The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,246

they weren’t particularly interested in sleeping on the floors and cooking over a campfire again.

Eulis had settled in at the hotel real easy. After the life he’d had, he didn’t need much to be happy—just Letty and a bed in which to sleep suited him just fine.

Letty, on the other hand, was having issues. There was a young woman and a baby in the room next to them. It was Letty’s opinion that the woman cried more than the baby.

The room across the hall was occupied by a woman named Delilah who had more male visitors than T-Bone had hairs. Not that she was judging her. Lord knew she’d been in the same boat for years. It was just a bit noisy from time to time.

As for T-Bone, he’d barely gotten used to the cabin before Letty had moved him into town. She didn’t know that he’d come from Denver City, and that every bad thing that could happen to a dog had happened to him here. If it hadn’t been for his devotion to Letty, he would have abandoned the hotel days ago. Letty knew T-Bone wasn’t happy, but for the time being, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Until their furniture arrived, they were stuck.

There was also the fact that they had to get used to having neighbors again. After the year that Eulis and Letty had survived, living back in town seemed stifling. There had been too many nights sleeping out on the prairies under the stars, and too many quiet mornings wakened by only the sound of a jaybird’s fuss, or a squirrel’s noisy chatter to readjust easily. Gunshots and loud voices had a tendency of setting a person’s teeth on edge, making them jumpy all the rest of the day. On the ninth day of their stay in the hotel, Letty reached her limit.

The woman next door had been crying since before daybreak. Eulis had given Letty a nervous look, apologized for having to leave for the mine so early, took T-Bone with him, and left before Letty could argue. They were going to be blasting today and he didn’t want her anywhere around it. Letty was tired of waiting for tables and chairs that might never arrive, and had contacted the carpenters who’d built their home to start building some furniture. Yesterday they’d begun work on a bed and a wardrobe and when they were done, would make them a dining table and some chairs. Their tools were few, so the furniture would be plain, but it suited Letty’s taste just fine. She wanted out of the hotel and into her own home in the worst way.

With no food to cook, and no cabin to clean, she was left with few options. Denver City was growing, but it still wasn’t a place where a woman could while away a day—unless she was occupied in whiling it away with men—for a fifty cents a poke.

While she was brushing her hair, she dallied with the notion of going to the general store to look at the bolts of fabric, with an eye to making some curtains for her new house. As she was brushing out the last of the tangles, the woman next door let out a particularly loud wail.

Letty rolled her eyes, puffed out her cheeks, and then laid down her hairbrush. If Eulis had been there, he would have recognized the look on her face. He’d seen it plenty of times back in Lizard Flats when she’d been tired of waiting for the hot water he was supposed to bring up for her bath.

She got up from the chair and headed for the door, muttering under her breath and stomping off the distance in long, angry strides. Once in the hallway, it became apparent that the wailing had increased.

“For the Good Lord’s sake,” Letty muttered, and hit the door three times with her fist.

The wailing stopped—instantly.

Letty whacked the door again.

Silence continued.

“Hello!” Letty called, and hit the door again with her fist.

“You might as well open up because I’m not leaving until we talk.”

There was another brief moment of silence, and then Letty heard footsteps moving toward the door. A few seconds later, the doorknob turned and the door swung inward.

Letty stifled a gasp. She’d seen plenty of depravity in her time, but never had she seen a woman in such horrible shape.

The woman glanced nervously around the hallway.

“You need to go away,” she whispered.

“I don’t think so,” Letty muttered.

Blood dripped from the