The Whippoorwill Trilogy

by Sharon Sala

  “You don’t trust anyone, do you, girl?” Eulis asked.

  “That’s not true,” Letty muttered. “I trust you.”

  The pup whined.

  She looked down at the dog and grinned.

  “And maybe, T-Bone.”

  At that point, they stopped talking and waited. The oddity of it was that the closer the stranger came, the more familiar he seemed to Eulis. It wasn’t so much that he recognized his facial features. It was more about the way his shoulders tilted just a tiny bit to the right, and how his fingers on his right hand curled slightly inward, like he was about to grab onto something important.

  His hat was wide-brimmed and black, although it appeared more white than black from the dust covering the surface. His boots were as dusty as the hat and run-down at the heels, and he was sporting at least a week’s worth of whiskers.

  All of a sudden, there was a hitch in Eulis’ breath.

  Letty felt it, but before she could ask what was wrong, the stranger had arrived.

  “Ma’am,” he said, and took off his hat as he acknowledged Letty’s presence.

  Letty nodded back without speaking.

  The stranger’s gaze immediately moved toward Eulis.

  “Reckon you’d be Eulis Potter?”

  Eulis nodded.

  “They told me down in town that you might be hiring.”

  Eulis exhaled slowly, as if he’d been holding his breath.

  “I’m hiring miners.”

  “I can do that,” the stranger said.

  Letty saw Eulis’ eyes narrow. She knew something was up, but couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. She shifted her rifle to a more comfortable position and settled her hand right on the trigger—just in case.

  The stranger saw her and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “I mean no harm,” he said softly.

  “Got a horse?” Eulis asked.

  “Shot out from under me.”

  “How did you come to Denver City?”

  “I walked.”

  “When did you last eat?” Eulis asked.

  The stranger’s face turned red, as if he’d just been insulted. He hesitated answering, and then it seemed that hunger won out over pride.

  “Maybe a day or two back.”

  Eulis glanced at Letty.

  Letty still didn’t know what Eulis was doing, but she recognized his intent and offered a meal.

  “There’s biscuits and fatback left over from breakfast. I’ll heat up some coffee.”

  Letty saw the man swallow, and knew it was pride that was going down with the spit.

  “I’d be real thankful for the food,” he said.

  “Eulis, maybe you could show him where to wash up,” Letty said and started toward the cabin, then stopped and handed Eulis the rifle. She sensed the unfolding drama, but trusted Eulis enough to deal with whatever needed to be done.

  She was heating up the red-eye gravy when Eulis and the stranger came inside.

  “Have a seat,” Eulis said, and pointed to the chair he usually sat in.

  The man had dropped his hat near the doorway. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and Letty could see that he’d tried to remove most of the dust from his clothes. But when she slid the plate of food in front of him, and then set down the cup of steaming coffee and a spoon, she saw his hands were shaking.

  He looked up at her then, his eyes swimming with tears.

  “I thank you, kindly, ma’am,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “Sorry we don’t have any regular cutlery for you to eat with. We ordered some from back East, but it will take a spell to get here.”

  “Ma’am, it’s been so long since I’ve eaten with anything but my fingers, I’m not sure I remember my manners.” Then he added. “This sure looks good.”

  Letty turned away so that he would feel comfortable enough to start eating, then glanced at Eulis, who arched an eyebrow, and then shook his head slightly. She was going to have to wait for answers to her questions.

  No one spoke as the stranger ate, although Letty filled his coffee cup more than once.

  T-Bone had followed the men as far as the doorway, and was now lying across the threshold with his head inside the cabin, and his backside out on the stoop. Letty couldn’t figure out if the pup was intent on keeping an eye on the stranger, or on the biscuits he was eating.

  It wasn’t until the man had sopped up the last bite of red-eye gravy with the last bite of biscuit that he bothered to look up. At that point, he had the grace to be embarrassed.

  “That was just about the best food I’ve ever eaten,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You had to be hungry to say that,” Letty said. “I’m just a passable cook, and Eulis here will be the first to tell you so.”

  Eulis grinned.

  “Now, Letty… I don’t say nothin’ bad about you. Ever.”

  At this point, he leaned forward, fixing the stranger with a cool, studied look. “I might be willing to put you to work.”

  Letty saw relief wash over the stranger’s face.

  “But not in the mine,” Eulis added.

  Letty frowned, and so did the stranger, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to be picky.

  “That’s fine. Whatever you need me to do I’ll be—”

  “I know who you are,” Eulis said.

  The man went still. An expression came and went on his face that set the hair to rising on the back of Letty’s neck. She glanced toward the doorway, wondering how long it would take her to get to the rifle before the man could get up from his chair.

  “But you don’t remember me, do you?”

  The man frowned as he shook his head.

  “About six years ago, you rode into a little town out in the Kansas territory called Lizard Flats. Three cowboys were hassling a drunk out in the street in front of the White Dove Saloon, taking turns shooting at his feet to make him dance.”

  Letty froze. She remembered the incident all too well, and to her shame, also remembered that no one had bothered to try and stop it.

  Still frowning, the man glanced at Letty, then at Eulis.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  Eulis leaned across the table and then offered his hand.

  “That drunk was me. I never did sober up enough to thank you then, but I’m doin’ it now. I don’t need to know how you come to this point in your life, but I know when I owe a man a favor.”

  The man stared at Eulis for the longest time, as if trying to place that overweight drunk with the wild hair and beard, to the man sitting before him. Finally, he nodded.

  “You should know that trouble has a way of finding me.”

  Eulis shrugged.

  “Ain’t no one in this house about to point the finger of blame. Now down to business. I reckon you heard that Letty here discovered herself one hell of a gold mine, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I heard.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Eulis said. “I need a guard. You’d be on the site day and night. This here cabin would be where you stay, and we’d keep you grub-staked with food and ammunition, as well as a good horse. A man needs a good horse. Never know when you might need to go somewhere.”

  The man’s mouth dropped. Again Letty saw unshed tears in his eyes. He looked at Letty, then at Eulis, then down at the coffee cup he still held in his hands. Letty saw him take a deep breath and then raise his head.

  “I’d be staying here with you folks?”

  “No,” Eulis said. “We’re building us a house near town. I reckon if we don’t move onto the site soon, we’ll never get it finished.”

  “You trust me to do this?”

  “I reckon I do,” Eulis said.

  “What’s to keep me from stealing some of your gold and riding off with it?”

  “I reckon the same thing that made you stop them men who was shootin’ at my feet.”

  “Maybe I just had a headache that day. Maybe I just didn’t want to
hear the noise,” he said.

  “No sir,” Eulis said.

  The stranger glanced at Letty. “I appreciate what you’re saying. God knows I do. But I need to remind you to think about your wife. I haven’t been around decent folk in so long that I don’t know how to act.”

  Letty snorted lightly.

  “Me, either,” she said, and got up to refill his coffee again.

  Eulis grinned.

  “Umm, my wife here has had a few obstacles in her life as well.”

  Letty’s snort was a little bit louder.

  “I worked at the White Dove… and I wasn’t scrubbing floors.” When she smiled at Eulis, she was unaware that her affections for him shown all over her face. Then she turned around and offered the man her hand. “Leticia Potter. But you can call me Letty.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, and then the man pushed his chair back and stood.

  “My name is Robert Lee Slade. Some people call me Robert Lee.” He hesitated for a moment, and then reluctantly added. “And some call me the Cherokee Kid.”

  It was to Letty’s credit that she didn’t falter when she shook his hand. She’d seen a man who called himself the Cherokee Kid draw down on a gambler who was cheating, shoot him through the heart, then sit back down and ask for a new deck of cards. But he was a far cry from looking like the man standing before her. Maybe one day they’d learn how he’d come to these hard times, and maybe they wouldn’t.

  For now, it seemed his arrival could be the answer to their problems, and that his presence would also put an end to her worries about Eulis’ well-being.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Letty said, and then smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt before adding, “I feel it’s only right to tell you the same thing that I told the other men who work for us.”

  “And that was?” Robert Lee asked.

  “That if you so much as harm a hair on my Eulis’ head, I will hunt you down like a dog, nail your balls to a tree, and scatter what’s left of you to the wolves.”

  For the first time since his arrival, Robert Lee looked—really looked—at the woman who’d just fed him. And in that moment, there was a tiny part of him that envied Eulis Potter for the woman who’d claimed his heart.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “All right then,” Letty said, and glanced toward the door. “You can move now, T-Bone.”

  The pup stood, eyed the stranger one more time, then turned and trotted away, leaving the doorway empty.

  A week had passed since Robert Lee’s arrival into their lives. His coming had lifted the weight of Eulis’ responsibilities so dramatically that he was now actually sleeping through the night. Before, he hadn’t had one calm moment since the day Letty had found that gold, although he’d hidden the worst of his fears from Letty, or so he’d thought.

  But she had known. She’d been lying beside him every night since their marriage. She’d felt the tension in his body and the way he’d tossed and turned. The burden of being rich was more than either of them could have imagined, even though their lifestyle had yet to reflect the gold and currency piling up in the Denver City bank in their name.

  Now, Robert Lee’s arrival afforded them the perfect opportunity for change. Having given up their cabin, they were residing in Denver City’s only hotel, second floor, last room on the left, at the end of the hall.

  Their new house finally had windows, but the furniture they’d ordered months ago had yet to arrive, and they weren’t particularly interested in sleeping on the floors and cooking over a campfire again.

  Eulis had settled in at the hotel real easy. After the life he’d had, he didn’t need much to be happy—just Letty and a bed in which to sleep suited him just fine.

  Letty, on the other hand, was having issues. There was a young woman and a baby in the room next to them. It was Letty’s opinion that the woman cried more than the baby.

  The room across the hall was occupied by a woman named Delilah who had more male visitors than T-Bone had hairs. Not that she was judging her. Lord knew she’d been in the same boat for years. It was just a bit noisy from time to time.

  As for T-Bone, he’d barely gotten used to the cabin before Letty had moved him into town. She didn’t know that he’d come from Denver City, and that every bad thing that could happen to a dog had happened to him here. If it hadn’t been for his devotion to Letty, he would have abandoned the hotel days ago. Letty knew T-Bone wasn’t happy, but for the time being, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Until their furniture arrived, they were stuck.

  There was also the fact that they had to get used to having neighbors again. After the year that Eulis and Letty had survived, living back in town seemed stifling. There had been too many nights sleeping out on the prairies under the stars, and too many quiet mornings wakened by only the sound of a jaybird’s fuss, or a squirrel’s noisy chatter to readjust easily. Gunshots and loud voices had a tendency of setting a person’s teeth on edge, making them jumpy all the rest of the day. On the ninth day of their stay in the hotel, Letty reached her limit.

  The woman next door had been crying since before daybreak. Eulis had given Letty a nervous look, apologized for having to leave for the mine so early, took T-Bone with him, and left before Letty could argue. They were going to be blasting today and he didn’t want her anywhere around it. Letty was tired of waiting for tables and chairs that might never arrive, and had contacted the carpenters who’d built their home to start building some furniture. Yesterday they’d begun work on a bed and a wardrobe and when they were done, would make them a dining table and some chairs. Their tools were few, so the furniture would be plain, but it suited Letty’s taste just fine. She wanted out of the hotel and into her own home in the worst way.

  With no food to cook, and no cabin to clean, she was left with few options. Denver City was growing, but it still wasn’t a place where a woman could while away a day—unless she was occupied in whiling it away with men—for a fifty cents a poke.

  While she was brushing her hair, she dallied with the notion of going to the general store to look at the bolts of fabric, with an eye to making some curtains for her new house. As she was brushing out the last of the tangles, the woman next door let out a particularly loud wail.

  Letty rolled her eyes, puffed out her cheeks, and then laid down her hairbrush. If Eulis had been there, he would have recognized the look on her face. He’d seen it plenty of times back in Lizard Flats when she’d been tired of waiting for the hot water he was supposed to bring up for her bath.

  She got up from the chair and headed for the door, muttering under her breath and stomping off the distance in long, angry strides. Once in the hallway, it became apparent that the wailing had increased.

  “For the Good Lord’s sake,” Letty muttered, and hit the door three times with her fist.

  The wailing stopped—instantly.

  Letty whacked the door again.

  Silence continued.

  “Hello!” Letty called, and hit the door again with her fist.

  “You might as well open up because I’m not leaving until we talk.”

  There was another brief moment of silence, and then Letty heard footsteps moving toward the door. A few seconds later, the doorknob turned and the door swung inward.

  Letty stifled a gasp. She’d seen plenty of depravity in her time, but never had she seen a woman in such horrible shape.

  The woman glanced nervously around the hallway.

  “You need to go away,” she whispered.

  “I don’t think so,” Letty muttered.

  Blood dripped from the woman’s right nostril onto the front of her dress. From the shape of her clothing, it was Letty’s opinion that it was only the latest in a series of similar stains. She would have glared at Letty, but one eye was swollen shut and the other was bloodshot and purple from bruising.

  “What do you want?” the woman asked.

  Letty frowned.

  “I’m Letty Potter. Me an
d my husband are staying next door.”

  The woman sniffed and then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. The baby on the bed behind her made a weak, squeaking sound. Letty thought it sounded like a sick kitten and the woman looked worse.

  She thought about turning around, going back to her room and minding her own business, but the thought came and went faster than a fart. Dismayed to the point of speechlessness, she had to clear her throat before she could find the breath to speak.

  “Reckon I might come in?” she asked.

  The woman looked nervous and glanced up and down the hallway again.

  “I’m alone,” Letty said.

  Finally she shrugged and stepped aside.

  Letty was met with the stench of soiled diapers and sour milk. She saw the diapers in a pile on the floor, and a pitcher half-full of curdled milk. But it was the bleeding cuts, swollen flesh, and dark bruises on the woman’s face and body that worried her most.

  “What’s your name?” Letty asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What? You don’t have one or you don’t want to talk?”

  The woman turned away.

  Letty’s eyes narrowed angrily.

  “Look, lady, your name is beside the point. I’ve been in this hotel for nine days now and I’ve had to listen to you and this baby cry for every one of those nine days. Now I know why. Is the bastard who’s beating you your husband, or just your man?”

  The woman drew up as if she’d just been insulted.

  “I’m not like that woman across the hall. I’m a wife… two years married.”

  Letty’s upper lip curled. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard comments from so-called ‘decent’ women regarding other women who found themselves in dire straits.

  “I’ll tell you something about that woman across the hall,” Letty snapped. “She’s got better sense than to stay with some bastard who beats her on a regular basis.”

  “I never—”

  Letty held up her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The baby squeaked.

  Letty turned around. “May I?” she asked, and pointed to the baby.

  “I guess,” the woman said, and then started to cry again, only this time the tears were silent.