Only Love Read online

  “Yeah,” Clim said. “We been wonderin’ all winter what you’d look like without them men’s rags you always wear. Are your teats dark like old Betsy’s, or are they red like Clementine’s?”

  “Clementine rouges hers,” muttered one of the Culpeppers. “And thet ain’t the only place she greases.”

  “Hell you say, Darcy,” Clim retorted. “I done left enough tooth marks on them teats to know what’s real and what’s rouge.”

  A small shudder went through Shannon.

  Only Whip noticed, for only he was looking for a reaction from the silent girl.

  Beau gets it first. Definitely. That boy’s manners need some real polishing.

  Whip took a step forward.

  “No,” Shannon said quietly, turning her head, looking right at Whip. “Ignore them. Their words mean no more than a dog breaking wind.”

  The Culpeppers didn’t hear Shannon. They were too busy arguing among themselves about what else Clementine rouged.

  Whip gave the Culpeppers a narrow, icy look and wondered how often Shannon had been forced to endure their lewd talk. Probably every time she came into town for supplies.

  Damn her husband for letting it happen, Whip raged silently. If he’s half as mean as his reputation, he should cut out their filthy tongues and use them for cleaning the barrel of his buffalo gun.

  But he hasn’t, and now it’s left for me to do.

  A movement at the back of the store caught Whip’s attention. Murphy was slowly lifting the lid off a barrel of flour. He handled the wooden lid as though it weighed more than a side of beef. His head was turned toward Shannon rather than toward the contents of the barrel.

  “What do you think, Floyd?” asked Beau over the sound of the other Culpeppers’ arguments. “Is that little girl’s teats big enough to squeeze until they turn red and white and blue like a Yankee flag?”

  Whip tried to control the anger tightening his gut. It was a losing battle. He couldn’t stop thinking how he would feel if it were his woman shopping alone while men talked loudly about how she would look naked and what size her breasts were.

  If Shannon were my wife, when I came back from yondering I would hunt the Culpeppers down like the coyotes they are.

  The thought didn’t satisfy Whip. Sometimes a yondering man didn’t come back. And even when he did, nothing could erase the sickening memory of humiliation in his woman’s eyes.

  Damn Silent John anyway! If he can’t take care of a girl like Shannon, he never should have married her and brought her to such a rough place.

  “Well, Floyd,” Beau persisted. “What do you think about them teats?”

  Floyd belched, scratched his crotch thoughtfully, and said, “I think Silent John is a damned good shot.”

  “So what?” Beau retorted. “We ain’t touchin’ her. Thet was all we was warned about. Touchin’.”

  “And followin’,” Clim added.

  “We ain’t done thet, neither,” Beau said.

  “Not after the first time,” Floyd agreed.

  He pulled off his hat and stuck two fingers through two bullet holes in the brim.

  “Damn fine shootin’,” Floyd said. “Must have been near a thousand yards. Sure never saw hide nor hair of him, neither.”

  “All we done is try to be friendly-like to his wife,” Clim said. “Follow her an’ see she got home safe.”

  “Yeah. We was bein’ neighborly.” Beau smiled, showing a line of sharp, uneven teeth. “Like now. Right neighborly. Thinkin’ warm thoughts about birds and tight little nests.”

  “Downright hot nest, I’ll bet,” Darcy mumbled.

  “Stuck-up bitch,” Clim muttered.

  “Murphy,” Whip said sharply. “Start measuring that flour instead of staring at it. I’m getting tired of hearing dogs break wind.”

  “Huh?” Clim said.

  For a few moments there was silence while the Culpeppers tried to figure out if they had been insulted, and if so, how.

  Murphy slammed the lid back on the flour barrel and walked slowly to the front of the store. He was carrying a small sack of flour over one shoulder and a much smaller bag of salt in his left hand.

  “Do you think she yells?” Darcy asked no one in particular.

  “What you yammerin’ about now?” Beau demanded.

  “Her, what else?” Darcy said impatiently. “When the old fart bends her over a chair and goes to rutting on her, does she fight and yelp and beg for mercy, or does she just let him do it any way he wants and whimper for more like a bitch in heat?”

  Darcy will be the second one, Whip decided.

  A subtle movement of Whip’s right shoulder dislodged the bullwhip’s coils, sending them sliding down his right arm. His left hand closed around the butt of the long lash as the coils fell toward the floor.

  The bullwhip came alive.

  With each small motion of Whip’s left hand, waves of energy rippled through the bullwhip, making the long, slender length of the lash seethe and whisper delicately like a snake gliding through dead grass.

  Whip began whistling softly through his teeth, looking at nothing, yet seeing every move the four Culpeppers made. None of them noticed. They had already decided Whip was no threat.

  Last chance, boys. Clean up your talk or have it cleaned up for you.

  Murphy walked past Shannon, leered at her, and plunked the flour and salt down on the counter.

  “Be back with the lard in a minute,” Murphy said. “Take good care of her, boys.”

  The Culpeppers laughed. Then they stopped laughing and eased closer to Shannon. Beau looked Shannon over with speculative, watery eyes, eyes that stripped her as she stood there, eyes that probed every curve and shadow for the vulnerable female body beneath the cloth.

  Shannon stood like a wild animal frozen in the moment of discovery by a hunter, poised on the edge of panicked flight. She was white and flushed by turns, obviously fighting for control.

  “Dunno how she likes it, Darcy, or if she likes it a’tall,” Beau drawled.

  Shannon flinched despite her desperate attempt not to show that she heard Beau’s words.

  “Know how I’d like it, though,” Beau continued. “I’d cut her pants open with a knife, put those little feet behind her ears, and—Ow!”

  Beau’s screech covered the pop of the bullwhip, but nothing could hide the bright gush of blood from his mouth.

  Like lightning, Whip’s hand flicked again.

  The long lash writhed and snapped, striking too quickly for the eye to follow. Darcy bent over, grabbing his crotch and trying to yell through a throat closed by pain.

  Whip didn’t even hesitate. Surprise was on his side, but only for a few more seconds.

  Snap.

  Clim grabbed his shirt, which was suddenly split from collar to waist.

  Snap.

  Floyd’s hat was sliced in two.

  Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Beau grabbed for his trousers. The steel buttons that had once held up his pants were bouncing and rolling across the mercantile’s uneven wood floor.

  The rest of the Culpeppers were still dancing in place and looking around for the hornet nest they must have kicked over.

  “Wonder how you boys would look without your clothes?” Whip asked sardonically.

  Snap. Snap.

  “Rawboned and filthy, I’ll wager,” Whip continued, “with privates smaller than a rat’s.”

  The lash hissed and snapped in savage counterpoint to Whip’s words, flaying buttons from cloth and cloth from flesh.

  While the Culpeppers hopped and yelped and their clothes were shredded too quickly for the eye to follow, Whip kept on giving the Culpeppers back the words they had used to bait Shannon.

  “Are you going to scream and beg for mercy?” Whip asked. “Or do you like being whipped so much you’ll whine and ask for more? Which will it be, boys? Speak up. Usually I’m a patient man, but you’ve plumb rode my temper raw.”

  By now, three of the Culpeppers were
bent over, covering their crotches with whatever remained of their pants.

  The fourth Culpepper went for his gun.

  The bullwhip uncoiled in a blur of speed. Leather shot hungrily around Floyd’s wrist. After a quick, hard jerk, Whip flicked the lash free, retrieved it, and struck again. Floyd yelped and flailed and fell to his knees. Blood streamed from a long cut just beneath both eyebrows.

  “I’ll kill the next one who goes for his gun,” Whip said. “That includes you, Murphy.”

  “I ain’t reachin’ for nothin’,” Murphy said calmly.

  “Keep it that way.”

  Then the lash was still.

  Silence gathered like a storm while Whip looked over the Culpepper boys. Other than Beau and Floyd, there was no blood, simply stinging welts. Yet everyone in the room knew that Whip could have reduced the Culpeppers to scarlet shreds as easily as he had disarmed Floyd. The attack had been so unexpected and so swift that they had never had a chance to gather their wits, much less fight back effectively.

  “Boys, I’ve known outhouses with cleaner mouths than yours,” Whip said. “I’m purely sick of your filth. If you all want to keep a tongue in your head, put a bridle on it when you’re around a woman. Hear me?”

  Slowly the Culpeppers nodded.

  “Good,” Whip said. “Shuck your irons.”

  Four revolvers hit the floor.

  “Leave that girl alone from now on,” Whip said. “Hear me?”

  One by one the Culpeppers nodded sullenly.

  “I’ve given all my warnings,” Whip continued, “and it’s more than the likes of you deserve. Now get out of my sight.”

  Dazed, uncertain, Beau allowed himself to be pulled upright by Darcy. Clim helped Floyd to his feet.

  The front door slammed open. The four Culpeppers staggered out into the cold wind. None of them looked back. They had seen as much of the big stranger as they wanted.

  The door banged shut. The room was empty but for Whip and the storekeeper. Whip looked at the countertop. The flour and salt were gone. He turned to Murphy. The storekeeper’s hands were in full sight and empty of all but grime.

  “You be the one they call Whip,” Murphy said.

  Whip said nothing. He was looking through the mercantile’s dirty window. The Culpepper boys were mounting up and riding out on their lean racing mules.

  Shannon was nowhere in sight.

  “Leastwise,” Murphy said, “folks done called you Whip ever since you skun out them Canyon City boys for talking dirt to that half-breed Wolfe Lonetree’s white wife.”

  Whip turned and looked at Murphy with eyes the color of winter.

  “Where is Shannon?” Whip asked.

  “She lit out when you cut Beau’s tongue.”

  The bullwhip seethed restlessly. Murphy eyed it as warily as he would have a rattlesnake.

  “Where?” Whip repeated.

  “Yonder,” Murphy said, jerking a dirty thumb toward the north. “Silent John works some claims up a fork of Avalanche Creek.”

  “Does she come into Holler Creek often?”

  Murphy shook his head.

  The bullwhip shivered and leaped softly, whispering to itself.

  Murphy swallowed. At the moment, Whip bore an uncomfortable resemblance to an avenging angel.

  Or Lucifer himself.

  “How often does she come in?” Whip asked.

  The gentle tone didn’t fool Murphy. He had gotten a good look at Whip’s eyes. They were a preview of hell.

  “Once a year,” Murphy said quickly.

  “In the summer?”

  “Nope. Just the fall. For the last four or five years she fetched the winter supplies for Silent John.”

  Whip’s eyes narrowed.

  “Now her tail is in a right narrow crack,” Murphy added. “That snake-mean old man is all what keeps the Culpepper boys away from her. Talk now is he’s dead.”

  Hope leaped in Whip.

  Maybe Shannon is free.

  A young widow.

  Damn, a yondering man like me couldn’t ask for more than a widow like Shannon between now and whichever tomorrow the sunrise calls my name again.

  When Whip had first come to the Rocky Mountains, he had seen their emerald and granite heights and felt that somewhere ahead of him there was a cabin he had never seen and a woman he had never known, and both of them were waiting for him, filled with warmth. The certainty was so deep in him that he even saw it in his dreams, the open door of golden light and snow all around and peaks reaching up into the dawn….

  But in the past few years Whip had been from east to west and north to south in the beautiful, deadly mountains, and he had found only his own shadow riding ahead of him, pushed by the rising sun.

  “Do you think Silent John is dead?” Whip asked.

  Murphy shrugged, looked sideways at Whip, and decided to keep talking.

  “He ain’t been seen since the pass opened,” the storekeeper said. “A few days later it snowed somethin’ fierce. Pass didn’t open again for weeks.”

  “Where was Silent John last seen?”

  “Heading out to his claims on Avalanche Creek on that old mule he favors.”

  “Who saw him?”

  “One of them Culpepper boys.”

  “How long ago?” Whip asked.

  “Five, six weeks. We don’t keep track of time much here. It’s either snowing or it ain’t. That’s the only clock what matters.”

  “No one has seen Silent John for six weeks?”

  “That’s about it, mister.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  Murphy grunted. “Ain’t nothin’ usual about that old snake. He’s chancy as a hog on ice. Come when you least expect and leave the same way. A hard man, Silent John. Real hard.”

  “Most bounty hunters are,” Whip said dryly. “Has he ever been gone longer than six weeks before?”

  Squinting, Murphy scratched the tangled hair that covered his chin.

  “Can’t rightly say. Once, maybe, back in sixty-six,” Murphy said slowly. “And in sixty-one, when he fetched the gal from back east.”

  “Seven years ago,” Whip said. “The War Between the States…”

  “That be the one. Lot of folks come westering during them years.”

  The thought of Shannon married to a “snake-mean old man” for seven years dug at Whip. He had been in Australia during much of the War Between the States, but he knew how brutal it had been for the people caught between North and South. His sister Willow had barely survived.

  It could have been Willy forced to sell herself to an old man in order to survive, Whip told himself silently. But Willy was lucky. She managed to stay alive and single until she met a man she could love. Caleb Black is a hard man, and a damned good one.

  “Yup,” Murphy said. “I figure the gal is a widow by now. There was a mess of avalanches this spring. Silent John’s probably froze solid as stone somewhere way up a fork of Avalanche Creek. Culpeppers must think so, else they wouldn’t be so free with their talk.”

  Whip said nothing. He simply stood, listening. The bullwhip writhed and hissed at his feet like a long, restless snake.

  “The gal will be froze solid, too, come fall,” Murphy said with faint satisfaction. “Them supplies she bought wouldn’t keep a bird alive. Now, if’n she been more neighborly and less uppity…”

  The storekeeper’s voice died as Whip looked at him.

  “I saw a crowbait black picketed just outside of town,” Whip said. “Would he be for sale as a packhorse?”

  “You got gold, ain’t nothin’ you can’t buy in Holler Creek.”

  Whip dug coins out of his pants pocket. Gold coins. They rang as they hit the counter.

  “Start rounding up supplies,” Whip said.

  Murphy’s hand flashed out and scooped up the coins with surprising speed.

  “And when you weigh the dry goods,” Whip added gently, “keep your dirty thumb off the scales.”

  Surprisingly, Murphy grinned
. “Not many folks are quick enough to catch me.”

  “I am.”

  Murphy laughed and started gathering Whip’s supplies.

  BY the time Whip returned to the mercantile leading the thin black packhorse, his supplies were waiting. Within an hour everything was loaded and ready to go.

  Whip swung into the saddle of his big, smoke-colored trail horse and grabbed the packhorse’s lead rope. He rode out with a storm building around him, tracking the girl with frightened eyes and a walk like honey.

  It was sunset when Whip rode down a wooded draw into a clearing. At the far edge of the clearing a cabin was waiting, the cabin he had seen in his dreams.

  And the girl he had dreamed was waiting, too.

  But Shannon had a dog the size of Texas by her side, a shotgun in her hands, and an expression on her face that said she didn’t want a damn thing to do with the man called Whip Moran.

  2

  SHANNON stood in the doorway of the cabin and looked into the eerie radiance that came to the high country during a stormy sunset. All around her thunder rumbled and echoed like distant avalanches. She could smell the storm coming down the mountainside. She could taste it. She could feel it in the freshening wind.

  But the fierce thunderstorm didn’t worry her nearly as much the lone man riding out of the sunset.

  Lord, that’s one big man the storm is pushing toward me.

  The rider was mounted on a silver-gray horse that was the exact color of the stranger’s eyes back in Holler Creek. When the rider turned to check on the progress of his packhorse, the long leather lash coiled over his right shoulder gleamed in the twilight.

  Whip.

  Is it really him? Cherokee said nobody alive could handle a long lash like the man called Whip.

  But what brings him here?

  The answer was a memory of Whip’s clear, quicksilver glances following her, touching her like ghostly caresses.

  Other men had stared at Shannon, followed her, wanted her…but none of them had looked at her like Whip. In his eyes there had been a combination of elemental male hunger and profound human yearning, as though he had spent a lifetime in darkness and she was sunrise shimmering just beyond his reach.