Shannon 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.
SHANNON 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.
Prettyface whined at the door and began scratching to get outside.
«No,» Shannon whispered.
Quickly she moved to the side of the house, where the wind couldn’t carry her scent inside.
Prettyface’s whining increased in volume and intensity. So did the scratching sounds.
Shannon knew Prettyface well enough to predict what would happen next. He would start to howl. That would awaken Whip, wherever his campsite was, and he would come investigating.
The thought of having to face Whip again made Shannon’s skin clammy and her stomach churn.
Even if she could face Whip, he would pitch a fit about her taking off to hunt by herself. Yet that was exactly what she had to do. She had to hunt and hunt successfully, without depending on Cherokee. If Shannon couldn’t manage that, she faced death in the coming winter or a lifetime of taking care of other people’s homes, other people’s children, other people’s lives.
And never having her own.
Shannon wasn’t certain which was worse, dying or never having lived in the first place.
«Quiet.»
The low command stilled Prettyface for a few moments. Then he began a high whimpering that would soon escalate into true howling.
«Damnation,» Shannon said beneath her breath.
She opened the door, grabbed Prettyface’s muzzle with both hands, and clamped down.
«You can come with me, but you have to be quiet.»
Prettyface quivered eagerly. And quietly. He knew the hunting ritual too well to make noise now that he was going to be included.
Silently Shannon and the big dog set out in the darkness. She knew that Whip could follow her tracks as easily as she hoped to find and follow deer, but it was several hours until daybreak.
In any case, Whip was going to be waiting around for his brother to show up, not looking for Shannon. Whip had made it savagely clear that he had no desire for more of her company.
With luck, Whip wouldn’t even come to her cabin. Then he wouldn’t even notice she was gone.
* * *
THE sound of a shotgun being triggered woke Whip up. He lay beneath the tarpaulin and a layer of fresh snow and listened intently. Another shot came, sounding the same as the first.
One man. One shotgun.
No answering fire.
A hunter, probably, taking advantage of the tracking snow.
Whip lay half awake, half asleep, feeling worn out and used up, as though he had spent the night in hell rather than in a comfortable bedroll while snow fell softly, making another warm blanket for him to lie beneath. Through slitted eyes, he measured the peach-colored light in the eastern sky. True daybreak was two hours away, for the sun had to climb over some tall peaks before its brilliant rays could fall directly on Echo Basin.
A third shot came echoing through the cold air, quickly followed by another.
Whip smiled thinly.
Must be a miner. No other kind of hunter would take four shots to bring down a deer. Sounded like he was using both barrels, too.
No sooner had the thought come than Whip sat bolt upright in his bedroll, scattering snow in all directions.
She wouldn’t!
But Whip knew that Shannon would. He had never met a girl more stubborn.
Whip crammed his feet into cold boots, adjusted his bullwhip on his shoulder, grabbed his rifle, and ran to the stony outcropping that overlooked the clearing.
There was no smoke coming from the cabin.
She could be asleep.
Then Whip saw the tracks leading away from the cabin. He began swearing under his breath.
A very short time later, Sugarfoot was saddled, bridled, and crow-hopping his way across the clearing. It was the horse’s way of letting Whip know how much it resented a cold blanket and a colder saddle.
Whip rode out his mount’s tantrum without really noticing it. He was still consumed by the knowledge that Shannon was out prowling the gray, icy predawn, hunting her next meal as though she had no other choice but to fend for herself.
Does she think I’m such a bastard that I won’t hunt a winter’s worth of game for her before I leave? Is that why she’s walking around in worn-out boots and clothing that’s fit only to be made into a rag rug?
The answer lay in the tracks showing starkly against the gleaming silver snow. Shannon obviously believed she had to hunt for her own winter supplies.
A harsh wind keened down from the peaks, stirred up by the rising sun. Whip shivered and swore and pulled the collar of his jacket higher against the icy fingers of wind.
She must be cold.
The thought only increased Whip’s anger.
Why didn’t she wait for me to hunt for her? I’m not so much a bastard that I wouldn’t help her out. She must know that by now.
Christ, other men would have taken what she offered and never looked back when they left.
But Shannon hadn’t offered herself to other men. Only to Whip.
And he had turned her down flat.
Remembering Shannon’s pain and humiliation, Whip suddenly knew why Shannon was out hunting in the icy morning alone. She wouldn’t take food from his hand if she was starving to death.
Grimly Whip followed the tracks, making the best speed that the land allowed — certainly much better speed than Shannon had made, for she was on foot.
She at least could have ridden one of the damned racing mules. They’re hers, after all. Sure as hell the Culpeppers don’t need them anymore, and Razorback will be lucky to make it through the winter.
Whip knew that Silent John’s old mule wasn’t the only creature that would be lucky to survive the coming winter. The thought of Shannon struggling against hunger and cold was like a splinter jammed deeply under Whip’s thumbnail, aching with each heartbeat, painful no matter what was done to ease it.
She’s too damned poor to be so proud. There would have been no shame for her in accepting a place with Cal and Willy. It’s honest work. And they liked her.
But Whip didn’t fool himself about his chances of getting Shannon to be practical and take the job with Caleb and Willow. After what Whip had said to Shannon yesterday, she wouldn’t go anywhere near relatives of his.
It’s for her own good. Surely she can see that. If only I had put it more gently….
Just how many gentle ways are there to tell a girl not to touch you, especially when you would move heaven and earth and take on hell just to be touched by her?
The thought of being caressed by Shannon’s warm and loving hands made Whip shift uncomfortably in the saddle. His own swift, pulsing arousal made him angry with himself, with her, with everything. He had never been this vulnerable to a woman in his entire life.
He didn’t like it one damned bit.
Hurry up, Reno. Find the gold that will free Shannon from this place.
And me.
The tracks Whip was following veered abruptly. As soon as he looked up, he understood why. Off to the right was a small clearing. Through the screen of trees he could see that deer tracks circled the clearing partway and then dashed across the fresh snow in the center as though the deer had been startled into flight.
Whip reined Sugarfoot over to the edge of the clearing and confirmed what he had already guessed. Several deer had been browsing along the margin of forest and meadow. The wind must have been on Shannon’s side, because she got within one hundred feet of them before they discovered her.
There was an area of trampled snow where Shannon had stood. Spent shotgun shells lay where they had been pulled out of the chambers and dropped as she reloaded.
A closer examination of the deer tracks gave a picture of animals eating shrubs one minute and running flat out the next. There was no sign of blood in the tracks.
Must have been a clean miss, Whip thought.
The rest of the tracks made it clear that Shannon and Prettyface were in hard pursuit of their quarry. The deep, skidding impressions in the snow told of a girl running recklessly across the meadow and into the forest, leaping small obstacles and scrambling over larger ones. The tracks of a large canine ran alongside Shannon’s. The raggedness of the dog’s stride told Whip that Prettyface was favoring his wounded haunch.
Abruptly Whip flung his head up toward the peak looming above and listened with every sense in his body.
He heard only silence.
Uneasiness blossomed darkly in him. He had a clear, uncanny certainty that Shannon had just called his name.
He listened again with an intensity that made him ache. Nothing came to him but the increased wailing of the wind.
Grimly Whip forced his attention back to the tracks in the snow.
Shannon never should have taken Prettyface along. What was she thinking of? he asked himself bitterly.
Hell, if she was thinking at all, she never would have left the cabin.
But Whip was too late to do anything about that, just as he had been too late to prevent Shannon from setting off into the frigid morning in search of food he could have — and would have — hunted for her.
A tracking snow might be pretty as the devil’s smile, but like the devil, it hides a lot of mischief.
The tracks led across a boulder-strewn creek where snow hid broken branches and logs slick with snow and water. Sugarfoot was a fine trail horse, but he had to pick his way with care.
Suddenly, spots of blood gleamed brightly among the tracks. The spots dogged one deer’s tracks, sticking with them no matter what the terrain or where the other deer veered off to find cover.
Shannon didn’t miss after all. Not completely.
When Whip saw clear signs that Shannon had slipped and fallen, his temper mounted. A bleak, unspeakable anxiety was pressing against his guts, chilling him.
He kept hearing Shannon calling his name with an urgency that was making him wild.
Yet he knew that the only sound in the landscape was that of the keening, ice-tipped wind.
The little fool. She could break an ankle running like that. A wounded deer can go for miles or days, depending on the wound. If she keeps running she’ll sweat and when she stops running the sweat will freeze.
Whip didn’t want to think about what would happen after that. He had found more than one man dead of cold or wandering around with no more brains than a bucket of sand, too numbed by cold even to think.
The reckless trail went on, crossing and recrossing the creek as the deer bounded ahead. The signs of blood became more pronounced and frequent. One deer was tiring, struggling to keep up with its companions.
The ravine gouged out by the creek became steeper and the way got more rough. Even the deer that weren’t wounded had a hard time of it. Despite having four agile feet apiece, there were signs that the animals slipped on the rough, snowy terrain almost as often as Shannon and Prettyface did.
Abruptly Shannon’s tracks shortened from a full running stride to a complete halt. Spent shotgun shells poked up from the snow, telling their own story.
Whip stood in the stirrups and looked around. He quickly sported the remains of the deer. Shannon had dressed it out with an efficiency that told Whip this part of hunting wasn’t new to her. What meat she couldn’t carry, she had strung up on a rope over a high branch, keeping the venison beyond the reach of other predators.
Well, Silent John was good for something, I guess. The hide itself won’t be worth much from all the buckshot holes, and a man will have to be real careful not to crack a tooth on stray chunks of lead, but the meat will fill an empty belly just fine.
Shannon’s tracks aimed toward a notch just ahead, a side ravine that snaked up and over the shoulder of the mountain. Whip’s past explorations told him that the notch would open out into a steep forested slope about half a mile from the cabin. Except for having to cross a fork of Avalanche Creek several times getting through the notch, the trail was a handy shortcut back to the cabin for someone on foot.
Whip wasn’t on foot.
For a moment he was tempted to push as far up the notch as he could on horseback, just to ease the clammy fear in his gut that something had happened to Shannon.
Don’t be a bigger fool than you already are, Whip advised himself harshly. The trail ahead is no worse than the one behind. There’s no point making Sugarfoot walk in ice water and take a chance of breaking a leg on those damned slippery rocks just to see Shannon’s tracks heading up and out of the notch.
Yet Whip wanted very much to do just that. The uneasiness that had begun shortly after he started tracking Shannon had grown into flat-out fear.
Common sense told Whip that Shannon was all right.
Instinct whispered a different message, her voice calling wildly to him in the silence.
Abruptly Whip reined Sugarfoot around and headed back down the ravine. Although he was savagely uneasy, he didn’t hurry the big gelding as it picked its way over the uneven ground. He kept reminding himself that by the time he reached the cabin, Shannon would already be safe inside. There would be a cheerful fire and mint-scented water to wash in and fresh biscuits baking.
But not for Whip.
The thought did nothing to shorten the two miles back to the cabin.
When Whip arrived, there was no smoke coming from the chimney, no scent of biscuits baking — and no tracks coming in from the direction of the notch. The uneasiness that had been riding Whip exploded into raw fear. He spun Sugarfoot around and examined the sparse, windswept forest where Shannon would have descended from the notch to the cabin.
Nothing was moving.
Whip yanked open the buckle on his saddlebags and pulled out a telescoping spyglass. He snapped it out to full length and held it up to his eye. Between spaces in the trees, snow gleamed whitely in the growing light.
Not a single track marred the perfect snow.