The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,97

They’re goin’ to Dodge City,” he mumbled. “And I need a drink.”

Letty grabbed his arm. “Only a small one,” she urged. “There’s still tonight.”

Eulis stopped. “What the hell’s tonight?”

“The revival under the brush arbor everyone’s been building. And don’t curse. Preachers don’t curse,” Letty warned.

“I can’t preach no full-blown sermon, and most preachers don’t poke whores neither,” Eulis grumbled. His frustration set off a new spate of tears to running down Letty’s cheeks. “Well hell, I mean heck. I didn’t mean to go and make you cry. Come on. Let’s go get ourselves somethin’ to eat while you tell me what else it is I got to do before I can get myself some rest.”

Consoled by the fact that Eulis seemed ready to do as she bid, Letty took him by the arm and headed toward the White Dove Saloon. She could fry up some side meat and put it between biscuits. Will always kept cold biscuits just in case.

“It’s just a sermon,” Letty said. “One little sermon. After that, the preacher will be on his way to the next stop on his missionary trip. You can handle one little old bitty sermon, now, can’t you Reverend?”

Eulis sighed. He wished his body could rise to the occasion that her look demanded, but so far, the only thing hard on his body was the preacher’s change jingling in the pockets of his pants.

“I reckon I can,” he said. “What’s one more sermon in the face of what we’ve already done?”

Tears dried on Letty’s face, replaced by an expression of relief.

“That’s the spirit!

“Don’t say that word,” Eulis muttered. “The only spirit I want is in a corked bottle.”

Letty grabbed him by the arm and led him across the street. “All in good time, Reverend Howe. All in good time.”

Eulis didn’t even notice that she’d called him by his ill-gotten name, because he was beginning to believe his own deception.

A small child darted across the street after a runaway kitten just as a big black horse entered town. The couple upon its back rode tall and quiet with little wasted motion, moving with the horse’s gait as if they were one.

It took Matt Goslin exactly thirty seconds to remember where he’d last seen that man. And when he did, he bolted inside his store and checked to see if the gun he kept behind the counter was loaded. It was. But little good it would be against the Breed if he chose to wreak the havoc for which he was known.

Joe Redhawk felt the stares before he saw the people. It did no good to care. For years it had been the same. If the sight of his brown skin and black hair didn’t strike fear in a white woman’s eyes, the gun on his hip did. It made no difference that he’d abandoned his Indian way of dress, and for the most part, his Indian ways. To them, he would always be a half-breed.

But that was before he’d met the woman who rode behind him. Before Caitie O’Shea. Now, unless something or someone stopped them, he was about to do something he’d never imagined. Not even in his wildest dreams. The half-breed was taking a wife.

Within moments of the sighting, word of the gunfighter’s appearance in Lizard Flats spread. Alfonso Worthy rolled from his marriage bed in fear that the bank was in danger of being robbed. The news left Sophie Hollis Worthy in a fainting fit, certain that her latest bed partner would suffer a fate similar to that of her first, and she would be forced to bury another man before she’d barely tried him out.

The smithy fired up the forge for no other reason than to have something to do, although a coal fire would do little to stop a man of Breed’s reputation.

Will the Bartender polished a few more glasses and popped the top on two new bottles. If things went according to usual, everyone in town would belly up to the bar for a shot of false courage.

Letty sat at a chair by the window in her room, watching Eulis sleeping the sleep of the dead. At the thought, she shuddered. She’d had her fill of dead men for one day.

But when she glanced out the window and saw the man riding in on that big black horse, she figured it was possible they’d be needing a new grave dug. And if Eulis came up missing in the middle of the need, someone might notice that the