The Whippoorwill Trilogy

by Sharon Sala

  “I take all that back,” Letty said. “I am scared, after all.”

  Eulis pulled her close and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  “Tell me what scares you, darlin’.”

  “Anyone with gold fever. We’re gonna have to watch our backs.”

  “Naw, we’re gonna be fine. When they find out that you cured me of smallpox, and killed a wolf with your bare hands, there ain’t gonna be a man for miles who’ll be willin’ to mess with you.”

  “You think so?”

  He grinned.

  “Yeah, warrior woman… I think so.”

  About five days later, when the ground had frozen back as hard as ice, they made the decision to leave. When all was said and done about how to get the ore to Denver City, they wound up just dumping it loose in the back of the wagon, then throwing their belongings on top of it. After that, they laid all six of the elk hides Letty had tanned on top. Eulis tied it all down, and for the first time in months, harnessed the mules to the wagon.

  Letty went in the cabin one last time to make sure that they weren’t leaving something important behind. Without their things scattered about, the room seemed larger. She stood motionless in the doorway, remembering the work they’d put in to make the old cabin weatherproof, then the long, frightening days and nights as Eulis lay near death. The cabin had been their sanctuary when they’d needed it most, as well as a tomb for the man who’d come before them. She eyed the wood stacked against the door to the mine, knowing that its presence would keep their secret safe, and then closed the door behind her.

  Eulis was sitting in the wagon with the reins in his hands.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She climbed up into the seat, then picked up the rifle down in the boot and put it across her lap.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Wonder how Denver City survived the pox,” Eulis said.

  “We’ll soon find out,” Letty said. “Let’s go.”

  Eulis flipped the reins across the backs of the mules.

  “Come on mules. We’re goin’ to town.”

  The mules put their heads down and started to pull, but the wheels barely moved. Eulis held his breath, wondering if they had loaded too much ore.

  “Come on, you two fat backs. You had it too easy. Now it’s time to get back to work.”

  He clucked at the mules and flipped the reins across their backs. To his relief, they dug in and pulled, and the wagon started to roll. The farther they went, the easier they rode. By the time they reached the crest of the hill above the valley, he stopped them to give them a little rest.

  “It’s all downhill from here,” he said.

  “Just don’t wreck us,” Letty said.

  He frowned. “Well, hell, woman… I wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

  “You cursed.”

  “And if I hear anything that stupid again I might be forced to repeat myself.”

  “Are you callin’ me stupid?” Letty asked.

  Eulis rolled his eyes. “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  “Okay then,” she muttered, and shifted the rifle across her lap.

  Eulis saw tears in her eyes and suddenly realized that she was emotionally torn about leaving. He knew just how she felt. Back there had been simple compared to what lay ahead. He reached out and patted her knee.

  “Just save all that piss and vinegar for them gold-fevered miners you keep worryin’ about.”

  She sighed.

  “You okay, darlin’?”

  She nodded.

  “Good enough,” he said. “Denver City, here we come.”

  It was the absence of the Arapahos and the size of the cemetery that Eulis and Letty noticed first.

  “Oh lord, Eulis… from the number of crosses, it appears that not everyone was as blessed as you.”

  “Sure glad I didn’t have to dig all them graves,” he said, and then looked away, unwilling to think about how close he’d come to being under one of those markers.

  As they passed, she scanned the crossed, silently marking the names that she recognized.

  Yung Chi. A little Chinese man who had done laundry.

  Marvin Handleman. A lawyer from Philadelphia who’d been disbarred and come West to seek his fortune.

  Corliss Sheffield. A woman who’d plied her trade at one of the saloons.

  Emory James. He’d outrun Millie Sees Crow’s bullets, but had been unable to outrun the pox.

  Boston Jones.

  As soon as the last name registered, Letty frowned. She thought of the gambler and the times they’d crossed paths, but she would not have wished the hell of that death on anyone.

  Looking away from the cemetery, she clutched the rifle a little firmer, and sat up a bit straighter as she focused on the city before them. Despite the smallpox epidemic that had gone through it, Denver City had grown. There were people everywhere. A good number of the tents had been replaced by wooden buildings, and someone had even had the foresight to lay sidewalk. Now, most of the businesses were connected by a maze of narrow wooden planks, and considering the size of the frozen ruts in the streets, it was a good thing.

  “It’s good the ground is still froze, or we’d bog sure as shootin’,” Eulis said, as they pulled into the city.

  “Where do we go first?” Letty asked.

  “I reckon to the assayer’s office to make sure what we got is the real thing, then straight to the land office to register the claim.”

  Letty thought about it a minute and then shook her head.

  “Let’s go to the land office first.”

  “But what if we got ourselves a wagon load of Fool’s Gold?” Eulis asked.

  “I’ve seen Fool’s Gold. It doesn’t look like this,” Letty said. “We do the land office first.”

  “Okay. Land office it is.”

  Letty felt a little easier, but didn’t relax.

  They rolled into town amidst a good dozen other wagons coming and going. A very new saloon had sprung up on the first corner in town. As they passed, the wood they’d used to build it was so green that they could see droplets of frozen sap on the outer walls.

  A pair of saloon girls were standing in the doorway, trying to lure customers inside with a mixture of lewd gestures and remarks.

  Letty blinked and then looked away.

  “Rest easy, wife,” Eulis said softly.

  Wife. That one word settled her quicker than anything else he could have done.

  “There’s the land office,” she said, pointing down the street.

  A few moments later, Eulis stopped the wagon directly in front so that he would have a clear view of Letty, who was going to stand guard outside.

  “You gonna be all right?” he asked.

  Letty lifted her chin.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded, and then jumped down from the wagon and walked inside.

  Letty saw him through the window as he walked up to the counter, and watched until he and the land agent began to converse. After that, she turned her attention to the job at hand.

  The rarity of a decent woman in the gold camps was still unusual enough to warrant curiosity from the men on the streets. A good number of them stared and a few tipped their hats, but it was the ones who stopped and came closer that made her nervous. One in particular set Letty’s nerves on edge.

  He came out of a cafe picking his teeth with the point of his knife, which was enough in itself to make her gag. He was huge—well over six feet tall, and walked spraddle-legged to accommodate the size of his belly. His hair was carrot orange and curly, and stuck out in all directions from beneath the hat he’d jammed on his head. His pants had been patched a number of times and his coat was obviously handmade from beaver pelts that were still bearing the heads of some of the beavers to whom the pelts had first belonged. He looked like something out of a bad dream, and she knew the first moment he took an interest in her. At that point, she glanced nervously toward the land office. Eulis was still at the counter.

&
nbsp; “I killed a wolf with a stick. I can handle one ugly fat man,” she muttered, but clutched the rifle a little tighter just the same.

  Sean Clancy had been at Cherry Creek almost from the beginning of the strike. Like all the others who’d come to Denver City, he’d dreamed of gold just laying around waiting to be gathered up, somewhat like when he’d been small and his mother had made him gather in the hen eggs. It had taken him exactly one week to learn that he’d been sorely mistaken. He’d lost his grubstake in a poker game, and then crippled the gambler. If it had been anyone other than a card shark, they would have hung him on the spot. As it was, he convinced enough of them that he’d been swindled, and so they turned him out on the street, and the gambler over to the doctor, who patched him up and advised him to get the hell out of town while the getting was good.

  But Clancy hadn’t been as smart as the gambler. He’d stayed on, trying to beg a grubstake from anyone who looked willing to share, and sleeping with Arapaho women every chance he got. Ironically, it was his lust for the Indian women that probably saved his life. He was in the Arapaho camp when word spread that there was smallpox in Denver City. The Arapaho had sent him packing as they gathered up and moved out. Afraid of the pox, he hid out along the creek, watching the various claims to see if any became abandoned. By the end of the second week, he’d taken the belongings of four miners who succumbed to the pox and then holed up in a cave above the city.

  It had been a long, lonely winter, and there were days when he’d thought he would go mad. But the Chinook thawed him out, just as it had Eulis and Letty, and he’d come to town with a winter’s worth of stored-up frustration, looking to hump a few women and fight the good fight.

  When he saw the raggedy woman perched on the wagon seat, his instinct for trouble led him straight to her. He rubbed the front of his pants in a suggestive manner, and then pointed at her.

  “I been waitin’ for you all winter,” he said, and stepped off the curb.

  Letty swung the rifle straight at his belly.

  “You in a hurry to die?”

  When she cocked the hammer back on the rifle, he stumbled. In an effort to steady himself, he reached for the mules. The unexpected slam of his body weight made Rosy and Blackie step sideways, and in doing so, moved the last obstacle from Sean Clancy’s path. He went face first onto the frozen ground and came up with a busted lip, a sore nose, and a handful of fresh mule manure on the front of his coat.

  “Son-of-a-holy-bitch!” Clancy roared, and reached for the barrel of Letty’s rifle.

  Tempted to aim for the mule shit he was wearing, Letty changed her mind at the last second, swung the rifle up and fired it off in the air instead.

  The gunshot stopped Clancy dead in his tracks, and brought Eulis running out of the land office, with the agent not far behind him.

  “What’s going on out here?” Eulis yelled, then saw the determination on Letty’s face. “Are you all right?”

  “So far,” she said. “Fat-ass here, seemed to think I’d been waiting out the winter just for his arrival.”

  Eulis eyed the mountain of a man with a calm that came out of nowhere. He doubled up his fists, ready to wade into the man, while accepting the fact that he would most likely take a whipping.

  “That’s my wife, you insulted,” Eulis said. “Apologize to her now, or I’m gonna have to whip you where you stand.”

  Sean Clancy started to laugh and then remembered the rifle aimed straight at his chest.

  “Hell, mister… ease up. I didn’t know she was yore wife.”

  “You do now,” Eulis said. “Apologize to her.”

  Clancy gritted his teeth as he turned around. Once again, he was face to face with the woman, only she didn’t appear as raggedy as she had a few minutes ago. There was a fire in her eyes and a jut to her chin that should have warned him she wasn’t one to mess with.

  “Look, Mrs… If I offended you…”

  Letty didn’t blink.

  “You did.”

  His face turned as ruddy as his hair, but the bore of that rifle she kept aimed at his face spoke loudly.

  “Then I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  “Time to move on,” Eulis said shortly.

  Clancy kept his head down as he quickly moved past.

  “Are you done in there?” Letty asked, as the land agent went back inside.

  “Yeah, we’re done,” Eulis said, then winked and grinned as he got up in the seat. “For better or for worse, that claim is ours.”

  Letty turned around to make sure that the red-headed man was still walking away. She watched until he disappeared around the corner of the street.

  “Now the assayer’s office,” Letty said.

  Eulis clucked to the mules and the wagon rolled on, taking them and their future a little farther down the street.

  “Assayer’s office,” Eulis said.

  “I’ll wait here,” Letty said.

  “No, darlin’… this time it’s your turn.”

  Her eyes widened. “What are you saying?”

  “You found it. It’s only fair that you get to be the one to see what it’s worth.”

  Letty handed Eulis the rifle, and hugged him something fierce before jumping down from the wagon.

  Eulis tossed her the small bag of ore they’d kept back.

  “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  She clutched the bag against her chest and headed into the office.

  The bell over the door jingled as Letty walked in, but the assayer didn’t bother to look up.

  “Be with you in a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Letty said, and plopped the sack of ore on the counter.

  It was the female voice that changed the assayer’s focus. Immediately, he set aside a set of scales and jumped to his feet.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. How can I help you?”

  She shoved the bag of ore toward him.

  “Kinda curious as to what this might be worth.”

  He hefted the bag and then grinned.

  “Well, little lady… let’s see what you’ve got here.”

  He was still smiling as he dumped the contents out onto the counter. It lasted just until he picked up the first chunk of ore, then his smile changed to respect.

  “This looks promising,” he said. “Give me a few minutes and we’ll see what we have here.”

  Letty nodded, watching carefully as he laid some of the ore on large piece of leather. He took a small hammer and began hacking at the dirt and rock, separating it from the color, muttering as he worked. Letty couldn’t tell if that was good or bad, but when he dragged out some chemicals and a set of scales, Letty caught herself holding her breath.

  Not once during the entire process did she take her eyes off him, although he could have been making bear stew and she wouldn’t have known the difference. Once, she glanced out the window, making sure Eulis was still there, and wondering if he should be here instead of her. If the assayer decided to lie to her, she wouldn’t know the difference.

  Then the man turned around, and the look on his face made her heart skip a beat. His hands were shaking as he began sacking up the ore that he’d dumped.

  “Ma’am…”

  Letty braced herself for disappointment.

  “What?”

  “Is there any more of this?”

  She thought of what was in the wagon bed as well as what they’d left behind.

  “Yes.”

  He started to grin.

  “This is without doubt the purest color I’ve seen since I came here. Have you filed a claim?”

  “Yes… but what do we do now?”

  “We? You mean your partner?”

  “My husband,” she said, and as she pointed out the window, realized that was the first time she’d had occasion to lay claim to him in this way.

  “Well, ma’am, let me be the first to tell you that, if what you say is true, then you are a very rich woman.”

  Letty heard the words, but
couldn’t believe what he’d said.

  “Say it again,” she said.

  The assayer grinned. “Lady… you and your man have just struck it rich.”

  “So, what do we do now?” Letty asked.

  “Ore like this has to be taken to a smelter.”

  “Is there one in town?” she asked.

  “Actually, there are a couple,” he said.

  “Are they honest?” she asked.

  The little man hesitated, then handed her the bag.

  “I didn’t tell you this, but if this was mine, I’d be doing business with Brian Moody.”

  “Where’s his business located?” Letty asked.

  “Follow the road to the end of town, then look to your right. You’ll see it there.”

  “How much do we owe you?” Letty asked.

  He pointed to the bit that he’d used for testing.

  “That will do me just fine,” he said.

  Letty headed for the door. She reached for the doorknob, then stopped and turned around.

  “You’re sure… about this being good, I mean?”

  “As sure as my name is Edward White.”

  “Then, Mr. White, I thank you.”

  He followed her to the door. “Tell your man to be careful when he brings the ore into town. There are people here who’d kill you without a second thought, just for what you got in that bag.”

  “Then they’d have themselves a real heart attack if they knew what was in our wagon, wouldn’t they?”

  Edward White frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The wagon is full of ore.”

  He looked past her, saw Eulis sitting in the seat with a rifle across his lap, and then stared at her in disbelief.

  “You brought it with you… in that wagon… loose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord have mercy.”

  “Oh, He already has,” Letty said. “Thank you for your help. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around.”