by Sharon Sala
He glanced back over his shoulder, checking to make sure his pony was still in sight then turned back toward the woman. He had been gone from his camp for two sleeps gathering plants and roots for healing. The gathering had been good, and as healer for the Turtle clan it was his duty to make sure he had what might be needed to get his people through the winter. Even though he felt sorry for the young white woman, she was not his problem. He stood up, intent on leaving before the white man came back when she started to cry.
He stared at the woman for a few moments more, and then looked past her to the other side of the creek. The white man was nowhere in sight. He stared at her again and then sighed. If he followed his instincts, he should get on his pony and ride away. But the woman’s misery was strong, and while he couldn’t take away the smell from her body, he could ease the pain in her eyes.
Before he talked himself out of it, he stepped out of the trees and down into the water, ignoring the water soaking his moccasins and leggings.
***
Letty heard the footsteps on the creek bank and then the splash as they came through the water. She felt around and grabbed onto the undergarments she’d been washing and quickly wrung them out. It didn’t occur to her that the footsteps had come from the wrong side of the creek or that Eulis hadn’t called out. She was too busy trying to hide the fact that she’d been crying.
Before she could think what to say, a hand encircled her wrist and pulled her upright. Clutching the wet clothing against her breasts, she let herself be led, then stumbled once when she stepped on a sharp rock. Immediately, she felt him catch her and set her back on her feet.
“Thanks,” she said, and had yet to wonder about his silence. When she began to feel the brush of leaves and vines against her skin, she knew they were back in the trees.
“I still smell awful,” she said, stating the obvious.
All she got for her truth was a grunt. She shrugged it off, figuring Eulis was taking the high road by no comment at all.
A few moments more and she heard the snort of a horse. When the hand on her wrist moved from her arm to her shoulder and pushed, she took it as a sign to stop.
“Eulis, I need my clothes,” she said.
He didn’t answer, but she heard him walking through the brush then heard a low, steady murmur as he steadied the horse with a sound that resembled a low hum.
She frowned. That didn’t sound like something Eulis might do. Still, being sightless made everything seem frightening and strange, so she didn’t question her confusion.
“Come on, Eulis. I’m not claiming any large amount of modesty, but be fair. Please hand me some clothes.”
She stretched out her hand, expecting to feel fabric. Instead, she felt something like grass or leaves in her palm. She fingered it, then decided it was leaves and lifted them to her nose. They had a sharp, medicinal smell and when she crushed one, it left an odd, oily substance on her skin.
“What’s this?” she said.
He touched her eyes then put her hand on the leaves then touched her eyes again.
“You want me to put this on my eyes?” she asked, and took a leaf and held it near her face.
He moved her hand to her eyes then gently pushed until the crushed leaves were lying next to her skin.
Almost immediately, her burning eyelids felt a measure of relief.
“Oooh, that feels good,” she said, and reached back into her palm, took another pinch of the leaves, crushed them between her fingers and rubbed it on her other eye.
She felt him put more leaves in her hand then he touched her on the shoulder in what felt like a gesture of goodbye, which she found strange. Moments later, she heard the shuffle of feet and then the horse whinny as it accepted the man’s weight.
“Eulis?”
He didn’t answer. She curled her fingers around the precious stash of leaves and then reached out with her other hand, searching for his location while thinking, surely to God he isn’t going to run off and leave me.
She lunged forward, felt the familiar warmth of the horse’s shoulder and realized there was no saddle and that made no sense. On a good day, Eulis was not much of a rider. Bareback, he would have been laughable, and yet someone had mounted this horse.
She moved her hand again. Instead of Eulis’s long, bony leg, she felt a strong, muscular calf encased in wet buckskin.
This wasn’t Eulis.
“Oh. Oh, God,” she said softly and instinctively crossed her arms across her breasts, although to be honest it was way past the time for modesty. “Who are you?”
She heard what sounded like a sigh. When she frowned, she heard a soft chuckle. The sound was foreign to anything Eulis had ever done, but at the same time it was still very male. It frightened her and intrigued her. Whoever it was obviously meant her no harm or he would have already taken advantage of her state of undress.
Frustrated by her inability to see, she scrubbed angrily at her eyelids, rubbing even more of the medicinal properties of the oil into her skin and as she did, realized she was beginning to see daylight. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but it was the first sign she’d had that this too shall pass. Then she heard the horse moving and knew whoever was on it was backing away.
“Wait!”
She heard the horse stop. She stepped forward, holding her hand out before her as she felt her way.
Suddenly her hand was enveloped in one much larger and stronger. She felt the brush of hair against her arm and knew it was not her own. She opened her mouth, then immediately shut it when his hand touched her face. She felt a fingertip tracing the path that her tears had made earlier and knew that he’d seen her cry.
“I don’t ever do that,” she said.
He took her fingers, put them back onto the leaves and then touched her eyes once more.
“You want me to put some more on my eyes? Is that it?” Quickly, she grabbed some leaves and began scrubbing them against her eyes. Each time that she did, she felt relief from the swelling until the misery was almost gone. She looked up again, and this time saw more than daylight.
His expression was motionless, his eyes hooded and dark. His shoulders were broad—his belly flat. He sat the paint horse as if they were one and the same, while wearing nothing but a feather in his hair, a breechclout and leggings, and moccasins on his feet. She should have been scared out of her mind. Instead, she felt an odd sort of empathy.
He touched his eyes once, then pointed at hers and suddenly she understood. He knew how she felt.
She held out her hand, showing him the leaves.
“Thank you,” she said, and touched her eyes, then her heart.
He stared at her for a moment, letting his gaze wander over her nudity without lust or shame then nodded.
Suddenly, his gaze slid from her to the creek behind her.
Letty turned. Eulis must be coming.
He grabbed the reins and turned his pony to the East.
There was a moment when their gazes met again, this time in a silent acknowledgment of what had transpired, and then he kicked his horse in the flanks and was gone.
It wasn’t until he disappeared that Letty started to shake.
“Lord, Lord, this is twice in my life that you’ve saved me from murdering Indians.”
Then she scrambled through the brush and into the creek just in time to see Eulis coming through the trees.
She turned once, looking behind her to make sure the Indian was gone, and then shivered. It dawned on her that, until she’d seen him, she’d not been afraid. She wondered what God was trying to tell her with that encounter, and then said a mute prayer of thanksgiving that the Indian had left her with her hair on her head and—she silently added—the ability to see.
“Hey, Letty, your eyes opened up some, didn’t they?” Eulis said, as he helped her out of the creek and up the bank.
“Yeah, probably the cold water,” Letty said, and then wondered why she didn’t tell Eulis the truth.
There coul
d be a whole band of Indians just over the hill waiting to swoop down on them and do them in, just like the ones who’d killed her father. But that didn’t fit the gentleness of the man as he’d led her out of the creek, or the leaves he had given her that led to the blessed relief to her swollen and burning eyes. She touched her face where he’d traced the paths of her tears and shuddered, too miserable and confused to figure everything out.
Eulis walked just a bit in front of her so as not to be staring rudely at her nudity, which would have been impossible to ignore.
“I didn’t plan on you bein’ able to see, so I already laid out some dry clothes for you. If I picked the wrong stuff, you just trade for what you need.”
“Whatever you laid out will be fine,” Letty said, still holding her wet bloomers against her breasts.
Eulis scratched at his whiskered cheeks as he nodded. When they got to Dripping Springs, he was going to need a good bath and shave, too. A few moments later they reached the campsite.
Letty grabbed her clothes and slipped behind a bush then began to dress.
Eulis politely kept his back turned as she put on her clothes, although he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why it now mattered to be modest. Before, when she hadn’t been able to see, she hadn’t cared a bit. Now, because she could see again, she was hiding in bushes. If he lived to be a hundred he would never be able to figure out women.
“Hey, Letty. I saved you some meat and johnnycake. Reckon you’re up to eatin’ a bite before we set out?”
Letty’s stomach rumbled. She was hungry and she thought the worst of her nausea had passed.
“I wouldn’t mind,” she said.
He set aside the leftover meat and johnnycake, and then began packing up the bits and pieces of their camping gear. A few minutes later, Letty came out from behind the bushes wearing a wrinkled, but clean, skirt and shirtwaist. Her hair was still wet, so she’d left it down to dry, but had put some hair combs in her pocket for later.
“Where are my shoes?”
Eulis pointed toward her saddlebag. “In there.”
She took them out and then held her breath as she put them on. They smelled to high heaven and so did she. Still, she couldn’t go all day on an empty stomach or she’d be puking again before night. She picked up the sandwich he’d made of the meat and corn cake, and took a big bite. It had a faint taste of skunk, but she figured that was a lingering taste in her mouth, not on the food.
“It’s good, Eulis. Thank you for fixing it.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry I still smell,” she added.
“Ain’t your fault.”
“I know, but still…”
“You’re gonna be downwind of me today anyway, so I reckon it won’t matter.”
Letty nodded as she took another bite, although that came close to being an insult. However, the lingering stench of skunk was a brutal reminder of how she’d been humbled. She wasn’t in any mood to chastise Eulis for the remark for fear of what might happen to her next.
A few minutes later, they mounted up, set their direction by the position of the sun, and rode out of camp toward Dripping Springs.
***
It was mid-afternoon when Eulis and Letty got the first glimpse of their destination. It was out in the middle of a wide, flat valley, which, if they hadn’t been so travel-weary, would have made them wonder where the isolated little town had gotten its name.
There was a mountain range far, far to the west, and a large herd of cattle barely visible in the south. The obligatory saloon sat squarely in the middle of town. Letty could read the sign from here.
Griggs Saloon.
It crossed her mind that there might be women working in there who she knew, then discarded the notion. There was no reason to assume they would even cross paths. Letty’s recent conversion to the Lord had automatically moved her to socially acceptable, especially if no one knew her from before.
She looked at Eulis. There was a strange, faraway expression on his face.
“Eulis?”
“What?”
“What are you thinking?” Letty asked.
Eulis looked at her and then sighed. “I reckon I was wonderin’ who it was I was gonna lie to this time.”
Letty frowned. She didn’t know how to deal with Eulis’s conscience.
“There’s no call to look at it like that,” she said.
Eulis shrugged. “Then how do you look at it? I’m gonna go down into that town and pretend I have the legal right to marry two perfectly decent people. Those people will then live the rest of their lives believing they are legally wed, and their children and grandchildren, and all who come after them will have been born from bastards. That’s how I look at it and it’s startin’ to bother me some.”
Letty’s frown deepened. She’d had no idea that Eulis was capable of such deep thinking.
“So, what are you saying? Are you blaming me for getting you into this?”
“No… I don’t know… maybe.”
Letty felt the weight of the world settling on her shoulders. Through sheer terror and no small amount of determination, she’d kept the people in Lizard Flats from finding out that the real preacher they’d been expecting had died in her bed. She’d dragged Eulis out of his normal drunken stupor, cleaned him up and passed him off as the preacher because it had suited her purposes, not his. She’d pushed and prodded him every step of the way, and not once had she thought about what they were doing. It had been all about what she wanted. She’d had a change of heart and quit a life of sin, and she wondered now whether it had been a real change of heart, or from fear and guilt. She couldn’t say she was sorry she was no longer letting men have their way with her body, but she was sorry she’d used Eulis.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
He glanced at her then looked away.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sorry you’re not still in Lizard Flats?”
He shook his head vehemently. “No. No, not that. I won’t ever be sorry about that and I got you to thank for helpin’ get me outa’ that. I reckon I woulda’ just drunk myself to death if you hadn’t… if we didn’t, uh… well, you know.”
“Look, Eulis, don’t think I need you to take care of me,” she said. “If you want to strike out on your own then don’t let me stop you.” She pointed to the little town nestled down in the wide valley. “There’s a saloon down there and I’ve still got a few good years left in me. I might not like it, but it won’t kill me, and I won’t starve to death.”
Eulis saw the bravado on her face, but he also heard the desperation in her voice. Even though he wasn’t sure about pretending to be someone he was not, he knew he couldn’t let Letty slide back into her life of sin. Not when he’d preached her right out of that life and baptized her into redemption. It might have been in a horse trough, but it was a sincere baptism just the same.
“That ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “And I don’t want to stop preachin’ either. I reckon I was just a little bit nervous, but I’m feelin’ fine now. Besides, I’m sure ready for a bath of my own.”
The mule he was riding suddenly lifted its head and brayed.
He grinned.
“See. Even this old mule is ready for a little rest, so let’s go see what there is to see.”
The relief Letty felt was so startling that she had to look away to keep from letting him see her tears. She swiped a hand beneath her nose in lieu of a handkerchief, and got a strong whiff of herself all over again.
“Lead the way,” she said. “Me and this old hay burner won’t be far behind. Oh… and Eulis…”
“What?”
“Maybe it would be best if, when we get into town, you go on ahead into the hotel and get us some rooms. They might not let me in if they smelled me beforehand.”
Eulis grinned. “Good thinkin’, Sister Leticia.”
“Yep, that’s me. Always thinking ahead,” Letty muttered, and urged her blind mare
forward as they began their descent into Dripping Springs.
VINEGAR, VANITY, AND VISIONS
It was Orville Smithson who first saw the strangers riding into town. One man on a mule. A woman on a blind mare. He knew the mare was blind because he could see the white film over the mare’s eyes from inside his shop. He frowned, wondering how that worked—riding into a strange place on a horse that couldn’t see?
The man was dusty and trail-weary, but the cut of his suit was fine, and the hat on his head was a Bowler, a style men out West didn’t much cotton to. His hair was a mixture of brown and gray and hung a few inches past the collar of his shirt. His face was ordinary, with less than a week’s worth of whiskers waiting to be shorn. The woman was some younger than the man. Her clothes were nothing to write home about, but she had a nice face, a voluptuous body, and a fine head of brown hair.
He laid down the straight-razor he’d been sharpening and walked out onto the sidewalk. He caught the scent of polecat as the couple passed by and wrinkled his nose as they rode straight to the rooming house. A cowboy ambled out of Grigg’s Saloon, mounted his horse and rode out of town as Henrietta Lewis walked out of the mercantile.
Orville waited for her to look his way so that he could wave, but she, too, had seen the strangers and was curiously watching as the man dismounted.
“Hey, Orville, I need a haircut.”
Orville turned around to see who had hailed him, then frowned. Harley Charles was coming up the sidewalk. It was the first time he’d seen him since Fannie had run him out of their house on all fours. He wasn’t certain how to behave toward a man who’d been humiliated in this respect, especially since it was his daughter who’d done the deed. But Harley didn’t seem all that bothered about their face-to-face, so Orville took his cue from Harley and waved him into the shop and set him down in the barber chair.
