The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,110

didn’t suppose preachers were supposed to glare.

She snorted. It was an unladylike noise from a woman who called herself Leticia, but it got his attention, nevertheless.

“One for the money, two for the show, my ass,” Letty grumbled, then leaned across the table. “It goes… I baptize you in the name of the Father, and… uh… the Holy Ghost, and stuff like that.”

Eulis leaned back in his chair and nervously slicked down the part in his hair. “I’ll practice on it some.”

“Not on me, you won’t,” Letty warned. “And not in no more horse troughs, neither. I was still blowing moss out of my nose this morning. I’ll probably come down sick.”

This time Eulis glared. Hard.

“You shoulda kept your mouth shut and your dress buttoned, and you wouldna’ had no moss gettin’ where it didn’t belong. Besides, you was plumb out of your head. I asked you twice last night if you knowed what you was doin’, and all you could say was you wanted to be saved. It wasn’t me that was had by the Devil.” He tried not to grin. “By the way, how are your legs?”

When her eyes narrowed at the mention of body parts Eulis got the message real fast. She’d become a proper lady, all right. In the old days when he helped his daddy farming and before he’d been a soldier and then a drunk, he seemed to remember that it wasn’t seemly to mention limbs and such to a lady. He felt obliged to correct himself by adding.

“The scratches! I meant, how are the scratches?”

She relaxed. “Oh! They’re healing up just fine.”

Something about the smirk on his face made her ask. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make the Devil scratch at me.”

His eyes widened. She still didn’t know. And something told him that the less she knew, the better off he was. After all, a man needed all the power he could get to save himself from a reformed whore.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I was as surprised as the next man to see you yank up your skirt tail and show them marks on your legs.”

It wasn’t a lie. Not really. He hadn’t expected her to believe the Devil was up her dress. If she hadn’t had such a guilty conscience, she would have known for certain that it had been a critter and not a demon that had taken refuge under her skirt.

A long moment of silence passed between them. Letty could still remember yesterday’s panic and the knowledge that she’d committed an unforgivable sin. Somewhere between then and now she’d been given an unexpected opportunity.

While she suspected that Eulis wasn’t telling her all that he knew, she didn’t care enough to press the issue. She wasn’t about to mess up her last chance to change her life.

Eulis dropped his napkin at his plate and stood. “The wagon leaves in an hour, my dear.”

Letty frowned. “I’m packed. And maybe you’d best not call me, ‘dear’. People might get the wrong impression.”

She flitted away to get her bag, leaving Eulis with a sinking feeling that while he was going to be in the company of a once-willing woman, she’d given up “willing” for “willful” and was going to conveniently forget about all those free pokes.

He went to get his bag and tried not to dwell on his disappointment regarding Miss Leticia Murphy, late of the White Dove Saloon, and now the new “assistant” to one traveling preacher on the amen trail.

A short while later, he stood outside, waiting for the Hollis Freight wagon to show up. “Get over it, Eulis,” he muttered. “You been on dry tit before. Just because you lost a woman you never had and gave up sex you didn’t get, don’t mean you got to bawl about it.”

Letty walked up behind him. “What was that you were saying?”

Eulis squinted against the glare of sun and the blast of dust that careened down the middle of the street.

“I was givin’ myself a sermon.”

Leticia grinned, and for a minute Eulis saw past her new facade to the old Letty beneath.

“Did it take?”

“I don’t know,” Eulis answered. “Only time will tell.”

They smiled at each other and then turned to look at the freight wagon that was pulling into town. The first step to Dodge City. It was time to lay the past to rest.

Rest In Peace, You Dirty Bastard

Dodge City was everything Eulis had imagined and more. He’d never seen so many people in one place in his entire life