Whippoorwill (21 page)

“I disgust you.”

The despair in her voice broke his heart. “No, Charity, no!”

“Don’t pretend with me Beau James. I can’t bear it. I’ve had my fill of men who say one thing and mean another.” Then she bit her lip to keep from crying. “Besides, I understand your feelings. Yes, I was wronged by Randall Howe, but it was partly my fault.”

“No, Charity, you misunderstood my—”

“Please Beau, let me finish.”

He bowed his head. Even though the pain in her voice was like knives in his heart, he did as she asked.

She sighed then, as if the weight of the world was square on her shoulders. Her gaze bore into him, wanting him to believe—needing him to understand. Not so he might love her. Just so he wouldn’t hate her.

“It was my dream, you see. I’d had the same dream seventeen times. I thought it was God telling me what to do with my life. I told Reverend Howe about it. He was going to help me become a nun.”

Beau’s head jerked up like a gutshot steer. A nun? This was the first he’d heard of such folly. His eyes narrowed angrily as he looked at her there in the moonlight. A nun. Not only no, but, hell no. A woman like Charity Doone was meant for a man’s empty bed and warm embrace. And he had both. If she would only care.

Charity continued her story, unaware of what was running through Beau’s mind.

“I told him everything.” Her mouth tilted in a bitter smile. “I let myself believe something false. I deserved what he did.”

Beau’s face was hot. His daddy used to say that Beau let his anger show more than any boy he’d ever known. Thankful for the gentleness of moonlight and the darkness of night, he cleared his throat. She’d had her say. Now it was his turn.

“No ma’am, you did not deserve to be mistreated. He was a man of the cloth—a man you were raised to trust. It was him that stepped over the line.” Then he touched her hand, then her arm. “Charity, girl, it doesn’t matter what he did to you. You’re what matters.”

Charity was stunned. She mattered? But did she matter to him?

“Those are kind words,” she whispered. “But find me a man who can ignore what I’ve done and I’ll show you a saint.”

Beau laid his hand at the side of her face. “I reckon you’re lookin’ at one now, but I ain’t no damn saint. I’m just a man who’s in love with a fine, gentle woman.”

Before, the pain had been too great to cry. But now the tears came, flowing free and cleansing.

“You love me? After all that I’ve… that he—”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Beau.”

Her tears were his undoing. “Lord, girl. Don’t cry. Don’t cry no more. I can’t bear it.”

He took her in his arms. “I have loved you for a long time now, Charity Doone. And I ain’t pushin’ you none, but when I get back from killin’ that preacher, I want to make you my wife.”

Charity was torn between pure joy and true fright. Suddenly the thought of Beau James putting himself into harm’s way was appalling.

“Oh Beau, I love you, too. And I will be proud to marry you. But if you love me as you say you do, please, please don’t go looking for Reverend Howe on your own. If anything happened to you, I would surely die.”

Beau’s heart soared. She loved him! But what she was asking was something he couldn’t give. He kissed her cheek, and then her lips, groaning beneath his breath as he made himself stop.

“You ain’t gonna die and I ain’t takin’ you back to the ranch and livin’ happy ever after while knowin’ that damned preacher broke your trust. I’ll see that man face to face before I quit the trail.”

His truth had been said. It was up to her to accept it. She did because he gave her no choice.

“Then so be it,” she said. “But you won’t go alone. If Hetty wants to go back tomorrow, she can go on her own. I’m going with you, Beau James. When we go home, we go together or not at all.”

Beau knew she was a winner. He grinned and swung her off of her feet and into his arms.

“Then we’d better be gettin’ back to the camp. I reckon there’s some things about us that Miss Hetty needs to know.”

Charity grinned while her feet dangled inches above the ground. “Knowing my sister, she’s already figured the whole thing out.”

Charity was right. Mehitable had taken their news in stride. But she didn’t go home. None of them did. In fact, when the freight wagon pulled into town the next day, they all had a new destination.

Lizard Flats.

It would be a hard two-day ride, but this time with a prize at the end of the trail.

A DRUNK BY ANY OTHER NAME

For a drunk whose normal speed was crawl, Eulis Potter came awake all too sudden and wondered why. Immobile, he contemplated the bright light of day through the slits in his eyelids and the fact that there was nothing between his head and the hard packed earth but his hat.

He’d passed out in the alley, which meant he hadn’t made it to his room, after all. He knew where he was because he recognized the roof line of Goslin’s General Store. But something was different. Something he couldn’t quite name. He wrinkled his nose. An odor of sweetness wafted up his nostrils, which was puzzling because good smells and Eulis did not coincide.

Molasses, he thought. That’s what he smelled. When he was a tyke, no more than four or five, his mother had made him molasses cookies. He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and thought of the face of Kiowa Bill on the wanted poster in his room at the White Dove Saloon. Funny how smells could bring back memories.

His arms felt like fence posts. His legs felt like lead. That last batch of rotgut Will the Bartender had bought wasn’t fit to sell. And yet Eulis had drunk his fair share, and from the way he was feeling, everyone else’s. He licked his lips and then frowned. Damned if he wasn’t tasting that molasses as well. This was quite a memory.

Someone giggled at the end of the alley. He didn’t bother to look. Someone was always laughing at him, or calling him names. But he’d long since quit caring what other people thought. He couldn’t be bothered with their business when he was so involved in his own.

Something crawled on his leg. He needed to move. Once he’d passed out and woke up with a snake up his pants. But that had been in the fall of the year and the snake had been looking for a place to get warm. God knows it was hot enough for snakes in Lizard Flats without them having to crawl up a poor man’s pants.

Someone giggled again. Then again.

“G’way,” he mumbled. “Leave me be.”

The giggles increased. And so did the crawling sensation. In fact, now that he thought about, the crawling wasn’t just up his leg. It was all over. On his ankles. On his arms. On his face. In his beard. He opened one eye just enough to peek out. Hell’s fire. Even crawling up his nose.

He lifted his hands, frowning at the tiny brown rash all over. And then his eyes opened wide. Oh God. That rot gut had been bad—real bad. He was worse off than he thought. He was hallucinating—and even worse—the brown rash was starting to move.

The giggles increased into wild bursts of laughter.

The scent of molasses was strong in his nose. The taste sweet on his lips. He licked them again, amazed at how strong his memory had become. Then he turned his head and spit. This was wrong. Molasses didn’t have seeds.

The crawling sensation was making him crazy. He sat up with a groan and slapped at his pants near his knee. The crawling was worse now. Swaying where he sat, he bent his knee and pulled up his pants, just to make sure it was absent of snakes. To his dismay, the dancing brown rash was down there as well.

“Oh lordy,” he muttered. “I been poisoned, that’s what. I been poisoned and I’m a’ goin’ to die.”

A tiny pain shot behind his ear, then in the bush of beard below his chin. He crawled to his feet and started toward the street. Maybe Matt Goslin had something in his store that would help cure his rash.

He stumbled. Something crashed against the wall. He looked down, frowning at a jug laying in the dirt. It was too small for whiskey and too large for liniment. He picked it up, lifting it to his nose—just in case he’d been wrong about the whiskey part.

To his surprise, the molasses smell was even stronger. He poked his finger into the narrow neck. It came away covered in thick, brown syrup… and ants. He could see them now. Crawling out of the lip of the jug and down the sides like little soldiers on the march.

It took a few moments—and another pain down his neck—for reality to sink in. He looked at the trio of tow-head boys peeking around the corner of the building and knew it wasn’t a rash he was suffering. Coupled with their hysterical giggles and the contents of the molasses jug that they’d poured onto his person, he’d knew he’d been had.

“You little devils,” he shrieked. They’d used him for bait. He came out of the alley, shedding clothes as he ran.

His coat fell at the feet of the blacksmith’s wife as he staggered across her path. She screamed and danced sideways as the coat hit her shoes.

Still on the move, his hat and shirt were the next to go as they landed in the middle of the street. A rancher’s daughter took one look at Eulis’s white hairy belly, still crawling with ants and started to laugh.

By the time he got to the watering trough in front of the livery, he was clawing at his hair and his beard. Desperate to stop the stings, he went in face first, landing with a belly flop and sending a spray of water high into the air. Moments later, he came up gasping and looked down. Hundreds of ant carcasses were floating on the water. He sat down in the trough, groaning in pain and disbelief as Pete Samuels, the owner of the livery, came out on the run.

“Eulis, dang your hide. That ain’t no place to take a bath.”

“Ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered, while combing his fingers through the sticky gunk in his hair and face.

“Then what the hell are you doin’?” he shouted.

Eulis pointed. “Ants.”

Pete gawked. Sure enough, the surface of the water was littered with them. It didn’t take long for the three laughing boys and the stench of a sweetened down Eulis to make things more clear. He shook his head. Those little dickens had sure caused a stir, pouring molasses on a passed-out drunk.

“Well, get the damned things off and then fill up my trough with clean water, you hear?”

Eulis nodded. “Be glad to,” he offered. “Just as soon as I pick the rest of these ants out of my beard. Durn things sting hard, don’t you know?”

Pete went back into his livery, muttering to himself.

Eulis continued to pick off the ants, splashing himself now and then with the murky green water and heartily glad he hadn’t been forced to shed his pants. His last pair of long johns had fallen apart last winter. He’d been doing without ever since.

***

Alfonso Worthy was on his way to Sophie’s house for supper. But it wasn’t the thought of her food that was hurrying his steps, it was the telegram he had in his pocket. The preacher was coming with the next wagon of freight. He could hardly wait. Not until he heard Sophie Hollis say the words, I do, was he going to rest easy.

And because he was so engrossed in his own bit of news, he missed seeing the clothes lying in the street. But he did see a small crowd gathering around the livery. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. He was a little bit early and his curiosity won out. He stepped off the sidewalk and into the street just as a trio of young boys came barreling past him.

“Hooligans,” he muttered, settling his hat a bit firmer on his head.

The frown was still on his face as he began pushing his way through the crowd. It did his blood pressure no good when he got to the front and saw Eulis sitting in the watering trough.

“Oh my word!” he muttered.

With a proper gentleman preacher coming from back east, he’d done everything within his power to increase the social amenities in Lizard Flats. He’d even hired a man to whitewash the bank, only now it stuck out like a sore thumb in a town where every other building was a plain, weathered gray, but Alfonso didn’t care. It was a sign of prosperity. For a banker, a necessity, indeed.

But now this? How would this town fare in the preacher’s eyes if the town drunk was allowed to take public baths.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted.

Eulis looked up. His head was throbbing and his vision had doubled. To make matters worse, the little roosters suddenly dancing in front of him looked a lot like Worthy, the banker.

“Have you all gone insane?” Alfonso continued, staring about in great confusion. “Why is this man being allowed to bathe in public? It’s a disgrace, I tell you! In fact, he’s a disgrace!”

“I ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered. Then he felt something crawling at the back of his neck and thrust his fingers through the wet, sticky mass of his hair, digging and picking until he felt the small ant. He mashed it before it could bite, ending its futile bid for freedom.

Alfonso was livid. Everyone watching seemed to think this was funny. They were snickering and pointing at the man like a side show freak. It was all he could do not to scream. He thought of Sophie. Now that she was his intended, he felt obligated to protect her in every way that he knew. He gritted his teeth and leaned closer until he and Eulis were almost eye to eye.

Water clung to Eulis’s hair and beard, mixing with the remnants of molasses to give him a rather interesting appearance. If it wasn’t for the stink of his body and the condition of what was left of his clothes, he might have looked sugar-coated.

“If not a bath, then pray tell what do you call this?”

“I been anted,” Eulis muttered. “I’m just pickin’ ’em off.”

Alfonso frowned. Anted? He’d never heard of such a thing. Then he looked down at the water. Hundreds of dead ants were floating upon the surface. He gawked.

“Good lord! How did such a thing happen?”

Eulis frowned. For a banker, old Worthy was pretty dim.

“Wal, you take a jug of somethin’ sweet and—”

“Oh for pity’s sake,” Alfonso snapped. “Get yourself out of there!” He straightened and glared at the crowd. “And you people are no better for gawking at a fool. Someone get him out of Pete’s trough and off of the street. What would the preacher think if he was to come into town right now?”