The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,205

see another two other buildings in different stages of completion. The rest were tents. There was a sign outside one of the larger ones that read BATHS, which made Letty smile.

“Look, Eulis. They got a bath house.”

Eulis resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Baths down there ain’t gonna come free.”

“I know,” she said.

“Things are gonna cost a whole bunch more than they’re worth.”

“I know. I heard Mrs. Cocker at breakfast this morning, too, you know.”

“That means we’re gonna have to watch the little bit of money we got left. We’ll need to outfit ourselves for huntin’ gold.”

“How so?” Letty asked.

“I don’t know,” Eulis said. “I ain’t never went huntin’ for gold before, but there’s bound to be things we need.”

“I guess… only I don’t think hunting is the right word. We can’t exactly go out there and track it and shoot it down like we did those squirrels we ate.”

Eulis rolled his eyes and refused to answer.

Letty sniffed politely, convinced that she’d had the last word, which she took to mean she was right.

Then a gunshot rang out and they looked back into the valley, watching as one man staggered out of the water, threw down what looked like a big flat pan, then punched the guy standing on the bank. That man fell backward onto his butt, then shook his head, yanked off his hat, got up with a roar and started swinging.

“Mercy,” Letty said. “Wonder what set them off?”

“The Tower of Babel,” Eulis said, unaware that he’d spoken out loud.

“What? Where?” Letty asked. “I don’t see any tower.”

Eulis shook his head. “Not here. In the bible.”

“I don’t get it,” Letty said.

“I don’t remember all the details cause I only read about it once, but there’s this story in the bible about some people all being forced to build this big stone tower. It was to honor some king or somethin’ and I think he swore he was gonna build it all the way to heaven. So God put some kind of spell on all the workers and all of a sudden they began speakin’ in different tongues. They could no longer understand each other, and the work came to a halt because orders couldn’t be followed. They called it the Tower of Babel. I reckon that’s where we got the word, babble. You know… doin’ a lot of talkin’ without really sayin’ anything.”

“Oh.” She looked down at the chaos below and then nodded. “I get it.” Then she smiled. “Way to go, Preacher Howe.”

Eulis frowned. “Not anymore… and don’t make a mistake and call me that again. We done run into one fella from our past out here. We don’t want to come across someone from back home who knew the preacher from Lizard Flats, cause they will likely have known of me, too. I know I don’t look like I used to, but I reckon there’s not two Eulis Potters who would be runnin’ with a woman from the White Dove Saloon.”

Instantly, Letty regretted her words.

“I’m sorry, Eulis. Sometimes I talk before I think.”

“Wouldn’t be a very smart thing to do out here.”

She thought back to the hanging man and shivered.

“I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

Eulis patted her knee. “It’s all right, girl. Just wanted you to think a bit, you know?”

She nodded.

He flipped the reins across the mules’ backs, and the wagon began to roll down the hill into their future.

Letty had been awake for hours, waiting for daylight. It was sometime after midnight when she’d heard moisture dropping from the leaves onto their tent. She’d rolled over with a muffled curse, and reminded herself that she and Eulis had to make different sleeping arrangements soon because there was no way they could spend the winter in this tent and survive.

Already the population of Denver City was less than half what it had been when they’d arrived two weeks ago. Men who’d given up the gold fever had headed out before winter. Almost overnight, the leaves on the trees had turned, and once in a while, there was a thin crust of ice on the creek at first light.

When they’d picked a place to camp and pan, it hadn’t been based on any scientific reasoning. They’d just gone to the land office and registered their claim. Picking it had been a simple case of availability, with as much privacy as possible, and that had meant going up creek to a somewhat higher elevation. Letty hadn’t minded, although it meant hitching up the wagon and mules every time they