Love Inspired Historical June 2014 Bundle: Lone Star HeiressThe Lawman's Oklahoma SweetheartThe Gentleman's Bride SearchFamily on the Range

by Griggs, Winnie; Pleiter, Allie; Hale, Deborah; Nelson, Jessica

  “Clint cannot have a family.” Though she repeated the statement, she couldn’t make the thought seem real. In her weakest moments, she’d allowed herself to daydream about the big, noisy family they could have together. Brown-eyed boys boasting My pa’s the sherriff! in the schoolyard. A doting Clint standing wildly overprotective over little girls in braids. She hadn’t even realized until just this moment how clear the whole dream had become in her heart. Without consciously deciding it, she’d dreamed up a version of the life he’d saved—her life—lived beside him even though she never had reason to think he’d want that life with someone like her. Too many truths—whether secret or not—stood in the way of that dream. How could it be that while she knew that fantasy was never possible, it now seemed twice as impossible? How could it hurt so deeply? It stunned Katrine that she could grieve so fiercely for something she could never truly have had in the first place.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Evelyn said the obvious with such tenderness.

  Katrine had no words. She only shook her head and slumped against the wall.

  “Seems a sorrowful waste, don’t you think? He’d make a fine father. He, Gideon, Elijah—they’ve all become fine men despite the difficult lives they’ve had. God’s grace can heal all, and all of their lives show it, even if my bull-headed brothers can’t quite get their heads around the idea.” She sighed. “Maybe all that nonsense is done with after today. Maybe God’s got better things in store.”

  She went on, filling the empty time and worry with words, but Katrine didn’t hear most of them. She turned her face away, wanting to hide her pain from Evelyn. Winona’s words last night—had it really just been last night?—had cracked open her hope, let out the dream that somehow Clint might see beyond her past. Now it hurt terribly to know should that obstacle be surmounted, it couldn’t all end happily. No family? After all that waiting and hoping and dreaming? Having gone so long without a mother, knowing all the pain that had brought her, Katrine’s dearest hopes centered around loving children of her own. Now she loved a man who could not share that dream. It felt so cruel and pointless. Why would God send my heart to him?

  “There has to be a reason,” Evelyn consoled.

  Katrine hadn’t even realized she’d spoken the question aloud. “I cannot see any reason at all.”

  *

  It was the night of the fire all over again. Every minute that passed seemed to place Katrine in more danger. Clint knew McGraw had no honor, no code, and that made him unpredictable and lethal. Worse yet, now that he was exposed, he had nothing left to lose, which made him dangerous and desperate. Clint was grateful Brett, Reid and Gideon had little need for talk as they rode. He’d spent the ride down toward the river trying to get into the head of a man like McGraw, to second-guess his tactics and whatever it was he thought he could now get.

  It didn’t work. Instead, his brain clouded with thoughts of Katrine in pain, Katrine fighting back fear. McGraw hadn’t been subtle in his amusement with her, and she of all people knew how low that lout was capable of stooping. He hated that she would be fully aware of the threats against her. She was smart that way, reading people and their intentions. It was one of the things he liked most about her, and it killed him that it would now be what made her wait for his rescue all the more terrifying.

  She was waiting for his rescue. That was the only way he could think about today. Today would be the day he saved her again. The alternative was too awful to swallow.

  A smudge in the riverbank caught his eye. A hoof-print in the dirt just beyond that rock. Fresh, from the looks of it, still wet in the deepest parts. “There!” Clint pulled his horse up short and pointed to a place where the grass on the bank looked disturbed. “Look there!”

  Gideon knew horses like no one else in Brave Rock. He swung down off his saddle and looked at the track. “McGraw rides a Morgan, don’t he?” Gideon shook his head, his hands fisted in frustration. “It’s deep enough for a horse carrying extra weight, but it’s too small for that horse.”

  “They switched horses for the raid. He might not be on his horse.” Clint scanned the scene before him for any detail, any clue that they were close to McGraw’s hideout and the women.

  “Looks enough like one of ours,” Reid said, crouching down over the track. “There’s another, and it’s headed in the right direction.”

  Come on, Katrine, kick on a log. Send me something. Lead me to you. Clint felt the desperate ache like heat spreading out from a lamp. Could that connection, that pull he’d felt between them since the fire, extend far enough to let her feel him finding her? Let him sense her near? His mind went to the surprisingly natural extension of that thought. Lead me to her, Lord. You see us both. You see us all. You can’t want McGraw to win this. I can’t believe You saved her only to have it end this way.

  The thought startled him. You saved her. Not me. I was there, but it was Your doing. I am the law in Brave Rock, but our lives are Yours. He’d taken the whole thing on his shoulders, nearly buckling under the strain of keeping lives safe against an endless stream of threats. The shift from I have to find her to Lead me to her held power. So much power. This had to be the power of prayer Lije was always going on about, that thing Clint believed in once, when he was young and hadn’t yet seen all the pain the world could dish out. He felt his desperation settle into a quiet, tingly focus.

  “What is it?” Brett pulled up alongside Clint.

  “Huh?”

  “You started going faster. What do you see?”

  Clint didn’t quite know how to answer that. “I got a hunch.”

  “A hunch?” Brett didn’t seem to find that particularly comforting. “A hunch?”

  Gideon came up beside the two of them, catching Brett’s arm. “This is what he does. Let him do it.”

  Brett wasn’t satisfied. “I’m not leaving Evelyn to some hunch in—”

  “Evelyn’s my wife. I want her back as much as you.”

  They rode on in tense silence. Clint could feel Brett’s and Reid’s frustration prickling behind him, feel Gideon’s trust stretching thin as fear wore down everyone’s resolve. It wasn’t supposed to take this long to find them, and that was nothing but bad news. Send me. Guide me. Keep him away from her. Help me. Blurts of desperate prayers seemed to leak out of Clint with every passing minute.

  “I hate feeling this helpless,” Gideon ground out through his teeth, and Clint could sympathize. The only thing keeping him from boiling over himself was the chance that if they weren’t on the right track, Lije and Lars were.

  “Over there!” Brett pointed to a bush by a spot where the riverbank had clearly been disturbed. “Is that anything?”

  A sky-blue ribbon fluttered in the hot wind. With a surge of relief Clint noticed that the ribbon had been wound around a branch, not just tangled. Someone had put it there. Evelyn wore her hair up but Katrine always wore her hair in a thick braid down her back—tied with a colored ribbon. It was the reason Sam McGraw had tried to buy her some ribbon at Fairhaven’s back in town. He scanned the scene for some other clue, audibly gasping when he saw three small rocks piled up on each other. Lars’s trail mark. They were here. Bless her, she’d found a way to kick a log free. He reached down and pulled the ribbon loose, thankful to be touching some part of that extraordinary woman and to know she was still alive.

  “It’s Katrine’s,” he called through the surge of admiration and affection that gripped his throat tight. “They’re here and they’re alive.”

  “A path!” Reid surged forward to where Clint could see a small trodden path up away from the river. It curved around a crop of scrubby trees, just the sort of path that would be worn by carrying water up to a hiding spot.

  It curved blindly around the trees. Clint held his hand to stop Gideon from following Reid and was taking a breath to yell a warning when the shot rang out.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Looks like we found ’em!” Gideon cried out as he reared his horse around t
o pull back behind a copse of trees.

  “Reid!” Clint called, crouching down himself and scanning the clearing for the best possible position. “You okay?”

  In answer, Reid came sliding back down the small incline. “Fine. But I saw the building. Tiny cabin of a thing with a shed alongside. One window, a pair of horses tied up outside.”

  “They know we’re here,” Gideon said just before a second rifle shot rang out overhead through the trees.

  “The last thing we need is a gunfight.” Clint cast his eyes back and forth between the two men beside him. “We’re all good shots, but there are women in there. We can’t just storm the place.” Clint pinched the bridge of his nose, weighing the options. “Reid, could you make out where Katrine and Evelyn might be?”

  “Looks like a one-room cabin with some sort of shack attached,” Reid replied, checking his pistol. “They’ve got to be in there.”

  “Then we’ve got to draw them out. As long as they’re in there, they’ve got the upper hand.”

  “Can’t say I wouldn’t welcome the chance to smoke them out if it weren’t for Evelyn and Katrine. Those boys ought to get a taste of their own medicine.” Gideon looked over his shoulder in the direction of the cabin. “I tell you, if he’s so much as laid one greasy hand on my Evelyn…”

  Clint put a hand on Gideon’s arm. He was a boiling pot of anger himself, but anger wouldn’t get Katrine and Evelyn home safely. “Steady, brother. We’re smarter than those two and don’t you forget it.” After a second’s pondering, Clint had an idea. “So let’s find out what they’ve done. Gideon, yell to your wife. Whether or not she answers could tell us a lot.”

  Gideon closed his eyes for a second, and Clint found himself praying, as well. God’s intervention seemed the only way to come out of this whole mess alive, seeing as those bandits had become so unpredictable. When Gideon opened his eyes, Clint met his gaze and nodded.

  “Evelyn!”

  *

  Katrine could hardly believe she had dozed off, even though they had been up all night. Still, the sound of Evelyn’s name shot both of them wide awake as they sat slumped against the shed wall.

  She looked at Evelyn’s wide eyes, still not yet sure she hadn’t dreamed the sound.

  “Evelyn!”

  “Gideon!” Evelyn said it in an astonished whisper, her hands flying first to her chest in surprise, and then to the floor to push herself upright. “Gideon!” she shouted back. “Gideon!”

  The shed door banged open, Private Wellington and his cocked pistol pushing through the doorway. “That’s enough of that!”

  Evelyn, clearly emboldened by how close her husband now was, took in a breath to continue shouting just as the private pulled back to hit her with the handle of his gun. Katrine pulled Evelyn down just in time to miss the blow. Monsters. These men were monsters.

  “Y’all hush it in there!” came McGraw’s voice as he limped into the shed. Katrine drew in a breath of shock at his appearance. They had not been kept that long in the shed, but the man looked far worse for the passage of time. The bandage Evelyn had applied earlier was now soaked through, mottled brown and red. He could barely put weight on the leg, and his blotchy face was both flushed and ghostly pale. Katrine watched him waver a bit before slumping against the doorjamb, the flimsy shack groaning under his weight.

  “McGraw!” Katrine’s entire body reacted to the sound of Clint’s fearsome roar. “Samuel McGraw!”

  “Jesse Wellington!” a third voice called out. Two more distinct voices repeated each of the men’s names.

  That meant four men were now surrounding the shack. Katrine grabbed Evelyn’s hand.

  “I heard Reid’s voice!” Evelyn said on a rush of breath. “Our prayers have been answered. They’re here to rescue us.”

  “Stop that nonsense. Ain’t no rescue going on—this here’s a trap.” McGraw used the tip of his gun to lift Katrine’s long braid off her shoulder. “And you’re the bait.” Katrine’s skin shivered where the metal of the gun had skimmed her shoulder.

  “Evelyn!” Gideon’s call came through the trees again. Evelyn began to inch toward the sound as if drawn, even though it placed her closer to McGraw.

  McGraw lifted his rifle and used the stock to knock out a corner of the shed’s flimsy wall closest to Gideon’s voice. Then, without even aiming, he shot a round into the air. Katrine and Evelyn both flinched at the blast, covering their ears and crouching back down against the far wall.

  “Next one goes through your little missy here!” McGraw called into the trees.

  “No one said nothing about killing them!” Wellington hissed to McGraw.

  “Don’t kill us,” Katrine found her voice, pleading to Wellington with her eyes, as well. “We’ve done nothing to you.”

  “Nothing’s right,” McGraw growled, spinning to face Katrine and Evelyn. “Most of you don’t pay us no mind. Men of the U.S. Cavalry. Used to be that counted for something.” He pointed his rifle at Katrine, and she felt her blood halt in her veins. “Only you pay that misguided sheriff more mind than you do me.”

  Katrine decided every second McGraw was talking to her was a second he was not shooting at Clint, so she engaged him. “You have the respect that comes with your uniform. You need not kill to get more.”

  “I got more men out here than you have in there, McGraw,” came Clint’s commanding voice. “End this before anyone gets hurt.”

  “Listen to him,” Evelyn pleaded.

  “I don’t take orders from the likes of you!” McGraw snarled.

  Wellington peered through the hole McGraw had knocked in the wall. “How many you reckon he’s got out there?”

  “He’s bluffin’,” McGraw answered, wiping his brow with his grimy sleeve. The thick, coppery scent of blood combined with the sour order of sweat to fill the room and turn Katrine’s stomach. “He’s got two. Three at the most.”

  “I dunno, Sam. I counted at least four.” Wellington was beginning to look worried.

  “You!” McGraw barked, pointing at Katrine with an unsteady hand. “Up!”

  Evelyn grabbed Katrine’s hand. “Don’t.”

  “I said up!” McGraw’s voice was beyond mean.

  Without a word, Katrine rose slowly to her feet.

  “Jesse, tie her hands and hobble her feet so’s she can’t run. Enough to walk, though. Just a few steps.”

  As Wellington began to do as he was told, Katrine forced herself to stand tall, nearly eye to eye with McGraw. “You burned down my house.” The words were thin as paper, but something hardened in her spine as she forced them out. “You tried to kill Lars.” If she was going to be paraded out onto the soil to die, Katrine was going to speak McGraw’s crimes to his face.

  “No news to me, missy. You done yet?” he snapped at Wellington, who was tying off the line he’d lashed around Katrine’s boots. “Hurry it up.”

  Katrine was not done. “All the accidents. The fences, the cattle, the wells…they were you.”

  “That’s enough!” With a shove rough enough to send Katrine nearly tumbling to the floor, McGraw pushed her through the shed and into the larger cabin. Limping ahead of her, he pushed open the cabin door and motioned with his rifle. “Walk out there nice and slow. Make sure Thornton gets a good look at ya. Just remember, if you even look like you’re tryin’ to run, I’ll shoot you down sure as we stand here.”

  Slowly, Katrine shuffled to the door as McGraw stood out of sight beside it. The bright sunlight hurt her eyes, trapped for so many hours in the dim shed as they had been. She had no idea what time it was or where they were, only prayed as she hobbled out into the clearing that this sunshine wouldn’t be her last.

  “Katrine?” Clint’s voice was tight and sharp from beyond the trees where she strained to see him but could not. “You hurt?”

  “Not yet she ain’t!” McGraw’s voice came from behind Katrine. “But I got a clear shot and like you said, you already seen how I treat my enemies.”

  B
ranches ahead of her shifted and Clint appeared from behind a copse of trees. He placed his rifle down on the ground and walked slowly.

  The sight of him brought such a flood of relief to her body that Katrine felt herself wobble a bit. His eyes held hers for a moment, then looked over her shoulder. His face tightened into a dark, focused expression and she knew he was doing what he did so well—gathering details, plotting tactics, assessing danger. How he managed to look so calm and still while his mind worked that fast, she could not guess, but the effect of his control gave her courage.

  She wanted him to come closer, but he stopped several yards away. He seemed deliberate in his choice of spot, but she had no idea of his plan. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” his eyes said, even though he simply repeated his earlier question. “Are you hurt?”

  Katrine shook her head. She was many things— terrified, tired, assured, confused—but not hurt.

  Clint pointed up to his face as if to say, “Keep your eyes on me.” It wasn’t hard to comply with his silent request. Katrine felt if she didn’t keep her eyes on Clint she might very well fall over. Her pulse galloped in her ears as it was.

  “This has gone far enough, McGraw. I got nothing you want, and these women will only slow you down if you escape.” Clint’s voice was remarkably steady despite his current position as a clear target out in the open. Then again, so was she. Katrine felt her head spin again. She did not want to end her life shot in the back by the likes of Sam McGraw.

  “Got you here, didn’t it?”

  Katrine watched Clint’s hand move behind his back, a small, almost imperceptible gesture. Clint raised an eyebrow—just a tiny bit—and his head fell a fraction of an inch. “Let ’em go, Sam. This is between you and me, anyways.” She watched his eyes dart back and forth between her and the cabin behind her. He had positioned himself, she guessed, so that her stance blocked part of his body from McGraw. When his fingers flicked, Katrine caught movement in the bushes far to her left.