The rest of the Culpeppers were still dancing in place and looking around for the hornet nest they must have kicked over.
«Wonder how you boys would look without your clothes?» Whip asked sardonically.
Snap. Snap.
«Rawboned and filthy, I’ll wager,» Whip continued, «with privates smaller than a rat’s.»
The lash hissed and snapped in savage counterpoint to Whip’s words, flaying buttons from cloth and cloth from flesh.
While the Culpeppers hopped and yelped and their clothes were shredded too quickly for the eye to follow, Whip kept on giving the Culpeppers back the words they had used to bait Shannon.
«Are you going to scream and beg for mercy?» Whip asked. «Or do you like being whipped so much you’ll whine and ask for more? Which will it be, boys? Speak up. Usually I’m a patient man, but you’ve plumb rode my temper raw.»
By now, three of the Culpeppers were bent over, covering their crotches with whatever remained of their pants.
The fourth Culpepper went for his gun.
The bullwhip uncoiled in a blur of speed. Leather shot hungrily around Floyd’s wrist. After a quick, hard jerk, Whip flicked the lash free, retrieved it, and struck again. Floyd yelped and flailed and fell to his knees. Blood streamed from a long cut just beneath both eyebrows.
«I’ll kill the next one who goes for his gun,» Whip said. «That includes you, Murphy.»
«I ain’t reachin’ for nothin’,» Murphy said calmly.
«Keep it that way.»
Then the lash was still.
Silence gathered like a storm while Whip looked over the Culpepper boys. Other than Beau and Floyd, there was no blood, simply stinging welts. Yet everyone in the room knew that Whip could have reduced the Culpeppers to scarlet shreds as easily as he had disarmed Floyd. The attack had been so unexpected and so swift that they had never had a chance to gather their wits, much less fight back effectively.
«Boys, I’ve known outhouses with cleaner mouths than yours,» Whip said. «I’m purely sick of your filth. If you all want to keep a tongue in your head, put a bridle on it when you’re around a woman. Hear me?»
Slowly the Culpeppers nodded.
«Good,» Whip said. «Shuck your irons.»
Four revolvers hit the floor.
«Leave that girl alone from now on,» Whip said. «Hear me?»
One by one the Culpeppers nodded sullenly.
«I’ve given all my warnings,» Whip continued, «and it’s more than the likes of you deserve. Now get out of my sight.»
Dazed, uncertain, Beau allowed himself to be pulled upright by Darcy. Clim helped Floyd to his feet.
The front door slammed open. The four Culpeppers staggered out into the cold wind. None of them looked back. They had seen as much of the big stranger as they wanted.
The door banged shut. The room was empty but for Whip and the storekeeper. Whip looked at the countertop. The flour and salt were gone. He turned to Murphy. The storekeeper’s hands were in full sight and empty of all but grime.
«You be the one they call Whip,» Murphy said.
Whip said nothing. He was looking through the mercantile’s dirty window. The Culpepper boys were mounting up and riding out on their lean racing mules.
Shannon was nowhere in sight.
«Leastwise,» Murphy said, «folks done called you Whip ever since you skun out them Canyon City boys for talking dirt to that half-breed Wolfe Lonetree’s white wife.»
Whip turned and looked at Murphy with eyes the color of winter.
«Where is Shannon?» Whip asked.
«She lit out when you cut Beau’s tongue.»
The bullwhip seethed restlessly. Murphy eyed it as warily as he would have a rattlesnake.
«Where?» Whip repeated.
«Yonder,» Murphy said, jerking a dirty thumb toward the north. «Silent John works some claims up a fork of Avalanche Creek.»
«Does she come into Holler Creek often?»
Murphy shook his head.
The bullwhip shivered and leaped softly, whispering to itself.
Murphy swallowed. At the moment, Whip bore an uncomfortable resemblance to an avenging angel.
Or Lucifer himself.
«How often does she come in?» Whip asked.
The gentle tone didn’t fool Murphy. He had gotten a good look at Whip’s eyes. They were a preview of hell.
«Once a year,» Murphy said quickly.
«In the summer?»
«Nope. Just the fall. For the last four or five years she fetched the winter supplies for Silent John.»
Whip’s eyes narrowed.
«Now her tail is in a right narrow crack,» Murphy added. «That snake-mean old man is all what keeps the Culpepper boys away from her. Talk now is he’s dead.»
Hope leaped in Whip.
Maybe Shannon is free.
A young widow.
Damn, a yondering man like me couldn’t ask for more than a widow like Shannon between now and whichever tomorrow the sunrise calls my name again.
When Whip had first come to the Rocky Mountains, he had seen their emerald and granite heights and felt that somewhere ahead of him there was a cabin he had never seen and a woman he had never known, and both of them were waiting for him, filled with warmth. The certainty was so deep in him that he even saw it in his dreams, the open door of golden light and snow all around and peaks reaching up into the dawn….
But in the past few years Whip had been from east to west and north to south in the beautiful, deadly mountains, and he had found only his own shadow riding ahead of him, pushed by the rising sun.
«Do you think Silent John is dead?» Whip asked.
Murphy shrugged, looked sideways at Whip, and decided to keep talking.
«He ain’t been seen since the pass opened,» the storekeeper said. «A few days later it snowed somethin’ fierce. Pass didn’t open again for weeks.»
«Where was Silent John last seen?»
«Heading out to his claims on Avalanche Creek on that old mule he favors.»
«Who saw him?»
«One of them Culpepper boys.»
«How long ago?» Whip asked.
«Five, six weeks. We don’t keep track of time much here. It’s either snowing or it ain’t. That’s the only clock what matters.»
«No one has seen Silent John for six weeks?»
«That’s about it, mister.»
«Is that unusual?»
Murphy grunted. «Ain’t nothin’ usual about that old snake. He’s chancy as a hog on ice. Come when you least expect and leave the same way. A hard man, Silent John. Real hard.»
«Most bounty hunters are,» Whip said dryly. «Has he ever been gone longer than six weeks before?»
Squinting, Murphy scratched the tangled hair that covered his chin.
«Can’t rightly say. Once, maybe, back in sixty-six,» Murphy said slowly. «And in sixty-one, when he fetched the gal from back east.»
