Blood Wedding

He swung into the saddle and rode away. His men followed. Angel lingered behind for a second or two, staring at the grave, and then turned her horse’s head and rode after them.

6

As soon as the Murray gang was out of sight, Fargo came out of the trees at a run. He went to the grave and began digging with his hands, throwing dirt and talking loud in the hope that Abby could somehow hear him.

He knew that Abby had landed underneath Jed’s body and that at least some air would have been trapped around her. The dirt was loose enough to trap a little more air, and the grave had not been dug deep the first time. Fargo was sure Murray’s men hadn’t deepened it, which meant that Abby was only a couple of feet under the soil. If Fargo was lucky—if Abby was lucky—he would reach her in time.

When he came to Jed, Fargo raked dirt aside even faster.

“Hang on a little longer, Abby,” he said. “I’m nearly there.”

He located Jed’s back. Abby, being much shorter, would be right there.

“Don’t talk,” Fargo said, though he’d heard nothing from Abby. “Save your breath.”

He cleared away more and more dirt, and soon he had Jed uncovered completely. Fargo straddled the grave, bent down, and grabbed Jed’s belt. He braced his legs and pulled.

Jed and Abby came up out of the ground slowly, sinking back a little bit every time they rose, like a bad tooth being pulled from a jaw. Fargo’s face reddened with strain, and his head began to throb steadily. After he had pulled them out a short distance, he could feel Abby helping him as she pushed with her legs.

“Glad to know you’re alive,” he said in response to her exertions. “I’ll have you out in a second now.”

He stumbled back, falling as they popped out of the earth. He heard Abby spluttering and spitting dirt. Reaching into his boot, he pulled out a bowie knife and cut the rope that bound her to Jed. Then he rolled Jed’s body to the side.

Abby sat up, shaking dirt from her hair, brushing away from her face, still spitting. When she was finally able to talk, she said, “I thought I was going to die there.”

“You didn’t, though,” Fargo said.

“How did you know where I was?”

“I saw them bury you.”

Abby looked at him. Her cotton gown was filthy, her face was smeared with dirt, and her hair was matted with it.

“You saw them?”

“Yes. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. There were too many of them.”

“You bastard!” she said, leaning toward him, beating him with her tiny fists. “You let them bury me, you bastard!”

Fargo let her pound him. She was too small to hurt him unless she hit his wound, and there wasn’t much chance of that.

After a while she was exhausted, and she collapsed against him.

“They told me you were dead,” she said. “Angel told me that she’d killed you. She said that no one would come for me, that no one would ever find me.”

“I found you,” Fargo said. “I figured they’d come here, so I got here as soon as I could. I just didn’t know what they’d do to you.”

“I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to lie there forever rotting away with Jed tied to me.

“It didn’t happen,” Fargo said.

She pulled away from him and looked at him more closely.

“What happened to your head?”

“That’s where Angel shot me. But she didn’t finish the job. She must have a soft heart.”

Abby almost managed a smile. She said, “She might have a soft spot or two, but her heart’s not one of them.”

Fargo thought about the way Angel’s breasts had felt when he’d encountered her in the barn earlier.

“I guess not,” he said. “I’d better take you home now.”

He stood up and helped her to her feet. “They’ll be back,” she said. “The Murrays, I mean. They won’t let it go at this, not when they find out that I’m still alive. You know that, don’t you?”

Fargo said he knew. He told her to wait there while he went for his horse.

When he got back, she was standing by Jed’s body.

“It wasn’t enough for them to kill Jed,” she said. “The way they talked when they brought me here, that didn’t count for a thing. The only thing they cared about was that Paul Murray was dead.”

Fargo bent down and took hold of Jed’s body, grabbing it under the armpits from behind and pulling upright.

“They didn’t care about Jed at all,” Abby said, not looking directly at either Fargo or the body. “They thought his death didn’t mean a thing.”

“Families are important,” Fargo said as he heaved Jed’s body across the broad rear of the Ovaro behind the saddle.

“What about me and Jed?” Abby said. “If you care about your own family, you should care about other people’s families.”

Fargo knew that revenge didn’t work that way, but he didn’t try to explain things to her.

“It’s a shame about the way they treated Jed,” Abby said. “And Paul Murray, too. You ought to be allowed a little dignity when you’re dead.”