Whippoorwill Read online

  Hetty looked at Beau and then down at Charity and sighed.

  “So it’s like that, is it?”

  “Yes ma’am, I reckon it is.”

  She nodded. “So be it, then. And it’s probably just as well. I’ll need someone to help me look after Charity.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re takin’ her with you?”

  Hetty frowned. “Hell yes. You heard her. She wants to die. It would be just like her to do something foolish to herself before I got back.”

  Fear slipped through him as he turned to look at her. The thought of that beautiful face and sweet laugh buried beneath six feet of territory dust made him sick. His voice shook.

  “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with her. Any man would be proud to call her his wife.” Then he flushed, realizing he’d gotten too familiar with his boss. “When you plan on leavin’?”

  Hetty glanced down at her sister. “I’d like to say now, but I reckon we’d better give her a day. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.” She gave Beau a hard look. “It may take a while. I ain’t got no idea where he was goin’ from here.”

  Beau pulled his hat down low on his head. “Don’t matter,” he said. “I got as long as it takes.”

  ***

  One day passed into another as Randall Howe traveled farther and farther away from his shame. But the distance in miles did not lessen his guilt. He’d done the unthinkable and taken a virgin—a young, helpless woman who’d been caught up in the throes of her own passion. He should have known better. They’d sent for him to counsel with her. He’d fucked her instead.

  He stared at the changing landscape without seeing the green give way to a flat, open plane. Heat intensified. And for the first time in his life, Randall let his personal hygiene slide. When it came time to embark upon the next leg of his journey, he was sporting a three-day growth of whiskers and his suit was covered with dust. Considering himself unworthy to even read holy words, he’d buried his bible in the bottom of his bag.

  When he got off the train and discovered the next leg of his journey would be by stagecoach, he decided it just punishment for what he’d done. That was the day he boarded the stage, bound for a place called Lizard Flats.

  ***

  Gentleman Jim poured a dollop of witch hazel into the palm of his hand and then rubbed his hands together before patting his freshly shaved face. The sharp, spicy scent made his eyes water and his cheeks burn, but the sensations soon passed, leaving a clean and pleasant aroma about his person. He’d made up his mind that tonight he was going to confess to Letty his growing admiration for her. He knew it was a long shot, but lately he’d been hungering for a different kind of life and hoped that Letty would, too. Will the Bartender had told him a little about Letty’s childhood and when questioned, she’d told him the rest. Jim understood all too well how a woman could come to the place in which Letty now found herself and held none of it against her. The way he looked at it, everyone sinned. It was the ones who didn’t regret it who were the losers and he knew that Letty hated her life. He heard the longing for something better when she sang of sadness and retribution.

  He glanced out the window and noticed the setting sun. Within a few minutes, Will would be calling up the stairs for Letty to come down, and he wanted to talk to her first before she re-entered that world. Smiling to himself, he reached for his hat, settled it on his neatly combed hair and started out the door of his hotel room when he realized his derringer was still on the bed. He slipped it in the pocket of his jacket and then hurried down the stairs, suddenly anxious to get to the White Dove.

  ***

  As usual, Letty was out on the balcony, girding herself for another night of drink and debauchery and waiting to hear the call of her good luck bird when she saw James Dupree exit the hotel. An ache rose in her throat as she watched him start across the street. The past few days with him had been heaven on earth for her. He had yet to take her to bed, although his good night kisses on the hand had progressed to tender kisses on her lips. Each night when she went to sleep, his face was in her dreams, and each day when she awoke, thoughts of seeing him that night were all that got her through the days. She didn’t want to think of the day when she’d awaken and once again find that he was gone, although she knew that it could happen.

  In her eagerness to see him, she forgot about the bird and leaned over the balcony to call down to him.

  “Jim!”

  He stopped in the street and looked up with a smile of delight on his face.

  “Letty, dear Letty. I need to talk to you. May I come up?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “But hurry. Will has already yelled at me once.”

  “Will can bide his time,” Jim said. “This is important.”

  Letty nodded and then raced back into her room as Will stepped up onto the sidewalk. She was checking her appearance in the mirror when she heard the gunshots—two—in rapid succession. After that, there was a rush of running feet and loud shouting, and then everything went still.

  She stood in the middle of her room without moving, staring toward her doorway with her heart in her throat, listening for the sounds of footsteps on the stairs that would tell her Jim was on his way. But the longer she stood there, the more certain she became that she would never hear them again.

  Finally, when she could move without falling, she made her way to the door and then started down the stairs. The room below was full of people, but all she could see was a sea of dusty hats. She couldn’t tell one man from another then saw Eulis coming out of the back room with the mop and a bucket of water. She flinched, and as she did, he caught the movement and looked up. The expression on his face made her sick. It was pity, pure and simple.

  As if on signal, the crowd below where she was standing suddenly parted and she could see the body stretched out on the floor. It was Jim. Even in death, he was still a beautiful man. Blood had blossomed upon the front of his white suit, like a red rose pinned on his lapel, but what had run out beneath him was pooling on the floor.

  “No,” she moaned, and started to moan. “Not him! Not him! Damn you, God, why do they all have to die?”

  Heads turned at the sound of her voice and then the men quickly looked away, as if ashamed to have seen into her grief.

  Helpless to move, she sat down on the fifth stair from the top and started to shake as what was left of James Dupree was carried out of the room.

  Will hurried up the stairs to her.

  Letty grabbed his arm, unable to speak.

  He patted her shoulder. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said. “But the man came out of nowhere. Said Gentleman Jim had cheated him the other night in a game of five card stud. Shot him square in the chest then yelled out that he wasn’t gonna hang, and shot himself before anyone could stop him.”

  “Who was it?” Letty asked. “Who killed my Jim?”

  Will missed the personal reference as he glanced back down at the floor, making sure that Eulis was doing what he’d been told.

  “Some drover from the Lipton ranch. Old man Lipton’s foreman has done carted him off. Come on down, will you, honey? Liven up the place for me. Pete’s gonna play that new song you like and Eulis is almost done mopping up the mess. It’ll be like old times in nothin’ flat. You’ll see.”

  Letty stared at him as if he’d just lost his mind.

  “Liven up the place? Just like old times? Have you no heart? For God’s sake, Will, a man is dead.”

  Will frowned. “Well, hell, Letty, he was just some deadbeat gambler. Besides, it ain’t like you never saw a dead man before.”

  Letty drew back her hand and slapped him. He staggered backward from the impact, more stunned that she’d done it than from the force of the blow.

  “He wasn’t a deadbeat. He was my… my…”Her voice broke. “He was my friend. As for livening up the crowd, I’d sooner set myself on fire. You want songs… sing them yourself.”

  Then she ran down the stairs and out the back way into the night,
sobbing as she ran. She ran until the tinny sounds of Pete’s piano were nothing but a memory and the lights of Lizard Flats were barely faint pinpricks of illumination in the dark.

  It wasn’t until a horse and rider almost downed her in the dark that she realized where she was. The rider dismounted on the run, certain that his horse had trampled her. He was surprised and relieved to find her standing.

  “Lady? Are you all right?”

  Letty smelled the scent of sweat and horse upon the man’s body and wanted to die.

  “No. I will never be all right again,” she said, and fainted in his arms.

  Up close, he recognized her as the whore he’d paid a dollar to only a week or so ago. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but he knew where she belonged.

  With little effort, he slung her unconscious body across the back of his horse, mounted up, then started back to town.

  Eulis was dumping out the mop water when the cowboy rode up at the back of the saloon.

  “Uh, hey, Eulis… Miss Letty has taken ill, I think. Reckon you could help me get her to bed?”

  For Eulis, the shock of seeing Letty draped across the saddle was like cold water in the face. He took one look at her and then pointed to the door.

  “Bring her in here,” he said, and held the door as the cowboy carried her inside.

  ***

  It was morning before Letty woke. She rolled over on her back, staring at the dusty, cobwebbed ceiling and trying to figure out where she was and how she’d gotten here. Then she heard a muffled snore and leaned over the side of the bed. That was when she realized she was sleeping on a bug-infested cot only three feet from Eulis Potter’s unconscious body.

  She bailed out of bed with a shriek.

  Eulis had been dreaming and Letty’s shriek settled into the dream with such reality that he sat up with a jerk before he was truly awake. All he saw were flaring nostrils and the flash of a red dress before he realized it was Letty who was wearing both.

  “Letty, I—”

  “Why am I in your bed?”

  The shock in her voice was turning to fury. He could hear it coming and started to talk before she got the wrong idea.

  “Some cowboy brung you back to town. And don’t go bein’ all mad at me. I ain’t the one who shot your friend.”

  It was then she remembered, and with the memory came the pain.

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  Eulis shrugged. “At the undertakers, I reckon. I got to dig me a grave before noon. It’s too hot to let him wait.”

  Letty’s eyes were glittering with unshed tears, but her voice was cold, her words hard.

  “You do it right, you hear me? You dig it neat and you dig it deep. And you tell me when they take his body up to the hill.”

  Eulis nodded. “Yeah, alright. I’ll let you know, right enough. Just don’t scream like that no more. My head’s killing me.”

  “No, Eulis. Your headache won’t kill you, but I might if I find any bed bugs in my hair. Why the hell you didn’t take me upstairs to my own bed is beyond me.”

  Letty swiped her hands across her eyes, dashing away the tears before they could fall. Damn the world and everyone in it. I will never let myself care—not ever again.

  “Bring some hot water to my room. I need to get clean.”

  Eulis scrambled to his feet, eyeing his mattress as he looked for his shoes. There weren’t any bed bugs on his mattress. If there had been, they would surely have been chewing on him all this time. Then he looked down at the skin on his arms and amended the thought. When all was said and done, he did look a bit on the charred side, himself. Maybe in a week or two he’d take a bath—just for a change of pace.

  “Eulis!”

  The screech in her voice set him on the run, his own bath forgotten.

  ***

  It was Sunday when they laid James Dupree to rest, although the day of the week hardly mattered. Letty was the only mourner, except for Eulis, who was horribly hung over and was leaning on his shovel to keep from falling in the open hole.

  The scent of new wood drifted up from the grave as Letty bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. She walked to the opening and looked down. There was a large, dirty hand print on the top of the makeshift casket where the maker had held it in place as he’d hammered in the nails. To Letty, it was a slap in the face reminder that he mattered little to the people of Lizard Flats.

  There was a pain in her chest making it difficult to breathe as she opened her fist and let go of the handful of dirt from his grave. Wind caught it, scattering it in a wayward pattern on the top of the coffin. She stood without moving, blind to everything but the emptiness of her life.

  Eulis began to fidget. His head was hurting and his legs were weak. He needed a drink and a place to sit down, but out here there was neither. He waited, watching for a sign that Letty was finished, but saw nothing that he could interpret as an ending to what was turning out to be a very bad day. Finally, his misery overcame his reticence.

  “Uh… if you was a mind to say some words now… or maybe sing one of your songs, this would be the time to do it,” he said.

  Letty lifted her head, and although Eulis didn’t move, he had the urge to take several steps back. She almost looked vicious. He reckoned it was a good thing that the man who’d shot the gambler had gone and killed himself, too, or Letty would be doin’ it for him.

  Then something happened that sent chills through Eulis’s body. Letty laughed.

  “Sing? You want me to sing?”

  Eulis’s stomach rolled.

  “I only thought you might—”

  “I don’t do anything for free, Eulis Potter, and don’t you forget it. You want a song? It’ll cost you. You want to take me to bed? It’ll cost you. You want to dance with me? It’ll cost you. I get paid for my services. I don’t do anything for free.”

  There was anger in her stride as she walked off the hill. Eulis watched her go, making sure she didn’t decide to turn around and attack him when his back was turned. She was already pissed that she’d found bugs in her hair. He’d heard about that more than once. When she was little more than a speck in the distance, he started to fill in the hole, putting back the dirt that he’d removed earlier. And, as always, there was dirt left over, displaced by the single pine box at the bottom of the grave. He mounded it up nice and neat, took the small plain cross that Letty had carried up the hill, tapped it into the dirt at the head of the grave, and followed her back into town.

  The wind began to pick up as he walked away, scattering loose dirt and dry grass as it moved across the land. A short while later, a meadowlark landed on the newly planted cross, waiting out the wind gusts before taking back to the skies. As it perched precariously on the cross piece it started to sing. It was the only song to be sung over the gambler’s passing.

  THE QUEST FOR TRULY FINE

  Sweetgrass Junction was an odd name for a town that couldn’t grow weeds, let alone prairie grass. But the name was no more out of place than the people who inhabited it.

  At the beginning of the small town’s inception, someone had decided to set the first building on a knob of red clay that was so barren it didn’t even throw a shadow. That building became the way station for the westbound route of Hollis Freight Line that ran out of Lizard Flats.

  When the second building went up, which happened to be a saloon—aptly named the Sweetgrass Saloon—it only stood to reason it would be built near the first. A saloon was a necessity in a land where the population of varmints outgrew the population of man. It was also the ultimate proof that man was never far from beast. Man needed a drink now and then, if for no other purpose than to howl at the moon.

  As is usually the case, people followed industry. A house or two was built. The owner of the saloon needed a place to sleep and Nardin Hollis, who owned the freight lines, had been farsighted enough to make certain that his horses had proper care, thus, a livery was erected on the spot nearest the freight line office
. And so it went until Sweetgrass Junction boasted a population of sixty-five—except once every two or three months, when Miles Crutchaw, a miner, came down out of the mountains. Then there were sixty-six.

  But ever since Truly Fine had come to the Sweetgrass, Miles’ visits were more frequent. He could have waited a lot longer than a couple of months before restocking his provisions, but it wasn’t food that brought him down out of the Rockies and east across the prairie to Sweetgrass Junction. It was the recent acquisition this past year of a new female named Truly Fine, formerly of Lizard Flats, and now residing at the Sweetgrass Saloon while taking nightly appointments for her favors.

  At forty-four, Miles Crutchaw had a commanding presence and an abundant head of curly, brown hair. His features were far from being handsome, yet manly. His face more nearly resembled a half-finished bust that some sculptor had abandoned in favor of a different project. It was craggy—all angles and planes set off by a pair of clear blue eyes and a beard that grew as wild as the man who wore it.

  With a bath, he would have been as fine an escort as Miss Truly Fine ever saw, except for one undeniable defect. Miles—Snag, to all his friends—had less than half a dozen teeth left in his head. Four to be exact. It was the one small flaw that Truly could not bring herself to ignore.

  And so it was on a hot day in June, while sitting in the lap of a gambler who was fresh from Dodge City, Truly happened to look up and see Miles coming through the door of the saloon for his monthly visit.

  “Oh no.”

  It was the way she said it that stilled the gambler’s hand upon her breast. And it was unfortunate for the gambler that it was his dealing hand with which he was playing fast and loose upon Miss Truly Fine, because it was the first thing Miles grabbed.

  “Christ all mighty!” the gambler yelped, and broke out in a sudden sweat as the mountain man forced his hand to bend in the wrong direction. “Let go, you ox! You’re gonna break it.”

  “Maybe if I do, you’ll remember next time not to put it upon a lady in such a disrespectful manner,” Miles growled.