief Long Horse, the day Long Horse's medicine lost its power; the day Long Horse died.
Red Plume was left ostensibly as Blaze's companion. In fact he was there for one purpose only: to guard Blaze's life with his own. Hazard was taking no chances on any possible abduction by rash young bucks. Red Plume was a matchless friend in Blaze's current state of unease. In his adolescent openness he responded to her seesaw moods, diverted her with a variety of activities, answered her curious questions about their way of life with patience and thoroughness. And in the process of becoming friend, guardian, companion, and helpmate to his uncle's beautiful wife, he fell a little in love with her himself.
They spent the mornings riding over the peaceful countryside. Red Plume taught Blaze the names of all the wildflowers and showed her the butte they called
Coyote's Ear and the point on the Arrow River they called The-place-where-the-cranes-rest. The sanctuary was beautifully serene, hundreds of magnificent cranes feeding in the lush green inlet. They rode along Arrow Creek where the sage thrashers whistled and called among the bushes and box elders. And they dismounted and sat down to watch the colorful birds the Absarokee call the-bird-that-makes-many-sounds. In the afternoons, when the sun was hot, they rested in the shade of the lodge. Together they practiced Blaze's Absarokee. Red Plume was a patient teacher, quick with his praise, an adolescent delighting in his role as tutor. But he seemed very grown-up when he demonstrated how to sew moccasins. Every warrior carried a sewing kit for moccasins, he explained. It was a basic necessity. And when Blaze, confounded at the image of Hazard sewing moccasins, inquired in astonishment, "Dit-chilajash too?" he said complacently, "Of course."
Young girls brought their meals to them; Hazard had arranged it. Rising Wolfs young nieces he'd asked for, intent on avoiding any confrontations between Blaze and women from his past.
It was a peaceful time, if Blaze's underlying fear for Hazard's safety could be discounted. And in the evenings Red Plume sat across the fire from Blaze and recited, in his beautifully careful English, some of the timeless legends of his people. Legends of courage and hope, love and honor, and some of the private depths of Hazard lineage were revealed to her in the haunting tales. She came to see the deep respect for tribal custom, the quest for the realization of individual dreams incomprehensible to a white man, the veneration paid to courage. The new understanding seemed to bring Hazard closer to her in his absence.
When it was time for sleep, Red Plume would always say good night politely and leave. Blaze was unaware he curled up in a robe under the stars and guarded her.
It was late at night when she felt the most terrible unease. Alone in a vast Indian village, certain she was carrying Hazard's child, she prayed, "Please, God, let him come back safely."
On the morning of the third day, Blaze was awakened by a soft whinny, unusual in its proximity. Rolling over half asleep in the predawn coolness, she dozed off again. Moments later, the sound again awoke her. It was distinctly a horse and very close. Lying awake now, she looked up and saw the pale morning sky just beginning to shade into color.
At the third clear nicker followed by an answering soft neigh, she slipped her fringed dress over her head, rose from the bed, and, walking across the silent lodge, lifted the entrance flap.
A magnificent golden palomino, its glossy coat glistening like new minted gold, its powerful neck looped with a braided rope, was tied to the lodge pole. And slipped under the rope circling its neck was a bouquet of summerflowers. Hazard was back! Her heart danced with joy. He was back. And it wasn't until the splendid palomino whinneyed again, only to be answered by several neighboring nickers, that Blaze glanced beyond the gilded beauty of the horse tied to the lodge. Her eyes widened in astonishment. Numerous other horses, each as beautiful, were tied beyond.
"Do you like them?" said a lazy voice, warm and familiar, over her shoulder.
She spun around. No more than a foot away, Hazard stood smiling. And she imprinted on her memory the image of him that morning: tall, collected, naked from the waist up, his hair still wet from his bath in the river, morning mist rising around him, a birdsong lifting on the breeze. He had a necklace of brown-eyed susans encircling his strong neck, spilling golden color down his sculpted chest. She ran toward him through the dew-wet grass, her face alive with happiness.
He crushed her to his cool chest, pungent flower scent invading their nostrils, and felt a glowing contentment seep into every tired pore of his body. "I missed you," he murmured, his chin resting in her hair. And they clung to each other, their love a tangible blessed presence. Feeling silent tears on his chest, he gently lifted her face and brushed away the wetness with his knuckles. "No need for tears, bia. It was a marvelous raid."
"I'm just happy," Blaze sniffled, attempting a small smile.
"It's hard to tell," Hazard teased, brushing away a smudge of pollen on her cheek. "Are you happy about your present, too?"