Blood Wedding

7

Everybody who didn’t have a horse piled into wagons and buckboards, and lit out for Molly’s farm.

Molly was in the lead, riding a bay that was almost a match for Fargo’s Ovaro. The Trailsman didn’t try to overtake her, however. She deserved at least a few minutes alone when she reached whatever was going to be left of her farm. Fargo didn’t think there would be much.

And he was right. When he got there, not long after Molly, the farmhouse was nothing but a chimney, a heap of smoking ashes, and a few smoldering boards that hadn’t fallen over yet. Red spots glowed in the boards, and there was still some smoke wafting around. The air was thick with the smell of it.

Dead birds lay scattered all around the chicken yard, blown to pieces, blood all over the white feathers as if the birds had been used for target practice by Murray’s men, which was probably close to the truth.

There had been a flower bed in front of the house, and the Murrays had ridden their horses through it destroying all the plants, leaving nothing standing, which was also pretty much true of the cornfield. They’d probably ridden through that while the house was burning, having themselves a high old time.

For some reason the barn, which was smaller than the one at Lem’s, hadn’t been burned. But there were two dead mules lying not far from it, both of them shot through one eye, their legs sticking out stiffly.

Molly was standing beside her horse when Fargo rode up. Her eyes were dry, and her face was drawn into hard lines.

“Those son of a bitch Murrays did this,” she said.

“Why?” Fargo asked. “What did you do to them?”

“You don’t have to do anything to them. They’d burn a house just for the meanness of it. But what I did was help bury Paul last night. They’ll do something to everybody who had a hand in it, sooner or later.”

Fargo thought over what she’d just said. There was something about it that bothered him.

“How will they know who helped?” he asked.

Molly turned slowly and looked up at him. Her eyes were hard and dark.

“You’ve asked a lot of questions today, Fargo, but that’s the best one of all. How the hell did they know?”

She was going to say more, but by then some of the others on horseback were beginning to arrive, and Molly turned back to the rubble that had been her house. Maybe there were other reasons why the Murrays had it in for Molly. None of them had been there when Paul was buried. Someone could have been watching, but Fargo didn’t think that was the case. He would have known.

Fargo caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and took a glance over toward the barn. The door was open, but Fargo didn’t think the Murrays would have left anything alive inside.

“Get on your horse,” Fargo told Molly. “Don’t say anything. Just get out of here. Do it now.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t have any intention of leaving, but the urgency of his tone must have convinced her. She mounted up and did what he said as he went around telling the others who had arrived the same thing.

He wasn’t sure he’d get away with it, and he didn’t. Before he’d managed to get everyone started away, the first shot came from the barn.

Tom Talley was hit and fell off his horse. The gunshot helped people who had lingered figure out why Fargo was warning them, and they started riding away, yelling at those in the slower wagons and buggies to turn around.

By that time there were more shots coming from the barn, and seven or eight of the Murray gang came riding out from behind it, pistols firing.

Fargo had his Colt out, and he returned their fire. Farmers didn’t generally take weapons to funerals, which of course the Murrays had counted on, and Fargo figured he was pretty much on his own. The odds weren’t exactly fair.

The Murrays wouldn’t care about that in the least, unless it was to be glad of it. They’d ride Fargo down and go right on after the others, killing as many as they could.

Or that’s what they’d do unless Fargo could do something to stop them. Stopping them was a good idea, except he didn’t have any idea how to stop that many men.

Of course one of them was a woman. Angel Murray was one of the riders charging at Fargo. She was beside her father, a wild grin of exhilaration on her face, and she was firing a pistol just like the rest. A bullet buzzed by Fargo’s ear. Another one tugged at his shirt.

There was only one thing he could do. He wasn’t sure it would work. In fact, he was almost certain it wouldn’t. But he didn’t have a lot of choice, so he did it.

He shot Angel Murray.

She fell from her horse and hit the ground hard. Fargo was running straight toward her before the other gang members even knew she was shot. They must have thought he was crazy, charging them like someone who believed he had them outnumbered instead of waiting for them to ride right over him.

They were so surprised that they couldn’t shoot straight. Their bullets went far over his head, and he managed to shoot two more of them out of the saddle before he reached the spot where Angel was lying on the ground.

The others he’d shot were dead, but Angel was still alive, which was part of Fargo’s admittedly shaky plan. There was a dark stain on the shoulder of her shirt where the bullet had struck her. Her hat had come off, and her black hair was spread out around her head.

Fargo reached down for her, grabbed hold of her good arm, and jerked her roughly to her feet. She screamed in pain, but Fargo didn’t much care. In fact, he was glad she’d screamed. It let her father know that she was still alive.

As soon as she was upright, Fargo twisted her good arm behind her back. He stuck the barrel of his pistol right into the tender skin under her chin, pushing her head up so far that she was looking at the sky. The pistol barrel was hot. It burned her, and she yelled again, but not as loud as before.

The gang had given up on their pursuit of the farmers and turned back. The men in the barn came out, pistols at the ready.

Between the two groups, Fargo stood supporting Angel, with his pistol tight under her chin.

Peter Murray was getting close, so Fargo said, “That’s far enough, Murray. Tell your men to keep their distance, or I pull the trigger.”

Murray stopped, and although he gave no signal, so did all the others.

“You must be the one they call Fargo,” Murray said, leaning forward casually in the saddle as if they were just two friends who’d met on the trail and were having a little talk.

Murray had a black beard shot through with white, and his hair, almost as long as his daughter’s, hung below his hat. His eyes were as black as the ashes of Molly’s house, but shinier.

“Well?” Murray said when Fargo didn’t answer. “Is that your name or not?”

“It’s my name,” Fargo said. “Not that it matters. What matters is that if you want your daughter to stay alive, you need to get your men together and ride away from here. And not in the direction the farmers went.”

“That’s an interesting proposition. And what’ll you do if I don’t?”

“Your daughter’s nothing to me,” Fargo said. “I’ll pull the trigger, and you’ll get to see the top of her head come off.”

Murray waved the pistol he was holding loosely in his right hand.

“What if I just shoot you instead?” he asked.

“You could do that,” Fargo said. “But you’d still see the top of her head come off. You ought to know that. I have my finger on the trigger, and if you shoot me, there’s no way in hell I won’t pull it. Even if you kill me, I’ll pull it.”

Murray sat easy on his horse and looked over Fargo’s head at the men who’d come from the barn. He nodded at them. They holstered their pistols and went to get their horses.

“Supposing I let you live,” Murray said. “What then?”

“Your daughter lives, too.”

“You mean you’ll let her go, don’t you? You live, I get my daughter back.”

Fargo gave him a tight grin.

“No, Murray, that’s not the way it works. I don’t trust you any more than I’d trust a diamondback rattler. As soon as I let her go, you’d gun me down where I stand. So you’re not getting her back.”

“If I’m not getting her back, then just what did you have in mind?”

“She goes with me. I see to it that her wound gets taken care of. When she’s ready, she comes back to you.”

Angel didn’t seem to think much of the idea. She tried to pull herself out of Fargo’s grasp, but he pushed her arm a little higher and kept the pistol barrel punched into her chin.

“She’s got spirit, Fargo,” Murray said. “But you’re the one with the pistol.”

“I guess that means you’re going to take the deal.”

“You don’t trust me,” Murray said. “But I’m supposed to trust you, is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Fargo said.

“Well, to hell with that, you son of a bitch. I’d lay odds you’re the one killed my son last night, and today you’ve shot my daughter. And now you want me to trust you?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn whether you trust me or not. That doesn’t have anything to do with it. We’re talking about your daughter’s life here, Murray. I shot her, but she’s alive. That’s more than I can say for the others I shot.”

The two men lay not far from where Fargo stood. Neither of them had moved since hitting the ground, and they weren’t likely to move ever again.

“If you don’t let your daughter go with me,” Fargo said, “she’ll wind up as dead as they are. I don’t see that you have much choice.”

Angel spoke for the first time. “Kill the son of a bitch.”

“You heard her Murray. Go ahead. Maybe it’s worth a try. It’s either that or ride away. Your choice.”

Murray sat and thought it over. For all the anxiety that showed on his face, he might have been considering whether to wear a black shirt or a blue one.

“Suppose I go along with you,” he said after a couple of long minutes had gone by. “How long do you keep her?”

“I told you. Until she’s ready to ride away.”

“That won’t be long,” Angel said. “You bastard.”

Murray went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

“And you’ll just let her ride away?”

“You have my word on that.”

“I don’t know what your word’s worth, Fargo, but it seems like I’m going to find out.”

“Just make up your mind,” Fargo said. “This pistol’s getting heavy. My finger might slip.”

“All right,” Murray said. “I guess you have me over a barrel. But I have to warn you about something.”

“What’s that?” Fargo asked.

“If anything happens to Angel, I’m going to come after you and kill you. There won’t be anything to stop me. And while I’m at it, I’ll burn every house and barn and field within fifty miles. You have my word on that. And my word’s good.”

“I believe you,” Fargo said, but Murray wasn’t listening. He nodded at his men, and they rode past Fargo, joining the men who waited at the barn.

“You son of a bitch,” Angel said. “Let go of my arm.”

“Not yet,” Fargo said. “I don’t trust your father enough to do that.”

“He’s not going to do anything. Let go of me.”

Murray and his men rode away without a backward glance. When Fargo judged they were out of firing range, he let go of Angel’s arm, and she promptly fainted dead away. Which made it a lot easier for Fargo to throw her on a horse and take her away from there.

“You should’ve killed him,” Molly said. “You had him right there, and you let him get away.”

“If I’d killed him, there would still have been plenty of others to get rid of me and come after you,” Fargo reminded her. “And come after everybody else, too.”

“And you promised him you wouldn’t kill Angel. Dammit, why did you have to do that?”

“Because I wanted to get out of there alive, for one thing, and I didn’t want Murray killing everybody else, which is what he would have done.”

“Damn. But you’re probably right. I’ll bet you always keep your promises, too, don’t you.”

Fargo nodded.

“I knew it. That’s the kind of man you are. So you can’t kill her. How about if I kill her?”

Fargo had to laugh at that. They were sitting in Lem’s kitchen. Angel was in the bedroom where Fargo had spent the previous night. Lem and Abby were with her and the doctor who’d come from town. He didn’t strike Fargo as much of a doctor, to tell the truth. His hands were shaky and his eyes were bloodshot. Lem had gone to town for him and had most likely found him in a saloon, if not lying drunk in an alley somewhere. But he was good enough to dig a bullet out of Angel’s shoulder. It hurt her when he did, and Fargo heard her cry out once. But he didn’t care.

“You can’t kill her, either,” Fargo said. “I don’t think Murray would take kindly to that. He might think it’s not part of our agreement.”

“The son of a bitch burned my house. He killed my chickens and mules. He destroyed my corn crop.”

Fargo understood how Molly felt. She still hadn’t cried, as far as he knew, but she must have felt like it. She’d lost everything.

“He killed Tom Talley, too,” Molly said.

Fargo didn’t think that was the case, but he couldn’t be sure who’d shot Talley. And it didn’t matter, anyway. Talley was dead, and Murray was to blame whether he’d pulled the trigger or not.

“He ought to be punished for all that,” Molly went on. “He can’t just keep on raiding and killing and doing whatever he pleases.”

“What about the army?” Fargo asked.

“The army’s too busy, and the sheriff doesn’t care. I told you that. I care, though.”

Fargo cared, too. He didn’t like the idea of Murray being able to run roughshod over an entire community. It wasn’t Fargo’s job to do anything about it, but because of Murray, Jed was dead, and Jed had been Fargo’s friend. Fargo had lost friends before. None of them had gone without justice, however. Fargo wasn’t one to let somebody kill a friend of his and get away with it.

“Maybe we can do something about that gang,” Fargo told Molly. “But we’ll have to do it later, and we can’t do anything to Angel because I promised not to. When she’s well and gone, though, we might be able to get Murray.”

“How?” Molly asked.

Fargo wished he had an answer for that. But he didn’t.