The Lawman's Oklahoma Sweetheart. Allie Pleiter

down, this is gonna take a bit of explaining.”

      Lars motioned them into the small cave he’d often used while hunting, lifting the leather flap that served as both door and disguise. The shelter within was cool and comfortable, fitted with a makeshift pallet, rock table and stacks of supplies. “I do not understand,” Lars said, gesturing for Clint to sit on the pallet while he sat on another rock. “Why should I worry about Katrine and why are you telling people I am dead? This was not our plan and I am very sure I am alive.”

      “You were right—McGraw was planning to burn a home down. Your home.”

      “Our cabin?”

      “Burned to the ground last night. Meant to burn you down with it, near as I can tell. That tells us for sure he knows what you know. Somehow, he’s found out you saw enough to link him to the Black Four. That means you’re not safe until they’re behind bars, so I thought it best to let him think he’d succeeded in killing you.”

      Alarm widened Brinkerhoff’s bright blue eyes. “And Katrine?”

      “I got her out in time.” The remark felt like putting that terrible night in too simple terms, but Clint would rather avoid the details. It would do Lars no good to know how cruel McGraw had been. The Dane did not need to hear of bloody feet or choking gasps or how the door was nailed shut. If Lars pressed him for details, he’d simply couch it in terms of Katrine’s desperate, brave escape. “But all of it burned. Katrine is staying with Lije and Alice. She’s fine enough, and she knows you are alive, but...well, I’m sorry.” Again, those two words didn’t seem near enough for what had happened, but Clint didn’t think this was a good place for particulars.

      Lars muttered something in Danish. “I had expected trouble, but not this. Dangerous. These men are more dangerous than we thought. This is not a fence or a well. These were lives. To seek to kill like that.” He looked up at Clint. “To kill me.”

      “That’s just it. If they thought you were still alive, they’d try again. Surely you can see that. You’ve got to know that you and Katrine are safer this way.”

      Lars’s furrowed brow—altogether too much like his sister’s—told Clint his friend wasn’t quick to agree. “This was not our plan. I don’t know.”

      “It’s not a perfect plan, and it’s hard on Katrine, but...”

      “And Winona—she does not...”

      In all his planning, Clint hadn’t thought to consider Winona Eaglefeather. The Cheyenne woman and Lars had been growing close during her many English lessons with Lije. Lars spoke the Cheyenne tongue fluently, and while Clint had always put their closeness down to the language, it was clear now that feelings between them ran deeper than mere translation. This plan was getting more complicated every minute. “Look, Lars,” he reasoned, “it can’t be helped. She can’t know.” He started to say, We’re playing with fire as it is, but stopped himself to simply utter, “The more people know you’re alive, the more dangerous this gets.”

      “Winona cannot think I am gone,” Lars argued. Then, as if his feelings for her weren’t reason enough, he added, “And she can help.”

      She could, in more than just practical ways, but it was still a bad idea. “Not yet. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.” When Lars only offered another frown, Clint added, “We’ll get you back to life as soon as possible, but for now you’d best stay dead. For your own sake as well as Katrine’s. And maybe even Winona’s.”

      Lars blew out a frustrated breath. Clint waited until the Dane came around to his line of thinking. Finally, Lars turned and asked, “They believed you? Truly?”

      “I made it in their best interest to believe me. After you and I talked about them likely burning down someone’s home, I got a bad feeling.”

      “You and your hunches.” Lars was forever kidding Clint about his gut instincts where crime was concerned, and how funny he found the American term for it.

      “If McGraw had any inkling you were on to him...” Clint shrugged off a chill despite the hot day. “I couldn’t shake that hunch, so I rode by your cabin on the way back to town just to be sure.” He looked away from Lars, not wanting his good friend to be able to read any of last night’s dread in his eyes. “That’s when I saw the torches. They were setting your shed on fire by the time I got there. They weren’t even trying to make this look like an accident. McGraw’s gotten so cocky he wasn’t even wearing a black bandana.” The use of dark clothes and black bandanas had earned the mysterious gang its name. Clint forced the sound of the crackling rosebushes as well as the sickening thump of Katrine’s kicking from his memory. “It came to me in a flash, but I had to act right then and there. I had the perfect chance to show I’d be loyal to them, to get in close enough to be ready for whatever the Black Four planned next. I took it.”

      “It was a big chance to take.” Lars shook his head.

      “Katrine is safe with Elijah and Alice. Lije, Alice, Gideon—they all think you’re dead. They’re taking it pretty hard, actually. Folks have brought Katrine food and supplies and all kinds of comfort.”

      “Of course they would. Brave Rock is a good place with good people.”

      “Well, tomorrow morning, you’re Brave Rock’s first funeral.”

      Lars gave a shiver. What man wouldn’t at hearing talk of his own funeral? “It is not an honor I enjoy.”

      “I don’t like it any more than you do, but a chance like this to get in with McGraw may not come again. This is the safest place for you to be. You just need to keep your head down until I’ve got enough proof to expose McGraw and his men as the Black Four. It’s our original plan, and it still holds. It’s just a mite more...complicated now.”

      “And Katrine? You are sure she is not in danger?”

      He wanted to give Lars an outright no, but found he couldn’t. “I hope not. I’ve convinced McGraw she doesn’t know anything important.” She surely knew enough to be in danger now, but he left that out. He also left out the near-lecherous tone the private had used when discussing her. Lars was protective of Katrine, but Clint was about to double those efforts. That louse would never get within a mile of her. “He’s got better things to do right now, anyways.” Clint leaned in and held Lars’s gaze. “He’s plotting more ‘accidents,’ and I aim to know what they are so we can catch all four in the act.”

      Lars’s eyes narrowed. “Brave Rock will be no place to call home until they are gone.”

      Clint suddenly remembered the most valuable provision he’d brought. “Here. It’s a message from Katrine. I told her I’d bring one back from you. She’ll be just fine if she can hear from you.” Clint handed over the folded note, envying the eagerness with which Lars snatched it from his hands. Family meant everything out here.

      Ducking out of the cave to give Lars some privacy, Clint surveyed the landscape. If a man had to carve out a future somewhere on this earth, Oklahoma Territory was a fine place to do it. The rolling green plains begged for homesteads, the clear air gave a man space to think. Plagued with growing pains as it was, there was a brand of fierce hope out here that Clint had never found anywhere else. The kind of hope that made a man feel capable, almost unstoppable. It egged a man on to grabbing his slice of the future with both hands.

      Clint’s two brothers, Elijah and Gideon, had surely grabbed their futures with both hands. Not only had they settled lands, but settled their hearts, as well. The iron-clad trio of the Thornton brothers was still there, but it had widened to include two women—wives, now, actually. Lije and Gideon had wives. Within Clint, marvel battled with a hefty dose of envy. He’d never quite forgiven God for making him want a big family—a whole noisy passel of sons and daughters—and then taking away his ability to do so. Back when Cousin Obadiah told him that disease “cursed” him to never be a father, he’d been too young to understand what a curse it truly was. Now he was old enough to feel