Frowning, Whip ran his hand through his hair.
«I haven’t seen one to beat it,» he admitted finally.
«In all the world?»
«Oh, Ireland is green enough, but it lacks towering mountains like these. Burma and Switzerland have huge mountain ranges, but they’re stone and ice with little place in them for man.»
Shannon leaned forward, her eyes brilliant, fascinated.
«South America has a long, muscular chain of mountains with green lands in between clusters of high peaks,» Whip said, «but the high plains are so high that it makes a man weary just to walk a mile. Australia has green mountains with some snowy peaks. They’re pretty enough, but they aren’t real high. And the smell of the gum forest never appealed to me as much as the evergreen scent of the Rockies does.»
«Then it sounds like the best place on earth for you is right here,» Shannon said.
Whip laughed and shook his head, but when he looked at Shannon, his expression became very serious. He sensed the question buried within her words: Are you going to stay in the mountains that are like nowhere else on earth?
«The Rockies have held me longer than any other place,» Whip said softly, «but someday a distant sunrise will call to me, promising me everything I’ve ever wanted and have never been able to name. Then I’ll set out again, because there’s nothing as grand as the sunrise I haven’t seen. Nothing.»
Shannon fought against a sorrow so sharp it made her breath break. There was no reason for her to feel such grief. Whip was barely more than a stranger to her. She shouldn’t care if he stayed forever or left in the next hour.
But she cared so much it was a knife turning deep inside her. She closed her eyes and fought the unexpected pain.
«Like I said, honey girl,» Whip said gently, «I’m a yondering man.»
Shannon’s eyes opened. She looked at the man she knew only as Whip. Then she looked at his savagely clear eyes, eyes that had seen so much and yet moved on to another view, a different place, one more distant sunrise, for there was always more to see.
Always.
I hear your warning, yondering man. Don’t try to hold you. Don’t dream on you.
Don’t love you.
Yet Shannon had the uneasy feeling Whip’s warning had come too late. Somewhere deep inside her, something she had never felt before had awakened.
She prayed that it was only desire.
6
A week later Shannon awoke just after dawn to the sound of an ax taking big bites from a tree. Relief washed through her.
Nothing changed while I slept. He’s still here.
If the Culpeppers came skulking around, they would find Shannon with a shotgun in her hands, a snarling dog at her heels…and a man called Whip by her side.
«See?» Shannon whispered to herself. «I told you he would still be here in the morning.»
This time.
When Shannon hadn’t heard Whip’s panpipes last night, she wondered if he had saddled up and left Echo Basin, never to return again. But he hadn’t. He was still here, still doing all the chores that had been difficult for Shannon to do alone.
Whip had repaired the lean-to where the old mule spent the worst of the winter, then he had trimmed and shod the beast’s hooves with horse-shoes Silent John never had gotten around to using. Whip had rehung the cabin door so that it closed evenly without being shoved or leaned on or kicked. Then Whip had rammed caulking so tightly between the cabin’s logs that the wind couldn’t get past to steal the fire’s warmth. He had chopped down eight trees and was working on a ninth.
Not only would Shannon have firewood curing for winter, with those trees gone there would be enough sun on the south side of the cabin for her to have a small kitchen garden. It was something she had always wanted, but she had given up on the idea four years ago. It had taken six days for her to gnaw through a tree with an ax, and then the tree had knocked her silly by falling the wrong way.
Silent John had laughed when she told him the story about the tree falling on her. But when she told Whip about it a few days ago, he hadn’t laughed at all. He had said something under his breath and then told her in very plain English that if he ever caught her trying to chop down a tree, they would both regret it — but she would regret it more.
Then, yesterday morning, the trees on the south side of the cabin had started to come down one by one, felled by a man who attacked each tree as though it was an enemy.
Humming quietly to herself, Shannon got out of bed and started the breakfast fire. As she worked, anticipation swirled through her like heat through flame. Soon Whip would call out and she would bring a pan of warm water to the bench at the side of the cabin. Then she would watch while he washed and shaved.
If she was lucky, he would overlook a bit of lather on his mustache or in the dimple on his chin. She would stand close to dab at the soap…and then she would look up and see the quicksilver of his eyes burning down at her, and the flare of his nostrils as he caught the scent of spearmint on her hands and breath.
«You’re a fool, Shannon Conner Smith,» she told herself firmly. «You’re letting that yondering man get too close.»
Yet all Shannon truly cared about was getting Whip closer still. She hungered for him in ways that were as old as desire and as new as sunrise.
She struck a match and bent over the open door of the wood stove. The flames caught and entwined with an ease that reminded her of Whip’s masculine grace. Heat filled the stove and radiated out into the room as wood and fire consumed one another.
Is that what it would be like with Whip? Would we feed one another until everything was gone but the memory of heat?
A shiver coursed through Shannon, touching her secret flesh like a match touched tinder; and like tinder, she burned.
Is this what the wood feels like? Does it ache and tremble and cry to be burned to an ash so fine it can fly right up to the sun?
«Lust, that’s all,» Shannon said beneath her breath. «Pure lust.»
Prettyface scratched at the cabin door, distracting Shannon from her study of the fire.
«Oh, all right. But if you snap and snarl at Whip when he comes up to wash, I swear I’m going to get a stick and beat you.»
The dog grinned and waved its long brindle tail. Rows of white, sharp teeth gleamed at her.
«Yeah, I don’t believe me either,» she admitted. «But I have to do something, Prettyface. You watch Whip like you can’t wait for an excuse to jump him. He’ll go soon enough. Much too soon. You don’t have to drive him away.»
Shannon opened the cabin door. Prettyface bounded out and began casting around for scent. Though Whip had shot more deer, the dog still hunted for himself. Whatever venison wasn’t eaten fresh was cured into jerky. It was the same for the trout. Whip was determined that Shannon have plenty of food for the coming winter.
As Shannon shut the door and headed for the dry goods cupboard, she noticed the fresh bouquet of wildflowers set on the small, scarred table. Very gently she ran her fingertips over the tender, scented petals. She was smiling when she reached into the cupboard and began to measure out flour into a battered tin bowl.
Whip was always bringing something to her, little things to brighten up the cabin’s dark interior. Usually it was flowers. Sometimes it was a pebble that was all smooth and rounded from the creek. Once it was a butterfly freshly come from its cocoon. Watching the wings slowly unfurl and become rich with color had been like having a rainbow gather and dance softly in the palm of her hand.
