The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,229

moved aside the rotting fabric of the shirt. Suddenly she gasped and pointed. “Eulis! Look down there… on the ground between his ribs.”

Eulis held the candle closer. Then he saw it, too.

“That’s an arrowhead.”

“Part of the shaft is broken off,” Letty said.

“I’ll be danged,” Eulis muttered. “He was gut-shot. Broke the arrow off at the belly. But why did he crawl off in here?”

The hair on the back of Letty’s neck suddenly stood on end. In her mind, she was twelve years old again, and hiding in that hollowed-out badger hole, listening to the shrill war cries of the Indians as they’d attacked her father and burned their home to the ground. She knew why he’d come in here.

“He was hiding,” she said.

Eulis knew enough about her past to know what she was remembering. He squatted down beside her and slid an arm around her shoulders.

“But it’s safe now,” he said. “The Arapahos are right friendly to the white man.”

“Not to all,” she said, pointing to the arrowhead and remembering the dead white man she’d helped Little Bird hide.

“I reckon they had their reasons,” Eulis said.

When she looked down, the floor started to move. She flattened her hands against the dirt, but it kept on swaying.

“Do you feel that?” she asked.

“Feel what?” Eulis said.

“The floor’s moving.”

He remembered the knot on her head and cursed himself for being so dense.

“Here, honey. Hold this,” he said, and handed her the candle, then bent down and picked her up.

“I think I can walk.”

“I don’t think you can even stand, and since I’ll be carryin’ you to the bed, you might as well just hush.”

Then he kissed her once on the cheek to soften his words, and took her out of the tunnel.

When he laid her on the bed, Letty pointed back at the wall.

“Close that doorway. We haven’t had any visitors, but I wouldn’t want to bet that gold on the fact that we won’t. It’s not going anywhere, and we’ve got the rest of the winter to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Eulis studied the opening for a bit before pulling it shut, then tried opening it over and over until he figured out how the hidden door worked. Satisfied that their discovery was safe, he hurried back to Letty.

She was dabbing a wet cloth on her head, trying to wash out the blood. When he offered to help, she shooed him away, so he stood at the foot of the bed, marveling at the intensity with which she was working. After a bit, he started grinning.

At that point, Letty looked up.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You did it, honey. You found a mother lode.”

“No. All I did was find someone else’s mine. It’s not ours until we register this claim and even then we gotta keep this secret. If those miners in Denver City find out what we’ve got and where it’s at, we’ll be dead before dark.”

He frowned. She was right.

“How do you reckon we’d best go about this?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But we got a few months to think on it before we have to make a decision.”

He brightened up. “That’s so,” he said. “Now lay back and rest your poor little head.”

She sighed and did as he suggested, but she couldn’t be still. There was something still bothering her.

“Eulis.”

“What, honey?”

“When the ground thaws, we need to give that man a Christian burial.”

Eulis glanced back at the wall.

“Kinda’ gives me the creeps, knowin’ he’s just layin’ back there like that.”

“A dead man doesn’t scare me,” Letty said. “Except for you, that’s the only kind of man that I trust.”

Except for the day Letty had admitted to loving him, it was the first real compliment she’d ever given him. Even though it was a bit backhanded, Eulis took it to heart.

“Well, all right, then,” he said gently, and despite her fuss, took the wet rag out of her hand and cleaned up her wound.

After putting a dry compress on it, he made her lie down. “I’m goin’ outside to cut up that wood. You rest. If you need something, call me.”

He cupped her cheek with his hand, then leaned over and kissed her.

“I’m sorry you hurt.”

She caught his hand as he started to pull away.

“There’s something I want to tell you… something I should have said months ago.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry for all those years I treated you bad, for yelling at you when you were bringing up my bath water, and calling you names because I wanted