“I’ve been hunting them ever since Appomattox. All eleven of them.”
“Any particular reason?” Whip asked mildly.
“They’re wanted, dead or alive, in Texas. During the War Between the States, they murdered three young Texas women and sold their children to the Comancheros. By the time the fathers came home from the war, found out what had happened, and went to rescue their children, it was too late. Every last child was dead.”
Whip didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t need to. The man was obviously a former Confederate officer. Whip suspected that the man’s wife had been one of the three young women murdered by Culpeppers.
As for the rest, Whip had only to look at the man’s bleak eyes to know that his children had been among the missing.
“Hunting Culpeppers, huh?” Whip asked softly. “Well, this is your lucky day, my friend. Those three are Clim, Darcy, and Floyd.”
“Dead?”
“Darcy is. Clim and Floyd are alive for the time being. Wouldn’t bet a Confederate dollar on their” chances, though. Clim’s back is broken and Floyd’s wrist smells like it’s gone bad.”
“Gangrene?”
Whip nodded.
“From the fight in Holler Creek?” the stranger asked.
“Wasn’t much of a fight. I took them by surprise and just kept at it until the job was done.”
If one corner of a mouth lifting slightly could be called a smile, the stranger smiled.
“Thought it might be you,” the man said, looking at the long, restless lash. “Whip, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“I’m called Hunter since the war.”
“Hunter,” Whip said neutrally, nodding.
“Heard Beau was with them,” Hunter said, gesturing to the Culpeppers.
“He was.”
“Then he got away again,” Hunter said savagely. “Damn his slippery hide! Excuse me, ma’am.”
“Don’t apologize,” Shannon said without looking up from Prettyface. “I’m no gentle Southern lady. I just killed a man.”
Hunter’s black eyebrows rose. “A Culpepper?”
Shannon nodded curtly.
“Well, ma’am, some folks would argue that a Culpepper doesn’t count as a man,’ Hunter said.” “Especially the folks who buried what was left of those three young women.”
Hunter turned back to Whip.
“Which way did Beau go?” Hunter asked.
“Straight to hell, I imagine.”
“He’s dead?” Hunter asked, looking around again.
Whip nodded. “In the cabin.”
Hunter gestured with his head toward Shannon, asking a silent question.
Again, Whip nodded.
Some of the fierce tension left Hunter’s body. Not until he began to relax did Whip realize just how poised for battle Hunter had been.
“I owe you,” Hunter said simply. “There was five hundred dollars on Beau’s head, two hundred on Floyd and Darcy, and one hundred on Clim. I’ll see that you get it.”
“No,” Shannon said fiercely. “No blood money. We wouldn’t have killed them if we had a choice.”
Hunter looked at Whip. Again, the left corner of Hunter’s mouth turned up very slightly, not even Enough to disturb his black mustache.
Though he didn’t say a word, Whip knew that Hunter understood what Shannon hadn’t yet realized: once the Culpeppers had grabbed Shannon, they had signed their own death warrants as far as Whip was concerned.
“If you’ll help me load the Culpeppers on two mules,” Hunter said, “I’ll give them to the first bounty hunter I find.”
“You’re not taking them in yourself?”
“Abner, Horace, Gaylord, Erasmus, and Jeremiah are still alive. Erasmus and Jeremiah are rumored to be on their way to Virginia City. I’ll be looking for the other three now that these boys are taken care of.”
“What about the rest?”
“My brother Case is tracking Erasmus and Jeremiah. When the Culpeppers split up, we split up, Too. Case drew the short straw, so he only got to Chase two of the sons of bitches. He’ll make up for It, though. I expect he might beat me to Virginia City.”
“Eleven, you said,” Whip muttered. “Is that all of them?”
“All there is to speak of,” Hunter said dryly. “But Pappy Culpepper was a tireless old goat. I expect he left quite a few eggs in other nests before my daddy shot him.”
“Eleven. Damnation. What about the rest of the alphabet? Am I likely to meet them any time soon?”
“Not likely. They’re buried back Texas way.”
Whip didn’t have to ask who had done the burying. Hunter had a look about him that reminded Whip of Caleb Black; a good man, but hard as flint.
The kind who made a very bad enemy.
“Hope you get the last of them,” Whip said.
“We will. You can count on it.”
Whip smiled slightly, glad that his name wasn’t Culpepper.
“Get on one of those racing mules and fetch that shaman,” Whip said, turning to Shannon. “He can nurse Prettyface while we’re gone.”
Shannon’s head snapped up. “Where are you going?”
“We,” Whip corrected. “We’re going to my sister’s ranch.”
Shannon opened her mouth.
“No,” Whip said, cutting across whatever she had been going to say. “Common sense be damned. You’re going with me this time if I have to tie you to the saddle.”
13
SHANNON awoke with a start and looked around wildly, heart pounding. It was first light, with stars fading in the east. She was in a small bedroom. A man was calling in a low voice from the porch to the corral. Another voice answered.
Whip’s voice calling.
Caleb Black’s voice answering.
That was what had awakened Shannon. The sound of men’s voices. Even three days after the brutal fight at her cabin, she was jumpy, flinching at sounds, looking over her shoulder to make certain she wasn’t being followed.
Shannon drew a ragged breath. The scent of coffee and biscuits and bacon curled against her nostrils. Her stomach growled in instant response. She and Whip had arrived at such a late hour the previous night that Willow had done little more than greet them before going to bed. The trip had taken so long because Shannon refused to ride either of the two racing mules Hunter had left for her.
Hurriedly Shannon got out of bed and dressed, not wanting to lie abed while others were up and working. From what Whip had told her, Willow had her hands full with her young son, her pregnancy, and cooking for all of the ranch hands. Not to mention sewing, mending, knitting, cleaning, washing clothes, ironing them, tending the kitchen garden, feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, and the hundred other small jobs that added up to a mountain of work.
It was no easier for Caleb, who had the cattle and horses to tend, wood to chop, fences to build and mend, outbuildings to construct and maintain, waterholes and troughs to keep clean, horses to shoe, barns and corrals to muck out, calves to brand, horses to break, furniture to make…the list was endless.
With quick steps Shannon went down the wooden stairs from the attic loft where she had slept. She hurried through the house to the kitchen.
Willow was working over the wood stove, frying bacon and making biscuits and stirring a pot of stewed fruit. Her hair was heaped in gleaming golden coils on her head. If the sunlight color of Willow’s hair hadn’t told Shannon that this was Whip’s sister, the catlike tilt of her wide hazel eyes would have.
“Good morning, Mrs. Black,” Shannon said.
Willow turned and smiled. “Call me Willow, please. It’s the western way to be informal.”
“Willow,” Shannon repeated, smiling in return. “Then you must call me Shannon.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Willow said. “Has the West given you a nickname yet?”
Shannon didn’t think honey girl qualified as a nickname. And even if it did, she wasn’t about to me
ntion it to Whip’s little sister.
“Not yet,” Shannon said.
Then she smiled slightly, looking at the pronounced curve of Willow’s pregnancy pressing against her dress.
“It beats me how Whip can call you Willy,” Shannon said.
“Whip?” Willow frowned, then smiled. “Oh, you mean Rafe.”
“Tall, wide-shouldered, sun-haired, handsome as a fallen angel and thickheaded as a Missouri mule?”
Willow snickered. “That’s Rafe. He calls me Willy because I used to follow my brothers around like a tomboy.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Five. Matt lives less than a day’s ride from here with his wife, Eve.”
“Matt?” Shannon asked.
“You’ve probably heard him called Reno. That’s the name the West gave him. Half the time I call him that, myself, just like I’m getting used to thinking of Rafe as Whip.”
“Silent John mentioned Reno by that name,” Shannon said. Then quickly, wanting to avoid the complex subject of the man who hadn’t been quite her husband and was no longer alive in any case, Shannon asked, “Where are the other Moran brothers?”
“Scattered all over the world from Scotland to Burma to the Amazon jungle, last I heard. But that was years ago. They could be anywhere now.”
“The yondering streak must run wide and deep in your family.”
The haunted tone of Shannon’s voice made Willow turn and look over her shoulder. A glance told Willow that her first impression of Shannon had been correct. The slender, edgy girl with the spectacular sapphire eyes was more than a little taken by Rafael “Whip” Moran.
“Yes, I suppose so,” Willow said, turning back to the stove. “Even if we had been stay-at-homes, the war would have scattered us to the winds. There was no home to come back to.”
“Yes,” Shannon said simply.
“Sometimes I hear the gentle rhythms of the South in your voice,” Willow said as she sifted flour.
“Virginia,” Shannon said, “a long, long time ago.”
“Is that why you came west? Did the war take your home from you?”
In another person the question would have been prying. But Willow’s voice and gentle hazel eyes made it clear that sympathy rather than curiosity lay beneath the question.
Shannon closed her eyes for an instant, wondering how to tell this gentle Southern lady about the hell on earth that Shannon’s life had been before Silent John had come and taken her to Colorado Territory.
“Never mind,” Willow said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry. Would you like a cup of coffee, or do you prefer tea?”
“Do you really have tea?”
The wistful question told Willow a great deal.
“We always have tea. Jessi—Wolfe Lonetree’s wife—was raised in Scotland and England. So was Wolfe, partly.”
“Wolfe.” Shannon frowned. “Whip has mentioned him.”
“Not surprising. Rafe earned the nickname Whip the day some Canyon City toughs were talking indecently to Jessi because she married a man who is half Indian.”
A vivid memory came to Shannon—the blurring speed of Whip’s wrist, the harsh crack of the bullwhip, and the bright blood on Beau Culpepper’s dirty mouth.
“That’s how I met Whip,” Shannon said.
Willow made an encouraging sound as she bent to remove a pan of biscuits from the oven. Though Willow hadn’t asked, she was very interested in how her brother had come to be in the company of the wife—or, according to Whip, the widow—of one of the most notorious man-hunters in the West.
“Some no-account claim jumpers name of Culpepper were in Holler Creek at the mercantile when I came in to buy supplies,” Shannon said. “The Culpeppers started talking about me. I didn’t like the vile things they were saying, but…” She shrugged.
“You were alone?” Willow asked as she deftly transferred biscuits to a napkin-lined basket.
“Yes,” Shannon said. “I tried to keep Whip from mixing in. I was afraid he would get hurt, four armed men to his one, and Whip wasn’t even carrying a gun. The Culpepper boys have an ugly reputation around Echo Basin.”
Willow’s breath caught at the thought of her beloved brother taking on four men.
“The Culpeppers kept on talking filth,” Shannon said. “Then suddenly there was a sound like a shot and blood was on Beau’s mouth and another sharp sound and another and Culpeppers were jumping and yelling like they had kicked over a hive of wasps. By the time I realized it was the bullwhip, the fight was nearly over.”
Willow wiped her hands on her apron and let out a long breath.
“I’ve seen my brother do some fancy tricks with that bullwhip of his, but four armed men at once…” Willow said, shaking her head.
“They didn’t expect it,” Whip said from beyond the doorway. “That made it a whole lot easier.”
Shannon spun around.
Behind Whip loomed Caleb Black.
“Don’t do a damn fool thing like that again,” Caleb advised dryly.
“I didn’t exactly plan on doing it the first time,” Whip retorted.
Caleb gave a crack of laughter, walked into the kitchen, and touched Willow’s hair with a gentleness that astonished Shannon.
“How’s my favorite girl?” he asked softly.
“Getting big enough to be two of your favorite girls.”
Smiling, Caleb bent down and said something that only Willow could hear. The sudden pink on her cheeks and the smile on her generous mouth spoke eloquently of a woman who was well pleased with her man, and he with her.
“Is that biscuits I smell?” Whip asked.
“Nope,” Caleb said quickly. “It’s your imagination.”
“Huh. Likely story.”
Caleb picked up the basket of biscuits and pretended to conceal it beneath his work jacket.
Smiling, Whip held out his left hand. On his palm were two steaming biscuits.
Shannon made a startled sound. She hadn’t even noticed Whip reaching for the biscuits, yet there they were in his hand.
“Thought you might feel that way,” Whip said, “so I helped myself while you were whispering sweet nothings in my baby sister’s ear.”
Willow rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“You two,” she said in mock disgust. “A body would think I made only one biscuit at a time and divided it crumb by crumb among all the help.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that,” Caleb said, bending down. “Among other things…”
Shannon blinked and tried not to stare. She was almost certain she had seen Caleb’s lips skim across Willow’s ear.
“Shoo,” Willow said, laughing and pushing on her husband’s broad back. “If you keep distracting me, I’ll burn the bacon and put too much salt in the biscuit mix.”
“You heard her,” Whip said, grabbing Caleb’s arm. “Move, man. You don’t want to interfere with Willy’s biscuits.”
Laughing, struggling just enough to make Whip work a little, Caleb allowed himself to be led from the kitchen. Shannon watched them go with a look of wonder on her face.
“You look like somebody just hit you with a board,” Willow said, trying not to smile.
“I feel like someone did,” Shannon admitted. “Whip is so…different here. I mean, he smiled and sometimes laughed and such back in Echo Basin, but not like this. Not…playful.”
“Whip knows that as long as he’s here, he won’t have to guard his back or his words or anything else. We’re his family.”
Shannon hoped her yearning didn’t show, but she was afraid it did.
“Home for a yondering man,” she whispered.
“That’s my brother,” Willow agreed, measuring out the salt. “A fiddlefoot and a wanderer. He’s been like that since I was knee-high to a racing mule.”
A child’s fretful cry came to the kitchen. Willow looked at the flour and at the oven. Then she sighed, washed her hands in a basin, and wiped them on her apron.
>
“Excuse me,” Willow said. “Ethan doesn’t have his father’s patience. If I don’t fetch him out of that crib and nurse him, he’ll yell down the house.”
“Go ahead. I’ll finish the biscuits for you. Have the hands eaten?”
“Pig Iron’s wife cooks for them lately.”
“Then we’ll need four more pans of biscuits, right?”
Willow’s honey-colored eyebrows rose. “How did you know?”
“Whip is good for two pans all by himself.”
“So is Caleb.”
Shannon smiled slightly. “Yes, I figured that from the size of him. Which leaves one batch of biscuits for us.”
“If we’re quick enough,” Willow said, her voice dry.
“I’ll stand over them with a loaded shotgun.”
“The men?”
“The biscuits. The men are big enough to look out for themselves.”
Laughing, Willow went to her son, whose cries were getting louder with each moment.
By the time everyone sat down to breakfast, Ethan had been fed, bathed, and dressed in clothes Willow had made for him. He sat next to Willow in a highchair that Caleb had carved from an old fir tree. Shannon sat on the child’s other side.
The habits learned while tending to her stepcousins quickly came back to Shannon. When Ethan became fretful for his mother’s attention, Shannon gave him a bit of biscuit to mangle or a sip of warm milk from the small cup in front of him. Sometimes she dipped a spoon in the stewed fruit and let him lick the naturally sweet juices.
The kitchen was warm and rich with the scent of food. Small dishes of jam studded the wooden table like rubies. Whip had brought in bright yellow wildflowers and put them in a canning jar in the center of the table. Blue-and-white-checked napkins wrapped the biscuits and covered the laps of everyone but Ethan. The mugs for coffee and tea were a thick, cream-colored ceramic that held heat for a long time. The plates were of the same creamy ceramic, glazed to a high sheen. The knives and spoons and forks were all made from the same plain metal whose patina came from daily use and vigorous scrubbing.
“Shannon? Aren’t you hungry?” Whip asked.
She started and looked at her plate. It was empty. Whip was patiently holding a basket of biscuits out to her.