The Whippoorwill Trilogy

by Sharon Sala

  “Oh, Eulis.”

  She clutched her belly as a fresh wave of pain threatened to send her to her knees. It was the thought of catching the man responsible for this tragedy that kept her going. She gritted her teeth, rubbed the tears from her eyes, and began scanning the floor of the forest until she finally found his trail. As she looked up at the wall of trees before her, she couldn’t help wondering if he was somewhere nearby, watching her struggling with shock and with grief.

  T-Bone whined.

  She took the piece of shirt from her pocket that she’d found on the bush and held it under T-Bone’s nose.

  “Find him, boy! Find him!”

  T-Bone seemed to sense the urgency in her voice and took off with his nose to ground. What she didn’t know was the pup was following a well-traveled path that he’d taken every day into George Mellin’s camp.

  Letty mounted, following with an eye to the trail. There was no way to tell how long the killer had been gone, but she didn’t want to waste any daylight.

  Within fifteen minutes, she rode into someone’s cold camp, but it was empty. A shelter of sorts had been built from limbs and pine boughs, although no fires had been made. She found a rabbit snare, but no sign of fur or bones. There was also a long indentation in the earth beneath some trees, with pine boughs and leaves as a cushion. She kicked it in anger, sending pine needles and leaves flying. The bastard had slept here. When she found him, she promised herself that his next sleep would be permanent.

  After a thorough search of the area, it didn’t appear he had plans of coming back. When she found a new set of footprints leading farther down the mountain, she went back to her horse, mounted up, and whistled for T-Bone.

  The pup fell into step behind the horse. The density of trees lessened as they descended, and she soon began seeing signs of old, long-abandoned campsites, as well as a few abandoned mine shafts. She knew them as places where men had searched long ago, then given up on their dreams.

  The signs of habitation were a signal to her that she must be close to the base of the mountain. This intensified her eye to the underbrush, making sure she wasn’t riding into an ambush. T-Bone was running ahead of her now with his nose in the air, on the trail of something new.

  When she rode out of a stand of trees into a small clearing and saw an old man lying on the ground beside a small lean-to, she pulled her horse to a halt.

  Grabbing her rifle as she dismounted, she ran to where the old man was lying. There was a spilled bucket of grain near his right leg, and what appeared to be a half-eaten biscuit clutched in his left hand.

  Just for a second, she saw Eulis again, and as she did, her vision blurred. Swallowing back a sob, she felt for his pulse. There was none. Then she saw the crack in the back of his skull and the pool of blood beneath his body. His body was cold to the touch, and when she lifted his hand, it was beginning to feel stiff. The bodies of people who’d just died were still supple. She’d seen enough dead people in her time to know that several hours had passed since this man took his last breath. This meant her killer was, most likely, a good distance ahead.

  Again, she began to look for the killer’s footprints, but it seemed he’d disappeared into thin air. It wasn’t until she began searching the other outbuildings that she realized the old man had owned a horse and it was gone. This changed everything. Now the killer was mounted, as well.

  After a few more minutes of trying to make sense of the tracks coming and going from the house, she found what appeared to be a fresh trail, moving west.

  So he wasn’t going to Denver City. She wasn’t familiar enough with the surrounding area to know what lay west of the burgeoning town except more mountains, but if she kept on going, she was bound to find out.

  For the first time since she’d ridden away from her home, she got scared. What if she lost the trail? A horse was a horse. How could she tell one’s trail from another? How would she ever live with herself again if she let a man get away with Eulis’ murder?

  Determined not to be defeated, she convinced herself that there was surely something she was missing, so she retraced her steps around the old man’s place. It wasn’t until she went back into the stable that she noticed a difference in the tracks. The horse was missing a shoe on the right front hoof.

  She grunted in satisfaction. That was what she’d needed to find. She wouldn’t look back at the old man—there was nothing she could do for him but try and find the person responsible for his death. She mounted up—ignoring the gut-wrenching pain in her chest—refusing to acknowledge that when this journey would be over, Eulis would not be waiting for her at the end.

  “Come on, T-Bone. Let’s go.”

  The dog barked as they disappeared into the trees.

  Robert Lee could tell by the deterioration of the tracks he’d been following, that he was at least three, maybe four hours behind Letty. As he’d ridden away from the house, he’d taken some comfort from the knowledge that the pup was with her. He would be some protection against animals or humans, but completely useless against a man with a gun.

  He found the stalker’s camp as easily as Letty had, and was somewhat surprised, then impressed, with her ability to track. She’d moved unerringly with the descending footprints on the back side of the mountain.

  Later, when he rode into the old man’s camp and found him dead and a horse obviously missing, he realized the stakes had gone higher. The killer was no longer on foot. But unlike Letty, he immediately caught the fact that the horse was missing a shoe. This would make it much easier to track, although the prints of Letty’s horse were now mixed with those of the killer. All he could do was follow and pray he didn’t get there too late.

  For hours, George rode with a cocky assurance, unaware he was being followed. He made no effort to hide his tracks, and once stopped for more than an hour to rest and to water the horse at a small creek. At that time, he dug into his stolen food and ate the piece of fried fatback that had been in a skillet on the old man’s stove, as well as some cold johnnycake. Later, as the horse was resting, he felt a pain in his belly and quickly took to the bushes, leaving a calling card of his own without bothering to bury it.

  After raiding the old man’s place, he was now in possession of a horse, food, and a bedroll. When night came, he would be sitting pretty. He still had some cold johnnycake and a couple of pieces of jerky, a large piece of flint for building fires, and a good-sized piece of uncooked fatback wrapped in a piece of thin, greasy cloth. He had a half-sack of dry beans, and about three pounds of cornmeal, as well as a spoon, and a couple of small pots, well-blackened from many outdoor fires. For a man who’d been without anything, he felt a great sense of well-being.

  It wasn’t until he saw how far the sun had moved into the west that he resumed his trek. Although he’d made good time since the shooting, he wanted to be farther away before he made camp for the night. He mounted up, eyed the sky once more, and kicked the old horse in the flanks.

  Within three hours it was dark and George was sitting beside his campfire. A small pan of beans was simmering at the side of the fire. By morning they would be cooked through and through. He would be able to eat from the pot and then pack it up, saving the cold beans for travel.

  When he’d first made his escape, his intent had been to just keep riding west, but the farther he rode from Denver City, the more convinced he became that the smartest thing for him might be to backtrack and go home to Boston. At least there, he’d had a trade. He’d never liked fishing, or spending every waking hour out on the ocean, but right now, it seemed far more appealing than the past year he’d lived through.

  Later, with a belly full of johnnycake and jerky, he spread his bedroll by the fire, pulled the loaded rifle up close to his chest, and covered himself with the old man’s blankets. They smelled of wood smoke and body sweat, but it was more than he’d had last night. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.

  Darkness came with Letty still in the saddle. The rage that had taken
her this far was still burning strong and steady. Every uneven jolt of the horse’s hoof to ground was a pain she welcomed. She needed the pain to match her emotions. It was the balance she needed to stay focused. The luxury of grief would come later, when she watched Eulis’ killer die.

  The later it got, the more she debated with herself about making camp for the night. But when it became apparent that tonight there would be a full moon, she changed her mind. She couldn’t track in the dark, but she was going to take a chance that the killer wouldn’t change direction, and assuming if she kept going, eventually she would smell the smoke from his campfire.

  She rode on, ignoring the aches in her muscles, and the hungry growl from her belly. The thought of putting food in her mouth turned her stomach. She needed to stay focused on the task at hand. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant reliving the shock and the acceptance of death that she’d seen on Eulis’ sweet face.

  Several times she was forced to slow down. The land through which she was riding was wild, and at night, dangerous. The valley was wide and long, nestled between two snow-capped peaks. But her instincts led her to keep following the creek that wound through the middle, believing that, when the killer decided to make camp, like anyone else, he would want easy access to water.

  Sometime around midnight she dismounted to water her horse and give him time to graze. When she swung out of the saddle and put her boots on the ground, her strength and willpower faded into nothing. The bloodstains on her clothes had long since dried and looked black in the moonlight. When she finally laid her hand on the dark stain across her breast, she dropped her head and sobbed. It was a sobering fact to know that his blood was the only thing of him she had left.

  T-Bone’s ears were on point—his nose was to the wind. The hair on his back had been raised for the better part of an hour, and ever so often he let out a low, warning growl. Letty wouldn’t let herself think of the wildlife that might be watching. She didn’t have time to be afraid of a four-footed devil when the one for which she searched walked upright.

  She had taken a cold flapjack from the pack Alice had made for her, and was absently feeding it to T-Bone while listening to the sound of her horse eating grass. There was a repetitive crunch as the horse bit down, then a tearing sound, as it pulled off a bite of the thick, lush growth. The grass around the creek was already over ankle high. Letty knew that it would be higher than her waist by mid-summer. It was a fine country, rich in all the things that counted, including that damnable gold.

  Only once, when she heard a sudden high-pitched scream, did she panic. Even though it sounded like the screams of a dying woman, she knew it wasn’t human. It was a cougar, and still some distance away. Nervously, she reached toward the butt of the rifle. It wasn’t until she felt the warmth of the wood beneath her fingers that she calmed.

  T-Bone growled what she assumed was another warning. She reached down and patted his head, murmuring softly until she felt the hair on his back finally relax.

  And so time passed. She didn’t know how long she’d been smelling wood smoke when it finally sank in, and then her heart skipped a beat. Everything around her, from the sound of the wind in the grass, to the water running in the creek beside them faded in the background of her consciousness.

  She stilled, and then closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but her sense of smell. Adrenaline heightened every sensation. She began to slowly turn in a clock-wise direction, intent on locating the direction from which the smoke was coming. When she felt the wind on her face and the smoke up her nose, she suddenly realized what had happened.

  Somehow, in the dark, she had ridden past the killer’s camp. The scent of smoke was faint. And from the way the wind was blowing, there was no telling how far back the camp had been made, but she was going to find out. She mounted quickly, whispered a command to her dog, and began to backtrack.

  A short while later, the scent of smoke was growing stronger. Within minutes, she’d ridden close enough that she could see the flames of a campfire through the trees. At that point, she stopped, dismounted, and tied her horse to the branches of a tree along the creek bank, then pulled the rifle from the scabbard and put her hand on T-Bone’s head.

  The pup sensed her anxiety and whined softly. She felt the muscles of his back trembling beneath the palm of her hand and gave him a quick pat. With her rifle in one hand, a knife in her boot, and her dog at her side, she walked into the camp.

  The light from the fire was so much brighter than the moonlight by which she’d been traveling that she saw everything quite clearly. The shape of the man lying beneath an old blanket was long and large. From where she was standing, she could see the end of a rifle barrel beneath his blanket near the back of his head.

  Since she’d walked in from the backside of the fire, she had yet to see his face, but it didn’t matter. She was almost positive as a person could be that this man was the killer she’d been tracking—but she needed to make sure.

  The man’s horse was tethered some twenty yards away, but when she noticed that it was standing on three legs and favoring the front hoof on the right—the one that was missing a shoe—she knew she’d found her man.

  She took a deep breath, and without giving herself time to panic, pointed at T-Bone. Although he never moved his gaze from her face, he sat down, quivering with tension, but sensing the need to obey.

  Letty moved quietly, taking care with every step, until she was only inches from the sleeping man’s head. Her eyes narrowed as she reached down and silently slid his rifle from beneath the blanket. Then, clutching his weapon in her left hand, she backed up until she was out of the circle of light and laid the gun in the grass. The man was snoring loudly, completely unaware he was no longer alone, yet she could barely hear the sounds for the thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears.

  She eyed the layout of the camp, noting a large stack of firewood that he’d obviously gathered before bedding down for the night. Tightening her grip on her rifle, she picked up a large stick, and from where she was standing, tossed it into the fire.

  It hit the flames with a thud, scattering sparks and burning embers into all directions, including the man’s hair and blanket.

  “What the hell?” he shouted, as he sat up in his bed, and then began beating at the blanket, trying to put out the flames.

  He didn’t know Letty was there until he heard something growl. Believing it to be a wolf or a bear, he went for his rifle, then saw Letty Potter at the same time he realized his rifle was gone.

  She looked like something out of a nightmare, with the flames from his campfire highlighting the bone structure of her face. Her gaze was as steady as the gun she had aimed at his heart. But it was the bloodstains on her clothes and the glitter in her eyes that told him he would not see tomorrow.

  “You!” Letty muttered, shocked to learn that it was George Mellin who she’d been trailing all along, and yet at the same time, it began to make a sick kind of sense.

  She wanted him dead now—she wanted to see him take his last breath, just as she’d watched Eulis die. But she needed him to suffer, too—to know that his physical pain was as sharp as the one in her gut.

  George was frozen in fear.

  Letty knew he was scared, but it wasn’t enough. Without talking, she picked up another stick from the woodpile and threw it into the already blazing fire.

  Again, the sparks flew outward, this time singeing George’s hair and skin, and burning more holes in his blanket. He cried out in pain and terror, and began to beat at the flames, when Letty stopped him with a warning.

  “If you move again, I’ll shoot you where you sit.”

  George’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  “I’m on fire,” he cried.

  “Not yet, you’re not… but you will be,” Letty promised.

  George writhed beneath the blanket as a small fire began to spread near his feet.

  “Please,” he begged. “You don’t u
nderstand. You shouldn’t a done what you did. No man deserves to be whipped like a dog in front of his friends.”

  “No man does to his family, what you did, you bastard… you coward… you sorry-ass, back-stabbing son-of-a-bitch. But the flogging wasn’t about your wife, Alice. She’s a grown woman. The way I looked at it, she could have spoke up for herself. It was about your baby. She died in my arms. Died before she had a chance to live. That’s why I whipped your ass, and I’d do it again.”

  George groaned. The hole in the blanket was burning a little larger as it continued to spread. He felt the heat catching onto his pant legs and knew it was just a matter of time before he burst into flames.

  “Please,” he begged. “You can’t do this to a—”

  Letty lifted the rifle to her shoulder.

  “Shut up,” she said softly.

  George groaned as his bladder gave way.

  Letty took a step closer.

  “You should have killed me, too,” she said softly, then pulled the trigger.

  The scent of gunpowder was suddenly up her nose as the kick of the rifle made her stagger.

  When the echo of the shot had faded away, George Mellin was still sitting, with the burning blanket in his lap and a bloody hole between his eyebrows.

  She shuddered, and took several steps backward until she felt the bark of a tree at her back. She slid downward with a sigh; sitting flat on the ground, with the rifle at her feet.

  A few yards away, the blanket finally burst into flames. She watched it catch on George’s pants, then his shirt, then watched his face disappear behind a column of swiftly rising smoke.

  Mellin was aflame.

  Nearby, his horse whinnied nervously. The smell of burning flesh sent it into a panic. It reared backward on the rope, then suddenly tore free from its tether and disappeared into the night at full gallop.

  Robert Lee’s horse was lathered—its breathing hard and labored. Ever since he’d come off the mountain into the wide, verdant valley, he’d been riding in fear. When dark came, he began to fear he would ride past Letty’s body, lying somewhere out of sight in the grass. He couldn’t get the dark, blood-stained earth at the Potter house out of his mind, and kept imagining he could hear the sound of her screams.