Only Love (24 page)

“He’ll give her his name and his children and build a home for her,” Eve said calmly. “She won’t have to live on the kindness of others. She’ll have her own home to enjoy, her own man to love, and her own children to raise. He will be her safety and she will be his refuge.”

“No.”

Whip didn’t know he had spoken aloud until he heard the echo of his own savage denial at the
thought of Shannon bearing another man’s child. Whip’s hands gripped the edge of the table until his skin was white. He shouldn’t feel this way about Shannon and another man.

But he did.

Eve’s dark gold eyebrows raised in silent query at Whip’s vehemence.

“She doesn’t have to marry some man and have his kids to be safe,” Whip said doggedly. “All she needs is…”

His voice died.

“I take it you don’t want to marry her yourself,” Eve said neutrally.

“It’s nothing against Shannon.” Whip’s voice was raw. “If s me.”

“Sugar,” Reno said softly, “it would be no kindness for Whip to marry Shannon. She might as well marry the wind.”

“Does she know that?” Eve asked.

“She knows,” Whip said flatly. “She told me she’d never marry a man who loved a sunrise he had never seen more than he loved her.”

“Smart woman,” Eve said.

“Stubborn woman,” Whip shot back. “She won’t leave the high country and it’s not safe there for a woman alone.”

“Why won’t she leave?”

“Up there, she isn’t beholden to anyone for her salt and bread.”

“Very
smart woman,” Eve said.

“Very damned
stubborn
woman,” Whip snarled. “I can’t leave her at the mercy of those miners and I can’t stay up there with her until she comes to her senses.”

Eve made a sound that was sympathetic, questioning, and subtly goading.

“The only way out of the mess,” Whip said, “is to find enough gold on those damned claims to buy her a place in Denver or back east or whatever, just so I know she’s safe.”

“And unmarried?” Eve suggested sardonically.

The bleak anger in Whip’s eyes was all the answer she needed.

“Whip, for the love of heaven!” she said, exasperated. “If you don’t want to marry Shannon, why should you get so upset at the idea that some other man—”

A nudge from Reno’s foot under the table cut off Eve’s words.

“Whip knows he’s being unreasonable,” Reno said. “That’s why his temper is on a hair trigger. If he needs a fight, I’ll be the one to give it to him.”

“
Men,
” Eve said under her breath.

Then she sighed and tried another approach.

“Why don’t you just give her some of your own gold from that Spanish mine?” Eve asked. “Lord knows you’ve barely touched it.”

“In her place, would you take it?” Reno asked before Whip could speak.

“No. But I was in love with a man who was a fool for hunting gold.”

“And Shannon,” Reno said, “is in love with a man who is a fool for yon—”

“She doesn’t really love me!” Whip interrupted harshly.

“Is that what she says?” Eve retorted. “Or is it what you hope?”

“She’s never been around anyone but a snake-mean old man hunter, and a tough old hermit called Cherokee, and a bunch of young miners with the manners of rutting elks,” Whip said. “Of course
she would think the first man who treats her decently is special.”

“In other words, she loves you,” Eve summarized.

Whip grimaced and said nothing.

“Let’s see if I have this straight,” Eve said blandly. “You don’t love Shannon, but you care about her safety. She doesn’t want to be someone’s hired girl. You don’t want her to live alone in Echo Basin, and you don’t want her marrying anyone, including you. So you’ve decided to find enough gold on her claims to salve your conscience before you take off yondering again. Does that about cover it?”

Whip’s eyelids flinched.

Reno’s breath came out in a low rush of air. “Eve…”

She ignored him.

“If you were a man,” Whip began, his voice uninflected.

“If I were a man you’d be beating the tar out of me,” Eve said. “That’s one of the reasons God made women, so that men would have to
think
as well as fight.”

Whip’s expression said he would rather fight.

Eve stood and went around the table to where Whip sat coiled and struggling within a cage of his own making. She stroked his sun-bright hair, so different from her husband’s.

“I love you, Whip,” Eve said softly. “You and Caleb and Willow and Wolfe and Jessi. You’re the family I always wanted and thought I would never have. Be mad at me if it helps. Because I want to help you. I ache to see you so unhappy.”

Whip closed his eyes. A visible tremor went through him. Then, slowly, his grip on the table
loosened. He looked up at Eve and gave her a smile so sad that it brought tears to her eyes.

“You’re like Willy,” Whip said softly. “A handful of sunshine. I can’t stay mad at either of you for more than a few minutes at a time.”

Eve touched Whip’s cheek and smiled in return.

“What do you find in all those foreign places?” she asked softly.

“I don’t think I can put it into words.”

“Will you try?”

Whip raked his fingers through his hair, then ran his fingertips over the soothing coils of the bullwhip on his shoulder. The gesture said much about his restlessness, as did the narrowness of his eyes and the bleak line of his mouth.

“It’s exciting,” Whip said finally.

“What is?” Eve asked. “New land? New languages? New cities? New women?”

Frowning, Whip pulled the long lash off his shoulder and began running the supple coils through his fingers, absently probing for frayed places.

“It’s not the women,” Whip said. “Oh, they’re pretty, all right. Some of them are as exotic as anything you can imagine. But Shannon is a lot prettier to me than any girl I’ve seen across the ocean. It’s not the kind of pretty that wears off, either. She just gets more beautiful every time I look at her.”

Reno’s black eyebrows went up, but he said not one word. Pointing out that Reno felt the same way about Eve would only make Whip’s temper flash.

“The languages are kind of intriguing,” Whip said after a moment. “Chinese is pure hell to get a handle on, but Portuguese isn’t, and their explorers settled some far-flung ports. Between Portuguese and English, I can get by in most places around
Asia, so long as I don’t stray too far from the water.

“And Portuguese and Spanish aren’t all that different, once you get the hang of how to pronounce the same words in a different way. I can go anywhere in South America and Mexico….”

Reno waited quietly, watching his brother wrestle with the roots of his own yondering urge.

Eve stood close by, touching Whip’s shoulder from time to time, silently urging him to talk, to loosen the harsh tension that lay just beneath his surface.

“The cities…” Whip began.

Then he stopped and shifted restlessly, running the bullwhip through his fingers the whole time.

“The cities…?” Eve coaxed softly.

Whip’s wrist made a lazy movement. The bullwhip uncoiled across the floor. The lash popped softly.

“It was the cities that lured me, at first,” Whip said. “I couldn’t get enough of them. Strange ways of putting together buildings, exotic faces, new smells and sounds and foods. Some of what I saw was good and some was plain awful, but it all was
different.
”

Reno nodded and made an encouraging sound.

Eve waited.

“Funny thing,” Whip said quietly, “but after a time, all that difference ends up feeling pretty much the same to me. I never thought about it until just now.”

The bullwhip stilled, then resumed its whispering movements, popping softly, punctuating Whip’s thoughts.

“As for the land itself,” Whip said slowly, “that’s a big part of it. This old world is plain incredible
when it comes to putting rock and water together in new shapes.”

“Yes,” Reno said. “That’s why I came back here. For my money, the Colorado Territory has some of the most extraordinary and curious shapes of land. Not to mention a lot of gold waiting to be found.”

“Do you have your own favorite landscape,” Eve asked Whip, “one you can’t wait to get back to?”

Whip shook his head. “I never go to the same place twice.”

“Then you haven’t found what you’re looking for yet, have you?” Eve asked simply.

Whip opened his mouth. No words came out.

He stood up and walked out of the house into the glorious Colorado day. As he moved, the bullwhip seethed around him, nipping delicately at the grass, snapping softly as a campfire.

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Eve asked Reno in a quiet voice.

“What he has always done.”

“Yondering.”

“Yes,” Reno said.

“Poor Shannon.”

“Poor Whip. He’s not exactly what I’d call happy.”

“That’s his choice,” Eve said. “It’s a choice Shannon didn’t get to make.”

“You sound like you wouldn’t mind hammering on my brother’s thick skull.”

“One thick-skulled man at a time is all I can handle,” she retorted.

“And I’m the one?”

Eve smiled slightly, went to Reno, and ruffled his midnight hair with her fingers.

“You’re the one,” she agreed.

Smiling, Reno pulled Eve onto his lap. For a long
time there was no sound in the kitchen but that of soft words and kisses that started as gentle comfort and swiftly became smoldering promises that would be kept later, when they were alone in the big bed.

When Whip finally came back to the house, the long lash was once again riding quietly on his shoulder. Nothing was mentioned about Shannon or yondering.

Whip permitted talk only of gold—where it was found, how it was found, how to mine it. While Reno listened intently, Whip described the claim he had worked. Then they talked through sundown and well into the night.

At dawn the next day, the silence was broken by a drumroll of hooves. Horses, running hard.

Moments later Whip eased out the back door, rifle in one hand and bullwhip on his shoulder, and his pants only half fastened. Reno stood back from the front window, watching through narrowed eyes. Eve stood beside him, a shotgun in her hands.

There were two horses. Only one of them carried a rider. Reno identified that horse instantly. The redgold coat, flashing white stocking, and tail carried like a red silk banner could belong only to Willow’s prize Arabian stallion.

“That’s Ishmael,” Reno said. “And that’s Wolfe riding him!”

Reno whistled sharply, a signal left over from childhood. A few moments later, Whip appeared around the side of the house, saw who the visitor was, and ran out to greet Wolfe. Whip noted that both horses had been ridden hard and fast, which told him that Wolfe had come on the run, switching mounts to rest first one horse, and then the other. The second horse was tall, long-legged, with
the lean lines of a racing horse and the stamina of a mustang.

“What happened?” Whip and Reno asked urgently as Wolfe reined to a stop in the yard.

“Cal galloped up to our house leading Ishmael, handed me the bridle, and told me to find Whip and find him fast. Then he hightailed it back to Willow.”

Whip looked up into Wolfe’s dark face. Eyes the same blue-black as twilight looked back at him.

“You found me,” Whip said. “Now spit it out.”

“You have a woman called Shannon?” Wolfe asked.

Whip was too surprised to answer.

“Let me put it this way,” Wolfe said sardonically. “If you
know
a woman called Shannon, she’s not staying with Willow and Cal anymore.”

“What? Where is she?”

Wolfe took off his hat, smoothed back his straight black hair, and settled the hat firmly into place once more. Whip had the look of a man on a hair trigger. Wolfe suspected that his next words would set his friend off.

“All Caleb said was the tracks went north and he couldn’t leave Willow alone to follow them,” Wolfe said. “Besides, Shannon wasn’t lost. She knew where she was going.”

Whip started swearing in a language none of the others had ever heard. But they knew it was cursing just the same. Whip didn’t have the look of a man strewing blessings.

He ran toward the corral, cursing fit to burn stone at every step.

“Stop by our place on the way,” Wolfe called out. “Jessi will give you a fresh horse to use along with your own.”

Whip jammed the rifle into the saddle scabbard and grabbed his bridle and saddle from the corral rail. He walked swiftly toward the hobbled horses that were a hundred feet away, grazing at the river’s edge.

Reno glanced at Wolfe. “Are you coming with us?”

“Do you need another gun?” Wolfe asked bluntly.

“Doubt it.”

“Then I’ll stay with Jessi.” Wolfe’s smile flashed, changing the predatory lines of his face to something much gentler. “She started losing her breakfast a week ago.”

Reno’s face lit up with an answering smile. “Congratulations! Other than losing her breakfast, how is Jessi taking it?”

“Just fine. Seeing Ethan born took away most of Jessi’s fears about childbirth. My biggest problem is keeping her from dancing around so much with joy that she wears herself out.”

Whip swung up onto Sugarfoot and cantered toward the house.

“Where should I meet up with you?” Reno asked.

“Avalanche Creek,” Whip said curtly.

“Which fork?”

“East!”

With that, Whip set his heels in the big gelding and headed out at a dead run.

S
HANNON
stood at the door to Cherokee’s tiny cabin. Prettyface was by her side, looking almost as healthy as before the fight. Above Shannon the wild Colorado sky seethed with clouds in every color from pearl to pewter to a strangely radiant midnight. A freshening wind swept over peaks and forests alike, making narrow stone ravines sing eerily and trees shiver and bow.

“Nice-looking mule,” Cherokee said from the doorway.

Shannon glanced back at the old woman. She was leaning on the cane she had carved to ease the burden on her ankle. Shannon suspected that the cane might become a permanent part of Cherokee’s life. The thought made Shannon frown. It was Cherokee’s stalking skills that had kept both of them alive the past winter, when snow had come early and stayed late.

“Last time I saw a mule like that was nigh onto two years ago,” Cherokee said, “when I dusted a Culpepper’s hat with two bullets from more than a thousand yards.”

“They thought it was Silent John doing the shooting.”

“Close enough. I used his long gun. Shoots true as a dying man’s prayer. I was grateful. No need to waste a fine mule with bad shooting.”

Shannon looked at the long-legged mule that was tied to a tree, waiting patiently while she visited with Cherokee.

“After the ride from the Black ranch, Razorback was too tired to go another foot,” Shannon said. “I don’t like riding a dead man’s mule, but there wasn’t much choice. Crowbait isn’t broken to the saddle.”

“Hell, gal, you been riding a dead man’s mule for years. Time you face up to it and get on with your life.”

Shannon winced. “Now that the Culpeppers are gone, I suppose there’s no real harm in folks knowing. Murphy is a weasel, but I can handle him.”

“Sic Prettyface on that old boy. Bet Murphy’s manners perk up something joyful.”

Smiling, fondling the dog’s big ears, Shannon glanced again at the wild sky. The wind rushed over her face, fresh and cold as ice water.

“I better ride soon,” Shannon said. “It smells like snow.”

“Won’t be the first time she snowed in July,” Cherokee agreed.

“A tracking snow would be a godsend.”

Cherokee straightened, shifting her weight gingerly. Though she had wrapped her foot and applied every poultice she knew, her ankle was being stubborn about healing.

“Going hunting?” Cherokee asked.

“Sure am,” Shannon said with a cheerfulness that went no farther than her smile.

The old woman grunted, turned, and limped back into the cabin. When she returned, she had a
box of shotgun shells grasped in her gnarled fingers. She held out the box to Shannon.

“Go on, take ’em,” Cherokee said impatiently. “I can’t hunt for a bit and there’s no sense in letting a good tracking snow go to waste. This way you won’t have to get so close to the critter you could skin it with a knife same as shooting it.”

“But I already owe you for doctoring Prettyface.”

“Oh, horseshit. It’s been share and share alike with us for nigh onto three years, and it was the same with Silent John and me for ten years before that. Take them shells and use as many as you need to bring back venison for us to eat.”

“But—”

“Now don’t go making me mad, gal. Prettyface wasn’t no problem at all. Skull like granite and a body to match. He healed hisself without no help from me. Didn’t you, you ornery mongrel?”

Prettyface looked at Cherokee, waved his tail, and turned back to Shannon. The bullet wounds on his body had shrunk to little more than healing scabs. It was the blood that had made the wounds look so awful at the time.

As for Prettyface’s skull, Cherokee was right. Solid stone from ear to ear. Other than a furrow in the thick fur on the dog’s head, there was little to show of the bullet that would have killed a less hardy and hard-skulled animal, or one not lucky enough to be cared for by a woman skilled with herbs.

“Thank you for taking such good care of Prettyface,” Shannon said, rubbing the dog’s muzzle gently. “He’s all the family I have, except for you.”

Cherokee’s shrewd brown glance saw in Shannon’s face everything that she had left unsaid, the
dream of loving and belonging that had been stillborn in a yondering man’s eyes.

“Well,” Cherokee said, “I guess you won’t be needing this after all, seeing as how you’re alone again.”

As Cherokee spoke, she pulled a stoppered jar from her jacket pocket. A small bag hung from the neck of the jar by a rawhide thong.

“What’s that?” Shannon asked, curious.

“Oil of juniper and spearmint, mostly. The bag holds bits of dried sponge.”

“I’ll bet the oil smells wonderful. Why won’t I be needing it?”

“Because Whip’s a double-damned fool, that’s why. Or did he become your man and then walk out on you?”

Shannon’s face went pink and then very pale.

“Whip isn’t anyone’s man but his own,” Shannon said through her teeth. “But, yes, he’s gone.”

“Is there any chance you’re breeding?” Cherokee asked bluntly.

Shannon drew her breath in swiftly. “No.”

“You dead sure?”

“Yes.”

The old woman sighed and eased weight off her injured ankle.

“Well, I won’t need to worry about bringing on your monthly bleeding then,” Cherokee said, “any more than you’ll need that bottle of oils and such to keep from getting a babe that won’t have no pa to speak of.”

“Is that what you give Clementine and—”

“No,” Cherokee said, her voice curt. “Be a waste of time. If the oil’s gonna get the job done, you got to apply it careful like and at the right time. But
when them poor gals is working, they’re drunk as skunks.”

Shannon thought of the Culpeppers and other men like them and shuddered.

“I don’t know how they survive it,” Shannon said.

“Most of them don’t,” Cherokee said. “Not for long, anyways.”

The wind howled around the tiny cabin, foretelling the storm to come.

“I’d better go,” Shannon said.

She turned around—and saw a big man riding toward her out of the wild afternoon.

“
Whip.
”

At Shannon’s soft cry, Cherokee turned, saw the man riding up, and laughed out loud in triumph. Hurriedly she stuffed shotgun shells into one of Shannon’s jacket pockets and the bottle of contraceptive oil and sponges into another.

Shannon didn’t even notice. The lightning stroke of joy she felt on seeing Whip quickly turned to dismay. If he was happy to see her at all, it wasn’t reflected in his face. He looked angry enough to eat lead and spit bullets.

“What are you doing here?” Shannon asked.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Whip asked bitterly, reining in just short of Shannon’s toes. “I’m chasing a girl who has no better sense than to leave a fine home and come back to a miserable shack where she’ll like as not starve to death this winter, if she doesn’t freeze first!”

“You left out the part where a grizzly eats her,” Cherokee said dryly. “But since she’ll be froze to death first, it don’t make no never mind, do it?”

“That’s not true,” Shannon retorted. “I’ve lived alone here for—”

“Howdy, Whip,” Cherokee called cheerfully, overwhelming Shannon’s words. “Nice horse you got. Look of speed about him.”

Whip didn’t even look away from Shannon when he spoke. He did, however, scratch the ears of the hound that had put his front paws on Whip’s thigh and was panting happily up into his face.

“I left Sugarfoot to graze around the damned hovel Shannon calls home,” Whip said. “This is one of Wolfe Lonetree’s horses.”

“Thought so. Get down and set awhile.”

“Thank you, no,” Whip said, still not looking away from Shannon. “Likely it will be snowing before we get back to Silent John’s leaky old shack.”

“It’s not leaky,” Shannon retorted.

“Only because I shoved half the mountainside into the cracks,” Whip shot back.

Cherokee snickered. “Well, children, I’ll leave you to it. My bones ain’t up to the chill.”

With that, Cherokee backed away and shut the cabin door against the cold, questing wind.

“Can Prettyface make it to your shack?” Whip asked.

“You’re the man with all the answers, what do you think?” Shannon retorted.

“I think you’re a damned fool.”

“How quaint. Cherokee thinks the same of you. So do I. You’ve had a long ride for nothing, Whip Moran.” Shannon’s head came up, giving Whip a clear view of her eyes. “I’m not going back to the Black ranch.”

Whip hissed a foreign word between his teeth. Not until he saw the anger in Shannon’s eyes did he admit how much he had wanted to see joy because he was back.

Cherokee is right. I’m a damned fool.

“Get on the mule,” Whip said curtly.

Shannon spun on her heel and stalked toward the mule she had named Cully. She mounted swiftly, unaware of her own grace.

Whip was aware of it. Just seeing her walk raised undiluted hell with his body.

Deliberately Whip looked away.

“If Prettyface starts limping, holler,” Whip said curtly. “He can ride across my saddle. Moccasin won’t mind. Wolfe breaks his horses to take anything in their stride.”

Shannon reined Cully in behind Whip’s horse. It was a lean, longmuscled chestnut with the look of a hard ride just behind it.

The man looked the same.

By the time they reached the cabin, Shannon was stiff from the cold wind and the emotions churning behind her expressionless face. She dismounted, stumbled, and reached out wildly.

Whip grabbed her. Though he was wearing gloves and Shannon was wearing heavy clothes, he swore he could feel her heat and sweetness radiating up to him, setting him on fire. Her eyelashes trembled, then opened fully, revealing eyes whose hunger and confusion matched his own.

But there was no confusion about one thing. Shannon was his. All Whip had to do was take her.

With a vicious word, Whip set Shannon on her feet and backed away even as she reached for him.

“No,” he said coldly. “Don’t touch me.”

Stunned, she froze in place, her hands held out to him, the love she felt for him so clear in her that Whip couldn’t bear looking at her. Nor could he force himself to stop.

“Whip?”

“I mean it,” Whip said fiercely. “
Don’t touch me
.
I came here to dig gold, not to dig a deeper hole with you. When Reno and I find enough gold to see you through the winter, I’m gone. Do you hear me, Shannon? I’m gone! You can’t hold me with your body. Don’t even try.”

Waves of hurt and humiliation swept through Shannon, making her cheeks alternately pale and flushed.

“Yes,” Shannon whispered through trembling lips. “I hear you, Whip. You won’t have to say it again. Ever. I’ll hear you pushing me away until the day I die.”

Whip closed his eyes against the humiliation he saw in Shannon’s eyes, her face, her whole body. He hadn’t meant to hurt her like that. He had just felt a cage door closing and had lashed out without thinking about the cost.

“Shannon,” he whispered in agony. “
Shannon.
”

There was no answer.

Whip opened his eyes. He was alone with the cold wind.

He told himself that it was better this way, for Shannon and for himself, better to hurt now than to spend a lifetime regretting a choice made because his blood was running hot and she didn’t have enough sense to say no.

It’s better this way.

It has to be.

Nothing else would be worth the pain I saw in her eyes.

S
HANNON
awoke at the first unearthly notes of the panpipes. She had never heard the tune before, but she knew it was a lamentation. Grief resonated in the keening, minor key harmonies and shivering, wailing echoes, as though a
man was breathing in pain and exhaling sorrow.

The haunting music closed Shannon’s throat and filled her eyes with tears. As remote and desolate as moonrise in hell, the music mourned for all that was untouchable, unspeakable, irrevocable.

“Damn you, Whip Moran,” she whispered to the darkness. “What right have you to mourn? It was your choice, not mine.”

There was no answer but a soulful cry of loss and damnation breathed into the night.

It was a long time before Shannon slept again, and she wept even in her sleep.

When Shannon awoke again it was still dark. There was nothing to hear but the peculiar hush of a fresh snowfall mantling the land in silence. Shivering, she went to the badly fitted shutters and peered out.

Beneath a clear sky and a waning moon, snow lay everywhere, soft and chill and moist. Too thin to survive the coming day, the layer of snow waited for its inevitable end in the rising heat of the sun.

But until that came, every twig, every leaf, everything touching the snow would leave a clear mark. Especially the hooves of deer.

Hurriedly Shannon dressed, forcing herself to think only of the coming hunt. Thinking about yesterday would only make her hands shake and her stomach clench. If she was to have any chance at all of bringing down a deer, she would have to have steady hands and nerves.

Don’t think about Whip. He’s gone whether he’s here or on the other side of the world.

He doesn’t want me. He couldn’t have made it any plainer if he had carved it on me with that bullwhip of his.

The unexpected weight of her jacket made Shannon check its pockets. The first thing she found was the shotgun shells. The second was the jar and its accompanying bag.

With a grimace of remembered humiliation, Shannon shoved the jar onto a cupboard shelf. The shotgun shells she kept, for she would have a use for them. Blindly, forcing herself not to think of anything but what must be done, Shannon shrugged into the jacket, grateful for its warmth. She felt cold all the way to her soul.

Shivering, she lifted down the shotgun from its pegs, checked it, and found it clean and dry and ready to fire. She grabbed a handful of jerked venison, drank a cupful of cold water from the bucket, and eased out of the cabin into the dense, featureless darkness that preceded dawn.

Breathing softly, Shannon stood just beyond the door and waited to see if Prettyface was going to object to being left alone. As much as she would appreciate his company, he still wasn’t fully recovered. He tired too quickly and was a bit stiff in his hindquarters where he had been shot. Another week would see the dog entirely healed, but she couldn’t wait that long to go hunting. A tracking snow such as this one was too good to pass up.