The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,251

day and a roof over her head, as well as protection from the ones who liked to hurt a woman first before they had their own pleasure.

George doubled his fists and took a step toward her.

Letty was so focused on the man in front of her that she never knew the clerk was gone. She waited for George to take that second step, fearing it, and at the same time, wanting some recourse for that dead baby on the table back in the doctor’s office.

She could hear the rasping sounds of his heavy breathing and smelled the stench of his unwashed body. Her stomach rolled. She felt light-headed, as if she’d had too much to drink as the sounds of men drinking and laughing from the bar in the adjoining room began to fade. From where she was standing, she could see the man who drove freight wagons to and from Denver City finishing off a big steak. The bullwhip he used on his team of mules was hanging on the back of his chair only a few feet from where she was standing.

Without giving herself time to think, she stepped through the doorway, snatched the bullwhip from the back of the chair, and uncoiled it as she walked. It snapped once, getting the attention of everyone in the bar, including the freight driver, who thought he was being robbed.

“Hey, mister! That’s—”

“That ain’t no mister,” someone said. “That there’s Letty Potter.”

It was the first snap of the whip that got George’s attention. He pointed at Letty as she walked back into the hotel lobby.

“You put that down before I—”

Letty swung it over her head once, and then aimed it at George’s face.

The leather tassels at the end of the whip tore the flesh on his cheek as neatly as if he’d been bitten.

“Godalmighty!” he yelled, and grabbed the side of his jaw.

Letty was already swinging the bullwhip again when George lit for the door. She was right behind him, running as she went.

Just as he was about to jump from the sidewalk, the bullwhip snaked around his ankles. Letty gave it a jerk and he went down like a felled ox. Dirt went up his nose and in his mouth. He tasted blood at the same time an intense wave of intense pain shot through his head. He’d bitten into his tongue so hard that the end had come off. He rolled over on his back and unwound himself from the bullwhip, spitting blood as he went.

“You’re crazy!” he bawled. “Somebody stop her. She’s crazy!”

People in the buildings heard the ruckus and began spilling out onto the sidewalks and into the streets. They didn’t know George, but it didn’t take long for them to recognize Letty. Everyone knew the woman in men’s pants who’d struck gold.

Letty was past rational thinking as she drew back the bullwhip, cracking it time after time onto George’s back, and his legs, and his face.

George Mellin was lying in the middle of the street, rolled up as small as he could get with his arms over his head, screaming and begging for someone to make her stop.

Someone yelled at her. She didn’t know it was the sheriff, and at the time, wouldn’t have cared. Every time she drew back the whip, she taunted him with a dare.

“What’s the matter, George? You like to hit women. Why don’t you get up out of the dirt and take a swing at me like you did your wife?”

Suddenly, the onlookers got a sense of Letty’s justice.

She swung the whip in the air. It cracked against the back of George’s neck like the echo of a rifle shot down in a canyon.

“Come on, you sorry sack of shit! You wife is broken in so many pieces she can’t stand up any more, and you went and starved your baby to death. She’s dead, George! Do you hear me? She’s dead!”

Letty didn’t hear the collective gasp from the crowd, or see the disgust spreading across the onlookers’ faces.

Take a swing at me, you sorry bastard. I’m not like Alice. I’ll fight you back.”

She popped the whip again. It ripped the back of George’s jacket, through the shirt, and all the way to the flesh on his back.

George bucked like he’d been shot as he rolled, trying desperately to get out of her way. Every time he tried to get to his feet, she yanked them out from under him again. Just when he was convinced that he was going to