The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,116

to guide her, she refused to quit on herself.

The cancer that was supposed to have killed her a year ago was, at this writing, undetectable, and we celebrated her strength and her news, while accepting the fact that none of us is promised a tomorrow.

As I have revised the story and am now putting it up in digital format, it is necessary to note that she has been gone since 2005, but I feel blessed in knowing that we share the same blood, and I face each day of my future hoping that I will live with as much honor and fortitude as she exhibited to her family.

To Alice Lorraine Shero Stone

Good friend.

Christian woman.

Loving daughter.

Faithful sister.

Devoted wife.

Beloved Mother.

Honored grandmother.

Blessed great-grandmother.

You were, and always will be, an example to us all.

Contents

Author’s Notes

1. Hark! Thy Name Is Brother

2. Shutting The Barn Door After The Horse Is Out

3. In Sickness And In Health

4. Get Thee Behind Me Satan

5. Hard Luck And Honeymoons

6. The Fragility Of Woman

7. Old Sins And New Hope

8. Lead A Horse To Water But Can’t Make It Drink

9. Standing On The Promises

10. Vinegar, Vanity, And Visions

11. Blessed Assurances And The High Road

12. Rescue The Perishing

13. Standing On The Promises

14. One More Mile To Go—One Last Soul To Save

15. Fever—Hot And Gold

16. The Tower Of Babel

17. No Room In The Inn

18. Raising Lazarus

19. The Time Of Revelations

20. Hidden Riches

21. The End Of The Trail

Author’s Notes

In research taken from MILE HIGH CITY, by Thomas J. Noel, we know that during the 1840s and 1850s, the Arapaho had been camping along Cherry Creek near its junction with the South Platte. A chief named Little Raven really did exist, and did what he could to maintain a cordial relationship with the white man, whom the Arapaho called ‘spider people’, which was a reference to the white man’s web of roads, survey lines, and fences. Too late, they realized the significance of this practice.

From time to time, it was the practice of the Arapaho to share their women with others and it was not considered immoral among them.

Mexicans had gold diggings before in the area around Cherry Creek, but it was dismissed as inconsequential by the big strike of 1858 and the huge influx of whites to the area.

To my knowledge, there was no smallpox epidemic during this time, although history has shown us time and time again, how devastating it was to the Indians when it did occur.

In creating my story, I took license with some of the historical time lines, as well as historical facts, i.e. the smallpox epidemic.

This story is purely fictional.

In no way is it intended as a book of historical fact.

Enjoy the story of Letty and Eulis’s triumph, but without judgment, as it was meant to be read.

Hark! Thy Name Is Brother

For Eulis Potter, stepping into the shoes of a dead preacher had not been his idea. He’d been persuaded to play the role partly because of his weakness for liquor, and partly because of Letty Murphy, the whore at the White Dove Saloon, who’d promised him free pokes for life if he’d help her hide the dead preacher’s body. Poor Letty had been in the act of servicing the real Reverend Randall Ward Howe when he had, literally, up and died on her or in her as the case may be. At the time, creating the deception had seemed imperative, but going through with it had almost been the end of them both.

Who could have known that Eulis, the town drunk/local gravedigger, would actually relish the role into which he’d been thrust? Even more unbelievable was the fact that during the ensuing events of that day, Letty had gotten religion and given up the role of Lizard Flat’s only whore. Those free pokes that she’d promised him were definitely now out of the question, but Eulis didn’t really mind. They were both caught up in their new lives and the new names under which they were living. The difficulties now lay in forgetting who they’d been and concentrating on who they’d become.

It had been months since Letty and Eulis had hit the Amen Trail, which is what Eulis like to call the path of his new career. Months of preaching in places so small that the settlements didn’t even have a name. Traveling by stagecoach when possible, and sleeping in way stations, eating the same menu of beef and beans at every stop and pretending they did not hear or smell the constant waft of bodily gasses that were