Blood Wedding

Women didn’t get over things so easily, either. Fargo wondered if Molly had gotten over Jed, but he didn’t ask. He said, “How did Jed take it that all these men were interested in his sweetheart?”

“He didn’t like it one little bit, but there wasn’t much he could say about it. After all, he was sweet on Angel Murray for a while there himself, at least until he found out what her family was involved in. So he couldn’t really blame anybody for being interested in Abby. They knew her before he did, and I think they were all put out that she picked him over one of them. Made them all pretty mad when it happened. But they forgot about it after a while.

Again, Fargo wasn’t so sure it was as easy as all that. But again he didn’t press the point. He said, “Angel Murray didn’t get over losing Jed quite so easy, by all accounts.”

“Angel’s no farmer, though. She’s different. She’s a killer. She’s as bloodthirsty as her father. Maybe even worse than he is. And you know what they say about a woman scorned. In Angel’s case, that’s the literal truth. Compared to what she’d do to you, the devil in hell would probably seem like a nice Methodist preacher.

If that was true of Angel Murray, and Fargo didn’t doubt it, it was true in plenty of other cases, too. Fargo had known more than one woman who’d killed for a lesser offense than being scorned. He still wasn’t convinced that any of the Murray gang had killed Jed, but if one of them had, it was probably Angel.

“Have you talked to Abby today?” he asked.

“You mean do I know about what happened to her last night? Yes, she told me. That’s what I mean about Angel being bloodthirsty.”

“And those farmers aren’t bloodthirsty.”

“Nope. Not a one of them. They just don’t have it in them to be like that. You can call them a lot of things. Mean, some of them. Lazy, too, some of them. But not bloodthirsty.”

“None of them ever got into an argument or a fight with Jed about Abby or about anything else?”

“Not that I know of. Like I say, they’re not the fighting kind. You should ask Abby about it, though. She could tell you if there was ever any trouble.”

“I’ll do that,” Fargo said.

He stared out over the cemetery. The grave had been filled, and the grave diggers were putting their shovels away in the undertaker’s wagon. All that was left to remind anyone of Jed was a mound of fresh earth that would eventually sink back level with the rest of the ground and maybe a little below that. Grass would grow over it, and there would be another white marker to remind people that someone who’d once had a name was buried there.

The sun was going down behind a slate-gray cloud just above the horizon. The sky above the cloud was red and pink and yellow.

And on the horizon just off to the right, a thick column of dark smoke rose lazily upward.

Fargo pointed it out to Molly, who jumped to her feet.

“Son of a bitch!” she said. “That’s my farm!”

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?”