The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,98

preacher wasn’t all he should be. Her anxiety increased as she watched him ride past.

The rider’s face was shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat that was as black as the hair hanging down around his collar. But she saw the way he wore his guns, and the way he sat loose in the saddle and knew she was right to worry. A gunslinger had come to Lizard Flats. Of all the faceless men who’d come and gone in her life, he was one she had not forgotten. He’d been kind, even gentle when he’d taken her to bed, and if she remembered correctly, had left her a five dollar gold piece instead of the dollar for which she’d asked.

As he passed, Letty noticed someone rode at his back. Someone small and shorn like a boy, but dressed in the fringed tunic of an Indian squaw. Someone whose bare legs shown as fair and white as the skin on Letty’s own breasts.

“What on earth?” Letty muttered.

“Jus’ pass me the bottle.”

She frowned at the lump of a man on her bed, walked over to where he was sleeping, and thumped him in the middle of the belly with a balled-up fist.

“Wake the hell up,” she hissed. “Trouble just rode into town.”

Eulis grabbed his belly as he rolled out of the bed. “Why did you hit me?”

“Look out the window,” she said.

Eulis kept rubbing his stomach. “I still don’t see why you had to go and hit me. I wasn’t hurtin’ you none and I don’t see what you’re so all-fired—”

He leaned all the way out the window then choked on his complaint. He’d seen the man before—in person as well as on wanted posters. He shuddered and ducked back into the room.

“I need a drink.”

Letty handed him a dipper of water.

“Not that kind of drink,” Eulis grumbled, and poured it back into the pitcher on the dresser.

“It’s that or nothin’,” Letty warned. “Put on your coat. Maybe you can stop whatever’s about to happen.”

Eulis gawked. “Why on earth would I be doin’ somethin’ like that?”

“Because you’re the preacher, that’s why,” she said, and handed him his suit coat. “And because if that gunslinger kills someone, they’re gonna be needing a grave. And if there’s no one to dig it, they might get to wonderin’ just where you have gone.”

Eulis went pale. With each passing moment, they kept getting deeper and deeper into the lie. And like Letty, he was so lost between fact and fiction that it hardly mattered anymore. He left the room, buttoning his coat and slicking down his hair. He needed to look good when he confronted the gunslinger. Maybe a killing could be averted. It was, after all, what a real man of God should do.

And So It Continues

Eulis was running when he got to the sidewalk. But the closer he got to the man on the horse, the slower he walked. His first suspicion had been right. It was the Breed! Then Letty pushed him forward, and it was too late to retreat.

The gunfighter’s eyes held no expression, except when he looked at the tiny woman riding behind him. When he did, something within him seemed to change. It was that single spark of humanity that gave Eulis courage. He looked up at the gunslinger, meeting his dark, brooding stare. While he was trying to find the right words to say, the Breed spoke first.

“Are you the preacher?” Joe Redhawk asked.

“Yes, I’m Reverend Howe. How may I be of service?”

Joe dismounted and then turned, lifting Caitie high into the air and then standing her down beside him.

Caitie lifted her chin. “We’ve come to marry.”

Eulis was momentarily speechless.

It was Matt Goslin who spoke up. “You tryin’ to tell us that you… a white woman—are gonna marry some half-breed?”

Joe went still. Caitie felt his anger, but it was nothing to the rage that overwhelmed her.

“I’ll not be tellin’ ye anything, ye randy old goat.”

Shocked by the viciousness of her manner, Matt frowned.

“Now see here—”

“Be gone,” Caitie raged, waving him away with one sweep of her hand. “If I was after lookin’ at apes, I would have been stayin’ in Mudhen Crossing and watchin’ Milt and Art Bolin hang.”

Letty gasped. She’d heard of them. They were trouble-makers of the worst sort. Too stupid to hurt anyone except themselves, they still managed to raise hell wherever they’d gone.

“The Bolin Brothers are going to hang?” Letty asked.

“And happy to be doin’ so,” Caitie said. “It was meself, or the noose. They chose the