Blaze Read Online Free PDF Page B

lightly, that admonition so familiar it didn't require an answer. Then suddenly she giggled and, bringing her twinkling blue-eyed glance up to her father's, she said, "It would be fun, Daddy, just once to swear a blue streak in front of her and watch the smoke come out of her ears."
     
    Billy Braddock tried not to smile. He'd always politely avoided overt discussions of his and his wife's differences.
     
    "I'd say foot-high flames from her nostrils," Blaze cheerfully remarked and giggled again.
     
    "Now, darling," the Colonel began, but a sudden image of Millicent's face after a "blue streak" struck his mind and a chuckle rumbled low in his throat. "It would be a sight," he laughingly agreed, "but promise me now—"
     
    "I know, Papa," Blaze reluctantly acknowledged, her smile diminishing, "I never would. But the temptation's grand at those stupid teas of hers. Do you love me, Papa?" she suddenly asked, thoughts of her mother always causing unease and a sense of loss. Her eyes were large with childlike need.
     
    The Colonel's arms opened wide and Blaze entered the familiar comfort of his loving embrace. "I love you, darling, more than anything," he quietly murmured.
     
    Blaze's southern belle mother, never having taken an interest in family anyway, ignored the emancipated life of her only child. On the rare occasions when she spoke to her husband and their daughter was mentioned, Millicent Braddock would tersely remark, "She's very like you, William." It was not a compliment.
     
    "Thank you," he'd always say, as though the underlying malice had escaped his notice. "Do you think Blaze needs new riding boots or a new fur coat?" he'd ask then in an effort to reach some common ground where civil conversation was possible. Millicent had excellent taste; he couldn't fault her on that, and he relied on her judgment, at least in Blaze's younger years, in selecting a suitable wardrobe for his daughter. In later years, he and Blaze had gone alone on their shopping sprees, for by then Blaze had her own sure sense of style.
     
    If he'd believed in divorce, the marriage could have been ended years ago, but it was a rarely elected choice in their social milieu. With wealth, separate lives were a civilized option.
     
    So in the spring of 1865, the William Braddock family, in company with other wealthy investors from Boston and New York, rode west leisurely on a private train of elegantly appointed cars. The trip was an unhurried holiday and an opportunity to check their newly acquired land and mining camps. The weather cooperated with springtime splendor and while the men talked business and the ladies gossiped, Blaze daydreamed about the rugged, wild land of Montana. For a young woman who found life in society positively dull, and was uninterested in the antidotal outlets to female ennui—shopping and adultery—the summer in Montana offered a promise of challenge. A flare of unfamiliar excitement accompanied her on the journey west. She was swept by an unknown, inexplicable wind of freedom.
     
    Hazard spent a month with his people, then moved up to Diamond City where the newest mining claims were being staked.
     
    The eastern investors arrived overland from the railhead outside of Omaha, in twenty leisurely days aboard specially equipped carriages, and settled into Virginia City's finest hotel. The ladies kept to their elegant sitting rooms, rarely venturing among Virginia City's eight hotels, seventeen eating places, two churches, two theaters, eight billiard halls, five elegant gambling houses, three hurdy-gurdies, several bawdy houses, and seventy-three saloons, on its mile length of Main Street—the quagmires of mud from the spring rains made leisurely strolls impractical. The ladies had also been warned of the occasional violence, murder, and drunkenness abroad in this large and rough community.
     
    The men rode upcountry to survey the new mines. Blaze accompanied her father.
     
    The mining camps were strung out along