Only 04 - Only Love

strap on Cully’s saddle.
    Willow and Caleb exchanged a swift look.
    “It was my understanding,” Caleb said carefully, “that Whip was working for wages rather than for a share of your gold.”
    “That was my understanding, too,” Shannon said.
    She yanked off the saddle with one hand and the blanket with the other. With a few quick motions she saddled the second mule.
    “But I was wrong,” Shannon said, mounting the mule. “Murphy told me the gold was wrong, too.”
    “You want to chase that by me again?” Caleb asked, puzzled.
    Shannon turned and looked at Caleb, making no attempt to hide the cold fury she had felt ever since she realized how little Whip had truly thought of her.
    “This gold never was dug in Echo Basin,” Shannon said savagely. “Whip paid me off with his own Spanish gold and then lit out for the far side of the horizon. But he made a little miscalculation.”
    “Did he?” Caleb asked warily.
    “Once I figured out what had happened, I suspected Whip had paid me too much, but I didn’t know the going rate, so I tracked down Clementine and Betsy and asked.”
    Caleb measured the flat rage in Shannon’s eyes and decided not to ask who Clementine and Betsy were, and what they had to do with any of it.
    “I was right,” Shannon continued. “Whip paid far too much for what he got from me. So I brought his change. Every damned speck of it.”
    “Wait!” Willow called as Shannon picked up the reins. “You’ve had a long ride. At least come in and rest a while before you set out.”
    “Thank you, no,” Shannon said. “The passes could close at any moment.”
    “But—” Willow began.
    “In any case,” Shannon continued with icy pride, “I respect you too much to bring your brother’s whore into your home.”
    With that, Shannon spun the mule and kicked it into a long, ground-eating lope. The other mule and Prettyface followed at a rapid clip.
    For a time neither Willow nor Caleb spoke. Then Willow let out a long, harsh breath.
    “I wish I knew where my dear brother was,” she said. “I would like to see him again.”
    “So would Shannon,” Caleb said dryly. “Preferably skinned out and nailed to her cabin wall.”
     
    I T was an icy dusk when Whip rode up to Willow and Caleb’s home, his collar turned up against the wind. Snow flurries gleamed and swirled around him.
    “Hello, stranger,” Caleb said, stepping down off the porch. “We thought you were headed for San Francisco and the high seas. I didn’t expect to see you for a year or two.”
    There was a question buried beneath Caleb’s words, but Whip didn’t know how to answer it.He was as puzzled as anyone else to find himself on this side of the sunrise.
    “Neither did I,” Whip said. “But here I am.”
    “And here you’ll stay. The passes are closed every way but the south.”
    “I know. I came in that way. Damned cold on the desert now.”
    Whip dismounted and shook Caleb’s hand.
    “Where have you been for the past three months?” Caleb asked.
    “Here and there,” Whip said, shrugging. “I got as far west as that big canyon where the Rio Colorado lies like a silver medicine snake at the bottom of a deep gorge.”
    “Hell of a place, from what Wolfe tells me.”
    “It will do,” Whip agreed. “I chased sunrise all the way around that canyon’s edge until I found myself back where I started from. Wild, lonely country, every inch of it.”
    “Come on,” Caleb said. “Willow should be finished putting Ethan to bed by now.”
    Whip hesitated.
    “If you’re thinking of riding off to the high country,” Caleb said, “think again. The passes have been closed for months. They won’t open again for months.”
    “I know. That’s why …” Whip’s voice died.
    “That’s why you came back? You know you can’t get to her?”
    Whip grimaced. “Yes.”
    “Just as well,” Caleb said. “Last time we saw Shannon, she—”
    “You saw her?” Whip interrupted instantly. “When?”
    “Just before the passes closed.”
    “Did she finally get smart and stay with you?”
    “Nope. She wouldn’t even stay for a cup of coffee.”
    Whip frowned. “Was she looking for me, then?”
    “After a fashion,” Caleb said sardonically.
    “What in hell does that mean?”
    “I’ll tell him,” Willow said from the doorway. “Come on in, Whip. Shannon left a message for you.”
    “Is she—” Whip’s voice dried up. He swallowed visibly. “Is she, uh, all right?”
    “‘All right’