Promise Me Texas (A Whispering Mountain Novel) by JODI THOMAS Read Free Book Online Page A

realized he’d meant his brother. “Is there anything I can do to help you on your quest?”
    “I’ll let you know if an idea comes up.” For a moment Levi looked very old for his ten years. Sometime along his quest, he’d lost the little boy in him. Too small to be a man, too worried to be a kid. Even the way he talked hinted that he wanted to be older than his years, or maybe he thought he needed to be.
    “We’re doing all right, miss, but that guy in the bed down from your husband, he could use some help. Would you check on him? But don’t tell anyone I asked you to.”
    “What’s wrong with him?”
    “Nothing but a snakebite when he came in, but every morning before dawn the nurse gives him a treatment and he gets weaker. He asked me for water a few days after they tied him to the bed. Even said thanks when I helped him. But the next day he was all mumbles that didn’t make sense. After the next treatment he quit making any sounds.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Don’t know, and I’ve never seen him have a visitor. Someone said he got bit at the hotel, but I’ve never known a snake that could climb to the third floor, and any cowhand would know the sound of a rattler before it strikes. He looked all beat up. I never heard of a snake beating a man up before he bites him. Nothing makes sense about him. The doc comes in every morning and asks him to sign some papers, but lately they have trouble getting him to listen. I get the feeling that if he could sign they’d leave him alone, but I don’t know if that would be good or bad.”
    She remembered how fast the doctor had been to offer something to calm her when Lamont said she was in shock. He’d also known she was with Andrew at the wreck, yet he hadn’t come to her defense until the sheriff questioned Lamont. “I’ll check on the man. I promise.”
    Gunfire rattled the night like a line of firecrackers popping in the street. Everyone in the café jumped. A woman screamed. Levi melted under the table, and Beth ran to the window with several others.
    They couldn’t see much. A few men running. Gunfire. Shouting. People who’d been on the street hurrying into the café for cover.
    “What’s going on?” someone yelled.
    “Sheriff’s got the last of the outlaws from the train robbery cornered in the livery,” a man answered as he ducked for cover. “Bet it’s Chesty Peterson. Old coyote finally got himself caught.”
    Everyone started mumbling as more gunfire came, along with shouts for the outlaw to come out with his hands up or be shot. Beth moved back to the table and knelt to see the kid and the waitress huddled low. Even in the shadows she could see he was fighting back tears as Madie tried to comfort him.
    “It’s all right. We’re safe in here.” Beth knew her words were little help.
    He shook his head. “My brother’s in the barn. He’s not safe, and I made him swear he’d stay put until I came back. I tried to make him come sleep at the hospital with me, but he preferred horse smell to blood smell.”
    Beth didn’t argue. “He’ll know to stay down. This will all be over soon.”
    The boy didn’t look like he believed her. His round eyes stared up at her as someone in the growing crowd shouted that the sheriff should burn the barn and take no chance of the train robber getting away. Then someone else agreed that the livery was a pile of rotting board anyway, and fire would only improve the value of the lot.
    Another yelled that they should shoot the horses in the corral, cutting off any attempt at escape.
    “We got to do something.” The kid closed his hand around Beth’s wrist. “I got to do something fast.”
    “You’re right.” All the stories her uncles used to tell her of the Texas Rangers floated in her mind. There was no time to be a coward. Sometimes acting and maybe being wrong is better than waiting and doing nothing to try and help. “If I can create a distraction, can you get in the barn and get your brother