Blood Wedding

19

Rip didn’t seem to know exactly what was going on. Which was just fine. Fargo didn’t want him to know.

“I didn’t think you’d show up here at this time of night,” Rip said.

He was standing on his front porch again, holding the lantern he’d lit while he was still in the house. His hair was tousled, and he didn’t look quite awake.

“I said morning,” Lem told him. “It’s past midnight, so it’s morning. You better get ready to go. We’ll help you.”

Cass and Bob were already off their horses and walking toward Rip, who was going to be trussed up and tossed across a saddle for his trip. As the two men reached him, Rip’s face changed. He seemed to know that something was wrong, and he turned back into his house.

Cass and Bob hesitated. They turned back and looked at Fargo as if to ask what to do next. In doing so, they gave Rip time to get to a gun.

The first shot came through the door and missed Cass by an inch or two. The second shot dropped Bob where he stood.

“Scatter,” Fargo said. “I’ll go around back.”

By the time Fargo got to the back of the house, the door was already opening. Fargo let Rip get outside. Then he said, “Put the pistol down, Rip. You’re not going anywhere.”

Rip held up the lantern so that the light spread out some more. Fargo was still outside the circle of radiance.

“We know all about you and Murray,” Fargo said.

“Then you’re going to kill me anyway,” Rip said.

“Nobody’s going to kill you. We’re just going to be sure you don’t warn anybody.”

“Bullshit,” Rip said.

He fired a shot at Fargo, missed, and started to run around the house. Fargo didn’t know where he was headed, but he knew he wasn’t going to let him get there. He shot him twice.

The first shot knocked Rip off his stride and sent him stumbling toward his house. The second shot jerked him sideways, and he stumbled into the wall. When he hit it, his arm swung around and the lantern shattered on the wood. Coal oil spread out and started burning. Rip slid down to the ground.

“Who told you, Fargo?” he said. “How’d you know? Angel?”

“Nobody told. I just figured it out.”

“Damn. Maybe you really are as smart as you think you are.”

Rip slumped over to the side until his head was touching the ground. The pistol he’d been holding limply in his hand slipped from his fingers.

The wall of the house above him was dry, and the fire was spreading fast. Fargo rode back around to the front of the house. Bob Tabor was standing up, and Abby was tying something around his midsection.

“How’s Bob?” Fargo asked of no one in particular.

Tabor answered for himself. “I’m just dandy. That bullet took a little fat off the side of my belly, but that’s all right. I could stand to lose it. Hurts a little, but I can still ride. What about Rip?”

“He won’t be doing any riding,” Fargo said. “And I don’t think we’ll be able to save his house.”

Everyone could see the flames now, and there was black smoke curling over the roof.

“Ain’t worth it, anyhow,” Cass said. “Funny, though. He was helping to run us off, and now it’s his house that’s going to burn.”

“Let it go,” Molly said. “It wasn’t worth a damn. Are we going to talk all night, or are we going after Murray?”

“You know the answer to that,” Lem said. “Let’s ride.”

Abby finished her bandaging, and Cass helped Tabor on his horse. When he was settled in the saddle, they rode away, leaving Rip’s house in flames behind them.

It was quiet in the woods near the Bigelow House. The only sounds came from the trees when a squirrel woke up for a moment of chattering or from the soft whispers of the little group gathered there to take on the Murray gang.

There wasn’t much of a moon, and the sky was cloudy, both of which made it hard to tell if there was more than one guard, or even if there was one. The house was quiet, and there was no movement anywhere near it. If there was a man on the porch, Fargo couldn’t see him, but there was a dark shadow by the wall that could have been a man.

“If you get caught, we’ll be in a mess,” Lem said. “I’d feel better about it if you didn’t have to cross all that open ground.”

“It’s the only way to get there,” Fargo said. “If there’s anybody on the porch, he’s likely to be asleep. That’s why we came at this time of the morning. Nobody’s going to be awake in there. They all think they’re as safe as if they were a thousand miles away.”

“Well, you better get going then. If they’re planning to set an ambush for us, they’ll be getting up soon enough.”

Fargo nodded and hefted the little keg of gunpowder that Molly had found in her barn. Talley had bought it to blast stumps with, but there weren’t many stumps to blast. That meant there was a little bit of gunpowder left over.

“You be careful, Fargo,” Molly said, leaning near his ear. “You don’t want to blow off any important parts of yourself.”

She nudged him with her elbow, and Fargo had to grin. He said, “Don’t worry about me. If that house doesn’t fall on me, I’ll be just fine.”

“You better get away long before it falls.”

“I’ll do my best. Just don’t let anybody shoot me if I come running back this way.”

Fargo waited until the moon was completely covered by clouds. Then he crouched as low as he could and set out toward the house. If somebody saw him, he was as good as dead, but he was counting on Murray to be lulled by the idea that the farmers were all waiting for morning to go to the cave on the river. He wouldn’t have any idea what they really had planned for him, so he wouldn’t have put out any extra guards.

Fargo judged it to be about a hundred yards to the house. The ground was rough, and when he was about halfway there, he stumbled. He had to straighten up quickly and run awkwardly forward for a few steps to regain his balance, holding the gunpowder out in front of him like some kind of prize pig. When he was balanced again, he squatted quickly and waited to see if anybody had spotted him from the Bigelow House. The moon stayed behind the clouds, the house sat as still and quiet as ever, and after a couple of seconds Fargo moved on.

When he reached the house, he went straight to the back, looking for a break in the skirting so that he could slip underneath. He found one quickly enough and slithered through the opening. The smell of musk and raw earth filled his nose, and he bit back a sneeze as he wormed his way along.

When he figured he’d gone about far enough, he set the keg down and started squirming back out, unspooling the fuse as he went. The fuse wasn’t as long as Fargo would have liked, but he thought it would do. He got almost back outside before it played out. He lit it and eased back out through the hole in the skirting.

As soon as he was out from under the house, he jumped up and started to run back toward the trees. He didn’t worry about concealment this time. He didn’t care who saw or heard him because by the time anybody tried to stop him, it was going to be too late for them to do much of anything.

Fargo was about twenty-five yards from the trees when the gunpowder went off with a muffled boom. Hearing the explosion, he hit the ground, slid forward a couple of feet, then swiveled around to see the results.

The house had already been leaning, and the blast finished it off. It exploded outward and upward. Boards flew through the air and landed all over, though none of them came very near to Fargo. What was left of the house toppled on over to the ground in a jagged pile.

By that time, Murray’s men were running in six or eight directions, having no idea what had just happened. They’d been asleep and the house had exploded around them. They might have thought it was the end of the world, or they might have thought the house had been struck by a cannonball. Or maybe they were just running and not thinking at all.

Whatever the case may have been, they certainly weren’t expecting the farmers to ride out of the trees and start shooting at them.

Most of Murray’s men were the kind to sleep with their weapons right at hand, so they were armed, and they had the presence of mind to drop down to the ground and start shooting back. A few others made a mad dash for their horses, maybe in the hope that they could get away before they were killed. A couple just stood there, looking around as if they were dazed, and maybe they were. Those were the first to be cut down by the farmers’ fire.

Fargo looked for Murray, but he didn’t see him amid all the confusion. He did see Angel as she rode past him, looking neither to the right nor to the left. She was focused on someone, and Fargo knew it must be Murray. Scrambling to his feet, Fargo ran back into the trees to get his horse.

Within seconds he was aboard the Ovaro and riding in the direction Angel had gone. He rode right through the middle of the fighting and got a kaleidoscopic view of what was happening all around him.

To his left, Molly was off her horse and fighting hand to hand with two men, her hair wild as she smashed one of them to the ground with her right fist and grabbed the other around the neck with her free left hand. Abby was running toward the man that Molly was grappling with. She jumped on his back as Fargo passed on.

To the right, Lem was sitting on his horse and firing his pistol steadily. The flashes from its barrel were like red and orange streaks in the night. Tabor and Elliot were beside Lem, matching him shot for shot, and Murray’s men, though they were firing back, were the ones getting the worst of it.

Then Fargo was through the crowd and alone, with Angel racing ahead of him and Murray in front of her.

After only a few more seconds, Murray turned back toward the trees, and his dark figure was soon lost in them. It was one thing to ride at speed across open ground. It was something else to do it among trees. In fact, it was impossible, and Fargo knew that Murray must have swerved into them because he had something in mind, maybe some trap he could spring on Angel. Fargo urged the Ovaro to go faster, hoping to reach Angel before she did anything foolish.

He was too late. She rode into the trees after her father.

It was dark in the trees, but they grew far enough apart for Fargo to maneuver the Ovaro through them. He could hear, but not see, Angel up ahead of him. Before she got to the creek, she turned aside, which meant that Murray was also sticking to the trees. Fargo didn’t blame him. You couldn’t ride fast, but you could ride, and there wasn’t much danger of anybody shooting you with all the branches in the way. It didn’t take much to turn a bullet aside.

Fargo drew the pistol he was wearing on the off chance that he’d get a shot at Murray. It wasn’t his Colt, which had disappeared the night he fell from the horse and Murray had hauled him to the cave. But it was a good enough gun. He’d borrowed it from Molly, who was the only person around with more than one pistol. Farmers didn’t generally go around armed. Fargo had shot the pistol a couple of times after borrowing it to get a feel for it, and it had done a good job against Rip. He thought it would do just as well when he had to use it on Murray.

He rode along for a minute or two, hoping to overtake Angel but not succeeding. Then up ahead he heard a horse whinny and someone screamed.

Angel.

Fargo couldn’t go any faster. Limbs were already whipping him across the face, and he didn’t want to damage his eyes. He hoped Murray hadn’t killed Angel, but he wouldn’t put it past him.

Before long, Fargo spotted Angel’s horse standing calmly near a tree. Angel was lying on the ground. She wasn’t moving. Fargo reined in the Ovaro and got down to see if she was just hurt or if she was dead.

She wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t hurt, except for some bruises. And she was angry.

“He waited for me,” she told Fargo. “He hid behind that big tree over there and pulled back a limb. When I rode up, he let it go. It hit me square in the face and scared my horse, but I think I’m all right.”

“At least he didn’t try to kill you again,” Fargo said. “Give him credit for that.”

“He knew the horse would throw me. He thought I’d break my neck.” Angel brushed leaves and dirt off her clothes, wincing only a little, and got back on her horse. “But it didn’t work, and now I’m going to get him.”

“He might be long gone by now.”

“I don’t think so. Where’s he going to go?”

Fargo said he didn’t know, but then he had an idea.

“He knows he’s lost this fight. There won’t be much left of his gang after those farmers get through with them tonight. He might be able to get another gang together, but it would take time, and the farmers would be a lot better organized before he could do it. He’s either got to keep running or try to do something that will really hurt them.”

“He won’t run,” Angel said. “How could he hurt them?” Fargo didn’t agree with her. He said, “I think he’ll run. But I think he’ll cause as much trouble as he can before he does. I think he might try to burn all the houses he can before we catch him.”

“You’re probably right. We have to stop him.”

Fargo hoped they could. “We can try,” he said.