The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,166

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