Only 04 - Only Love

his head to one side, ears erect, looking as though he were about to speak to Shannon.
    “If only you could talk.” She sighed deeply. “But you can’t. So I guess I’ll have to ask Whip why he got so furious when I said I wanted a home and children of my own. It’s not like I was asking him to provide either one.”
    Unsettled, torn between anger and hurt, Shannon walked after Whip.
    But when she got to his campsite, all her questions fled. Whip was quickly, efficiently, packing up his belongings.
    No! Oh, Whip, don’t leave me yet.
    Shannon’s short fingernails bit into her palms as she tried to stem the tears burning against her eyelids.
    I won’t cry. I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think it would be like this. In anger.
    Shannon started to speak, then thought better of it. She couldn’t trust her voice not to reveal her hidden tears. Silently she turned away and went to her own campsite.
    By the time Shannon heard Whip’s big gray horse walking toward her campfire, she could trust herself to speak. Whip pulled the horse to a stop and dismounted without a word.
    “Leaving?” she asked him evenly.
    “I told you I was.”
    “Yes.”
    Shannon looked at her hands, took a deep, secret breath to calm herself, and smiled up at Whip.
    “Thank you for all you’ve done, Whip. If you ever come back through here—oh, that’s right. You never chase the same sunrise twice.” She made a vague, jerky gesture with her right hand. “Well, thank you. Are you certain you won’t take some pay? You’ve done so much and I do have a bit of gold left.”
    Whip looked at Shannon’s pale face and trembling hands and wanted to comfort her and shake her at the same time. Silently he stalked past her and began packing up her camp.
    “What are you doing?” Shannon asked after a minute.
    “What does it look like?”
    The tone of Whip’s voice made Shannon flinch.
    “It looks like you’re packing my gear,” she said.
    “Do tell.”
    Whip rammed some dried food into a burlap bag and looked around for more.
    There wasn’t any.
    That, too, irritated him. It reminded him of justhow close to the edge Shannon had been before he came along, and how close to the edge she would soon be after he left.
    Unless she took a job with Willow.
    “Why are you packing my gear?” Shannon asked distinctly.
    “Because you’re coming with me.”
    Shannon’s eyes closed. I refuse to lose my temper over a yondering man who can’t see love when it’s right in front of him.
    When Shannon’s eyes opened, they were as furious as Whip’s. But her words weren’t. They were well chosen, spoken in a low voice, and very distinct.
    “You weren’t listening very well,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere except up to Rifle Sight to dig for gold.”
    “Oh? You going to eat grass while you dig?”
    Shannon blinked. “No.”
    “Then you better ride as far as your cabin with me. There aren’t enough supplies left up here to keep even a stubborn little idiot of a girl alive.”
    “Don’t worry. There’s no ‘stubborn little idiot of a girl’ around to eat the supplies. There is, however, a thick-shouldered, thickheaded blind man with the appetite and disposition of a starving grizzly who—”
    Abruptly Shannon remembered that she had promised herself not to lose her temper with this stubborn, blind mule of a man.
    “There are enough supplies for a day of digging,” she said with false calm.
    Whip looked at the cloud-seething sky and then back to Shannon.
    “By this time tomorrow, it will be storming fit to drown Noah,” he said. “A smart little girl wouldget her rump moving down the hill to shelter.”
    “A smart little girl wouldn’t be up here—”
    “Amen.”
    “—with a rock-stubborn blind man!”
    “Pack up,” was all Whip said.
    Shannon didn’t move.
    With a savage curse Whip turned to her.
    “You calling me stubborn,” he said coldly, “is like the pot yelling at the kettle for being black.”
    “Do I sense agreement on the subject of your stubbornness?”
    “Right now we couldn’t agree on water being wet, but that doesn’t change the facts. There’s no gold in Rifle Sight. There’s a storm coming. There aren’t enough supplies to see you through the storm.”
    Shannon wanted to dispute Whip’s words, but she knew he was right. She had been so busy playing with Prettyface and arguing with Whip that she hadn’t bothered to look at the sky.
    She came to her feet in a graceful movement that