The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,123

too.”

Letty thought about it a minute and then stuffed the gun back beneath her pillow and laid down. A few seconds later, she raised up again and whispered.

“Eulis.”

He frowned. “Brother Howe, if you please.”

Letty rolled her eyes and then tugged at the neck of her nightgown.

“Sorry. Where do you reckon we’ll wind up next?”

Eulis sighed. “I suppose wherever the Good Lord leads us.”

Letty thought about that a moment, then nodded. Satisfied by the godly answer, she laid back down.

An owl hooted outside the station. She caught herself waiting to hear if there was an answering hoot from somewhere else then thought of how she used to listen for the call of the whippoorwill, waiting endlessly in hopes of hearing the mate’s answering call.

Disgusted with herself for still being a dreamer after all the wasted years, she poked the thin, lumpy pillow into a different shape in hopes of making it more comfortable. She was a reformed whore and well past the marrying age, even though there had been one man, a gambler, who seemed to care for her despite her disreputable past. After he’d died in a gunfight, she figured it was her punishment for even imagining she could deserve such happiness. Now she considered it her penance to follow a man who’d dedicated his life to bringing the word of God to the territories. Even if Eulis wasn’t a real preacher, and even if he hadn’t made the decision on his own, she was in a better place now than she had been last year.

Something banged beyond the curtain as lamplight suddenly glowed.

“Something wrong?” Eulis called.

The bale on a bucket rattled as Forney pulled it out from beneath a bench. It had a hammer, and what he hoped were enough nails to do the job he had planned.

“Seein’ as how we got ourselves a woman on the property, I reckoned I’d go put the walls of my outhouse back together before someone had the need to use it again.”

Letty snorted.

Forney jiggled the bucket, taking satisfaction in the clank and clatter of the nails to punctuate what he’d left unsaid, then slammed the door behind him as he left.

Eulis wasn’t quite sure what to say, although he knew a remark was needed to settle the air.

“That was right thoughty of him, don’t you think?”

She snorted again. “I don’t think that Forney man has the capacity to have two thoughts in his head at the same time, that’s what I think.”

“Well then,” Eulis said.

The sound of hammering shattered the silence of the night. Letty wondered what the men trying to sleep in the barn thought about all that noise, then decided she didn’t care.

“Good night, Brother Howe,” Letty said.

“Good night, Sister. Sleep well.”

“I intend to,” she said shortly, and blanked out the sound of the hammering just as she was learning to bury the memories of sleeping with men for money.

Shutting The Barn Door After The Horse Is Out

Mary Farmer was the oldest of six children, her daddy’s favorite, and the only one who’d taken her looks after her mother, Lillian, whom her father adored. She was sixteen, book smart, and common sense smart—both traits that her father took credit for, although it was her mother who’d schooled all six of her children to read and write.

Mary worked behind the counter at the family dry goods store in Plum Creek, and was a big draw in getting the local cowboys business on payday. She’d been named the Harvest Queen during the town’s annual fall festival two years in a row, only Mary was certain it wasn’t going to happen a third time. She was pretty sure that pregnant, unmarried girls weren’t named anything but loose, which meant that being Harvest Queen a third time was out.

She didn’t really mind not being Harvest Queen again. She’d had her two years in the limelight. What she did mind was that her daddy had forbidden her to even speak to Joseph Carver, the wild young cowboy who worked on the Double R Ranch. She’d minded so much that she’d done the unthinkable. Not only had she slipped around to see him, but she’d fallen in love with the dark-eyed wrangler, and made love with him every time they got the chance. Now she was about to pay the ultimate price for her indiscretions.

Last Saturday night, Joseph Carver had gone and gotten himself arrested for horse thieving and cattle rustling. Caught hands down with the branding iron in his hand, he’d been tried and found