The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,224

the moccasins against his chest and looked away. To his utter embarrassment, he started to cry.

It was the last thing Letty would have expected him to do and attributed it to his recently weakened state.

“Look, it won’t hurt my feelings if you—”

“You could have been killed. You could have laid out there in the snow and died and I wouldn’t have known a thing.”

“But I wasn’t hurt,” Letty said, as she sat down beside him.

He stared at her, unashamed of his tears and then shook his head.

“You killed it with a stick.”

She nodded and wiped the tears from his face.

“It was a big stick,” she added.

He looked at her for a minute and then started to grin.

“What?” she asked.

“Just like in the bible.”

“What’s like in the bible?”

“You know… David the shepherd boy, who kills that giant Goliath with a rock and sling? That’s you, Letty, only you used a stick, not a rock.”

A little pleased with his analogy, she couldn’t help but grin.

“The critter wasn’t hardly a giant.”

Eulis ran his hands inside the moccasin and then kicked off his boots.

“I thought you were going hunting,” Letty said.

“I changed my mind,” he said. “Elk meat is fine with me. I’m gonna sit here in our home, with these fine shoes on my feet, and think how blessed we’ve been.”

“Blessed? You got smallpox and I got attacked by a wolf and you call that blessed?”

“But we didn’t die. We could have, but we didn’t. I call that blessed.”

Letty stared at the man she’d come to love and shook her head.

“You know what? Despite the fact that you’ve given up preaching, I’m thinking you’re still a preacher at heart.”

He pulled on the moccasins and wiggled the toes against the fur lining.

“Feels real good,” he said. “I reckon I’m gonna wear ’em when we have the funeral.”

“We can’t have a funeral for the wolf. I dumped its carcass out in the meadow weeks ago.”

“Not the wolf. Us. Remember the night of the blizzard?”

She arched an eyebrow. It was their first night to make love.

“Of course I remember that night. I remember it very well, thank you.”

“I think my superb lovemakin’ has driven the rest of the night from your mind.”

Letty rolled her eyes.

Eulis ignored her as he continued.

“I told you that when I got better, we were goin’ to have a funeral and bury our old selves, remember?”

“You were serious?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But what in the world are we going to bury?”

Eulis frowned. “It’s got to be somethin’ we still have from before. Somethin’ that don’t belong here anymore.”

Letty shook her head. “I think I left all that behind.”

“I got a flask of whiskey in my bag.”

Letty gasped.

“Not to drink, you understand. Just to prove to myself I didn’t want it no more.”

Letty laid her head against his shoulder, just for a moment, but long enough to let him know she understood. Then she got her bag from the corner of the room and set it on the bed.

Eulis stood up and moved away, figuring she might need some privacy to find the part of her past. He watched her unfasten the bag and, one by one, remove the articles from inside.

There was a tortoise-shell comb that he’d never seen her wear.

“My mother’s,” she said, and laid it aside.

Next came the stockings and her old pair of shoes—part of her life as Sister Leticia, but nothing to do with the White Dove Saloon.

She took out a handful of books, then a small wooden box with a tin-type inside.

Eulis peered over her shoulder.

“Who’s the kid?” he asked, staring intently at the little girl with a large bow in her hair who was missing her front teeth.

“Me.”

A lump came to his throat, thinking of the years of hardship that little girl had endured before she’d come to this place. He put his hand on the back of her head and then left it there, as if cushioning her from some unseen blow.

“Here,” she said, suddenly, and handed him a small bag.

“What’s in it?” he asked.

“See for yourself,” she said, and dumped the contents onto the bed. “Rouge for my cheeks, kohl for my eyes, and color for my lips. War paint from the White Dove.”

Eulis gathered up the makeup and dropped it back into the bag.

“War’s over,” he said gently. “Time to bury the past.”

“I’ll get the shovel,” she said. “Only I don’t know where we’ll dig, seeing as how the ground is frozen and all.”

“Out where the mules shelter,” Eulis said. “And I’ll get the shovel. You