Free The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance by Sandra Chastain Page B

robbers hit the way stations. For all he knew the outlaws had circled around and were waiting for them.
    He was down to a handful of bullets and flat out of ideas. Waiting until morning had given them time to dry off and rest, but now they were in full sight. And he had a woman to protect.
    He glanced at her. She was impatient to be on the way, stamping her feet and flexing her shoulders. Her hair was tangled from their trek and the desert breeze. She might be wearing a man’s jacket and shirt, but that glorious head of auburn hair would identify her as a woman from ten feet. Most women would be timid and afraid. She was like some renegade chief, spear raised, ready to charge.
    “All right,” he said, “let’s see if Daniel is in his den.” He started toward the smoke spiral, toward rescue, toward God only knew what.
    “Wait a minute,” Macky called out. “Why not let me go first? If there are outlaws there, I’ll tell them you’re hurt. That way you’ll have a chance to size up the situation before you’re into it.”
    “Let a woman go first?”
    “What do you have against being cautious?”
    “I don’t call that cautious. I call that foolish!”
    “My father didn’t. He always let the most unlikely person scout out the situation. Said it caught the opposition off guard.”
    “Your father sounds like a smart man. How come he let a town get the best of him?”
    Macky turned to face her companion, her eyes dangerously full of moisture. “Because of me and my brother. He wanted to give us a good life and didn’t know how.”
    “Sometimes we can’t save the ones we love, no matter how bad we want to,” Bran said softly. “That’s why I travel alone.”
    “Alone?” She swallowed the lump in her throat, concentrating instead on refuting his claim. “What do you call me, or don’t I count as a person?”
    “You’re temporary trouble. And I never let trouble get the best of me, not for long.”

Chapter Six
    T hey continued to follow the wagon trail across the plains until the way station came into view. Macky charged ahead, determined that the preacher wouldn’t tell her what to do. He stayed with her for a while, then slowed.
    The hot Kansas sun brought beads of perspiration to Macky’s forehead. She’d never understood the sudden change of temperature in the West. When the sun set, the flat open plains became bitterly cold. But in the springtime, it could snow one day and still be warm, sometimes even dry the next.
    From a distance, the station seemed quiet. By now she could see horses in the dusty corral. A dog wandered down the trail, then sat and watched as if he were too lazy to come any farther. Nothing about the scene caused alarm.
    The door opened and a tall rawboned woman with thinning brown hair caught up in a bun stepped out, carrying adishpan which she emptied over a patch of new grass sprouting beside the door.
    “Hello!” Macky called and began to run toward the crude structure.
    The woman looked up, frowned and stepped quickly back inside. Moments later a bearded man wearing a red shirt that fit too tight across his middle came to meet them.
    “Morning,” he said, studying them with surprise. “Name’s Smith, stationmaster here for the stagecoach line. You folks run into some trouble?”
    “We were on
your
stagecoach,” Macky answered, “Bandits wounded the driver and tried to hold us up.”
    “Your driver’s still alive,” Bran added. “We left him back a ways, in an outcropping of rocks just off the trail.”
    “Know where that is. What about the robbers?”
    “Winged two. One got away.”
    “Could be Pratt’s gang. One of those new Pony Express riders came through here last night with the news. Pratt broke out of the federal prison and robbed the bank in Promise. He and the kid riding with them escaped with the loot.”
    Kid riding with him
. Macky groaned inwardly. He was talking about her. And Pratt had escaped. She didn’t want anybody to die, but she