appearance of a girl, rather than the woman she’d been for years.
“Oh my, Truly, you look just fine—truly fine.”
She grinned.
“I’m ready, Miles.”
He swooped her from the sidewalk and into his arms, twirling her around beneath the noonday sun and laughing at the dust that coated his boots and pant legs.
“Not half as ready as I am, girl. Not nearly by half.”
For the first time in her entire life, Truly Fine blushed.
“Preacher man. Do your thing,” Miles ordered, and set his blushing bride down beside him before she could change her mind.
“Here? You want me to marry you right here in the street?”
Miles shrugged at the preacher’s question. “Why not? One place is as good as another. Beside, it ain’t the place, it’s the woman that matters.”
At the vow of love, Letty couldn’t hold back. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She was sick at heart by the hand fate had dealt her.
“Stop sniveling, Letty, and hand me my book,” Eulis grumbled. Every time he looked at her, Letty seemed to be bawling. She should have the headache he had, then she’d have something to bawl about.
Letty did as she was told.
“Ashes to ashes… dust to…”
Letty kicked him in the shins. “That was for the buryin’,” she muttered. “This is a wedding, you dolt.”
It had ceased to matter to Letty or Eulis that anyone should think their banter strange. They were too busy trying to endure that which they had wrought.
“I knew that,” Eulis argued, and turned several pages in his book. He smiled benignly at Miles. “I had turned to the wrong page,” he said. “Please excuse me.”
Truly smiled and leaned against Miles’ massive arm. She didn’t care what page they were on as long as it got her married.
Eulis began. “Dearly beloved—,”And a few minutes later, he stood on the sidewalk, watching with a bemused expression as the big man scooped his new wife into his arms and carried her to the wagon across the street without letting her feet touch the ground. Then to Eulis’s surprise, Miles Crutchaw came back.
“Here,” Miles said, and handed Eulis a small pouch.
“What’s this?” Eulis asked.
Miles grinned. “I reckon you could call it payment for services rendered.”
Eulis’s eyes brightened. He hadn’t thought about getting paid for any of this—only getting it over without being hanged.
“Well now, this is very thoughtful of you,” Eulis said. But when he peeked inside, the smile on his face froze. He gasped then poked a finger into the sack, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
“Is this—”
Miles nodded. “Struck it rich a while back. Thought I ought to share some with the man who made my dream come true.”
“And that would be me?” Eulis asked.
“Thanks to you, Truly is now my wife.”
Eulis beamed. “It was my pleasure, I’m sure.”
Miles grinned. “I reckon we’ll be movin’ on,” he said. “It’s a ways to Dodge City.”
“Is that where you live?” Eulis asked.
“No. I’m thinkin’ of takin’ Truly to San Francisco. I here tell they’ve got a lot of refinement out there. Truly deserves to live like a lady. The west is hard on women, you know.”
Eulis kept fingering the pouch full of nuggets. Making small talk wasn’t easy for a man who hadn’t said much more than, ‘give me a drink,’ for the last ten years of his life. But the man had paid him in gold, and he felt obligated to visit until the man called it quits.
“So, Dodge City is just a whistle-stop on your way to bigger and better things is it?”
Miles shook his head. “Naw. But I heard tell that they’re hangin’ Kiowa Bill up there sometime next week. He once killed a friend of mine. Thought I might stay around long enough to see that.”
Miles Crutchaw’s voice faded away as Eulis’s head started to pound.
Kiowa Bill was in Dodge City. He was going to hang.
Eulis’s fingers were twitching as he retied the string around the pouch and dropped it in his pocket while Miles Crutchaw and his wife drove away. He could hear Letty sniffling as she sidled up, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find the words to speak. He kept seeing his mother’s blood on the ground and hearing his little brother’s screams.
Letty dabbed at her eyes as the newlyweds pulled out of town.
“Wonder where they’re going?” she asked.
Eulis shrugged. An idea was forming in the back of his mind. It was radical, but he’d gotten away with the impersonation so far. Who was to say it couldn’t continue. “Dodge City.