“Brinkerhoff’s dead and gone.” Clint didn’t like putting such a casual air into his voice when discussing murder. “The cabin went up like straw and him in it. No body to bury, even.” He pulled a canteen from his saddlebag and took a long drink, then sat down on the rock beside McGraw. He kept his eyes on his boots as he stretched his long legs out. It was easier to fool a man when you weren’t looking him in the eye. “Nothin’ left to save by the time anyone could have gotten there to try. No one’d seen you, neither. I asked around just to be sure.”
McGraw settled his hat back down and made a self-important show of inspecting his cigarette. “Bein’ all friendly-like with the sheriff does have its benefits.”
“I done you four a mighty big favor.” Clint leaned back, the heat of the rock feeling much better than the cool, oily sensation talking to Sam McGraw always gave him.
“A fact which does not escape my notice, Thornton.” McGraw inhaled with a dramatic flourish. “Go on.”
“And where I come from—where we both come from—debts get paid. Alliances can be highly useful. A man of your position can appreciate the value of a well-placed partnership.” Clint made sure to give McGraw’s position an air of admiration he didn’t truly feel.
“Indeed.” McGraw blew a series of complicated smoke rings that hung in the hot air like targets.
Clint leaned in. “Let’s not beat around the bush, McGraw. I’ve a notion of what you’re up to. Seems to me certain claims are falling into certain hands in a very convenient fashion. Might just be poor luck on the part of folks who aren’t suited for life out here, or it could very well be something a bit more...deliberate. Four black somethings—or someones—to be exact. Makes me think it could serve a man well to be on your side of things.”
“Deliberate? What exactly are you implying?” There was no defensiveness in McGraw’s tone. In fact, he sounded more like he was playing a game of cat and mouse that he very much enjoyed.
“I’ve found it pays not to put any stake in coincidence in my line of work.” Clint then offered a short list of the properties that had met with Black Four “mishaps” to scare their original owners into defaulting or selling. “It don’t take much to see where things are headed. Stakes go for cheap when the owners get scared. Stakes that might not go for that low price if things had gone well for those same owners. You might say a man of opportunity could turn a tidy profit by being the right buyer comin’ along at the right time.”
“You might say that.” McGraw looked out over the horizon, blowing out a long thin stream of smoke.
“I’ve seen enough to know that you might be that man. That, and I just got a whiff of how you treat your enemies.”
McGraw laughed out loud at that. “Well now, we don’t charbroil everyone who stands in our way. Some of ’em just up and get shot.” He gave Clint a sideways glance that belonged on a rattlesnake, not a government soldier. “Fences fall. Animals die. Wells sour.”
“Accidents happen.”
“Yes indeedy. It’s a cryin’ shame how accidents do happen.”
“That’s how folks view what happened to Brinkerhoff. A stray ember on a dusty night—it ain’t too hard to explain away. You’re the peacekeepers here, after all. But folks aren’t all that dumb. Unless you’re careful, someone might catch on. See something. Best to have someone pointing suspicions away from you. Someone folks are ready to believe.”
“And that’d be you now, wouldn’t it? The good sheriff at our disposal.”
“The well-paid sheriff as your inside man,” Clint corrected.
McGraw pinched the edge of his considerable mustache. He played to character with such a sense of drama that Clint couldn’t help but wonder at how much McGraw relished it all. Power did that to some men. Clint had seen it dozens of times in the war. It turned men cruel, brought out the predatory animal hiding under civilized uniforms. “What sort of arrangement do you have in mind, Sheriff?”
“Nothing you can’t afford—if my suspicions are correct. And I’m hardly ever wrong.”
McGraw gave a dark chuckle and stubbed out the last of his cigarette on the rock between them. “I like your confidence. Okay, Thornton, you’re in. By the way, what about the other one? The foreigner’s pretty little sister—Katie-something, isn’t it? She go down with her brother?”
Clint now tasted the bile rising in his throat, and fisted the hand McGraw couldn’t see. “What do you care what happened to Katrine?”
“I found her rather fetchin’, that’s all. Be a shame if the world lost a pretty face just because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d be sort of sorry.”
He’d be nothing close to sorry. “She wasn’t there. She and Lars had a falling out the other week and she was up in Brave Rock staying with a friend for a few days.”
“How fortunate for her.” McGraw drew the word fortunate out in a way that made Clint’s stomach churn. “I’d hate to have her meet with any kind of accident on account of her knowing...unfortunate facts.”
A protective resolve settled around Clint’s spine, cold and hard and straight as north. He would draw his last breath keeping this snake away from Katrine Brinkerhoff. “She’s of no consequence, McGraw. She doesn’t know what Lars saw and she’ll be no trouble to you.” While it bothered him to do so, he added, “She’s not too bright and her English is worse than Lars’s was anyways.”
“Land sakes,” McGraw snickered, bumping his shoulder to Clint’s like they were barroom buddies. “It weren’t conversation I was looking for anyhow.”
* * *
It smelled like death.
There wasn’t another way to put it. To Katrine, campfires had always smelled of home and cooking and good people gathered against the night. Today the wind blew sour, acrid scents against Katrine’s face as she stood looking at what remained of the home she’d shared with Lars. “Tak Gud,” she whispered, forcing herself to remember no one had died here.
“Pardon?” Sheriff Thornton stood squinting into the wind, his jaw set with a kind of anger she knew he reserved for criminals. Lars had often said, “I’d never want to be an enemy of Sheriff Thornton’s,” and today she could see why. He would stop at nothing to see justice done. She prayed such determination would be enough to keep Lars safe.
Katrine felt her cheeks flush. “I was thanking God for our lives.” As she said the words, they struck her anew. Clint Thornton had reason to be thankful for his life today, too. He had risked his life to save hers. She believed that to be an enormous thing even if he didn’t seem to recognize it. “For all our lives.” That truth—coupled with the secret they now shared—seemed to bind her to the sheriff in unsettling ways.
She walked a mournful circle around the pile of rubble, feeling as though coming here solved nothing. Half of her wanted to run, to look away and never remember the home that had stood here. Another half, equally strong, wanted to claw through the wet, black timbers to find something—anything—worth saving. A wave of fear washed over her as she came across what was left of their front door. Their barred front door.
She gave a small, whispered yelp at the sight, and in seconds Sheriff Thornton dashed over to stand next to her. She heard him swallow hard. “Don’t think about it.”
How was that possible? Threats of harm were an old, evil menace for her, a tie back to a time in her life she tried hard to forget. It seemed unfair that in one single night all the peace she’d fought so hard for had been taken away.
The sheriff reached down and lifted up a curved piece of metal. Katrine recognized it as the decorative iron latch that had