Dangerous Heart by Tracey Bateman Page A

at stake. She dipped the cloth in the cool water and swiped it across Buddy’s forehead. “Grant is a good man, Buddy. I’ve known him long enough to understand that. He would never willingly let a man die. But you have to remember not to let on where we come from. If he knew who we are, he wouldn’t be lifting a hand to help. Remember—his wife died in that raid.”
    â€œGinger, I need…” Buddy’s eyes shot to the bucket. She grabbed it just in time and held it until he was finished.
    â€œLay still. I’ll tend you.”
    She rubbed the wet towel across his forehead. His face was devoid of color and his skin clammy. His eyes closed, and she knew he’d fallen asleep. Ginger set the towel back in the basin of water and stretched out on the hard ground a few inches away from her brother’s pallet. She rested her head on her bent elbow.
    â€œGod,” she whispered. “Please don’t let Buddy die. He’s all I have left.”
    She watched the steady rise and fall of Buddy’s chest as he slept. How many times had they fallen asleep this way over the last fifteen years? Too many to count, she figured. Before her older brother, Clem, died, he would lay down with her much the same way she did Buddy. Keeping her safe, making sure no harm came to her. And none ever had. Clem had taught her to ride, to shoot, to trap and fish. He might as well have been her pa. Without question, he was more of a pa than Web ever was.
    If only Clem were still alive. He had promised her. Onelast robbery—the stagecoach bound for St. Louis. And he would take his cut and the three of them would go to Texas, start a new life, maybe on a ranch of their own. Clem had fed into her big dreams of someday being a respectable citizen. Only instead of all of her dreams coming true that day, her worst nightmare had occurred. Clem had been shot by the driver of the stagecoach. But he might have made it if the doctor on board the stagecoach had helped him.
    Pain squeezed her heart at the memory. Clem’s death was as much her fault as the doctor who had let him bleed to death on the Missouri prairie. She had played the decoy, had stood in the road and waited for the stage to come. She waved them down and of course they’d stop for her just like all the others.
    This particular ploy had worked too many times for Web to consider the possibility that the time might come when their tactics would fail. As she thought back on it, she supposed it was like Sam Two Feathers said during his last Sunday sermon around Toni’s campfire when he described the giant crashing to the earth, defeated by a small shepherd boy with a sling and a stone. “Pride goeth before a fall.”
    Web’s pride in the way they’d profited that summer led him to be careless. When the stage driver pulled in the reins and everyone inside was distracted by Ginger’s sudden appearance, Web and his gang rode hard from the woods, shooting into the air to create chaos and confusion. It had worked a hundred times, but this time the robbery went bad.
    How could they have known there was a US Marshal on the stage? The fighting was hot, but when the smoke cleared,Web and the boys took off, leaving Ginger behind and Clem bleeding on the ground from a gut shot.
    â€œSarah!” The scream coming from within the stage, mirrored the horror Ginger felt as she threw herself to the ground and lay across Clem’s heaving chest. The stage door flew open and a man jumped out, pulling a woman with him. “Bring my bag!” he yelled to no one in particular as he gently lowered her to the ground. “My bag!”
    â€œDon’t bother.” Another man appeared, this one wearing a badge. “She was dead the second that bullet hit her.”
    â€œI’m a doctor. I can save her. I have to save my wife!”
    Ginger’s heart had lifted with hope that only a child can muster in situations like that