The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,182

of his weight into the effort. Within seconds, the mule was up, wild-eyed and chomping at the makeshift halter that tethered him down.

Letty rocked back on her heels, and then started to shake.

“That was close,” she said.

No sooner had their nerves started to calm, than a ripple of thunder came rolling down the valley. Stunned by the sound, they looked up at the quickly darkening sky, then flinched and ducked as a bolt of lightning suddenly ripped across the sky.

“Oh no,” Letty muttered.

“What? We need the rain,” Eulis said.

“Lightning. The lightning is going to spook them. We’ve got to do something, and we’ve got to do it now.”

No sooner had she said it, than the first drops of rain began to fall, splattering hard against the wide shoulders and wooly heads of the great beasts. In response, the movement of the herd perceptibly slowed and they began to draw closer and closer together.

Eulis and Letty lifted their parched lips to the sky, reveling in the life-giving moisture falling onto them, as did their mules. As they sat with the rain falling on their faces and the herd gathering ever tighter together, Eulis lifted his gaze to the hills, and saw the chance for their only way out.

“I’ve got an idea,” Eulis said. “Get the harness.”

Soaked to the skin and half sick from hunger and fear, Letty rolled over onto her hands and knees.

“The harness? Have you lost your mind?”

“Probably, but hand ’em here anyway.”

Letty dragged the harnesses out from beneath the seat. Eulis took them from her, while gauging the motion and mood of the herd against the oncoming storm. The mules eyes were rolling wildly as they snorted and stomped. Even they seemed to sense the urgency of the moment.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said, threw a leg over the side of the wagon and slid down until he was standing between the mules with the harness in his hands.

He began buckling the first mule into the gear as if nothing was different from any other day. He didn’t look up. He wouldn’t look around. He couldn’t let himself acknowledge the danger he was in and still do what he had to do.

“Okay, Letty, now hand me the other one.”

Letty handed over the rest of the harness as rain began to fall in earnest. Another shaft of lightning struck high on the hill above. The herd shifted en masse, moving slightly to the right, then slightly to the left, as if testing for the best track to run.

“Hurry,” Letty said, and then went over the side after Eulis, knowing that, if they survived, it would take both of them to make this work.

Working side by side, they finished harnessing up, then Eulis took a deep breath and looked at Letty.

“You ready for this?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

Eulis nodded, but still he hesitated. He looked at her then, studying her in a way he’d never done before, and saw past the hardened woman that life had repeatedly kicked in the teeth, to the little twelve year old girl, hiding in an abandoned badger hole from the Indians who’d killed her father. He thought of the nights after she’d grown up when she’d gone out onto the balcony of the White Dove Saloon to listen for the call of the Whippoorwill—keeping alive a ritual that her deceased mother had begun. She was a survivor who stood as tall as any man he knew.

“Uh… Letty?”

“What?”

“Just so you know… I ain’t sorry about nothin’.”

A lump of emotion swelled in Letty’s throat.

“Swear?”

He nodded. “Swear.”

“Then let’s do this,” Letty said.

They took the mules by their harnesses and slowly began moving through the herd to the front of the wagon. They had been exposed to the herd for so long that they’d taken on their scent and since the buffalo behind them sensed nothing foreign, and the ones in front had no way of knowing that the pressure to move forward was anything other than more of their own, the herd gave way and they had the mules in place. With shaking hands and silent prayers, they hitched the team to the wagon.

“All done. Now let’s see what happens,” Eulis said. When Letty started to walk around one of the mules to get into the wagon, Eulis grabbed her. “Stay between the mules,” he said.

“But the harness…”

“Step over or crawl under, but don’t get out from between these mules.”

She nodded, and slowly, they both made their way back to the wagon, then up into