The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,282

had moved into the west that he resumed his trek. Although he’d made good time since the shooting, he wanted to be farther away before he made camp for the night. He mounted up, eyed the sky once more, and kicked the old horse in the flanks.

Within three hours it was dark and George was sitting beside his campfire. A small pan of beans was simmering at the side of the fire. By morning they would be cooked through and through. He would be able to eat from the pot and then pack it up, saving the cold beans for travel.

When he’d first made his escape, his intent had been to just keep riding west, but the farther he rode from Denver City, the more convinced he became that the smartest thing for him might be to backtrack and go home to Boston. At least there, he’d had a trade. He’d never liked fishing, or spending every waking hour out on the ocean, but right now, it seemed far more appealing than the past year he’d lived through.

Later, with a belly full of johnnycake and jerky, he spread his bedroll by the fire, pulled the loaded rifle up close to his chest, and covered himself with the old man’s blankets. They smelled of wood smoke and body sweat, but it was more than he’d had last night. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.

Darkness came with Letty still in the saddle. The rage that had taken her this far was still burning strong and steady. Every uneven jolt of the horse’s hoof to ground was a pain she welcomed. She needed the pain to match her emotions. It was the balance she needed to stay focused. The luxury of grief would come later, when she watched Eulis’ killer die.

The later it got, the more she debated with herself about making camp for the night. But when it became apparent that tonight there would be a full moon, she changed her mind. She couldn’t track in the dark, but she was going to take a chance that the killer wouldn’t change direction, and assuming if she kept going, eventually she would smell the smoke from his campfire.

She rode on, ignoring the aches in her muscles, and the hungry growl from her belly. The thought of putting food in her mouth turned her stomach. She needed to stay focused on the task at hand. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant reliving the shock and the acceptance of death that she’d seen on Eulis’ sweet face.

Several times she was forced to slow down. The land through which she was riding was wild, and at night, dangerous. The valley was wide and long, nestled between two snow-capped peaks. But her instincts led her to keep following the creek that wound through the middle, believing that, when the killer decided to make camp, like anyone else, he would want easy access to water.

Sometime around midnight she dismounted to water her horse and give him time to graze. When she swung out of the saddle and put her boots on the ground, her strength and willpower faded into nothing. The bloodstains on her clothes had long since dried and looked black in the moonlight. When she finally laid her hand on the dark stain across her breast, she dropped her head and sobbed. It was a sobering fact to know that his blood was the only thing of him she had left.

T-Bone’s ears were on point—his nose was to the wind. The hair on his back had been raised for the better part of an hour, and ever so often he let out a low, warning growl. Letty wouldn’t let herself think of the wildlife that might be watching. She didn’t have time to be afraid of a four-footed devil when the one for which she searched walked upright.

She had taken a cold flapjack from the pack Alice had made for her, and was absently feeding it to T-Bone while listening to the sound of her horse eating grass. There was a repetitive crunch as the horse bit down, then a tearing sound, as it pulled off a bite of the thick, lush growth. The grass around the creek was already over ankle high. Letty knew that it would be higher than her waist by mid-summer. It was a fine country, rich in all the things that counted, including that damnable gold.

Only once, when she heard a sudden high-pitched scream, did she panic.