The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,5

two layers of dirt. That’s what I reckon.”

Now it was Eulis’s turn to frown. “It don’t pay to insult the man what brings you your bath water every night.”

Letty sighed and then sat down on the side of the bed.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Eulis. No hard feelings, okay?”

Eulis waited until she tossed the hairbrush onto the other side of the bed and then rolled over and dragged himself upright.

“Yeah… well… just see that it don’t happen again,” he muttered, and started out the door when Letty called him back.

“Hey, Eulis, do you ever want more in your life than what you got?”

Eulis’s head was starting to float right off his shoulders, which always meant he had about five minutes, no more, no less, before he passed out. He preferred passing out on his bed in the back of the saloon, but if Letty didn’t stop her yapping, he wasn’t going to make it down the stairs. However, he knew women well enough to know that if he didn’t answer this question, there would be another and another until they got the answer they wanted, so he shrugged.

“I reckon so.”

“Me, too,” Letty said. “What do you want?”

“That’s easy,” Eulis said. “You know that big fancy bottle of Tennessee bourbon that Will has sitting on the back of the bar? The one that he’s never opened?” He grinned. “That’s what I want.”

Letty snorted in an unladylike manner and grabbed for the hairbrush again.

“Get out of my room, you old sot, and take your stinkin’ shoe with you.”

Eulis ducked as she picked up his shoe and sock and flung them past his shoulder and out into the hall. He made it out of her room just as the door hit him in the backside. It sent him staggering even more, but he caught himself on the stair rail and then turned and glared at her closed door.

“I wish she hadn’t asked me no question. I knew I wouldn’t have the right answer,” he grumbled, then rubbed his hands on his face, trying to stimulate blood circulation.

He eyed the shoe that she’d thrown and knew that if he wanted it back, he would have to bend down to pick it up. He also knew that if he did, he’d spend the night on the floor in the hall.

“I reckon I’ll get it tomorrow,” Eulis said, and started down the back stairs, one shoe lighter than when he’d come up.

He made it all the way to his room, but when he turned around to sit down, missed the side of the bed and sat down on the floor.

“Tarnation.”

It was his last thought of the night as he rolled over on his side and fell asleep.

Upstairs, Letty was in a similar state of mind, but her fugue was not from drink, it was from the miasma of her life. As she scrubbed off the stink of her job, she began to imagine what it would be like not to have to put up with any more men ever again. And just like that, James Dupree’s image popped into her head.

Long after she’d crawled into bed she was still awake, thinking of a dark-eyed gambler who’d smiled at her and kissed her hand, until she finally drifted off to sleep.

But in different parts of the Kansas territory, other people’s lives were taking unexpected turns that would, ultimately, find them all with a need to travel to the place Letty called home.

Lizard Flats was about to experience a boom in population.

Howe The Mighty Do Fall

Reverend Randall Ward Howe was a sinner. He knew it. He accepted it. He even blamed God for it from time to time, claiming he was nothing more than he’d been born to be. It was true that Randall Howe did everything in extreme—from demanding the best cuts of meat to the richest of desserts. And it was also true that he was more than a little bit vain. His clothes were tailor-made, his hats imported from London, England. His shoes had a perennial shine, and the part in his hair was straight down the middle without a hair out of place.

Even though he was well over six feet tall, he was already what ladies would call stout. He accepted the fact that, with age, corpulence would follow. His father had run to fat. His mother had been Rubenesque in stature as well. Still, at forty-two, he carried himself well, in spite of a growing paunch.

But weight was the least of Randall’s sins. The