Christ, other men would have taken what she offered and never looked back when they left.
But Shannon hadn’t offered herself to other men. Only to Whip.
And he had turned her down flat.
Remembering Shannon’s pain and humiliation, Whip suddenly knew why Shannon was out hunting in the icy morning alone. She wouldn’t take food from his hand if she was starving to death.
Grimly Whip followed the tracks, making the best speed that the land allowed — certainly much better speed than Shannon had made, for she was on foot.
She at least could have ridden one of the damned racing mules. They’re hers, after all. Sure as hell the Culpeppers don’t need them anymore, and Razorback will be lucky to make it through the winter.
Whip knew that Silent John’s old mule wasn’t the only creature that would be lucky to survive the coming winter. The thought of Shannon struggling against hunger and cold was like a splinter jammed deeply under Whip’s thumbnail, aching with each heartbeat, painful no matter what was done to ease it.
She’s too damned poor to be so proud. There would have been no shame for her in accepting a place with Cal and Willy. It’s honest work. And they liked her.
But Whip didn’t fool himself about his chances of getting Shannon to be practical and take the job with Caleb and Willow. After what Whip had said to Shannon yesterday, she wouldn’t go anywhere near relatives of his.
It’s for her own good. Surely she can see that. If only I had put it more gently….
Just how many gentle ways are there to tell a girl not to touch you, especially when you would move heaven and earth and take on hell just to be touched by her?
The thought of being caressed by Shannon’s warm and loving hands made Whip shift uncomfortably in the saddle. His own swift, pulsing arousal made him angry with himself, with her, with everything. He had never been this vulnerable to a woman in his entire life.
He didn’t like it one damned bit.
Hurry up, Reno. Find the gold that will free Shannon from this place.
And me.
The tracks Whip was following veered abruptly. As soon as he looked up, he understood why. Off to the right was a small clearing. Through the screen of trees he could see that deer tracks circled the clearing partway and then dashed across the fresh snow in the center as though the deer had been startled into flight.
Whip reined Sugarfoot over to the edge of the clearing and confirmed what he had already guessed. Several deer had been browsing along the margin of forest and meadow. The wind must have been on Shannon’s side, because she got within one hundred feet of them before they discovered her.
There was an area of trampled snow where Shannon had stood. Spent shotgun shells lay where they had been pulled out of the chambers and dropped as she reloaded.
A closer examination of the deer tracks gave a picture of animals eating shrubs one minute and running flat out the next. There was no sign of blood in the tracks.
Must have been a clean miss, Whip thought.
The rest of the tracks made it clear that Shannon and Prettyface were in hard pursuit of their quarry. The deep, skidding impressions in the snow told of a girl running recklessly across the meadow and into the forest, leaping small obstacles and scrambling over larger ones. The tracks of a large canine ran alongside Shannon’s. The raggedness of the dog’s stride told Whip that Prettyface was favoring his wounded haunch.
Abruptly Whip flung his head up toward the peak looming above and listened with every sense in his body.
He heard only silence.
Uneasiness blossomed darkly in him. He had a clear, uncanny certainty that Shannon had just called his name.
He listened again with an intensity that made him ache. Nothing came to him but the increased wailing of the wind.
Grimly Whip forced his attention back to the tracks in the snow.
Shannon never should have taken Prettyface along. What was she thinking of? he asked himself bitterly.
Hell, if she was thinking at all, she never would have left the cabin.
But Whip was too late to do anything about that, just as he had been too late to prevent Shannon from setting off into the frigid morning in search of food he could have — and would have — hunted for her.
A tracking snow might be pretty as the devil’s smile, but like the devil, it hides a lot of mischief.
The tracks led across a boulder-strewn creek where snow hid broken branches and logs slick with snow and water. Sugarfoot was a fine trail horse, but he had to pick his way with care.
Suddenly, spots of blood gleamed brightly among the tracks. The spots dogged one deer’s tracks, sticking with them no matter what the terrain or where the other deer veered off to find cover.
Shannon didn’t miss after all. Not completely.
When Whip saw clear signs that Shannon had slipped and fallen, his temper mounted. A bleak, unspeakable anxiety was pressing against his guts, chilling him.
He kept hearing Shannon calling his name with an urgency that was making him wild.
Yet he knew that the only sound in the landscape was that of the keening, ice-tipped wind.
The little fool. She could break an ankle running like that. A wounded deer can go for miles or days, depending on the wound. If she keeps running she’ll sweat and when she stops running the sweat will freeze.
Whip didn’t want to think about what would happen after that. He had found more than one man dead of cold or wandering around with no more brains than a bucket of sand, too numbed by cold even to think.
The reckless trail went on, crossing and recrossing the creek as the deer bounded ahead. The signs of blood became more pronounced and frequent. One deer was tiring, struggling to keep up with its companions.
The ravine gouged out by the creek became steeper and the way got more rough. Even the deer that weren’t wounded had a hard time of it. Despite having four agile feet apiece, there were signs that the animals slipped on the rough, snowy terrain almost as often as Shannon and Prettyface did.
Abruptly Shannon’s tracks shortened from a full running stride to a complete halt. Spent shotgun shells poked up from the snow, telling their own story.
Whip stood in the stirrups and looked around. He quickly sported the remains of the deer. Shannon had dressed it out with an efficiency that told Whip this part of hunting wasn’t new to her. What meat she couldn’t carry, she had strung up on a rope over a high branch, keeping the venison beyond the reach of other predators.
Well, Silent John was good for something, I guess. The hide itself won’t be worth much from all the buckshot holes, and a man will have to be real careful not to crack a tooth on stray chunks of lead, but the meat will fill an empty belly just fine.
Shannon’s tracks aimed toward a notch just ahead, a side ravine that snaked up and over the shoulder of the mountain. Whip’s past explorations told him that the notch would open out into a steep forested slope about half a mile from the cabin. Except for having to cross a fork of Avalanche Creek several times getting through the notch, the trail was a handy shortcut back to the cabin for someone on foot.
Whip wasn’t on foot.
For a moment he was tempted to push as far up the notch as he could on horseback, just to ease the clammy fear in his gut that something had happened to Shannon.
Don’t be a bigger fool than you already are, Whip advised himself harshly. The trail ahead is no worse than the one behind. There’s no point making Sugarfoot walk in ice water and take a chance of breaking a leg on those damned slippery rocks just to see Shannon’s tracks heading up and out of the notch.
Yet Whip wanted very much to do just that. The uneasiness that had begun shortly after he started tracking Shannon had grown into flat-out fear.
Common sense told Whip that Shannon was all right.
Instinct whispered a different message, her voice calling wildly to him in the silence.
Abruptly Whip reined Sugarfoot around and headed back down the ravine. Although he was savagely uneasy, he didn’t hurry the big gelding as it picked its way over the uneven ground. He kept reminding himself that by the time he reached the cabin, Shannon would already be safe inside. There would be a cheerful fire and
