The Whippoorwill Trilogy

by Sharon Sala

Eulis rolled his eyes.

  “I’m in heaven.”

  A gust of wind rattled the windows.

  Letty turned toward the sound and wrapped her arms around herself, stifling a shudder as a fresh wave of rain began to fall.

  “Lord in heaven, I wish this rain would stop.”

  Eulis nodded. “They might have to move the gold out of the bank.”

  Letty gasped, and turned abruptly.

  “Where to?”

  “Don’t know, but if that water gets any closer to the bank, they won’t have much choice.”

  “Well, that’s not good,” Letty muttered. “There has to be something we can do.”

  Eulis shrugged. “Last time I checked, God was still in charge of the weather. There ain’t nothin’ we can do.”

  “We’ll see,” Letty said. “Meanwhile, come help me lay down these quilts.”

  Eulis picked them up and followed Letty into an empty room down the hall.

  “What are we doin’ here?” he asked, as he spread them to her satisfaction.

  “We’re making a bed for Alice.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  They laid one down, then another to the side for covers.

  “I wish the things that we ordered would hurry up and come,” Letty said, as she continued to fuss with the quilts. “Can’t even make a proper bed up here.”

  “Honey, I don’t reckon as how your Alice will be too worried about the lack of a pillow… not after you as good as saved her from a fate worse than death.”

  Letty walked back to the window. The view from the second floor of their home was grand—even though they were looking at it through a downpour.

  “Eulis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember how flat the land was back in the Kansas territories?”

  “I reckon I do.”

  “I was always afraid of it.”

  Eulis turned to her. Surprise was evident on his face.

  “I didn’t know that. In fact, I don’t reckon I ever saw you afraid of anything… except that day the preacher from back East died in your bed and you passed me off as the man they’d all been waitin’ to see.”

  She shuddered.

  “Lord. Don’t remind me. I thought I was a goner, for sure.”

  “So, why did the flat land scare you, girl?”

  “I don’t know… maybe because it appeared that there was nothing to hold on to. You know how it got when the wind blew. It just went on forever. And in the winter when it snowed, it blew and blew without anything to stop it. I guess I was afraid I’d blow away, too.”

  “You got too much grit to be flighty,” Eulis said.

  Letty shrugged. “Still… I like the way these mountains make me feel. Sort of like I’m being cradled in big, strong arms. You know?”

  Eulis hugged her.

  “I reckon I’d just as soon keep you in my arms, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Letty smiled.

  “You don’t have to politic me anymore. You’re already getting your second helpings.”

  Eulis shook his head.

  “Honey, with you it ain’t ever politickin’… just the plain, honest to God, truth.”

  “So, let’s go eat,” Letty said.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Eulis said, and followed her down the stairs.

  Alice didn’t know what to make of Letty Potter, but she was grateful for the job and the shelter. It was shame enough that everyone knew her husband’s weaknesses. To have him jailed was even worse. But it was her little baby that was breaking her heart. Their time together had been far too brief, and not being able to lay her to rest was weighing heavy on her mind. If only this terrible rain would stop—at least long enough for them to be able to put her baby in the ground—she’d feel better.

  A burning ember popped as Alice bent over to stir the stew. A drop of the savory liquid sloshed over the side of the iron pot and into the fire, hissing briefly before it dried.

  The cast iron pot in which she’d baked the apple cobbler was sitting at the edge of the fire to keep it warm, and her biscuits were just about done, but Alice felt faint. She hadn’t done this much physical work in a long time and was still weak from her injuries. But she wasn’t complaining. Far from it. She had a safe, dry place to sleep and food to eat. For now, it was all she could ask for.

  “Somethin’ sure smells good.”

  The man’s compliment was unexpected. Alice ducked her head as the Potters came down the stairs.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Alice said. “But I can’t take credit for the stew. Your wife already had that finished before I got here.”

  “Well, we’re proud to have you,” Eulis said.

  Alice ducked her head again. “It’s I who owe you. I was desperate. Your wife’s offer was an answer to a prayer.”

  Eulis glanced at Letty and winked—a reminder to each other of their time together on the Amen Trail, when he’d been a practicing preacher and she, a devoted, but somewhat controlling, companion.

  “Is the cookin’ done?” Eulis asked.

  Alice nodded.

  “Then let’s eat,” he said. “My belly’s been complainin’ for hours.”

  Alice looked startled. They were behaving as if she would be having her meal with them. That couldn’t be right. Surely she’d misunderstood. Then Letty handed her a plate.

  “Here,” Letty said. “You did most of the work so you should get the first dip.”

  “But I’m just the hired—”

  Letty frowned. “Let’s get something straight right now. There is no “just” in this house. Get yourself some stew and quit fussing. Maybe by next week we’ll have us a table and some chairs, but for now, we’re sitting on the floor.”

  Alice took the plate and bit her lip to keep from weeping.

  “The last three nights, I slept in the stable. From where I’m standing, this is a drastic improvement, and I thank you for it.”

  “You’re welcome,” Letty said. “Get yourself a biscuit to go with that stew and step aside before Eulis slobbers all over your shoulder.”

  Eulis blushed.

  Alice grinned, and then winced from the pain of still healing facial muscles. She added a biscuit to her plate and eased her bruised and battered body down until she sitting on the floor with the wall at her back.

  T-Bone had been sleeping in another room, but obviously heard the clank of spoon to tin plate and came to check things out.

  Letty caught movement from the corner of her eye and frowned.

  “I already fed you,” she said.

  The pup whined.

  “And you stink,” she added.

  T-Bone sat down in the doorway, unaffected by her criticism.

  “There’s a bone in this stew here. I’ll dig it out and give it to him,” Eulis said.

  “It’ll be too hot,” Letty said.

  Eulis grinned. “Well then, he can sit and look at it while it cools.”

  Alice eyed the pair, as well as the rangy pup, and took another bite of her stew, thinking to herself as she ate that these people were unlike any she’d ever known. As for the pup, she remembered it from the alleys down in Denver City. They obviously adopted more than displaced people. She didn’t know how this was going to work out, but for now, she was profoundly grateful.

  George Mellin could see the rising water from the window of his cell. Every night when he laid down on the cot, he wondered if he’d be alive in the morning, or if he’d just drown in bed. He couldn’t believe his life had come to this. If he had it to do over again, he would never have married Alice, or fathered their child, although the child was no longer an issue. He wondered a bit about the fact that he felt no sadness for her passing, but didn’t dwell on it. This was a harsh land and no place for the weak. It was simply a case of survival of the fittest.

  Still, it seemed he was going to have to face a judge for the disagreements he and Alice had been having. He didn’t consider it anybody’s business but their
own, but obviously some did—the some—being that bitch, Letty Potter. If she’d minded her own business, none of this would have happened. Oh, the kid would have died. Nothing could have prevented that. But at least he and Alice would have been back to where they started, which might not have been all bad. At least they wouldn’t have been fighting over dragging that weakling to a doctor—as if they’d had the money for such foolishness. It’s what he got for marrying someone from back east. Those big cities didn’t produce women used to hardships. He should have picked himself a woman who’d been born and raised in the territories. They knew how to make do with little to nothing.

  Now, because of the choices he’d made, he was stuck in this cell, waiting for some stranger to make the decision as to how the rest of his life would go—and all because of Letty Potter’s meddling. When he got out, he was going to pay her back in a big way.

  As a young man, Joshua Dean had studied law back in Virginia, and had been practicing law for the past twenty years in Atlanta, until the last six months. There were rumors back in the southern states that had not set well with him. His life had been based on interpreting the Constitution of the United States of America, and the laws of the land. And, because of his background, he was struggling with the current mood of his fellow Southerners.

  The suggestion from the Northern States that slavery should be outlawed, had set the emotions of the South on fire. It challenged and threatened their livelihood in a way they could not ignore. There was no way the big landowners could operate their vast plantations without slave labor, and the Southerners were of the opinion that the Northern states had no business trying to regulate or change their way of life.

  The Honorable Joshua Dean knew that, if the rumblings actually came to fruition and the southern states seceded from the Union as they were threatening to do, he would not be able to stay true to himself and still reside in the place where he’d been born.

  The problem was, Joshua Dean was a man with thinking ahead of his time—a man who did not believe in the buying and selling of other human beings. He also held to an unpopular theory that the blacks were not lesser beings, but simply a race of people with a different way of living, and that just because they’d been sold into slavery, it should not reflect upon their capacity for learning or being treated fairly.

  Because he’d been unable to make a decision as to which side to back, he’d made an unusual choice. He’d opted to remove himself from the discord before he was forced to make a stand.

  Going west into the territories had been an option he’d considered, as had taking himself to Europe—possibly England or France. But he considered the British a cold-mannered nation, and since he didn’t speak French, the decision had been made for him. West it was.

  He’d been in the territories for just over six months, and the news he got from home convinced him that he’d done the right thing. Every day the southern states came closer and closer to seceding, at which point, he just kept taking himself further West.

  He had enough judicial pull to get himself an appointment as a judge, and was actually enjoying traveling from one outpost to another, delivering justice whenever it was needed. Of course, he had to accept that, more often than not, the people who populated these places were accustomed to meting out their own brand of justice. Several times he’d traveled days at great discomfort only to discover that the locals had taken the law into their own hands and hanged an offender without due process of the law. In those instances, he’d rendered his disapproval and moved on before he became the next target of their ire.

  Such was the case when he received word that a judge was needed in Denver City. He started out with a sense of fatalism. Either he got there before a crowd mentality developed, or he didn’t. Considering there was an ongoing gold strike, he could only imagine what might be waiting for his disposition.

  Amos Trueblood, a middle-aged man with the physique of a scarecrow, stood on the back steps of his bank building, absently tracing the part in his thin and graying hair as he watched the rush of flood waters a few hundred yards below. His long black topcoat and black pants were stained around the hems with mud splatters. His shoes, normally shined, were filthy and rimmed with dried mud. No matter how many times a day he cleaned them, at the end of a day, they were still filthy.

  In the early days when he’d first opened for business, he’d worried about many things, including being robbed. But he’d never imagined, on his worst day, that he might be ruined by a flood.

  He had opened the bank less than two months after the first gold strike had been made in the area. In loaning money to first one prospector then another, he’d acquired, by default, more than a dozen claims. While he had no intention of panning for gold, he was more than happy to acquire the land. He had a feeling that, one day, this boom town was going to make it past the gold strike, to grow into an honest to God city. When it did, he would be in on the ground floor in development. However, if the flood waters didn’t stop rising, he was going to have to rethink his future plans.

  Last night when the rain had ceased, he had hopes that today would be the day the flood would crest. After that, it would be a matter of waiting until the water began to recede. Instead, it was raining again.

  He looked up at the sky, squinting against the rain drops peppering against his face. Only God knew how this all would end.

  Letty woke up with a start and glanced toward the window as she sat up. It was still raining.

  “Eulis.”

  Eulis woke abruptly.

  “Hmm? What? Is ever’thing okay?”

  Letty frowned.

  “No. It’s still raining.”

  Eulis threw back the covers and sat up, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he, too, looked toward the window.

  “Yep. So it appears.”

  “I think we just made a mistake building this house,” Letty muttered.

  Eulis frowned. “How so, honey?”

  “We should have built ourselves an ark, instead.”

  Eulis grinned. He got the biblical reference quickly.

  “Don’t worry, we’re safe and sound up here.”

  “I’m not worrying about us. I’m worrying about what’s going to happen to the town below. If everything floods, then that might mean the end of the gold strike, and if that happens, people will begin leaving. I’ve seen it before. We’ll wind up living in this big old house without another living soul within a hundred miles except critters and Indians.”

  Eulis lifted an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a pretty drastic statement. If I was you, I wouldn’t set myself up for Denver City turning into a ghost town just yet. The rain will stop. It has to.”

  “But the claims along Cherry Creek are ruined.”

  Eulis nodded. “Yeah. I thought about that myself.”

  “That could put us in danger,” Letty muttered.

  “How so?” Eulis asked.

  “Think about it,” Letty said. “If you’re starving to death and your gold claim just went downstream with the flood, then there will be some who’ll look to where gold is still intact. That means people like us. Mining isn’t the same as panning. I’m afraid for you.”

  Eulis leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Remember, we’ve got Robert Lee.”

  “He can’t be everywhere at once,” Letty muttered.

  “Stop fussin’,” Eulis said, and then sniffed the air. “I smell coffee brewin’. Seems like our cook might be earnin’ her keep.”

  Letty watched Eulis crawl out of their bedrolls and dress quickly, combing his hair with his fingers as he walked out of the room. He was probably going outside to relieve himself. She needed to go, too, but wasn’t in the mood to get soaked. Still, until their furniture arrived with all the accessories that came with it, like slop jars and wash stands, she didn’t have any other options.

  Muttering as she dressed, she opted for her boots, rather than the slippers she liked to wear aroun
d the house. No need to get her slippers all wet and muddy when she had to go out. She dug through their trunk until she found a clean shirt to go with yesterday’s pants, and dressed without fuss. By the time she got downstairs, her stomach was growling from the enticing scents coming from the parlor. If she wasn’t mistaken, she smelled frying fatback and hot biscuits.

  She paused outside the doorway to the parlor and peeked in. Alice Mellin was bent over the fireplace, poking at the fire with a poker.

  “Morning, Alice,” Letty said.

  Alice looked up.

  “Oh! Good Morning, Ma’am. Breakfast is—”

  Letty frowned.

  “Not ma’am… Letty… please.”

  Alice flushed. “Yes, ma—… I mean, Letty.”

  “Something sure smells good,” Letty said.

  Alice beamed in spite of herself.

  “Thank you. It’s ready when you are.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Letty said.

  Alice went back to her cooking, while Letty made a run for the back door. They’d dug a well and built an outhouse before they’d dug footing for the house, and that was where she headed. At the time, it had seemed reasonable to put it a distance away from the back door, but this morning she was doubting the wisdom. Still, no one wanted to be greeted with the scent of an outhouse while enjoying the view. There was nothing to be done but make a run for it.

  She noticed as she stepped off the porch that T-Bone was already there, nosing around the outhouse door. She hoped a skunk hadn’t taken shelter from the weather where she intended to pee.

  Water splashed up on the legs of her pants as she ran, while the falling rain dampened her long, curly hair and poured down the back of her neck. By the time she made it to the outhouse, she was soaked. T-Bone was whining and woofed softly as she reached for the door.

  “Is it a skunk?” she asked.

  The pup didn’t have much to say on the subject other than offer up another woof.

  Letty rolled her eyes.

  “I can’t believe I was waiting for an answer,” she muttered, as she yanked the door open then stifled a gasp.