McGraw laughed. “Well, some loose ends do indeed require a snip.” He raised an eyebrow at Clint. “Others are useful enough to leave hanging.”
“Hanging? Or swinging from a gallows?” McGraw looked to Clint like the kind of man who wouldn’t think twice if a lynching served his purpose.
McGraw waved the match out and flung it to the ground. “You are a funny one, Thornton. Sending men to the gallows is your job, not mine.”
Actually, law and order decreed it was the county judge who condemned men to hang, but Clint didn’t really feel like arguing the point with the likes of this man. Clint had seen enough in life that very few things repulsed him, but everything about Samuel McGraw set Clint’s gut to churning. McGraw gave him that slanted smile of his, and all Clint could see was the loathsome grin the private had given him as he rode off last night. As if the whole world tilted around the Black Four and his every whim. Every second Clint spent in these men’s company felt ten seconds too long.
Get on with it, Thornton. Finish the job you and Lars started. “Thought you ought to know, he’s dead.”
McGraw took a long pull on the cigarette. “The foreigner?” He spat the word out like an insult, in the tone Clint’s childhood guardian, Cousin Obadiah, had used for varmints and beggars.
“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