By the time Whip reached the claim, he was somewhat calmer. Even so, Reno gave his brother a wary look when he saw Whip waiting for him just beyond the entrance to the mine. The look in Whip’s eyes would have done credit to a trapped wolf.

«Lose something?» Reno asked mildly.

«No. I found it.»

Reno’s green eyes asked a silent question.

«Gold,» Whip said succinctly.

«Where?»

«In your corral.»

«If I wait long enough, I suppose I’ll hear something that makes sense,» Reno said.

«How much chance do you think there is of finding gold on Silent John’s claims?»

«Real gold? The kind that buys bacon and beans and freedom for dumb yondering men?»

«Yes,» Whip said savagely.

«About a snowball’s chance in hell.»

«That much?» Whip retorted. «I would have put the odds a lot lower, myself.»

Reno smiled despite his irritation with his thickheaded brother.

«I was trying to let you down easy,» Reno said.

«Truth is, horseshit has more gold in it than this mine.»

Whip gave a crack of laughter that was almost painful.

«Yeah, that’s what I thought,» Whip said. «Yet Shannon talked about Silent John bringing pieces of ore down the mountain that were so rotten with gold they came apart in your hands.»

«Then Silent John must have had God’s own claim. But it isn’t on Avalanche Creek,» Reno added with certainty.

«Shannon doesn’t know that.»

«She will when I tell her.»

«Don’t.» Whip’s voice was curt, final.

Reno waited.

«Do you still have nuggets and dust stashed around from your old claims?» Whip asked.

Reno nodded.

«Dig up one of those ingots of Spanish gold Eve gave me,» Whip said. «Swap it for nuggets and dust.»

«Hold it. I don’t have that much loose stuff.»

«Make up the difference with my gold. Shave it or melt it and pour it into the dust or put dynamite under it and blow it to hell and back. Just get that damned gold up here in pieces.»

Reno’s black eyebrows rose.

«Bring Eve,» Whip continued relentlessly. «Salt that damned useless mine. Put on a show with the Spanish needles. Do whatever you have to, but make sure Shannon believes the gold came from Silent John’s claim.»

«If I do what you say, I’ll end up with at least three kinds of loose gold — placer, dust, and shot-gunned into the rock,» Reno said. «In addition, the gold will be different colors from what is found up here. Some of my gold has more copper, some has more silver. Hell, some of it is placer gold, worn smooth as a baby’s bottom.»

«So?»

«So it wouldn’t fool a miner who knows Echo Basin gold mines,» Reno said impatiently.

«That’s not a problem. Shannon doesn’t know gold from granite.»

Reno took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh. Rock dust rose.

Warily, Whip waited.

Reno whacked the hat a few more times and put it back on his head with a smooth, quick motion.

«All right,» Reno said. «I’ll be back in six days with Eve and enough gold so that Shannon can be free of Echo Basin — and you can be free of her.»

Whip’s eyelids flinched in silent pain, but he said nothing. With hungry eyes he watched the arc of the sun across the sky.

«Make it four days,» Whip said flatly.

«Judas Priest. If you’re that restless, just leave. I’ll take care of things here.»

Slowly Whip shook his head. «It’s not that. It’s just that the longer I stay with her …»

Whip turned and walked away without saying any more. He didn’t know how to explain that each day spent with Shannon made it harder to leave her.

And each day made it more certain that the pain of parting would be deeper.

I never meant to hurt you, honey girl.

Yet Whip would, and he knew it.

20

Torn between hope the gold hunt would succeed and certainty that success meant the end of her time with Whip, Shannon watched Reno work the valley next to a slender woman whose hair was the color of gold dust. Their movements were smooth and elegant, in complete harmony.

As Reno and Eve turned, Shannon could see that each held a Spanish needle between one thumb and palm. The forked end of the needles rested against each other, interlocking gently.

There was no pressure from either Reno or Eve that forced the needles into contact. Nor was there any attempt to keep the needles touching. In truth, there was no visible reason for the dowsing needles to remain interlocked while Reno and Eve walked over the rugged land.

Yet the needles did.

«It’s…incredible,» Shannon said.

Her voice was a whisper, though there was no chance of being overheard.

«The needles?» Whip asked.

«The way Reno and Eve move together. As though the Spanish needles were connecting them rather than the opposite.»

«Reno once told me that if moonlight were water flowing, the feel of its currents would be like the needles when he and Eve use them. Ghostly, but very real.»

«Like the feeling that comes when I remember how we…» Shannon’s voice died as a flush climbed her cheeks.

The quicksilver gleam of Whip’s eyes told her that he knew what she was thinking.

«Just like that, honey girl. Interlocking, moving, rocking. Only with us, it’s more like currents from the sun than the moon.»

Shannon smiled and took a shivery kind of breath. «Yes.»

The back of Whip’s fingers brushed lightly down Shannon’s hot cheek. His thumb slid lower, caressing first her lips and then the race of her pulse in her neck.

«Time to go,» Whip said, his voice unusually deep. «Crowbait is packed and ready for the trail.»

Shannon spun to face Whip fully. Pain made her features bleak and her voice raw.

«But I thought you wouldn’t leave until they found gold,» she protested shakily.

Whip gathered Shannon close, wrapping his arms around her, feeling her pain as though it was his own.

«Shannon,» he whispered against her hair. «I wasn’t talking about leaving alone. I was talking about taking you back to the cabin and doing some deer hunting.»

For an instant Shannon’s arms tightened almost harshly around Whip. Then she pulled back and forced a smile onto lips that would rather have done anything else.

«Of course,» she said, looking away from Whip’s too-knowing eyes. «Silly of me. I don’t know what I was thinking of.»

Whip’s eyelids flinched. He knew exactly what Shannon had been thinking of. The fact that he would leave her soon had been haunting him, too.

I don’t want to hurt her.

I can’t stay.

God, why did I ever come to Echo Basin in the first place? Before now I never guessed how much a man could hurt and never show a wound.

Nor how much a woman could cry and never make a sound. Looking at Shannon’s sad eyes is tearing my heart out.

But all Whip said aloud was, «You’ve learned a lot about tracking and stalking in the last few days. By the time deer and elk start coming down out of the high country, you’ll be a good hunter.»

Not that she needed to be. Whip had shot enough game for Shannon, Cherokee, and a starving bear to winter on. Most of it was at Cherokee’s cabin right now, curing over slow fires.

«Hunting. Of course,» Shannon said distantly, her voice as empty as her smile. «Well, we’d better get cracking, hadn’t we? Should I say good-bye to Reno and Eve now, or will they come by the cabin before the three of you leave for good?»

«Shannon …» Whip’s voice dried up.

He swallowed hard, trying to banish the emotion that kept ambushing him without warning.

«Reno and Eve like you a lot,» Whip said finally. «They would be happy to have you visit them.»

«Of course,» Shannon said for the third time.

And for the third time, the words meant nothing.

«Will you?» Whip pressed.

«Will I what?»

«Visit Reno and Eve.»

«Don’t worry,» Shannon said, her voice neutral. «You won’t trip over me if you come back from yondering and want to see your own family.»

«That’s not what I meant!»

«Isn’t it? Well, in any case, it’s what I meant.»

«What about Caleb and Willow?» Whip demanded. «Are you just going to walk away from them, too?»

Shannon gave Whip a look from narrowed blue eyes.

«They’re your family, not mine,» she said distinctly. «I’m not walking away to anywhere but home, yondering man.»

«Damn it, that shack isn’t a home,» Whip said between his teeth.

«It is to me. Nothing you can say or do will change that. Accept it. Just as I’ve accepted that you’ll leave me as soon as your conscience lets you.»

Shannon turned away from Whip. In silence she watched the two people who moved as one over the rough slope. Just beyond Reno and Eve the mine’s mouth opened like a black, empty eye. They began quartering the area carefully, walking out from the mine’s entrance.

Whip watched, too. A muscle at the side of his jaw worked visibly as he fought to control his temper at Shannon’s maddening, stubborn insistence that she would keep on living in a place he didn’t believe was safe for her.

But there was nothing he could do about that, any more than he could take the darkness from Shannon’s beautiful eyes and replace it with light.

«It’s getting late,» Whip said finally.

Shannon nodded without looking away from the intricate dance of Spanish needles, woman, and man.

And love.

Shannon felt Eve’s and Reno’s love for one another like a knife turning in her soul. She would never have its like. When Whip left, he would take her love with him.

And he wouldn’t come back.

I never go to the same place twice.

«It takes time to find gold,» Whip said, keeping his voice level. «We have better things to do than watch Reno and Eve working.»

«How long does it take?»

For a moment Whip didn’t answer. He was too shocked by the flatness in Shannon’s voice. Where laughter and hope and love had once been, there now were only harshly controlled syllables and no life at all.

«It could be days,» Whip said. «The needles are tricky and tiring to use.»

«Days.»

The word was almost a ragged sigh, telling Whip that Shannon had hoped the answer would be weeks, perhaps months.

Perhaps even until the snows came, closing the trail to Avalanche Creek’s highest reaches.

«Then you’re right,» Shannon said. «We can’t waste any more time stalking sunlight through the forest, or picking flowers, or playing with Prettyface, or holding hands and watching sunset and moonrise, or lying together at night and pretending that tomorrow will never come.»

«Shannon —»

«No,» she said, speaking over Whip’s interruption. «You’re right. It’s time to move on.»

«Damn it! You make it sound like I’m saying good-bye right now. I’m not!»

«You should be. It might be easier that way.»

«Is that what you want? For me to walk away right now?»

«What I want?» Shannon laughed oddly. «What in God’s name does what I want have to do with it?»

Tears flashed unhappily in her eyes.

«Shannon,» Whip whispered. He reached for her. «Honey girl, don’t cry.»

«No.»

Shannon stepped back from Whip so quickly that she almost tripped.

«Don’t touch me.»

Her voice was raw from the fierce grip she had on her emotions.

«But —»

«If you touch me,» Shannon said over Whip’s voice, «I’ll really cry and that won’t do any good at all.»

Whip moved with alarming speed and strength, yet his hands were gentle when he pulled Shannon into his arms and wrapped her close against his body.

«I m-meant it,» Shannon said brokenly, refusing to meet Whip’s eyes.

«I believe you.»

He bent and kissed her eyelashes where silver tears already glittered.

«Go ahead and cry, honey girl. Cry hard and long. For both of us.»

A shudder went through Shannon as she fought against herself and the man who held her, cherished her, protected her, wanted her…but loved only the sunrise he had never seen.

Then she looked up at Whip’s eyes and saw her own helpless pain reflected there, an anguish that was all the more intense because he had never expected to feel it.

Cry hard and long. For both of us.

The fierce tension in Shannon’s body broke. She pressed her face against Whip’s neck and wept as though everything of life had been taken from her except pain itself.