and she wouldn’t let herself think about the times when’ she’d had plenty to eat and a bath every night.
At the same time, Eulis had sweated away the last of his yearnings for whiskey, become a better shot, and learned to appreciate Letty’s tenacity and her refusal to quit.
The trail they’d been following was vague at best, and most of the time non-existent. They gauged their direction by sunrise, sunset, and the stars at night. They only way they knew for sure they were doing it right, was because the thin blue line of the mountains on the horizon was becoming larger and darker. Danger was with them every mile of the way, sometimes they knew it, sometimes they did not.
On a dark, moonless night when they’d been without water for almost twenty-four hours, they were forced to stop and make dry camp. Their water barrel was empty and the canteens had been empty even longer.
“We need water bad,” Eulis said.
Letty sighed. “Well, don’t look at me. I haven’t had a bath since Sunday, and then it wasn’t a real bath. I just rolled around in that muddy creek and pretended I was clean.”
Eulis frowned. “What day is it now?”
“It’s Thursday… I think.”
“So, what do you think we oughta do?” Eulis asked.
Letty turned and stared toward the mountains. Her gut knotted as she thought about how many days they had yet to go before they even reached the foothills.
“I’d say, first off, we better say our prayers real good tonight before we go to sleep, because if we don’t get ourselves a miracle, we won’t ever have to worry about anything again.”
Eulis sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Letty asked.
“I’m the one who suggested tryin’ out the gold fields.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t hear me begging you not to go, did you?”
“No, I reckon not,” Eulis said.
“Look at it this way. We’re closer than we were the day before, and that’s called progress. So if we’re still making progress, then what more could we ask?”
“Beats me,” Eulis said, and took their bedrolls out of the back of the wagon.
“What are you gonna do?” Letty asked.
“I thought you might want a little privacy while I shake out the bedrolls.”
Letty did a three hundred and sixty degree turn and then gestured wildly around them, to the treeless land and the horizon that went on forever.
“Privacy? Where do you suppose I might find me some of that?”
Eulis frowned. He hated it when she caught him saying something dumb, and this was one of those times. There wasn’t a bush to be had for forty miles, nor a hill to climb, or a ditch in which to squat.
“I suppose you’ll have to use your imagination,” he said.
Letty thumped him up beside his ear.
“Then close your eyes while I go over there and pee and imagine I have a gun up your ass, because one look from you and constipation will be a thing of the past.
Eulis frowned. “All you had to do was say so. I don’t need to be threatened to do the gentlemanly thing, you know.”
Letty stomped off a short distance away, untied the rope around her waist, then glanced over her shoulder to where Eulis was standing. Even though they’d seen each other naked more than once, their relationship was still one to need boundaries. Satisfied that Eulis was looking in another direction, she dropped her pants, and squatted. To be on the safe side, she closed her eyes, reasoning that if she couldn’t see him, then he couldn’t see her.
Night came. They chewed on a piece of jerky, hobbled the mules, and then tied them to the opposite side of the wagon.
“You gonna build a fire?” Letty asked, as Eulis shook out their bedrolls.
“Nothing to burn,” Eulis said.
Letty looked up. The sky was peppered with stars, but she could barely make out Eulis’s shape.
“Sure is dark.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I’ll sleep in the wagon,” Letty said, then crawled up into the wagon and shoved some boxes around to make room for her to stretch out.
“I’ll bunk under it,” Eulis added.
A few minutes later, except for the occasional snort from the mules, the prairie was quiet. Letty fell asleep looking up at the sky and listening to Eulis snore. She was dreaming that she was back in Lizard Flats at the White Dove Saloon and some drunken cowboy was breathing hard against her ear.
“Go ’way,” she mumbled, and swatted at the cowboy, but his persistent kisses and snuffles against her ear didn’t stop.
Letty rolled from her