Free Only Love by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

After all, he was seen riding out over Avalanche Creek Pass at the first thaw.
    The thought made Whip’s mouth thin. Much as he wanted the pleasure he would find within Shannon’s body, he no more wanted to seduce a married woman than he did a virgin. It wasn’t something a decent man did.
    That was why Whip had spent much of the past week quartering the land and scrambling up the various forks of Avalanche Creek, looking for any sign that Silent John was working on his claims or had gone to ground to wait out an injury.
    Whip had found nothing for his trouble but a few ragged holes far up the mountainside, signs that someone had taken a pickax to hard rock and gone looking for gold. But there was nothing to tell Whip how long ago the holes had been worked. All he could be certain of was that the ashes of the various campfires he discovered hadn’t been disturbed since the last rain, three days before.
    Three days.
    Three weeks.
    Three years. No way to tell.
    Hell, Caleb told me of coming across charcoal from fires built against cliffs high in these mountains. Nothing had changed since his daddy surveyed those same charcoal remains thirty years ago for the army.
    And the fires had been built by Indians three hundred years ago, before they had stolen horses from the Spaniards and learned how to ride.
    I don’t have three hundred years to find Silent John.
    Whip did’t know how much more time he would spend in the Rocky Mountains. Already he had stayed here longer than he had in any place since he had left West Virginia all those years ago,when he was man-sized and boy-stupid.
    Part of what still held Whip in the Rockies was the presence of his brother Reno and his sister Willow, and friends like Caleb and Wolfe. But the land itself was also an extraordinary lure. The taste of the wind and the colors of the land were like nowhere else on earth. Something about the clusters of high, icy peaks and the long, green divides between the groups of mountains fascinated Whip.
    Yet as much as he loved the landscape, he didn’t expect to settle down and live in the midst of the wild Rockies. Sooner or later wanderlust would reclaim his soul and he would go wherever the mood took him, searching the earth for something he was able to describe only as the sunrise he had never seen.
    But until the yondering urge comes, there’s nothing to keep me from enjoying the sunrise I have right here.
    Accompanied only by his thoughts and a restless wind, Whip cast for sign in the long, raking light of late afternoon,. He saw tracks of elk and deer and mountain lion. He heard the high, fluting cry of an eagle calling to its mate. But he neither heard men nor saw signs of anyone moving over the land.
    There were no new mule tracks where Holler Creek’s racing white water joined with Avalanche Creek’s eastern fork. The tracks of four mules were still there, blurred somewhat by a light rain but unmistakable.
    The Culpeppers had ridden to the fork in the trail that led to Shannon’s cabin. Three of them had stayed there for a time, sitting on their mules and drinking while the fourth Culpepper scouted the east fork of avalanche Creek.
    Whip had been on the rise behind Shannon’s cabin when he saw Darcy sneaking through thewoods. Whip had pulled his carbine out of the saddle scabbard, sighted, and send rock splinters peppering over Darcy’s chest. Darcy had run back to his mule and set off at a hard pace.
    Whip had backtracked him to where the others sat their mules and awaited their brother’s return. The Culpeppers didn’t hang around for whoever had taken a shot at Darcy. They threw two empty whiskey bottles onto the rocks and put spurs to heir racing mules.
    When Whip got there, all that was left were telltale tracks and shards of glass glittering in the sun.
    Days ago, Whip thought, looking around the valley where the two creeks joined. The Culpeppers haven’t been back since.
    But they’ll get around to it. Soon as they work up the