Read Only 04 - Only Love for Free Online

his presence. It also reminded Shannon that she was standing in the icy evening rain, feeling as empty as the clearing had become when Whip rode out.
    Stop dreaming, Shannon told herself savagely. Mother dreamed, and what did she get? A no-account traveling man who left her flat.
    And she got me. I loved her, but all she loved was laudanum.
    Cherokee is right. Love is a fairy tale spun to keep women from setting off on their own and leaving men to take care of themselves.
    Slowly Shannon turned and went into the cabin that was little warmer than the rain itself.

3
    W HEN Shannon awoke before dawn, the storm had spent itself. Night was slowly draining from the sky, leaving it a transparent silver that reminded her all too much of Whip’s hungry eyes.
    Prettyface made a low sound in his throat and nudged Shannon’s cheek again.
    “Brrrrrr,” she muttered. “Your nose is as cold as the floor will be.”
    But Shannon ruffled Prettyface’s fur anyway. He was the only living thing that had ever returned her love. If it hadn’t been for Prettyface, she didn’t know what she would have done when Silent John disappeared in the winter of ’65.
    Not that her great-uncle had ever been much company. He had fully earned the nickname “Silent John.” But Shannon was grateful to him just the same. No matter how remote, no matter how lonely, no matter how hard life was in Echo Basin, she much preferred it to the life she had left behind in Virginia.
    In the Colorado Territory, Shannon was free.
    In Virginia, she had been little more than a slave.
    “Good morning, my beautiful monster,” Shannonsaid to the dog, stretching. “Do you think summer will ever truly come? Sometimes I feel so cold even the hot spring can’t warm me.”
    At the words “hot spring,” Prettyface’s ears came up. He cocked his head, whined, and looked toward the back of the cabin, where a cupboard door opened onto a narrow tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a cave with a hot spring that was sweet rather than sulfurous.
    Silent John had used the healing waters when his arthritis bothered him too much. Shannon simply liked the steamy warmth of the hidden cave. It saved having to chop wood to heat water in order to wash clothes—and herself. The hot spring meant that the secondhand clothes she wore were clean, as was the skin beneath them. In such a remote place, where the soft comforts of civilization were almost entirely lacking, the hot spring was a delicious luxury.
    And during Shannon’s first winters alone, when she had neither the strength nor the skill to bring down trees big enough to heat the cabin, the hot spring had saved her life. She was better with ax and maul and saw, now, yet far from good. There was barely a few days’ worth of stove wood stacked outside the cabin right now.
    Thank the Lord for the hot spring. Otherwise I might get as dirty as Murphy or those Culpeppers.
    Seeing the direction of his mistress’s glance, Prettyface whined hopefully. For all his rough appearance, the dog enjoyed chasing shadows in the warm creek that flowed out from the hot spring’s pool before disappearing into a crack in the bedrock.
    “Not this morning,” Shannon said to Prettyface. “We have to return the salt we borrowed fromCherokee. She—blast it, he – will need it.”
    Shannon frowned at Prettyface, who waved his tail gently.
    “It’s a good thing no one else is ever around,” Shannon said unhappily. “I got used to being called Silent John’s wife, but I have an awful time speaking of Cherokee as a he when I know full well now that she isn’t.”
    Memories of the Culpeppers’ coarse comments tightened Shannon’s mouth for a moment.
    “Not that I blame Cherokee for the charade. The longer Silent John is gone, the more I know why she decided to dress like a man, let herself be called a shaman, and live way up on the north fork of Avalanche Creek.”
    With a determined sweep of her arm, Shannon pushed off the bearskin cover that