The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (5 page)

“Let me,” he said, sliding out from under her and sitting up, with his back against the floor of the overturned carriage. “I insist.”

Amidst a flurry of skirts and tangle of limbs, she managed to stand and back away, ready to protect herself if he attempted to lay a hand on her. “Don’t you dare.”

“But I do, until I know you’re not wounded.”

“I hit my head and my stomach feels like it’s full of prairie dust,” she said quickly, “but I’m not hurt.”

“Can you get the door open?”

It was then that Macky realized there were no sounds of life, other than their own breathing inside the coach.

The coach was on its side. She managed to turn around, twisted the handle of the door and pushed against it. It flew open, letting the fading sunlight inside.

Cautiously, she poked her head out of the open door and looked around. Nothing but prairie, and a purple shadow of mountains in the distance.

“I think we’re alone,” she whispered, the enormity of the
truth washing over her like a rush of cold air. “I don’t see the driver.”

“I think I’ll worry about me—us first, beginning with getting up.”

But it wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. He was still dizzy and his legs were as wobbly as a newborn calf. “Damn! When you said you were trouble, you meant it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you have the hardest head in the Kansas Territory.”

She felt a twinge in her chin and took in the blood on his face with sudden understanding. “Did I do that to you?”

“You had a hand in it,” he said, grabbing the bottom of the window as he tried to lift himself. He thought back to their earlier position and grinned. “Guess that makes us even.”

She reached down to assist him, her movement pushing her cape open to reveal her exposed breasts. “Sir!” she gasped. “How could you take advantage of me when I was, when we were—”

“I didn’t, though if I hadn’t been nearly knocked out by the force of your lovely chin, I might have.”

“Get your own self up,” she blustered, jerking her hand back and grabbing her cloak to cover herself.

It took her a moment to realize that there was no jingle of coins. She reached beneath her cape. Gone. Not only her purse but her carrying case as well.

“You stole my money,” she accused as she watched the stranger grit his teeth and force himself to a standing position.

“You forget, ma’am. I was underneath you.” He glanced around the coach. “Your purse is probably somewhere along the trail with my gun, flung out the window when the coach was being dragged by the horses. Horses!” He caught hold of the carriage and looked around. Without horses they could be in big trouble.

His worst fears were realized. There was no sign of any
living thing. They were alone. Night was coming and with it the intense cold of the prairie. At least the woman had a warm cape. Still, they couldn’t survive long out there. They’d have to face the elements and possibly Indians as well. With the Arapaho and the Pawnee at war there were too many hostile Indians in the area.

He’d spent the best part of his life staying away from innocent, headstrong women. Now here he was, stuck with one who didn’t have sense enough to know the difference between the back and the front of a dress, who was worried about her missing purse when they didn’t even have a gun.

Bran lifted himself through the open door and slid over the side to the ground, wincing as the jolt set off a fresh round of pain in his head. He touched his head, feeling the sticky evidence of his wound. Apparently his hat had gone the way of his companion’s purse.

Macky saw him flinch and felt a twinge of guilt that she’d been responsible for the accident. She scrambled out of the fallen carriage, strode to the back of the coach where Bran was studying the surroundings.

“Everything is lost,” she whispered. “Even my travel case—”
The wages of sin
.

“No,” Bran corrected her. “It’s behind us. I can see something back down the trail where the coach turned over. If I’m lucky, my gun and my hat will be there.”

But Macky had already started back toward the patch of color. She could see the wheel, lying where it had rolled to a stop. And something else, a bundle that took shape as she came closer.

“The driver.” Macky ran toward the man and dropped to her knees beside him. He was still alive, a bullet through his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“As all right as a man who’s been shot can be,” he rasped. “Sorry about what happened, ma’am.”

“Can you walk?”

“You’re durn right I can,” he blustered. “I was just lying here gettin’ my strength.”

She helped him to his feet and watched as the preacher picked up something, then walked slowly toward her, taking in the driver and studying the landscape around.

“What about your head wound?” she asked as he neared.

“I’ll live.”

“Unless whoever tried to hold us up comes back. We have a stage, but no horses.”

“So we walk.”

“A preacher with a Bible, but no gun.”

“So, we’ll pray.”

“I don’t have a lot of confidence in that,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he snapped.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t really want to believe that the men chasing them were after the stolen money in her travel case. Instead she looked around for the blue velvet drawstring bag and the preacher’s hat. They were nowhere to be seen.

“Good shooting back there,” the driver said. “Do you see any of the outlaws?”

Bran shaded his eyes and searched again. “No. I guess the one who got away must have picked them up.”

“Who were they?” Macky asked guardedly.

“Probably that gang that held up the bank back in Promise,” the driver answered. “The ticket agent told me that one of them was riding a horse with a silver-trimmed saddle.”

“Surely it wasn’t the same man,” Macky said. “There could be more than one saddle like that around.” She tried to convince herself that Pratt couldn’t have known she was on the stage. Still she couldn’t be sure and the thought of being stalked out here in the desert was daunting. “I mean …”

She looked up at the two men who were waiting for her to finish her statement. “The sheriff probably caught them,” she finished uneasily. She couldn’t figure out how they got away.

Bran studied her gravely. She knew more than she was admitting about what had happened back in Promise. Her
quick departure was becoming more suspect. Sooner or later he’d do a bit of discreet questioning. For now he’d just watch her.

Watching her was becoming an interesting task since she’d lost that awful-looking bonnet, allowing a riot of rich red hair free across her shoulders. Any thought that she was odd-looking had vanished when he’d seen her hike up her skirt, throw shapely bare legs over the window of the coach and slide to the ground.

Trouble, as he’d begun to think of her, was an intriguing young woman. She had the kind of mouth that made a man lust to taste it at the same time she dared him to try.

He could tell that he was making her uneasy, studying her so seriously. She quickly averted her eyes, turning to the driver, spying the gunbelt strapped to his hips. “You have a pistol. If the thieves return, you can protect us, can’t you?”

The driver worked his shoulder and winced. “Not likely, ma’am. They got me in my shooting side.” He unsheathed his pistol and handed it to Bran. “You take it, preacher. You’re a better shot anyway.”

Bran took the weapon, examined it, then inserted it in his own holster. “Ammunition?”

The driver pulled back his jacket to reveal the bullets in the loops of his gunbelt. “Some, enough maybe.”

“Good man. At least we’re not helpless. I think we’d better get out of here, before the bandit who got away decides to come back. Any idea what he was after?”

“Not unless it was the mail. Ain’t carrying nothing else on this part of the run, ’cept you two. Going the other way, sometimes I carry gold from the mines. But they usually send a couple of guards then.”

“Look, isn’t that the mail sack?” Macky asked, pointing to a bag lying against a rock.

The driver struggled to the bag and tried to lift it, groaned and let it fall back to the ground. “Don’t think I can carry it. What about it, Reverend? I’ll take your Bible if you’ll tote the mail. Can’t afford to lose it. That new Pony Express
is already getting the mail across country faster than we can.”

“How far to the way station?”

“Too far to walk before dark,” the driver said. “Maybe we’d better find a place to make camp.”

“Make camp?” Macky could sleep on the ground as well as the next one, but she was famished.

Bran studied the driver, then looked down the trail. “Let’s get to that outcropping of rocks just ahead,” Bran said as he picked up the mail bag. “At least it will give us some protection from the wind.” He turned his head, speaking under his breath to Macky. “I don’t suppose you have any beans and bacon in that carrying case, do you, Trouble?”

“Afraid not.” He didn’t have to tell her that she’d have been a lot smarter filling it with food instead of nightgowns and petticoats. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me that. I had nothing to do with our attack.”

“Maybe not,” Bran said. “But the name still fits.”

“Let me help you, Mr.— What is your name?” Macky asked the driver.

“Jenks Malone,” the driver said, pressing his hand against the circle of blood spreading beneath his fingers.

Macky took a step toward the grizzly old man. “You need medical attention before we go anywhere, Mr. Malone.”

“Call me Jenks and I can wait,” he insisted, through clenched teeth that said how painful the injury really was. “Right now, we gotta find shelter away from the wagon. Cover our trail.”

As if on command the wind sprang up, whipping Macky’s cape like a sail as she tried to collect it around her. Leaning against the strong current of air, she headed off down the rutted trail, the wind erasing evidence of her footsteps as she walked. Her case was heavy. She was cold and the growls of her stomach sounded more like tigers than termites.

To add to her woes, she faced the worrisome possibility that Pratt might be behind them. At least he was looking for a boy named McKenzie, not an odd-looking woman and a dangerous one-eyed man carrying a mail bag in one hand and a Bible in the other.

B
ran produced a small bottle of whiskey from inside his coat and told Macky to use it to clean and dress the driver’s wound.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“We need food,” he said, and walked away.

Macky watched him for a moment, then turned to the injured man. Jenks Malone was lucky. The bullet had passed through his shoulder, leaving a clean wound. The raffle from Macky’s newly purchased flannel nightgown served as a bandage, but as the sun fell behind the mountains and carried the heat with it, Jenks became far too cold.

Macky’s compassion overruled her personal comfort and she unfastened her cape and used it to cover him. Ruefully she studied the front of her shirtwaist and blushed. Moments later she’d removed the offensive article of clothing and replaced it with her brother’s shirt and Papa’s coat. At
least she was warm, even if she was wearing the clothing that would identify her to the bank robbers.

Bran returned, carrying a small rabbit. He glanced at the woman’s change of clothing but didn’t comment. If anything, he decided, she looked more at home in men’s clothing than she had in the ill-fitting garments she’d worn before.

He wondered how old she was. About twenty, he’d guess. But women in the West were usually married by then. And she’d been quick to defend her status as single. Maybe too quick.

Bran put aside his reservations about calling attention to their location and built a small fire. The driver needed heat and they all needed food. If they were being followed, the bushwhackers already knew where they were, and he knew enough to know that the Indians didn’t need fires to find their targets.

Soon the rabbit was roasting. The smell of the fat hitting the burning brush made Macky’s mouth water, yet she stayed away, reluctant to get too close to Bran until finally the cold forced her to the heat.

“What about—the outlaws?” she asked. “Will they come back?”

He could have told her he was more worried about Indians, but he didn’t. “Depends on what they were after. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

She forced herself not to show a physical reaction to his question. He might be too close to the truth. “No. I don’t know anything about those men. Maybe they planned to rob us.”

“Could be.” He motioned for her to sit and tore a chunk of meat from the roasting animal and handed it to her.

“How’s Jenks?” he asked.

She blew on the meat, passing it back and forth between her fingers until it cooled. “The bullet passed through. He lost a lot of blood, but I think he’s all right. There’s no fever yet.”

“There could be by tomorrow, if not from the wound, from exposure. Never know out here. The sun could fry us or the weather could change and bring more snow.”

Macky glanced up at the clear black sky and shivered. One star was brighter than the rest. It blinked at her like a faraway candle. A wishing star, she thought, remembering the times she and Papa had looked up into the heavens and made a wish on the first star of the evening. “Do you think we’ll make it?”

“We’ll make it,” he said, putting a strip of meat in his mouth and chewing slowly. “Don’t suppose you have a blanket in that case?”

“No, just a nightgown and some other clothes.”
And the money from a bank robbery
. She wished she’d never started out for town this morning, wished that Papa hadn’t died and that Todd hadn’t been driven to desperation. But her wishes had never came true before; there was less reason to believe they would now. “What about feeding Jenks?”

“He needs his rest more, and come morning, he’ll need water.” The one-eyed man stood and looked around. “I think there is enough brush. Try and keep the fire burning. It will protect you from wild animals and take the chill off.”

“Where are you going?” The only thing worse than having him stare at her was having him leave her alone.