Only 04 - Only Love

and isn’t the weather lovely?”
    Whip said something blasphemous under his breath.
    Shannon acted as though she hadn’t heard. She reached past Whip, took the pot of preserves, and began slathering jam on a biscuit.
    “Do you prefer sleet or snow?” she asked.
    “Shannon—”
    “I know,” she interrupted. “Such a difficult choice. What about hail? Do you think we could not yell about that?”
    “Doubt it,” he retorted. “I wouldn’t yell about another cup of coffee, though.”
    Hiding a smile, Shannon twisted in her chair and reached back to the stove, grabbing the coffeepot without getting up. She turned back gracefully, surprising an expression of frank hunger on Whip’s face as he looked at her breasts. An instant later the expression was gone.
    Silently Whip held out his coffee cup. Just as silently Shannon poured coffee and replaced the pot on the stove.
    “How about half of whatever you find on Silent John’s gold claims?” Shannon asked. “Would you yell about that?”
    The tin cup of coffee stopped an inch from Whip’s mustache.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Silent John had— has —several claims on Avalanche Creek.”
    Whip shrugged.
    “He worked those claims to pay for food he couldn’t hunt,” Shannon explained.
    “Do tell,” Whip said dryly.
    “I’m trying, yondering man. I’m trying.”
    “My name is Whip,” he said finally, rankled by the nickname.
    “Why do you get upset when I call you yondering man? It’s what you are, isn’t it?” Shannon asked reasonably. “I don’t get upset when you call me a widow, and you’re not even sure I am one.”
    Whip started to argue but knew it was futile before he said a word. He let out a long breath and concentrated on his coffee and bacon for a few minutes.
    Shannon was tempted to push Whip to agree that there was no reason for him to be irritated. Then, reluctantly, she decided that she should quit while she was ahead.
    It was difficult, however. The temptation to bait Whip was nearly irresistible. Frowning slightly, she concentrated on her coffee.
    “My little sister Willow used to do the same thing,” Whip said finally. “My brothers and I decided mothers must teach it to girls along with how to make good biscuits.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Tying men up with words.”
    Shannon didn’t hide her smile before Whip saw it.
    “But we do get even,” Whip drawled.
    “Do tell. How?”
    Whip simply smiled.
    “Tell me about those gold claims, honey girl.”
    “There’s not much to tell.”
    “Start with where they are,” he suggested dryly.
    “Up Avalanche Creek.”
    “Which fork?”
    “East. Way, way up, where it comes out of a shattered rock wall.”
    Whip grunted. “Rugged country. Some of the roughest I’ve seen.”
    “Amen,” she said. “Each time I climb up there,I get dizzy and breathless and I just know I’m going to fall.”
    “You have no business going up to such a dangerous place!”
    Shannon ignored Whip.
    “A grizzly got one of the mules there,” she said, “the second summer I was in Echo Basin. After that, Silent John packed in supplies, brought Razorback home, and walked back to the claims.”
    “Did you go with him?”
    “Sometimes. Sometimes I stayed at the cabin. I didn’t know from day to day what I would be doing. That’s the way he wanted it. He said a hunter can’t kill game that doesn’t have a pattern to its movements.”
    “Cautious man.”
    Shannon shrugged. “It was just Silent John’s way.”
    “Did he have any other work besides prospecting?” Whip asked, curious if Shannon knew about her husband’s other life as a bounty hunter.
    “No.”
    “Didn’t find much gold for all the time he was gone, did he?”
    “We never went hungry.”
    “Didn’t he work for other people if the prospecting was slow?” Whip probed.
    “Silent John? Hardly. He hated people. Anyway, who would hire him? He was wiry but he wasn’t what you would call a strong man. And he was old. He would be more likely to hire something done than to hire out himself to do another man’s labor.”
    “There are some jobs that don’t need a lot of strength,” Whip said dryly.
    Shannon frowned. “Silent John never would have tended bar or been a storekeeper or whatever. He was no good with people.”
    Whip looked at Shannon’s clear, innocent eyes and realized that she hadn’t the faintest idea that she was the widow of one of the most feared man-hunters in the Colorado Territory.
    “You