Blaze: Chapter 42

Hazard and Blaze ride into a collection of rocks that Hazard knows from all his Indian scouting days. He sets Blaze carefully in the shade and surveys the land below. He spots four riders following their trail. Hazard decides his best idea is to face them from the rocks and he asks Blaze if she knows how to shoot. Blaze says she does, kinda, and Hazard giver her a rifle and says he'll be back soon. Blaze: Don't you mean IF you come back. Hazard: WHEN I come back. I promise. I'm not quite sure HOW Hazard has the ability to see the future and act so damn confident but what do I know? I've never written a romance novel!

Hazard sets a trap by putting one horse in the field running along the creek (convenient) and the other horse he snags the bridle in a tree, so i looks like he got stuck there. Hazard hopes his attention to detail will attract the trackers close enough so he can get a clean shot. Isn't he clever! He heads back into the rock, takes the rifle from Blaze and settles in to wait. Eventually he sees the trackers coming up the creek bed, two he recognizes as this dude from this thing who is super deadly and the other dude is from this other thing and he is also super deadly. There are more detailed descriptions in the book, but since these men are due to be dead soon (What?! That's not a spoiler! You can't tell me you didn't see that coming!) I don't see any reason to go through a lengthy description. So Hazard shoots both of them with one shot (HOW DOES HE DO THAT? I mean... all they say is he fires a shot and two men fall down. What the hell?! I didn't even know Hazard was PLANNING on doing such a thing until he did it! I can't decide if this is sneaky or poor set up on the authors part.) and then goes down into the creek bed to flush the other two dudes out (the less deadly ones).

Hazard flushes out the two other dudes by jumping into the creek bed and starts to fight them. Blaze, freaking out but keeping her shit together, shoots one from the rocks (WITHOUT HITTING HAZARD WHICH IS AMAZING) and Hazard shoots the other. Hazard confirms the dudes are dead (Yup. They're dead.) and goes back to the rocks and Blaze. They coo at each other and make starry eyed looks at each other a bunch. Blaze and Hazard both think about the INSURMOUNTABLE ODDS AGAINST THEM, but decide its best not to talk about because, hey, we just lived through that shit! They saddle back up and start to ride into the territory, thinking that they've got problems, but it'll be okay, because we're TOGETHER (gag).