The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,87

fact.”

“I don’t need that kind of help, you ass. I need you to help me hide something.”

She pushed him through the door and slammed it shut behind them.

Even for a drunk, the body on the bed was impossible to miss. Eulis staggered backward. He’d seen plenty of dead men in his days, but none laid out on a whore’s bed, covered with a thin cotton spread, and not a stitch of clothes to his name. It was a sobering sight that sent the last fumes of alcohol flying from his whiskey-soaked brain.

“What the hell did you do to him?”

She thought about crying but changed her mind, although her voice was shaking. “I didn’t do nothin’ to him that I don’t do to any other man. How was I to know he was goin’ to croak on me?”

Eulis felt bad. He hadn’t meant to upset her none.

“There, there.” He patted her shoulder. “I’m sure it couldn’t a’been helped. I always say, ‘when it’s a man’s time to go, it’s his time to go.’” He grinned through a drunken fog. “Besides, I can’t think of a better way to die than gettin’ a little of the good stuff on the way out.”

Letty hit him up aside the head. “Don’t make jokes. This is serious.”

Eulis grimaced and rubbed at the side of his face where she’d smacked him. “Not for him it’s not. He’s past worryin’ about anything.”

Letty bit her lip as she confessed her sin, although saying the words made her belly quake. “That there’s the preacher everyone’s been waiting for.”

Eulis gawked. He looked from the mound of flesh beneath the spread, to Letty, and back again.

“You killed the preacher?”

At this point, she began to shake and moan, wondering if it hurt much to hang.

“Oh hell, now, let’s don’t start that all over again,” Eulis muttered. “We’ll figure somethin’ out.” The sounds coming out of her mouth were giving him a serious headache.

Letty blew her nose on the skirt of her dress. “We’ve got to hide the body.”

Eulis stared at the mound of man beneath the spread. “That might take some doin’. He’s right portly.”

She rolled her eyes and then punched Eulis on the arm. “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know. I lay odds you have never been humped by something the size of a buffalo.”

Eulis considered the fact and had to agree. And then he thought. “We could bury him.”

Letty’s face brightened. It was the first sensible thing Eulis had ever said in her presence.

“Where?”

“I done dug a hole for that trapper they’re waitin’ to plant. Maybe I could dig it a little deeper and put the preacher-man in first. If I cover him with a few inches of dirt, no one will be the wiser when they drop the trapper in on top. Hell, the old trapper smells so bad now that I doubt anyone will even come to watch the buryin’, save maybe his partner who brought him into town.”

Letty’s eyes widened as she considered the notion. With one last sniff, she clasped her hands beneath her bosom in a prayerful gesture.

“Oh Eulis! If you help me do that, you can poke me free forever.”

Even though his pecker was useless, he brightened at the thought.

“All right then,” he said. “Help me wrap him up good. We’ll drag him out the back door and into Will’s wagon. I’ll have him at the cemetery before you can say amen.”

Reverend Howe would have been highly incensed at the casual way in which his earthly body was handled. He was rolled, thumped, and bumped down a single flight of stairs, then dragged up a plank and into the wagon with little ceremony.

The only snort of disapproval came from the horse pulling the wagon. And it was not at the manner in which the body was being handled. It was because he was still hitched to a wagon, rather than a feed bag.

But Letty was borderline hysterical, and Eulis was on a mission. The horse’s meal would have to wait. Together, they made it out of town and up the hill to the cemetery then did what they had to do. Later, still hidden by the shelter of darkness, they re-entered town a weary, but calmer, pair than when they’d left.

“I need a drink,” Eulis muttered, as he unhitched the horse and bedded it down in a stall.

Letty’s eyes narrowed. She had other plans for Eulis—plans she’d been concocting while he’d been digging a deeper hole.

“What you need is a bath.”

Eulis