Blood Wedding

“Why does everyone seem to think I know what’s going to happen or how to deal with it?” Fargo asked.

Molly laughed. “I think you know the answer to that. You look like the kind of man who’s been in a fracas or two before. The rest of these fellas around here, well, they look like farmers. Which is what they are. You give ’em a plow or some chicken feed, and they know exactly what to do with it. But you hand ’em a gun, and they’re as likely to shoot themselves in the toe as to hit somebody who’s shooting at them. I get the idea that wouldn’t happen to you.”

“I didn’t sign on to be the sheriff. You have one of those?”

“We have us one, but you won’t be seeing him. He’d never go up against the Murrays. You know about what’s going on around here?

Fargo said he had a pretty good idea.

“Well, then you know what it’s like. We have the army fighting the militia half the time and the militia fighting the army the other half. Most of the folks here don’t want any part of that slavery argument, but that doesn’t stop the fighting among the rest of them. The Murray gang just takes advantage of the situation to pretty much have a free hand. The army’s too busy to mess with them, and the sheriff’s too worried about his own skin.”

“Sounds like you need a better sheriff.”

“Nobody wants the job. The one we have’s fine for rounding up drunks in town on Saturday night or tracking down somebody who’s stolen a cow or some chickens. But that’s all he’s good for. Maybe you’d be interested.”

Fargo said he didn’t think so. He looked over at a spot near the church where Wesley, Conner, Talley, and Johnson were talking and smoking. Johnson smoked a pipe. The others had cigarettes.

“What can you tell me about those four?” Fargo asked.

Molly gave them a disdainful glance. It was plain that she didn’t think much of them.

“What do you want to know about them? They’re farmers, and that’s about all you can say for them. Not very good farmers, either, but they get by.”

The last was said with a bit of pride, but then Fargo already knew that Molly was proud of her own capabilities when it came to farming.

“You told me at the dance that Conner wasn’t much and that he wanted to marry Abby to get Lem’s place. What about the others?”

“Rip Johnson’s married, got a place that could be right nice if he’d work it right. But he’s as lazy as Conner. I feel sorry for his wife. She’s just a little bit of a thing, but she does more of the work around there than he does.”

“He has a hardworking wife, but you say he likes Abby.”

“Everybody likes her. She’s sweet and pretty and friendly. Why wouldn’t they like her?”

“I didn’t mean he liked her that way,” Fargo said.

Molly frowned. “I know what you meant. Johnson’s a sorry excuse for a husband. He thinks his wife doesn’t know about him, but I’m sure she does. He’ll make a grab for anything in skirts.” She smiled and ran a hand over her well-filled shirt. “Or even some people who aren’t in skirts.”

Fargo grinned. “I take it he’s made a grab or two for you, then.”

“For all the good it did him. I told him if he tried anything like that again, I’d break both his arms, and I could do it, too.”

Molly flexed her hands, and Fargo thought they were big enough to do just about anything she wanted to do with them. They weren’t soft, womanly hands. They were roughened and callused from hard work.

“I know I’m not pretty,” Molly said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll let any man who comes along jump me. Rip found that out right quick. ’Course, I’m sure there’s more than one who hasn’t turned him down, married or not.”

Molly didn’t have a high enough opinion of herself, Fargo thought. She might not be small, like Abby, or have Abby’s delicate features, but she was pretty enough in her own way. If she wouldn’t hide her figure inside men’s clothes, she’d most likely knock any man’s eye out.

“And how about Wesley?” Fargo said.

“Alf? Well, he’s not really so bad. He liked Abby, too, like the rest of them, but he was never a pest about it like Rip and Frank.”

“What about Tom Talley?”

“He’s a funny-looking fella, don’t you think? Looks like somebody mashed his head in on the sides and crowded everything together.”

“I don’t much care how he looks. I’d like to know about him and Abby.”

“What do you think?”

“If he’s like everybody else, he must have liked her.”

“Yes, but he knew he didn’t have a chance with her. He tried to court her once, and she just laughed at him. Because of the way he looked, I guess. He pouted around for a couple of weeks after that, but he got over it.”

Fargo wondered if that was true. Men didn’t always get over things like that as easily as women seemed to think. Having a woman laugh at your looks was enough to set some men off, maybe even enough for them to start thinking about a way to strike back. It was possible that Talley had found a way, by killing Jed.