Winona worried the fringe at her sleeve as she had for the past hour. “The sun sets on slow feet tonight.”
“Indeed,” Katrine replied. The two of them stood on the newly built church steps, looking west toward town. Tonight, Winona would stand watch on the small hill just east of town. Clint would tack a red bandana to the back wall of the blacksmith’s shop as he rode to join McGraw, which would be Winona’s signal to ride out to Lars’s hiding place and send him on to the Chaucers’ lands. How she wanted him to come here first, to hug her and tell her things would be all right before riding off on such a dangerous mission.
Winona had explained the plan in simple enough terms. She believed in Clint and the wisdom of any plan he put together. Still, such faith couldn’t stop the endless list Katrine’s brain concocted of things that could go wrong.
“You worry for Lars, don’t you?” she said to the Cheyenne woman when her dark brows knit together for the hundredth time that hour.
At first she only nodded in reply, then she added, “I have been praying. To Christ, as Reverend Thornton has taught me to do.”
Katrine offered a sigh. “What else can we do right now but pray for His will and protection?”
“I know Reverend Thornton tells me I should pray for God’s will to be done in my life. I should want that God’s will is done tonight, but my own heart is strong in what it wants. What if they are not the same? What if that blocks the way of my prayers?”
Katrine could easily understand those feelings. Hadn’t centuries of believers felt the rift between human wants and Divine Sovereignty? “I believe God knows our hearts, weak or strong. It is a fool thing to hide your own feelings from Him.” Her own words made her wonder if she’d attempted to hide her feelings for Clint from God. She’d poured her heart out to Lars, but she had never really taken the matter to prayer, had she? She pushed out a sigh, hoping Winona’s fear of “blocked prayers” could not be true. “If God heard our prayers only by what our hearts wanted, we’d go no end of wrong, ja? I believe it is the Holy Spirit’s job to change feelings that pull us from God’s purposes.” Holy Spirit, You have much work to do tonight.
Katrine tried to meet Winona’s eyes with kindness and peace rather than worry and fear, but she suspected the wise young native saw right through her ruse. “We cannot help but fear tonight, but we also know God holds the outcome. So,” she said as she squared her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap, “I shall try to set aside the fear and pray in trust.”
Winona considered the words for a moment, then spoke softly. “Have you set aside what you feel for the sheriff?”
Katrine took a breath to start a flurry of denials, but then realized how useless an attempt that was. In the end, she merely shook her head.
“Hearts wander in foolishness.” After a second, Winona added, “Or perhaps they are the wiser than our heads in what matters most.”
Katrine ran one hand along the newly painted church rail, thinking of the new square windowsill Clint had built for her. “I don’t think that is true. My heart feels very foolish right now.”
“My heart began to see Lars far before my spirit looked to your God. I saw how God made Lars who he is. How his faith shapes him as a man. At first there seemed to be so much between us, so many differences. Now I see that much of that is of no matter to God or hearts.”
If Lars felt for Winona the way the Cheyenne woman felt for him, then Katrine couldn’t help but think Lars’s heart had chosen very wisely indeed. “It would be lovely if that were true.”
Winona caught Katrine’s arm. “What do you believe stands between you and Sheriff Thornton?”
There seemed no simple way to put it. Then again, maybe it was as simple as the answer that came to her. “Things that cannot be changed.”
“Reverend Thornton would say God is more powerful than anything man can do, yes?”
“Yes. Only some things cannot be undone. Even God’s forgiveness cannot change a past deed.” A woman is still dead, Katrine thought. A murderer still roams free.
“There is a deed on your soul?”
The simplicity of Winona’s words did not come close to describing the tangled route Katrine and Lars had had to take on their difficult way across the nation to be here in Oklahoma. And yet, that’s exactly how she felt. As if there was a dark spot staining her life that could not be removed, even if it was forgiven ten times over. “Yes.”
Winona narrowed her eyes. “The sheriff does not know of this deed?”
“No.” The word hung in the darkening air, final and sad.
“And you do not tell him because you fear it would change his heart against you.”
His heart against you. The choice of words stung, and Katrine swallowed hard.
Winona’s gaze seemed to take stock of Katrine’s sagging shoulders and dismiss them. “And so you decide his heart for him by not telling him.”
“Do you know the word compromise?”
Winona shook her head but guessed. “Something between two people?”
Again, so simple. Perhaps that was why the Cheyenne always looked so serene—there seemed to be no complexity or compromise in their world. “Often it’s more than that. It can be...bending to agree to something, or it can be doing what you must when you would rather do something else. Like a mistake, only different.”
“So you have made a mistake, a...compromise that you think would drive Sheriff Thornton from you if he knew.”
“Sheriff Thornton is not a man who compromises. Not when it comes to the law.”
Winona folded her hands together. “That is true. But this compromise, it is not the same as a crime, yes?”
Katrine felt her sigh to the bottom of her shoes. “It depends on your point of view.” That really was the crux of it, wasn’t it?
“Do you regret whatever it is you have done?”
Did she regret doing what it took to keep that man from hurting her? Katrine was never sure of the answer to that question. On her worst days, she was angry at the world for forcing such a choice on her at that age. On her best days, she knew the person she was now had very little to do with the frightened girl who pretended not to see that woman in her pool of blood on that street so many years ago. That act, she could sometimes forgive. The many other poor choices the torment of that act had fostered—well, those were filled with regrets. “I wish I had not let it harm me so.”
“You told me once you felt you were given another life when you were pulled from the fire. Can you not choose to leave all that behind you?” She met Katrine’s eyes with a powerful dark gaze. “Can you not let Sheriff Thornton choose if he would want to leave that behind, instead of choosing for him? It seems to me this is also about the fear and trust you just mentioned.”
Winona, for all her simplicity, was right; Katrine was allowing fear to deny Clint his own choice about her past. She was taking away from him the chance to choose, in the fear his choice would be to end their friendship.
Only their goodbye this afternoon had already ended that friendship. Not because she didn’t want his company, but because she wanted it more than ever. She wanted more than a friendship from him. Mere friendship with Clint, genuine as it may be, would never be enough. “Yes,” she whispered to Winona, “it is about fear.”
She feared she would be like Trillevip, surrendering her loved one to another’s heart. Dear Father, can You make me brave enough tonight to risk what I have for what I want most?
* * *
As if it knew what deeds McGraw planned, the moon hid its face tonight. McGraw was delighted to have such cover of darkness, but Clint could argue the inky night both helped and hindered his plans. Shots fired in the night could easily go off target, one man could easily be mistaken for another. There was just so much that could go wrong.
Not to mention his own concentration. Something had shifted between Katrine and himself this afternoon. Neither one had admitted their feelings to the other—in fact, their words declared the opposite—but the denials rang hollow and Clint was sure they both knew it. The clarity of her eyes made her a poor liar—they spoke so much more loudly than her words. That woman had so much love to give the world, and yet she held back, often hiding behind Lars’s outgoing nature. She needed a family to love and to love her. Watching her with Dakota and Walt—and every other child in Brave Rock who thought of her as The Story Lady—showed that clear as day.
Which made his path clear as day as well: he’d have to tell her he could never give her a family. Outright, in the clearest—and maybe cruelest—possible words. He’d tried to tell himself differently, that all her pretty dreams about happy homes and big families didn’t involve him. Still, he couldn’t deny what he saw; even as she spoke the word friends he knew that wasn’t the half of it. Glory, but when she touched his arm it was easy to forget there was a near decade between them. When she spoke his name he could make himself dismiss how they were from different worlds.
This entire week—and what was about to happen tonight—had shown him things he’d tried not to see. Katrine was sweet and pure, she’d surprised him by how brave she could be. But none of that could deny the hard truth that Katrine was not suited to live the risks of a lawman’s wife. Especially not if she wanted all those young ones. He, like every Thornton, knew the pain of growing up without a father. Children needed a father they could be sure was coming home safe and sound. As sheriff, that wasn’t part of what he could bring to a woman’s home. No, he wouldn’t risk such a constant threat of loss for any wife of his.
“Thornton!” McGraw pulled his horse up beside Clint and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Where’s your head at, son? If you want to stay alive you’d best keep your mind on your business tonight. We’re riding out. Where’s your bandana?”
Clint held up a red one, and watched McGraw scowl, glad his scheme to get it up onto the blacksmith’s wall was already in play. “What in blazes is that thing? I told you to get yourself a black one.” He peered at Clint, doubt narrowing his eyes. “You getting cold feet?”
“Not one bit,” Clint shot back, inserting confidence in his voice. “Just didn’t think of the details.” He shrugged as if he didn’t think it was that important but would go along with commands, then cocked his head back in the direction of the smithy’s. He’d hung a black one off the back wall earlier today. “I saw a black one hanging off the blacksmith shop. I’ll go swap it out.”
“Hurry it up.” McGraw turned his horse away, muttering something about fools and lawmen.
As he galloped up to the back of the blacksmith shop and pulled the black bandana from its nail on a back door post, Clint felt a clumsy prayer gush from his heart. Let Winona see. Keep Lars safe. Spare lives tonight. I’m more than ready to be done with this. With a final glance in the direction of the hill where he knew Winona would be watching, Clint turned his horse toward the end of town where Bryson Reeves waited.
He and the private veered north out of town, following the Cimarron River until they came to the side of the Chaucer property that jutted up against its banks. Full dark was settling in fast. An owl hooted over Clint’s shoulder, a pair of dogs barked at each other from back toward town. The quiet night sounds of Brave Rock would not stay quiet for long tonight.
Reeves swung down off his saddle and pulled a heavy set of wire shears from his saddlebag. “Bend the wire back,” Clint advised when Reeves began snipping random wires to make a hole big enough for cattle.
“There’s hardly time for that,” Reeves balked. “We don’t want it to look obvious.” Obvious was exactly what tonight was.
McGraw really was the brains of the outfit, Clint realized. That was clear enough. “Well,” he countered, “there’s hardly a point to risking scrapes on cattle we might be able to sell later.” Just because the private gave him a blank look, Clint couldn’t help but add, “Anyways, won’t it be obvious once we start shooting?”
Reeves shrugged and kept snipping until Clint swung down off his own horse and began pushing the sharp wire back on itself to make a safe exit. So many things could go amiss here. The further he got into this, the more it was going to take an act of God to come out of this with no men dead.
A shout and burst of light to his left told him the other three had ridden onto Chaucer property and a barn fire had taken hold. Now was the time to make his move.
Keeping his voice casual, Clint pulled his black bandana back up and said, “Time to get going.” As if it were all part of the plan, Clint got on his horse and pulled out his rifle.
Only it wasn’t, and Reeves hollered, “What are you doing?” They were supposed to begin driving the cattle across the river, only heading over to the houses if the signal of two gunshots had been given.
Clint turned his horse in the direction of the three cabins.
Reeves at least had the good sense to look puzzled. “I didn’t hear no gunshots.”
Clint reverted to the oldest trick in the book. “You didn’t hear that?”
Reeves eyed him suspiciously. “I didn’t hear nothin’.”
Clint wasn’t interested in lingering for a debate. “Time to go, Reeves.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t hear no guns.”
If Clint made it to the cabins in time, there might be no guns to hear. It was a long shot if ever there was one, but tonight was a night for slim chances to succeed. “Suit yourself,” he called over his shoulder as he galloped toward the house.
The familiarity of the scene was like a punch to the gut; Clint found himself barreling through the night toward a fire with lives at stake. If the Chaucers had any sense at all, the barns had been emptied of people and animals, but he couldn’t count on that. He couldn’t count on anything except himself tonight—and maybe a little Divine assistance—and the weight of it pressed down on his lungs with a fierceness that hadn’t ever left since the night of Katrine’s fire.
It had become “Katrine’s fire” in his mind. Not Lars’s fire, or the fire, but a personal event. Over the course of the past two weeks, this had become not just about Brave Rock’s future, but hers. He admitted to himself that he was not rebuilding a cabin for Lars, but for Katrine. It was as if he could not help himself from fixing everything in her life that he could reach, deeply aware of the parts he was helpless to restore. Or ever to bring into being. Today had shown him she’d come to mean more to him than ever was wise. He’d fight tonight to bring McGraw down so the scoundrel could never hurt Katrine again. He’d fight tonight to make Brave Rock a place where Katrine Brinkerhoff could safely raise a family with whatever husband God had in mind for her.
The fact that it couldn’t be him would just have to fester as the wound that it was.
McGraw, Strafford and Wellington—nearly unrecognizable in dark clothes and black bandanas—were circling around the eldest brother’s barn, touching torches to any parts that hadn’t yet caught fire. McGraw had somehow seen fit to dismount his horse and commandeer the Chaucers’ wagon, now filled with tools and items clearly pulled from the barn. So McGraw had decided open thievery suited his tastes as well as scare tactics, had he? Really, was it hard to believe a man capable of burning Lars in his own bed would stop at any crime? Clint could tell by the way McGraw’s head kept turning toward the cabins that if the private felt the barn fire failed to give the Chaucers enough incentive to clear out, one if not all of the homes would be next. Theft, fire, destruction—it was only a matter of time before someone would start shooting.
The thought slid into Clint’s head as easily as he raised his weapon. Might as well be me.
Clint had thought the moment he actually turned on McGraw would feel huge. Momentous and dangerous, like jumping off some kind of a cliff. It didn’t. It felt more like pushing out of a dense forest into a field where the straight path in front of him opened up into clarity. Without a word, without so much as a hitch of breath, Clint kept his horse at its current speed and rode right through the line, sending three bullets into the wagon’s front wheel.
The sharp sound filled the night sky, followed by shouts, a cascade of splintering wood and the whinny of the horse as the wagon crashed off its wheel and pulled everything down. The confusion gave Clint just enough time to yank off his bandana and hat so that his face could be seen, and head full tilt toward the cabins, hoping Chaucer eyes would find him before Chaucer bullets.