Only 04 - Only Love

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 abox 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, thedream 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. Butwhen 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