Blood Wedding

Fargo had to laugh at that. They were sitting in Lem’s kitchen. Angel was in the bedroom where Fargo had spent the previous night. Lem and Abby were with her and the doctor who’d come from town. He didn’t strike Fargo as much of a doctor, to tell the truth. His hands were shaky and his eyes were bloodshot. Lem had gone to town for him and had most likely found him in a saloon, if not lying drunk in an alley somewhere. But he was good enough to dig a bullet out of Angel’s shoulder. It hurt her when he did, and Fargo heard her cry out once. But he didn’t care.

“You can’t kill her, either,” Fargo said. “I don’t think Murray would take kindly to that. He might think it’s not part of our agreement.”

“The son of a bitch burned my house. He killed my chickens and mules. He destroyed my corn crop.”

Fargo understood how Molly felt. She still hadn’t cried, as far as he knew, but she must have felt like it. She’d lost everything.

“He killed Tom Talley, too,” Molly said.

Fargo didn’t think that was the case, but he couldn’t be sure who’d shot Talley. And it didn’t matter, anyway. Talley was dead, and Murray was to blame whether he’d pulled the trigger or not.

“He ought to be punished for all that,” Molly went on. “He can’t just keep on raiding and killing and doing whatever he pleases.”

“What about the army?” Fargo asked.

“The army’s too busy, and the sheriff doesn’t care. I told you that. I care, though.”

Fargo cared, too. He didn’t like the idea of Murray being able to run roughshod over an entire community. It wasn’t Fargo’s job to do anything about it, but because of Murray, Jed was dead, and Jed had been Fargo’s friend. Fargo had lost friends before. None of them had gone without justice, however. Fargo wasn’t one to let somebody kill a friend of his and get away with it.

“Maybe we can do something about that gang,” Fargo told Molly. “But we’ll have to do it later, and we can’t do anything to Angel because I promised not to. When she’s well and gone, though, we might be able to get Murray.”

“How?” Molly asked.

Fargo wished he had an answer for that. But he didn’t.

8

Fargo had to sleep in the barn that night. Angel was using the bed he’d had in the house, and Molly was staying in the kitchen.

“I’ve slept on harder beds than that table before,” she’d said, and nobody mentioned that Jed had been laid out there only the previous evening. Fargo didn’t think it would have bothered Molly even if anyone had brought it up.

The barn smelled of hay and manure, and no one would ever have guessed that a dance had been held there so recently. Fargo didn’t mind the smell. He made himself a bed in the loft, laying his blanket over a pile of straw that he gathered up. He’d slept in worse places before.

After he got settled in, he lay back and thought about all that had happened since last night’s dance. There were a lot of little things that bothered him about all of it, but he hadn’t quite sorted it all out as yet. He was sure, however, that there was more going on with Murray and his gang than met the eye. Maybe he could have a little talk with Angel about it. Fargo chuckled at the thought. He might as well have a little talk with one of Molly’s dead mules, for all Angel would tell him.

He drifted off to sleep, but, asleep or not, he was always on the alert. When the barn door creaked open, he came awake instantly.

His hand went to his pistol, which was right beside him in its holster. He pulled it out and waited. For a few seconds he heard nothing more, but then something scuffed a ladder rung below him. He thumbed back the hammer of the pistol.

It was dark inside the barn. Only the faintest moonlight filtered in through the cracks in the boards, but Fargo’s eyes were used to the dark by that time, and in a few seconds he saw the dark outline of a head rise above the floor of the loft.

He let the hammer down quietly and said, “Is that you, Molly?”

“Yes.” She climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and stepped into the loft. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t until just now.” Fargo slipped the pistol back into its holster. “You almost got yourself shot.”

“That would have been too bad. But I didn’t want to make too much noise getting here. I didn’t want anybody to know I came. There’s something we need to talk about.”

Fargo sat up and said, “What’s that?”

Molly walked the few paces to where he was and sat on the hay beside him.

“Talley’s funeral,” she said when she was settled.

“What about it?” Fargo asked.

“You know what happened when we buried Jed. Don’t you think Murray might try the same thing again?”

Fargo hadn’t thought about that, but now that she’d brought it up, it didn’t seem very likely to him.

“He knows we’re onto that trick,” Fargo said. “He’d expect us to have somebody waiting at Talley’s house. Besides, he might not even know Talley’s dead.”

“He knows. He knows everything that goes on around here. He probably even knew about the little stash of money I had in my house.”

“You didn’t mention any money.”