Love Inspired Historical June 2014 Bundle: Lone Star Heiress\The Lawman's Oklahoma Sweetheart\The Gentleman's Bride Search\Family on the Range (33 page)

“But we always had each other,” Lije said with a warm look toward Clint. His hand covered his wife's. “And good things have come along.”

“A big family is a wonderful blessing,” Alice added, her eyes on her husband. “Especially out here. Come harvest, Don Nelson will be glad for all those strapping young boys and their strong backs.” She dished herself some more potatoes, handing the bowl to Clint when she was done. “I only pity Louise—that's a passel of hungry mouths to cook for and it will only get worse as they grow.”

“A happy task,
ja?
” Katrine smiled at Alice. The longing for a home and family of her own was all over her face, Clint recognized. No wonder Lars had spent so much time pondering how God would send her a husband—it was plain she wanted one, and she was of more than sufficient age to be settling down on her own. Clint kept waiting for the day when such a notion of a wife and family wouldn't stab him in the ribs, when he'd find a way to be satisfied with his role as uncle and protector. It wasn't coming near soon enough. The way Katrine kept poking into his thoughts, it had better hurry up and arrive.

“Have you written down any stories since...the fire?” Lije's voice was full of tender concern. “I saw your journals by your cot and hoped you found some comfort in that. It's a marvelous gift you have. Don't lose it.”

“Mostly, I write to Lars.”

Clint's jaw tightened. Were she Lije or Gideon, Clint would have found a way to kick her foot under the table for the slipup.

“It is my way of saying goodbye, I suppose,” Katrine went on, and Clint felt a stab of guilt for his first reaction.

“Well, no one can fault you for that.” Clint found himself wondering if Lije had told Katrine the story of his own loss, having watched his fiancée succumb to the same influenza epidemic that took Gideon's wife and child. Yes, sir, the Thornton men were no strangers to grief. Some days that was the only silver lining Clint could find to his solitary future. If a man had no family, he had no family to lose. “Perhaps when we order church supplies we can include more journals for you.” He turned to Clint. “Were you able to order all the supplies for Katrine's cabin?”

Clint was glad for a safer subject of conversation. “The smithy's making the last of the nails and hinges, so it's just a matter of manpower from here on in. The foundation's laid, so it's just the walls—”

“And the windows,” Katrine cut in. Hang her, every time he got to thinking she was a frail thing she'd go and show him the strength of her spine. It did something to his heart he didn't like one bit.

“And the windows. And the roof.”

Alice raised an eyebrow. “Windows?”

Clint parked an elbow on the table and tried to keep himself from rolling his eyes. “Miss Brinkerhoff has insisted the new cabin have a window.”

“Two,” Katrine corrected.

“Well,” said Alice, clearly aware that there was more going on here than the finer points of cabin structure, “windows are a fine thing to have, and I need the good light for nursing. I only wish the flies and the winter wind didn't share my opinion.”

Now it was Lije's turn to look beleaguered. “Alice has been after me to get some pane glass for the home and the infirmary.”

“What?” teased Clint, glad to feel the earlier tension clear the room. “Before stained glass for the church?”

“I have plans,” Lije replied.

“And I have
patients,
” Alice added.

“Now all you need is
patience,
my sweet.” Lije softened his jest with a tender kiss to his wife's cheek. Clint turned his attention to his plate while Katrine found something important to adjust in her long blond braid. He was happy for his brother—he truly was—but watching all that wedded bliss with Katrine just one seat away stung worse than a whole nest of hornets.

He'd put in twice the hours at the Brinkerhoff cabin tomorrow. For crying out loud, he'd work all night getting Katrine's walls and roof in place just to keep from having to endure another dinner like this.

Chapter Ten

F
rustration proved to be a mighty fine incentive, for Clint seemed to do twice the work in half the hours on the Brinkerhoff cabin Thursday morning. It helped that he'd managed to convince Katrine to stay home and make use of Evelyn's sewing machine. It didn't help one bit that he'd gotten the walls up far enough to begin setting the holes for the window—windows, he corrected himself with an unsuppressed smile. The thought brought a whole mess of distraction with it.

He stood inside the walls, looking overhead to judge the angle of the sun. One window facing east, one facing west. Only not directly opposite each other, so as not to give a strong wind too much of an invitation in winter. Squinting to measure against his raised hand, he tried to imagine the best height. She was nearly as tall as he.

Hang it, he knew
exactly
how tall she was. His chest remembered the exact place where her shoulders had fallen against him as they rode from the fire. He knew, without actually remembering if she had ever been that close to him, exactly how she would tuck under his shoulders if he held her. His memory had somehow catalogued the angle of her neck as she looked up at him. It was as fixed in his brain as the sideways glance she gave Lars when she was annoyed with him, or the way her entire face changed whenever she spoke to children.

He pulled a pencil from his pocket, marked a spot on the wall log and went to fetch the ax.

“I hope that's not for me.” He hadn't even seen Lije come around the corner of the cabin.

“Very funny.”

Lije walked around the half-built walls, giving a low whistle once he'd made the complete circle. “You're in the wrong line of work, brother.”

“I thought you were in favor of my being sheriff. Peace and justice, order and such.”

“Oh, I am.” Lije pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped his brow. The morning had been hot and windless. Clint's own shirt was already soaked. “Only I never realized how fast you can raise a cabin. I think this is going up even faster than Gideon's did, and there were a whole mess of folks helping out with that.”

Returning the ax to its place among his other tools, Clint eyed his brother. “What's it to you? You two newlyweds missing your privacy?” It came out sharper than Lije deserved, but his brother's overflow of marital happiness last night stuck in Clint's craw.

Clint deserved every bit of the scowl Lije gave him. “You know me better than that. And I know you better than to wonder just what it is you're chopping out here.”

This was the hard part of having a minister in the family. Lije was forever tending to the state of souls, and brotherly souls were entirely too close at hand.

“I'm chopping wood.” Clint overemphasized the words, as if explaining it to young Walt rather than a learned older brother. “Takes such a thing to make a cabin.” Trying to outguess Lije's thinking, Clint added, “And no, I'm not working out my grief over Lars. Although I'm not sure what it'd be to you even if I was.”

Lije always looked after his brothers, but now he wore what Clint privately called his “Pastor Face,” a compassionate look usually accompanied by a firm hand on a shoulder. “You've lost a dear friend in the worst possible way. No one would fault you for taking it hard.”

Clint chose not to reply. Not that it stood any chance of ending Lije's pastoral care, but it was worth a shot.

“Still,” Lije went on, “this doesn't look like grief to me.”

Clint shifted back on one hip and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “Really, now.” This felt too much like the time Clint cut down one of Cousin Obadiah's apple trees and Lije decided he'd been showing the guardian how much he hated him. Truth was, Clint was just tired of getting stung by the bees gathering outside his bedroom window. Lije was always stuffing emotional complications into simple actions. “What all does this look like, other than a man building a cabin? And if I tell you I don't really want to know, will that change anything?”

“Gideon likes to take things apart when he's frustrated. You, you like to put things together. Judging by the rate of speed here, I'd say you've got a king-size bee in your bonnet.”

“I'm not much for bonnets, if you haven't noticed.”

Lije narrowed his eye, as if analyzing why he'd chosen to respond about the bonnet rather than deny his irritation. Some days talking to Lije was like poking a path through a field of bear traps. “Bothered by a bonnet, are you?”

“No.” Clint nearly growled the word, feeling like the aforementioned bear who tread wrong and heard
snap.
He picked up the ax again, hoping to cue Lije into an exit.

Lije simply removed his coat and picked up a hammer. “Need some help?”

Not from you. It comes with too much conversation.
Against his better judgment, Clint nodded toward eight shaved planks and a tin of nails. “Think you can square those up?”

“Miss Katrine's pair of windows?”

Suddenly Clint was sure he didn't want help, not especially with Katrine's beloved windows. Still, if he changed his mind, Lije would be on him like flies to honey. Lije was looking at him funny enough as it was. “Yep. But you won't help me much if you can't square 'em up.” He hoped Lije would take his scowl as perfectionism.

Lije put the hammer down. “I have many gifts, but despite the example of our Lord, carpentry has never been one of them.”

Clint laughed. It was true. Gideon and he had enjoyed several laughs at Lije's expense over what the Brave Rock Church would be like if the reverend were required to build it. The structure was coming along nicely, but only because Lije supervised rather than lent a hand. “I think God sets fine stock in men who know their limits.”

He immediately regretted uttering a sentence with the word
God
in it. There were no short conversations about faith with Lije. “I think God sets fine stock in men who save lives. Still, building Miss Katrine a new cabin doesn't have to be your penance for not being able to save Lars.”

Clint didn't look up, but sunk the ax blade into a log to start the notch that settled it into the log underneath. “That's what you think this is?”

“I think you're working too hard at something others could help you do. I don't know why you think you have to do this alone.”

It hadn't struck Clint until just this moment that he had, indeed, taken it on himself. Only it wasn't as Lije thought—it wasn't some self-inflicted punishment. It felt more like the only true part he could play in Katrine's life. There was no “have to” about it—this was a “want to” kind of thing. “You know I like doing things on my own.” It sounded like a weak excuse even to his own ears.

“No, I don't think you really do. I've seen you at our table, at church, with folks. Gideon may prefer the company of animals, but you
deny
yourself the company of people. I think you believe you have to do things on your own because—”

Clint cut him off with a mighty swing of the ax—so hard it split the log instead of finishing the wedge cut. “That's about enough, Lije.”

“I know it's not—”

“I said
leave it.
” He kicked the log off the rack that held it in place. “Go tend your flock however you like but I'll ask you to back down off this
right now.
”

The look in Lije's eyes, however, held little yield. A silent standoff began between them, Clint shifting his grip on the ax and Lije holding irritatingly still. Clint hated when Lije got this way—it always made him feel as if his private feelings weren't all that private.

“Lars's death is not your fault.” Lije's words were low and steady.

Clint came dangerously close to shouting “Lars's death isn't even real!” Short of his own blood, Lars was about the only man whose safety would drive Clint to the extreme of keeping such truth to himself. Honestly, if Lije stayed one more minute, Clint couldn't be sure if he would tell his brother, or sock him. Instead, he did the only thing he could think of to do: he turned his back and walked away.

Let Lije think it was guilt that drove him to work so hard. Clint knew what it really was. And he knew why it was so much worse.

* * *

Some June afternoons Katrine found the Oklahoma territories to be as close to Heaven as she could imagine. When the heat let up and the whole prairie turned out in freshly sprung color, Katrine could tell herself the happiest of stories. Almost without effort, she could build a picture in her mind of a big noisy family tending a bursting vegetable garden, of pink roses turning their faces up to fluffy white clouds like the ones that filled Friday's wide blue sky. Days like today she could almost lay aside the dark images of their burned house, replacing them instead with the vision of a white board cottage with blue calico curtains fluttering in the breeze. Someday—soon, she prayed—Lars would come down out of his hiding place and back to life. They'd put this whole awful episode behind them and make new lives. Big, wide-open-space lives filled with happiness.

Years ago she and Lars had talked about such details, dreaming together about the families they would raise side by side. Of course, back then it had taken much more imagination, and never had she dreamed it would be so far out west as Oklahoma. Still, she and Lars had invented their futures together often—it had served as their favorite diversion on the nights when that future felt far away. Their sharing had offered distraction from hungry nights back east when all they'd had to eat was what she could scrounge together from scraps at the saloon. They had sat on the floor of the tiny, dingy boardinghouse room and taken turns describing their houses, losing themselves in complicated, flowing Danish descriptions, never having to reach for the right English word. They'd shared stories again as they ventured out west, using the same distraction when hunting was poor or Lars's traps would come up empty. Now, she used the diversion to keep her from loneliness or worry.

“Pjusket blÃ¥ gardiner,”
she wrote in her journal, forced to dream of “ruffled blue curtains” in writing rather than aloud because Lars was hidden away. She went on to describe a table set with sunflowers, piled high with big white pottery bowls bearing blue-striped trims. A bursting table groaning under heaps of food, set to feed a dozen people at least—her and Lars's great big American families. Giggling, she expanded her story to write of a tall, handsome American cowboy riding in off the range to this well-deserved supper. In the American family of her daydreams, Katrine's husband was far from Danish in his features; she would cast her imaginary hero as ruddy and dark-haired with a thick stubble and a cowboy swagger to match. And their children—all eight of them—would be a mix of features. Her imaginary sons would have dark, American eyes while her daughters would have big blue Danish eyes to bat at their many beaus.

“Do you write in that?” A different dark-eyed male—eight-year-old Dakota Eaglefeather—stared at her from the edge of the tree's shade. He nodded toward Katrine's journal as though writing were a puzzle he could never hope to solve.

“I do, Dakota.” She offered him a smile. As the son of a Cheyenne and a white cavalry officer, Dakota suffered too much scorn from too many of the full-blooded Cheyenne boys. Winona had reason to worry about his future among the tribe of Cheyenne. His lighter skin was no fault of his own, and Katrine could see that Winona did her best to give him confidence, but it was a challenge. It didn't help that there had been enough people back in Boomer Town ready to look down on his skin for being too dark. Lars had said more than once how glad he was that Brave Rock was not home to men who considered Indians as only savages to be conquered or avoided.

“Your stories?”

“Something like that.” She looked behind the boy but did not see Winona's dark braids anywhere in the yard. “Is your aunt with Reverend Thornton?”

Dakota nodded.

“I think it's too nice to stay inside, too, even if I still want to look at books.” She closed her journal and patted the ground next to her. “Shall I tell you a story?”

He smiled and moved to join her under the tree. Even though she guessed he could understand not much more than half of her words, he still loved to hear stories as much as she loved to tell them.

She began to tell the Danish tale of Trillevip, the dwarf who helped a girl asked to spin twenty full spindles in a single night. Trillevip's price for his help was the hand of the spinning girl in marriage. Dakota knew what spinning was, for she could mime the actions. She was just getting to the part of the story where Trillevip would let the girl out of her bargain if only she could guess his name, when a shadow fell across the boy and herself.

“Trillevip's boasting reveals his name and he loses his bride.” Clint's deep voice offered the next point in the plot. “She outsmarts him.”

“Ah, but she is still in a fix,” Katrine went on, “for the young man has chosen to marry her for how fast she spins, not knowing it is the dwarf who has made it happen.” She looked up at Clint. “Did Lars tell you this one?”

The sheriff settled down on his haunches. “Not half as well as you do.”

Katrine felt ill at ease continuing the story with Clint's dark eyes watching her. Stories of marriage and rescue and clever tricksters seemed somehow odd and wrong to tell in front of him, although she couldn't really say why.

“So Trillevip tells the maiden he will send three old crones to her wedding banquet, and she must call them mother, aunt and grandmother and be very kind to them.”

“Our chief says we must always be kind to guests,” Dakota offered. He was such a bright, considerate child.

“That's always true,” Katrine agreed, “but Trillevip had a special reason for asking this of the maiden. The first crone showed up with horrid red eyes that drooped to her chin.” Katrine looked up to see Clint making an awful face, pulling his cheeks into a clumsy droopy shape and crossing his eyes. Dakota erupted in giggles at Clint's theatrics. “She told the groom her ugly eyes had come from staying up late to spin too much yarn.”