Whippoorwill (35 page)

Comfort? Hell. He needed a gun and a fast horse.

Up two steps. Then three, then another and another until they were standing on the platform.

Eulis’s voice rolled out across the crowd. The only passage he’d ever memorized from the bible was standing him in good stead.

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…”

Kiowa Bill glared at the preacher. “Shut up,” he muttered. “Shut the hell up.”

Eulis turned. His face was pale. His eyes were red-rimmed and blazing with a fire that made the outlaw step back.

“Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over…”

Kiowa Bill suddenly shuddered. Something was wrong here.

Eulis’s nostrils flared as he met the outlaw’s hard gaze without flinching.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

“I don’t want no more prayin’,” he muttered.

Eulis’s head was pounding. The rage in him was so strong he could taste it.

“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Suddenly it was silent. Kiowa Bill flinched as if he’d been slapped. He looked to his right. A hangman stood—waiting. The black hood over his face was an ominous sign of what was to come.

The sheriff pushed Kiowa Bill backward until he was standing directly underneath the noose. He flinched when they slid it over his head and then down beneath his ears. The rope was new and stiff which was bad news for him. When the floor went out from under him, the noose would not tighten so easily, which mean it would take longer to die.
Shit.

Sheriff Wells began to say his piece, as he had at every hanging he’d attended since he’d come into office.

“Kiowa Bill Handlin, for all the crimes you have committed over the past thirty years, you have been sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”

The crowd was silent now. Watching. Waiting.

Kiowa Bill hated them for the fact that when this was over, they would still be breathing and he would not. He stared at the preacher again. The rage on the man’s face was impossible to ignore.

Sheriff Wells gave the noose a quick tug, just to make sure it was safely in place.

“Do you have any last words?” he asked.

Fear mingled with frustration as Kiowa Bill stared out across the crowd. Last words? What a joke. Then his gaze moved from the sheriff to the man with the bible.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Fixing Eulis with a cold, angry stare, his voice lowered to little more than a whisper. “Who the hell are you?”

Eulis leaned forward, just enough so that his voice wouldn’t carry.

“I’m the man who gave you that scar.”

Kiowa Bill’s eyes widened in shock. He stared at the pale, fleshy face of the preacher, trying to find the tow-headed kid who’d thrown an axe in his face. Then something thumped and the floor beneath his feet disappeared.

Bill Handlin’s last sight on earth was the preacher’s satisfied smile.

***

Letty woke up to find she was alone in the hotel. Panicked that Eulis had somehow skipped out of town without her, it had been all she could do to get dressed. It wasn’t until she’d come running out onto the sidewalk that she’d seen the crowd at the other end of the street. The hanging! They were having the hanging! In the distance, she thought she could see Eulis standing on the platform, his bible held close to his chest. At that point, she started running.

Moments later, she was pushing her way through the crowd. Only after she saw Eulis’s face clearly, did she start to relax. He hadn’t left her after all. He was just performing his Christian duties as a minister of the faith.

There was a sudden thump and then the floor fell out from beneath the outlaw’s feet. He commenced to swaying and jerking like a chicken with its head wrung off. Letty looked at Eulis and frowned. He was smiling. She’d have to talk to him some about that. Preachers were supposed to stay solemn.

Satisfied that her shaky new world was still centered, she took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. Not because she cared a whit for the outlaw who had just peed his pants, but in relief that Eulis hadn’t let her down.

Silence held sway over the crowd until the hangman cut the rope and Bill Handlin’s body dropped through the hole in the platform to the undertaker’s wagon beneath. A collective cheer went up and a few moments later, people began to disperse.

Letty waited. Not because she was afraid any longer, but because it was her duty as the preacher’s sister to stand at his side.

“I see you’re awake,” Eulis said, as he joined her in the street. “Did you pass a good night?”

Letty stared. For a man who’d just witnessed a hanging up close, he was in an awful good mood.

“Uh… yes, that I did.”

“That’s good,” Eulis said, and offered her his arm. “How about some breakfast, sister?”

She glanced back at the scaffold and then up at Eulis. “What was that all about?” she asked.

“Just fulfilling my duties.”

She lowered her voice, anxious that no one overhear her berating a man of the cloth. “You should not have smiled.”

Eulis frowned, as if considering her criticism. “You’re probably right. If there’s ever a next time, I’ll take better care.”

Satisfied that she’d done her sisterly duties, she took Eulis’s arm. “About that breakfast you promised.”

Eulis settled his hat a bit firmer on his head. “Then let’s go. I’m a man who likes to keep promises.”

The wind tore through the dust, lifting it into the air in a yellow-brown spiral. Eulis held onto his hat and Letty reached for her skirts.

It was going to be another hot day.

EPILOGUE

“Reverend Howe! I say… Reverend Howe!”

Eulis wiggled on the seat of the stagecoach and shifted his gaze from the bouncing bosom of Leticia Murphy, the sleeping whore turned preacher’s helper, to the liquor salesman who was accompanying them in the coach.

“Yes?”

The salesman opened his case and offered Eulis one of the sample bottles. “It’s a right dusty ride. If it isn’t against your religion, I’d be proud to offer you a sample of my wares.”

Eulis shook his head. “No, but thank you, my son. We’ll be arriving at the next stop before long and I need to be at my best.”

The salesman nodded and closed his case.

It has to be said that Eulis did consider it. But several things prompted him to refuse.

One being the sharp kick on his shins from the dainty toe of Sister Murphy, who obviously wasn’t as sleepy as he’d assumed. Another was the slack-jawed expression of the little man who’d offered the drink. He looked as if he imbibed a bit too freely in what he sold, and to Eulis, it was like looking at a reflection of his old self—a reminder he didn’t need. He was a man of the cloth now. Worldly pleasures were a part of his past.

But the benevolent smile stayed square on Eulis’s face as the stagecoach continued to roll. Eulis was getting real good at those fatherly smiles. He practiced on a daily basis.

Sister Leticia Murphy was fond of saying that practice makes perfect. Eulis figured she should know. She’d been the best whore in the Kansas territory until a dead preacher had changed her fate.

While Eulis had a firmer grip on his life, he didn’t know that last night Letty Murphy had backslid and had a secret rendezvous with her past—or that she’d stood at her window until long after most of the town had gone to sleep, listening for the call of a small, brown bird.

It had been close to morning when she’d finally heard it—off in the distance and almost too faint to be sure. At that moment, something happened that had never happened before. Right above her head, she’d heard an answering call. Startled, she had leaned so far out of the window that she’d almost fallen as she’d searched the night sky for a glimpse of the mate.

For a few moments, she’d seen nothing but the outline of rooftops and the faint glow of a lantern in the sheriff’s office down the street. Then the call had come again, and this time when the second bird answered, she saw it take flight.

In that moment, her vision blurred and her voice started to shake.

“Oh, mamma, I should have known you were right. It just took time and patience for me to understand.”

Her hands were shaking as she went back to her bed, but her heart was light and ready for what lay ahead. Even before daybreak, she was up and packed, waiting for the new day. Now her life had purpose and her future was bright. Maybe one day she would find someone who would love her for who she was and not who she’d been, but until that day came, she was satisfied with what she’d become.

If she was ever blessed with children of her own, she was going to teach them what her mama had taught her—how to listen for the whippoorwill. She could picture it all now, cradled by darkness and safe within the shelter of her arms, they would sit on the front steps of their home and feel the warmth of the dirt between their toes, maybe even smell the dampness as dew settled on the grass.

And maybe—just maybe—while they were waiting for the bird to call, if they were quiet long enough and old enough to know the difference—they would be able to hear their own heartbeats and know the truth of their own minds before it was too late.