The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,181

parts got scattered and you never got buried.

Eulis, on the other hand, had been so staggered by the situation in which they found themselves that he’d laid down and gone to sleep.

To Letty’s disgust and dismay, he continued to sleep, even as the sun slid slowly toward the western horizon. With every passing hour, the buffalo continued to move past them in a never-ending wave. Dust was so thick in the air that the horizon was blurred, and even though she couldn’t see them, she knew a pack of wolves hovered somewhere in the distance. She heard them setting off an evening chorale of eerie howls and yips as they hung near the edge of the herd, hoping to pick off a straggler or a calf too young to keep up.

Suddenly, a massive bull went head first against the side of the wagon, as if pissed off that it was in his way.

The wagon rocked.

A mule brayed and then kicked.

Letty screamed.

And Eulis woke up, dismayed to find out that he wasn’t back in Lizard Flats having himself a stiff drink after all.

“What’s happenin’?” he mumbled.

“We’re dying!” Letty screamed, and then covered her face with her hands and threw herself down into the wagon, unable to face anymore.

Eulis waited for the end, but nothing else happened. The pissed off bull moved on, and the massive movement of wooly beasts continued to pass, politely parting to accommodate the wagon and mules in their paths. Finally, he reached down and shook Letty on the shoulder.

“Letty… Letty… I think it’s all right.”

Letty rolled up into a ball and pulled her bedroll over her head.

“It’s never going to be all right again,” she said, and started to cry.

Eulis sighed. Considering the plight they were in, he was in no position to argue, and during the hours they’d been stranded, he had been doing some serious thinking. So serious, in fact, that he had come to the conclusion that God had meted out this punishment to them because of their deceit.

When he’d agreed to Letty’s original plan of impersonating the preacher, he hadn’t given any thought to what God might think about the lie. He’d married and buried and christened and blessed in the name of God, but without any authority. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but looking back, all he could think about was the fraud they’d committed upon innocent people.

As hard as he’d tried, he couldn’t reconcile what they’d done as being just, and from the looks of their situation now, God wasn’t in a forgiving mood, either. He’d put them square in the middle of hell on earth.

Eulis looked at Letty, who was little more than a lump beneath her covers. Even though he knew her lips were cracked and her face was burned bad from the sun, she was still one of the toughest women he’d ever known. If he had to be in this situation, he could not have picked a better partner to have at his back.

“Letty.”

She pulled the covers off and sat up.

“What?” she whispered.

“Do you—”

“Sssh,” she hissed, and slapped a hand over his mouth. “Not so loud.”

He lowered his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“The better question would be what’s not wrong?”

“Why are we whisperin’?” Eulis asked.

A pair of cows suddenly butted heads, slamming one against the wagon bed while the other moved past, satisfied that she’d made her point.

“That’s why,” Letty said, pointing to the two massive cows. “Do you know what’s gonna happen to us if they get spooked? There won’t be enough left of us to bury. So I figure if we don’t do anything stupid, we might have a chance.”

“If they don’t move on soon, we’re gonna die anyway. We need water bad.”

Letty wanted to argue, but she couldn’t ignore the facts. He was right.

“You know what, Preacher Howe… I think you need to pray. I think we both need to pray.”

Eulis shrugged. “I will if you will.”

Letty frowned. “You’re the preacher.”

“Yeah, and the shit you’re standin’ in is as deep as mine.”

Another buffalo bumped into the wagon. One of the mules on the other side brayed and kicked, connecting with a large cow who retaliated by knocking the mule completely down.

Letty gasped, and lunged over the side of the wagon. She grabbed hold of the rope with all her might and started pulling.

“Help me, Eulis, help me! We’ve got to get the mule up or they’ll trample him.”

Eulis threw himself forward, grabbed onto the rope and then lunged backward, putting all