Blood Wedding

2

Fargo could hear the music coming from the barn, the clucking of the chickens on their roosts, the sound of the wind in the cornstalks. Those were the things that most people could have heard, if they’d listened for them. But Fargo had spent most of his life listening for things that not just anyone could hear, and now he heard the distant sound of hoofbeats, headed in the direction of the farm.

“You think the Murrays are coming here?” Abby said.

“It might not be the Murrays,” Fargo said, “but it’s a lot of riders. I think we should get back to the barn.”

Abby didn’t waste any time questioning him further, another point in her favor. She gathered her skirts and ran for the big open doors of the barn.

She had a head start, but Fargo, with his long, loping strides got there just a little ahead of her. He started swinging the tall doors shut while Abby ran to stand beside the fiddler and shout a warning.

“The Murrays are coming!”

She had to yell it twice before anybody paid her any attention. The second time, the fiddler stopped playing, his lively song ending on a squealing note that trailed off into nothing. The dancers stopped and turned to the stage.

“The Murrays are coming,” Abby said again into the silence that had settled in the barn.

The only other sound was the squealing of door hinges, and Fargo thought he and Abby were going to look pretty foolish if the riders passed the farm by or if they were only more guests, arriving late to the dance.

“What are we going to do?” somebody called out.

Fargo hadn’t thought much about that, but then he realized that the people in the barn were farmers. They wore pistols. They didn’t carry rifles. Of all the men there, only he and a couple of others, including Jed, had weapons. And they weren’t carrying them. They’d put them aside when the dance started.

“Get your guns,” Fargo said. “And then see if you can block the door with something.”

Barn doors weren’t made to be barred from the inside, and there was nothing more needed than a gentle push to open them. The Murray gang could ride right on in.

Fargo went over to the wall where he’d hung his gun belt on a nail. He took the belt down and buckled it on while Jed and several other men started stacking grain sacks against the doors. Fargo knew the bags wouldn’t stop anyone for very long. He looked around the barn for more weapons. There were a few tools, but that was all.

“Pitchforks in the loft,” Lem said at his side. “I got a shotgun in the house.”

“Too late for the shotgun,” Fargo said. “Grab a hoe.”

He smelled the dry hay as he started up the ladder to the high loft that ran half the length of the barn. There were no lanterns hanging up there, but Fargo thought how easily the whole barn could go up.

“Put out the lanterns,” he called.

It wouldn’t matter if the barn were in darkness. In fact, it would make things better. There was no danger of any of Jed’s guests shooting each other, since they weren’t armed, and the darkness would make it harder for the gang to find targets.

He reached the loft and tossed down a couple of pitchforks with long, curving tines.

“Don’t hit anyone who’s not on a horse,” he said.

Lem caught a pitchfork and said, “Get those lanterns out, like he told us.”

Several of the young men ran around the barn and doused the lights as the thudding of hoofbeats shook the ground outside the door.

There was one lantern left on, and long shadows danced around the barn walls before it was extinguished. In the sudden darkness there was gunfire from outside, and bullets smacked into the hard wood of the barn doors.

No doubt about it, Fargo thought, it was the Murray gang, all right.

There were only a few shots and then more silence. Fargo could hear the people in the barn moving around as they sought through the darkness for a place to hide. One of the younger children started crying, but the noise was cut off as someone covered his mouth. Fargo didn’t blame him for crying. There wouldn’t be much use in hiding if the Murrays got inside. People were going to die, and most of them would be farmers, not gang members.

Fargo could hear yelling outside, and then the barn doors began to slide slowly back into the barn. Fargo pulled the big Colt from its holster and got ready. The only advantage he and the other couple of armed men had was that they were in almost total darkness, whereas the Murrays would be silhouetted against the faint light from the moon and stars. Fargo hoped Jed had enough sense to hold his fire until more of the gang was bunched in the doorway.

Fargo needn’t have worried. Jed had always been cool even in a tight spot, and apparently the few other men with guns knew what to do.

The doors opened wider, and when they did, riders started to plunge through them. There were fifteen or twenty of them, all whooping and yelling and spurring up their mounts. Fargo couldn’t tell which one was Angel, not that it mattered. She’d have to take her chances with the rest of them.

Fargo loosed off three quick shots, hoping that the Murrays were stupid enough to be riding in front of the gang. He didn’t think that would be the case, but he was gratified to see three dark figures pitch backward off their horses.

Jed and the others opened up about that time, and the gang members started firing off their pistols and rifles. The bright muzzle flashes lit up the dark and showed the faces of the men in reddish light. Fargo fired again, but by then the Murrays were all inside and it wasn’t easy to pick them off without endangering everyone else.

Someone fired in the direction of the muzzle flash from Fargo’s Colt, but Fargo had already flattened himself on the floor of the loft. As he reloaded, he looked over the edge at the fighting that was going on below and saw the vague outlines of black figures striking out with hoes and pitchforks and a scythe or two. He heard the grunting of their efforts and the yells of men being jabbed by a pitchfork or sliced by a scythe. Men were being pulled off their horses now, and it was becoming impossible for Fargo to distinguish between friend and foe. He decided it was time for him to leave the loft, and when a horseman passed beneath him, he dropped over the edge and landed behind the rider.

The horse reared up, and Fargo put his arm around the rider, finding to his surprise that he wasn’t behind a horseman at all but a woman. His hands held her soft, pillowy breasts, but he didn’t have time to enjoy the experience. She snapped her head back in an attempt to catch him sharply on the point of the chin. He might have fallen if he hadn’t been ready for some such trick, and he had moved his head far enough to the side so that he caught only a glancing blow. He twisted her roughly and threw her from the horse. He wasn’t worried about where she landed or about whether she was under the horse’s hoofs. He pulled his pistol and looked around for other riders.

He saw muzzle shots as pistols were fired, but he didn’t know who was doing the shooting now, so he didn’t try firing any shots in the direction of the flares. He saw one big horse wheeling in the middle of the barn, and the dark rider was yelling something that Fargo couldn’t quite understand. He pointed his Colt in that direction, but before he could pull the trigger, someone grabbed his left leg and gave a hard yank, pulling him from the saddle.

Fargo landed hard on his back. Someone kicked him in the head, and his finger tightened on the trigger of the Colt, sending a wild shot along the dirt floor of the barn. Fargo’s head throbbed, and there was dirt in his eyes. He expected that his attacker would shoot him, or at least kick him again, but it didn’t happen. He pawed dirt from his eyes and saw that the woman he’d pulled from the horse was mounting it again, and then the Murray gang was helling it out the barn, yelling and waving their hats as if they’d won some kind of victory.

Fargo had to roll aside to keep from being trampled. The farmers fired a few shots after the riders, and then it was quiet in the barn except for some moans from the wounded and the crying of frightened children. The air was filled with acrid smoke from the pistol shots.

“Get those lanterns lit,” Lemuel Watkins called out, and after a few seconds someone followed his orders.

Fargo stood up, his knees a little shaky, and touched a hand to his head. There was no blood, but a lump was forming just above his right temple. He holstered his Colt and looked around the barn.

There were men standing with their hands to bloodied shoulders and heads, at least one woman had been hit in the arm. As far as Fargo could see, none of the children had been hurt. Several horses were milling around, and Lemuel gave orders to get them under control. They had belonged to dead outlaws, of whom Fargo saw at least five.

Over to one side of the barn, a man lay face down in the dirt, the back of his head blown off. Fargo felt his insides go hollow. Even from where he stood he could tell that the dead man was Jed Brand.

Fargo and Lemuel got Jed into the house and laid him out on the kitchen table. One of the women was with Abby in another room. Abby had cried wildly at first, but when Fargo had last seen her, she had been icily calm.

Lemuel looked down at Jed’s body and shook his head.

“Not much good you can say about a thing like this. We got more of them than they got of us, but I do hate it that they got Jed. He was a fine young man, and he’d have made a good husband for Abby.”

“He was the one they were after,” Fargo said, though something about the way things had happened bothered him. It seemed to him that there was more to it than met the eye, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. “Abby told me he spoke out against them.”

“Yeah,” Lemuel said. “He thought I didn’t know about it, but I did. I didn’t like it because I knew what could happen. I’m not much of a man to go looking for a fight. I thought that if we’d leave the Murray gang alone, they’d leave us alone.”

“People like that don’t leave anybody alone.”

“I guess I know that now. Did Abby tell you that Angel Murray was sweet on Jed at one time?”

“She told me. I think I met Angel tonight.”

“Met her? How could you do that?”

“We had a little tussle,” Fargo said. “You wouldn’t say that we got properly introduced.”

“She’d be the one that shot him,” Lemuel said. He ran his fingers through his gray hair. “She’s a beauty, but she’s mean as a snake.”

“I don’t think she shot him. She was too busy. I threw her off her horse, and then she pulled me off it.”

“She could’ve shot him before all that. Those Murrays don’t like to be slighted. They always get back at whoever does it.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You say that like you’ve had a little experience.”

“I have,” Fargo told him. “I’d better go to the barn and help with those bodies.”

“Hell, we oughta just put ’em in a pile and burn ’em. Sons of bitches.”

Fargo knew the old man didn’t really mean it, though he wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.

“You go on,” Lem said. “I’ll go see how Abby is doing.”

He left the kitchen and Fargo looked down at Jed’s body, which lay under a sheet on the wooden table.

“You have to get them,” Abby said at his back.

Fargo turned slowly. He said, “I thought your father had gone to see about you.”

“I don’t need anybody to see about me. I sent Sue Ballew home, and I told my father to go on to bed. You’re the one I want to talk to. You’re the one who knows what to do when something like this happens.”

“What makes you think that?” Fargo asked.

“The way you look. The things Jed told me about you. He said you were a man who knew a thing or two about revenge.”

Fargo thought about it. He’d gone on the vengeance trail long ago, family business as it was. But it hadn’t been any good, not in the long run. His life was no longer consumed by a need for revenge. He’d gone past that a long time ago.

“A man who goes looking for revenge usually finds a lot of things he wishes he hadn’t,” Fargo said.

“That may be so,” Abby said, “but don’t bother telling it to the Murrays. Do you think they’ll forget what happened tonight?”

“They did what they came to do.”

“But they didn’t get an even exchange. Jed’s dead, but so are four of the gang members. And one of them is Paul Murray.”

“The father?” Fargo asked.

“No, the son. The father’s name is Peter. It would have been better if he’d been killed because they say Paul wasn’t quite as crazy as his old man. And his sister. They’ll come after us again, and after everybody who was at that dance.”

“How will they find out?”

“They already know. You can count on that. They know everything that goes on around here.”

Fargo wasn’t surprised to hear it. There was already plenty of talk in and around small communities. You didn’t have to be too clever to pick up any information you wanted.

“The Murrays operate out of this area?” he asked.

“Nobody knows just where they stay. I don’t think they ever stay in one place for long. They’ve robbed and killed all over the state. You have to do something about them.”

Fargo started to tell her that it wasn’t his job. He had other places to go and other things to do. But for some reason he kept his mouth shut. Finally he said, “I’ll think it over. Right now, I have to go to the barn.”

“Jed was your friend,” Abby said, as if that settled everything, and in a way it did. But Fargo wasn’t ready to tell her that.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said.