The Whippoorwill Trilogy by Sharon Shala

Author:Sharon Shala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2013-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

VINEGAR, VANITY, AND VISIONS

It was Orville Smithson who first saw the strangers riding into town. One man on a mule. A woman on a blind mare. He knew the mare was blind because he could see the white film over the mare’s eyes from inside his shop. He frowned, wondering how that worked—riding into a strange place on a horse that couldn’t see?

The man was dusty and trail-weary, but the cut of his suit was fine, and the hat on his head was a Bowler, a style men out West didn’t much cotton to. His hair was a mixture of brown and gray and hung a few inches past the collar of his shirt. His face was ordinary, with less than a week’s worth of whiskers waiting to be shorn. The woman was some younger than the man. Her clothes were nothing to write home about, but she had a nice face, a voluptuous body, and a fine head of brown hair.

He laid down the straight-razor he’d been sharpening and walked out onto the sidewalk. He caught the scent of polecat as the couple passed by and wrinkled his nose as they rode straight to the rooming house. A cowboy ambled out of Grigg’s Saloon, mounted his horse and rode out of town as Henrietta Lewis walked out of the mercantile.

Orville waited for her to look his way so that he could wave, but she, too, had seen the strangers and was curiously watching as the man dismounted.

“Hey, Orville, I need a haircut.”

Orville turned around to see who had hailed him, then frowned. Harley Charles was coming up the sidewalk. It was the first time he’d seen him since Fannie had run him out of their house on all fours. He wasn’t certain how to behave toward a man who’d been humiliated in this respect, especially since it was his daughter who’d done the deed. But Harley didn’t seem all that bothered about their face-to-face, so Orville took his cue from Harley and waved him into the shop and set him down in the barber chair.

“Want a shave with that, too?” Orville asked, as he fastened the barber cape around Harley’s neck and tried not to look at the man’s swollen nose and black eyes.

Harley rubbed a hand on his jaw, testing it for soreness, and nodded an okay.

“Yeah, sure. My face isn’t as tender as it had been.”

“That’s good,” Orville said, tilted the chair back enough to get a good angle for a shave, and then poured some hot water in a basin.

He dipped a clean towel in the water, wrung it loosely, and then wrapped it onto Harley’s face, making sure to leave his nose free to breathe.

“Damn, Orville, that’s hot,” Harley said.

Orville knew it, but pretended innocence as he worked up a lather in the shaving mug.

“Sorry,” Orville said. “Softens up the whiskers good, don’t you know.”

Harley grunted, and crossed his hands across his belly, unaware that Orville had walked back to the door.

“Got a couple of strangers in town,” Orville said.

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