Blood Wedding

“One day, my mother went to town. Alice. Her name was Alice, but I never called her that. There was a fight there that day between the free-staters and some of the people who favored slavery. She got caught in the middle, for no reason. She was just there. But she got killed anyway.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Fargo said, meaning it. “But I don’t see what it has to do with your father’s war against the farmers here. Looks like his quarrel is with somebody else.”

“That’s not the way he sees it. He thinks people should have done something about my mother, but nobody ever did. She was just in the way, they said, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault that she died. That was the way people looked at it. Pa tried to do something, but nobody listened to him. He came home one night and told me and Paul that he was going to make people sorry they’d ever messed with the Murray family. He was going to get revenge on the ones responsible, and on everybody else besides. Nobody was ever going to cross the Murrays again. The world belonged to the strong and the violent, he said, and he was going to be as strong and as violent as anybody in it.”

“That’s not going to do a lot of good for your mother,” Fargo said.

“No, it’s not.” Angel sat up and then got to her feet. “It seems to do a lot for Pa, though, and Paul understood. Now Paul’s gone, and somebody’s going to have to pay for that.”

Fargo stood beside her. He thought he might as well try to explain things to her one more time, for all the good it would do.

“It was as much your father’s fault that Paul died as it was anybody’s,” he said. “If you hadn’t been out to get revenge on Jed, both of them would be alive, and quite a few others would, too. Sarah Johnson. Tom Talley. Just to name a couple of them.”

“You don’t understand,” Angel said. She began getting into her clothes. “There’s more to it than I’ve told you.”

Fargo started to get dressed as well. When he was finished, he said, “Why don’t you tell me what else there is about what’s going on around here.”

“That’s not for me to do. I’m not even sure I know exactly what it is. Pa doesn’t tell me everything, the way he did Paul. You’ve been fun, Fargo, but I have to keep some of my secrets, even though you’ve treated me better than any man ever has, even Jed. You know a few tricks he didn’t, and I appreciate it.”

“I’d say the pleasure was all mine,” Fargo told her, “but you and I both know better.”

Angel blushed and then smiled. “I guess we do, at that. I’m sorry it has to stop, but we won’t be seeing each other again. Not like this.”

She went over to her horse and untied the reins from the limb. Then she managed to get in the saddle again without Fargo’s help.

“I’m going to ask you a favor, Fargo. I know you’re a man of your word, so I’m going to ask you not to follow me. I think you owe me that.”

“All right,” Fargo said. “I won’t follow you.”

“Thank you for that. I don’t want to see you get killed, not this soon after we, well, you know.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” Fargo said. “I don’t want to get killed at all.”

“Then mind your own business and maybe you won’t,” Angel said, and rode off through the trees.

Fargo watched her go, and when she was out of sight, he got up on the Ovaro and went back to the Watkins farm. He thought about Angel and what she had said all the way.

13

The Murray gang struck at Alf Wesley’s farm that night around midnight. Wesley was asleep when the shooting started, but he must have run outside and tried to put a stop to it.

He didn’t have a chance. He was shot to ribbons before he got off his front porch.

The Murrays stayed around after he was dead, shooting and hollering and generally having themselves a fine old time. It was as if they were trying to attract attention to what they’d done, and if attention was what they wanted, they got it. Wesley farm was close enough to Lem’s for the noise to awaken Fargo, and it didn’t take him long to get the Ovaro saddled and go to see what the trouble was.

Lem wanted to go with him, but Fargo told him to stay at home.

“You can’t leave Abby here alone,” the Trailsman said. “And we don’t want her to go with us. You need to be here to put up some kind of fight if they come this way. Make plenty of noise if anybody shows up here, and I’ll come back.”

Lem said that he’d try to make as much noise as he could, but Fargo could see that he wasn’t happy about staying.

“You think they’ve killed Alf?” Lem asked.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Fargo said.

The gang didn’t seem too worried that anyone would interfere with their fun. And they needn’t have been. As Fargo neared Wesley’s farm, he realized that no farmers had come in response to the ruckus, and he didn’t think any of them would be coming along later, even though the shooting could be heard for miles. Everybody heard it, Fargo was sure, but nobody appeared willing to take the risk of leaving his own house.