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.»

«Seven years ago,» Whip said. «The War Between the States…»

«That be the one. Lot of folks come westering during them years.»

The thought of Shannon married to a «snake-mean old man» for seven years dug at Whip. He had been in Australia during much of the War Between the States, but he knew how brutal it had been for the people caught between North and South. His sister Willow had barely survived.

It could have been Willy forced to sell herself to an old man in order to survive, Whip told himself silently. But Willy was lucky. She managed to stay alive and single until she met a man she could love. Caleb Black is a hard man, and a damned good one.

«Yup,» Murphy said. «I figure the gal is a widow by now. There was a mess of avalanches this spring. Silent John’s probably froze solid as stone somewhere way up a fork of Avalanche Creek. Culpeppers must think so, else they wouldn’t be so free with their talk.»

Whip said nothing. He simply stood, listening. The bullwhip writhed and hissed at his feet like a long, restless snake.

«The gal will be froze solid, too, come fall,» Murphy said with faint satisfaction. «Them supplies she bought wouldn’t keep a bird alive. Now, if’n she been more neighborly and less uppity…»

The storekeeper’s voice died as Whip looked at him.

«I saw a crowbait black picketed just outside of town,» Whip said. «Would he be for sale as a packhorse?»

«You got gold, ain’t nothin’ you can’t buy in Holler Creek.»

Whip dug coins out of his pants pocket. Gold coins. They rang as they hit the counter.

«Start rounding up supplies,» Whip said.

Murphy’s hand flashed out and scooped up the coins with surprising speed.

«And when you weigh the dry goods,» Whip added gently, «keep your dirty thumb off the scales.»

Surprisingly, Murphy grinned. «Not many folks are quick enough to catch me.»

«I am.»

Murphy laughed and started gathering Whip’s supplies.

BY the time Whip returned to the mercantile leading the thin black packhorse, his supplies were waiting. Within an hour everything was loaded and ready to go.

Whip swung into the saddle of his big, smoke-colored trail horse and grabbed the packhorse’s lead rope. He rode out with a storm building around him, tracking the girl with frightened eyes and a walk like honey.

It was sunset when Whip rode down a wooded draw into a clearing. At the far edge of the clearing a cabin was waiting, the cabin he had seen in his dreams.

And the girl he had dreamed was waiting, too.

But Shannon had a dog the size of Texas by her side, a shotgun in her hands, and an expression on her face that said she didn’t want a damn thing to do with the man called Whip Moran.

2

Shannon stood in the doorway of the cabin and looked into the eerie radiance that came to the high country during a stormy sunset. All around her thunder rumbled and echoed like distant avalanches. She could smell the storm coming down the mountainside. She could taste it. She could feel it in the freshening wind.

But the fierce thunderstorm didn’t worry her nearly as much the lone man riding out of the sunset.

Lord, that’s one big man the storm is pushing toward me.

The rider was mounted on a silver-gray horse that was the exact color of the stranger’s eyes back in Holler Creek. When the rider turned to check on the progress of his packhorse, the long leather lash coiled over his right shoulder gleamed in the twilight.

Whip.

Is it really him? Cherokee said nobody alive could handle a long lash like the man called Whip.

But what brings him here?

The answer was a memory of Whip’s clear, quicksilver glances following her, touching her like ghostly caresses.

Other men had stared at Shannon, followed her, wanted her…but none of them had looked at her like Whip. In his eyes there had been a combination of elemental male hunger and profound human yearning, as though he had spent a lifetime in darkness and she was sunrise shimmering just beyond his reach.

Shannon’s heartbeat hammered wildly inside her chest while Whip rode slowly closer. The double-barreled shotgun lay cold and heavy in her hands. The gun was loaded, the hammers were back, and her finger rested across both triggers.

Beside Shannon a huge brindle dog snarled softly, sensing his mistress’s unease. Bigger than a mastiff, leggy as a timber wolf, as thick through the chest as a pony, the dog clearly outweighed Shannon. Just as clearly, the dog was protective of her. Fangs as long as Shannon’s thumb gleamed whitely below the beast’s curled upper lip.

«Easy, Prettyface,» Shannon said softly to the dog.

Prettyface subsided, but the ruff still stood out on his powerful neck. His ears remained flat against his massive skull in blunt warning of his temperament.

Whip kept riding closer, until Shannon could see the clear silver of his eyes. His hunger was equally clear, a yearning both direct and complex. That yearning had haunted Shannon all the way back to the cabin.

It haunted her still.

«That’s far enough, mister,» Shannon said steadily. «What do you want?»

To her relief, Whip reined in his horse and tipped his hat politely to her.

«Evening, ma’am,» he said. «You left Murphy’s store so quickly that you forgot most of your supplies.»

Shannon’s eyes searched the quicksilver and shadows of Whip’s eyes.

She hadn’t made a mistake. She wasn’t dreaming. The stranger called Whip was here, in her clearing.

And he wanted her.

«Itisyou,» she said huskily. «Whip. That’s what they call you, isn’t it?»

«Out here, yes.»

Shannon knew better than to ask if Whip had any other name, a given name, a Christian name, a home and a family. West of the Mississippi you called a man sir, mister, or whatever nickname he accepted. If he wanted to be called something else, he would tell you quickly enough.

Shannon’s glance went over Whip with a curious longing. The rhythm of his words and his muted drawl were those of a man who hadn’t been raised in eastern slums or crude western gold camps. He was southern, but not from the Deep South. Perhaps not even Confederate.

«Are you…Did you…?» Shannon took a quick breath. «Did those Culpeppers hurt you?»

Whip smiled slowly.

Shannon’s breath lodged in her throat, making her ache. Whip had the smile of a recently fallen angel, gentle and rueful and so darkly beautiful it almost brought her to her knees.

«No, Shannon,» Whip said. «They didn’t hurt me.»

«You’re sure?»

«Yes.»

The breath Shannon had been holding came out in a ragged sigh.

Lightning raked the mountain peaks that rose around the clearing. Wind surged, bending delicate aspens whose branches were still bare of leaves. With the wind came a prolonged rumble of thunder and a quicksilver taste of rain.

«You shouldn’t have interfered,» Shannon said earnestly. «The last man who stood up for me against the Culpeppers got stomped so bad that he died.»

Gray eyes narrowed.

«Those boys have the manners of a wolverine,» Whip said.

«I tried to warn you.»

«And I tried to warn them. They didn’t listen. So as Caleb would say, I read to them from the Book. Maybe they’ll listen better in the future.»

Shannon’s dark eyes jerked toward the braided leather coils riding so comfortably on Whip’s powerful shoulder. She hadn’t seen the lash strike Beau, but she knew it had. At the first sight of blood on a Culpepper mouth, she had grabbed her supplies and run for old Razorback.

«Caleb?» Shannon asked.

It was the only thing she could think of to say, for the smile was gone from Whip’s face. Now he was looking at her like she was food and he was a man who had gone hungry far too long.

What frightened Shannon was how much a part of her wanted to ease this one man’s hunger.

I’m still scared after what happened in town, Shannon told herself stoutly. Tomorrow I’ll go see Cherokee. Then I won’t feel so alone that a stranger’s smile turns my heart upside down and makes my knees shaky.

«Caleb Black,» Whip explained gently, «is my sister Willow’s husband. They have a ranch west of here. So does my brother Reno, and his wife, Eve.»

«Oh.»

Shannon forced herself to breathe normally. Her hands ached from being clenched around the heavy shotgun, but she wasn’t about to put the weapon down. She had seen how terrifyingly fast that bullwhip could move.

«I’m Shannon Conner, uh, Smith,» she said. Then added hastily, «Smith is my married name.»

Whip frowned as though he didn’t like the reminder that she was married.

«Is it all right if I get down and give you the supplies you left behind?»

«All right?» she asked, perplexed.

«The shotgun,» Whip said gently.

«Oh. That.»

Whip made no attempt to hide his amusement at his effect on Shannon Conner Smith.