The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,232

repeat myself.”

“Are you callin’ me stupid?” Letty asked.

Eulis rolled his eyes. “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

“Okay then,” she muttered, and shifted the rifle across her lap.

Eulis saw tears in her eyes and suddenly realized that she was emotionally torn about leaving. He knew just how she felt. Back there had been simple compared to what lay ahead. He reached out and patted her knee.

“Just save all that piss and vinegar for them gold-fevered miners you keep worryin’ about.”

She sighed.

“You okay, darlin’?”

She nodded.

“Good enough,” he said. “Denver City, here we come.”

It was the absence of the Arapahos and the size of the cemetery that Eulis and Letty noticed first.

“Oh lord, Eulis… from the number of crosses, it appears that not everyone was as blessed as you.”

“Sure glad I didn’t have to dig all them graves,” he said, and then looked away, unwilling to think about how close he’d come to being under one of those markers.

As they passed, she scanned the crossed, silently marking the names that she recognized.

Yung Chi. A little Chinese man who had done laundry.

Marvin Handleman. A lawyer from Philadelphia who’d been disbarred and come West to seek his fortune.

Corliss Sheffield. A woman who’d plied her trade at one of the saloons.

Emory James. He’d outrun Millie Sees Crow’s bullets, but had been unable to outrun the pox.

Boston Jones.

As soon as the last name registered, Letty frowned. She thought of the gambler and the times they’d crossed paths, but she would not have wished the hell of that death on anyone.

Looking away from the cemetery, she clutched the rifle a little firmer, and sat up a bit straighter as she focused on the city before them. Despite the smallpox epidemic that had gone through it, Denver City had grown. There were people everywhere. A good number of the tents had been replaced by wooden buildings, and someone had even had the foresight to lay sidewalk. Now, most of the businesses were connected by a maze of narrow wooden planks, and considering the size of the frozen ruts in the streets, it was a good thing.

“It’s good the ground is still froze, or we’d bog sure as shootin’,” Eulis said, as they pulled into the city.

“Where do we go first?” Letty asked.

“I reckon to the assayer’s office to make sure what we got is the real thing, then straight to the land office to register the claim.”

Letty thought about it a minute and then shook her head.

“Let’s go to the land office first.”

“But what if we got ourselves a wagon load of Fool’s Gold?” Eulis asked.

“I’ve seen Fool’s Gold. It doesn’t look like this,” Letty said. “We do the land office first.”

“Okay. Land office it is.”

Letty felt a little easier, but didn’t relax.

They rolled into town amidst a good dozen other wagons coming and going. A very new saloon had sprung up on the first corner in town. As they passed, the wood they’d used to build it was so green that they could see droplets of frozen sap on the outer walls.

A pair of saloon girls were standing in the doorway, trying to lure customers inside with a mixture of lewd gestures and remarks.

Letty blinked and then looked away.

“Rest easy, wife,” Eulis said softly.

Wife. That one word settled her quicker than anything else he could have done.

“There’s the land office,” she said, pointing down the street.

A few moments later, Eulis stopped the wagon directly in front so that he would have a clear view of Letty, who was going to stand guard outside.

“You gonna be all right?” he asked.

Letty lifted her chin.

“I’ll be fine.”

He nodded, and then jumped down from the wagon and walked inside.

Letty saw him through the window as he walked up to the counter, and watched until he and the land agent began to converse. After that, she turned her attention to the job at hand.

The rarity of a decent woman in the gold camps was still unusual enough to warrant curiosity from the men on the streets. A good number of them stared and a few tipped their hats, but it was the ones who stopped and came closer that made her nervous. One in particular set Letty’s nerves on edge.

He came out of a cafe picking his teeth with the point of his knife, which was enough in itself to make her gag. He was huge—well over six feet tall, and walked spraddle-legged to accommodate the size of his belly. His hair was carrot orange and curly, and stuck out in all directions from beneath