The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,203

in your crooked card games.”

Boston flinched. He’d underestimated the woman. The men gathered around the table were all looking at him with new interest, and most of it didn’t look good. He glared back at Letty, blaming her for the wave of mistrust. This didn’t bode well for the success that he’d expected.

“I do not run a crooked game and I take exception to the accusation. Are you insinuating that I’m a crook?” he asked.

Eulis was starting to get nervous. Letty had accused the man of that very thing without any proof.

“Letty, maybe you should—”

Letty pointed down the table at the platter of fried eggs.

“Would someone please pass the eggs?”

Eulis sighed. He recognized the jut of Letty’s chin and went back to his food.

The gambler didn’t have Eulis’s knowledge of the woman or his experience of her persistence. He would have been better off if he’d concentrated on his food instead of pissing off the former Sister Leticia. But since he didn’t know, he pushed when he should have shut his mouth.

The egg platter came down the table, hand to hand, but when it got to Boston Jones, he didn’t pass it on. Instead, he held it.

“Lady, I asked you a question. You called me a crook, but you had nothing to back that up other than the fact that we spent a miserable trip together in the same coach.”

Letty had no qualms about revealing this man’s true colors because he’d thrown the first rock. He’d belittled both her and Eulis, and insinuated that there was something criminal about them using another name. As far as she was concerned, he’d asked for what he was about to get.

“Actually, it was during that same trip that I saw what you can do. That deck of cards that you fiddled with all the way from Dodge City to Ft. Mays was marked.”

He slammed the platter of eggs on the table and stood abruptly.

“You lie! You’re just trying to ruin my reputation to further that damned religion you claimed to preach. You’re nothing but some pious, mealy-mouthed female with a hate against men.”

“I don’t lie and I don’t give a horse’s ass for your reputation. You threw the first stone here, mister when you started this conversation, and just for the record, I am anything but pious.”

Eulis grabbed her arm.

“Don’t, Letty. Don’t speak ill of yourself just to prove he’s a bastard.”

“What is he talking about?” Boston asked.

Letty lifted her chin and stared him straight in the face.

“Oh, that’s just Eulis trying to protect me from myself, which he’s been trying to do, and without success, for some years. I know you’re crooked because I saw your marked deck, and if anyone should recognize a marked deck, that would be me. My last place of residence, before my friend and I started on the Amen Trail, was at the White Dove Saloon in Lizard Flats. So don’t tell me I don’t know a marked deck when I see one, or a bastard when I meet one. I’m an expert at men. I used to sleep with them for money.”

There was a gasp behind her, which Letty knew came from Mrs. Cocker, followed by a stunned silence from the men at the table. Then Eulis cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen… Letty, here asked someone to pass the eggs.”

The man next to Boston snagged the platter and passed it down, then nodded cordially at Letty.

“Name’s Riley Whitmore. Right nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said, and then nodded at Eulis, too. “Ever been to a gold camp?”

“Nope,” Eulis said.

“Me neither,” he said. “I reckon I’m about half scared and the rest of the way excited. Had a farm back in Pennsylvania. Got flooded out three years in a row then hailed out the next year. Decided to try my hand at something a little easier.”

“Ain’t nothin’ easy about pannin’ for gold,” another man said.

Whitmore grinned. “Obviously, you ain’t never tried your hand at farming.”

The men laughed, and the tension disappeared. But Boston Jones didn’t laugh. He quickly finished his food, then got his pack and rode away, anxious to set himself up in Denver City. He told himself these few men didn’t matter. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of men in the gold fields. He had no reason to assume he’d ever come in contact with any of these people again.

But that didn’t include Letty Murphy, and promised himself that if the situation ever occurred, he would get his revenge against that woman or know the