Blood Wedding

The next few days passed without any more incursions by Murray. Fargo figured he was looking for a new hideout, since Angel had told them where he’d stayed after leaving the cave. The drunken doctor had come out and removed the bullet from Angel’s shoulder, and she was healing again. Fargo and Lem tried to decide what to do about Murray.

“There aren’t that many places around here he could go,” Lem said. “If we could find out where he is, we’d go after him.”

“Who’s we,” Fargo wanted to know.

“I’ve talked to Cass Ellis and Bob Tabor. Both of them would throw in with us. And they think they could find some others. Murray shouldn’t have hung Frank from that scarecrow. That made people madder than anything he’s done so far.”

“What about Rip Johnson?” Fargo asked.

Rip had been by a couple of times already, trying to get Abby’s attention, hoping to make some time with her.

“Rip’s ready to ride anytime we say. He told me to let him know first thing, just as soon as we decide on a plan, so he could be ready. He and Frank were friends, just like he and Tom were. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed like them, and he knows it.”

Fargo thought about that and decided to ride over to Talley’s place, or Molly’s, since it was hers now by virtue of the bank and her own persistence.

He stopped in Angel’s room first. She was propped up on some pillows and smiled when he came in.

“I guess we’re even now, Fargo. I stuck up for you when Pa wanted to kill you, and you stuck up for me the other day. I was just about sure Pa was going to kill me.”

“He almost did. I need to know where he’s hiding out these days.”

Fargo had already asked that question more than once, and Angel kept putting him off. He wasn’t sure if she really didn’t know anything or if she was still protecting her father even though he’d shot her.

“I’d tell you if I knew. He could be back in the cave, though. That’s like something he’d do. He’d try to outsmart you, and if he believed you wouldn’t expect him to be there, he might head straight for it. It would be worth a try.”

Fargo had already considered that possibility. He didn’t think Murray would go back to the cave. It was too easy to get trapped in a cave if you didn’t know the way out, and Fargo didn’t think Murray would want to exit by the route Fargo had used. It was too uncomfortable, and it took too long. And Fargo would know where he’d be coming out.

“We could check the cave,” Fargo said, not really meaning it. “There’s something else that’s been bothering me.”

Angel tried to sit up a little straighter, hardly wincing at the pain she must have felt.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked.

There were a lot of things. Fargo had a whole list of them, but he didn’t want to go through them with Angel. So he told her one of them.

“Seems to me your father always knows what’s going on with the farmers. He knows when the funerals are, and he knows who’s going to be there. He knows whose house the bodies will be in, and he knows who’ll be sitting up with them. I don’t see how he does it.”

“I don’t know, either, but I see what you mean. If Paul were alive, he could tell you. Pa always let him in on the plans. He never told me anything. He let me ride with him, but that was only because I wouldn’t stay behind. You know something, Fargo?”

Fargo didn’t like guessing games, so he didn’t reply. Angel apparently didn’t expect him to, and she answered her own question.

“I should have left Pa long ago. I must have been crazy to stay with him when I saw what he was doing.”

“I’m not too clear on what he’s doing.” Fargo said. “You told me a while back that there was more to it than I knew, but you never explained what you meant by it.”

“That’s because I don’t know much more than you do. But Pa and Paul used to go off all the time to discuss their plans. That’s probably when they met with their spy.”

“How do you know there was a spy?”

“You said it yourself. Pa always knew everything. There had to be a spy. I thought you knew that. I just can’t tell you who it was because I was never there when they met.”

Fargo had figured out the spy part for himself. He even thought he knew who the spy was, which was why he was going to see Molly.

“You must have some idea about the plans,” he said.

He had a vague idea, himself, but he couldn’t quite make sense of all the ideas rattling around in his head.

“All I know is that Pa was upset with everybody when Ma was killed,” Angel said. “He hates the farmers, he hates the free-staters, he hates the slaveholders. Sometimes that’s all he can talk about. I don’t know how he thinks he can whip all of them, but for some reason he started with the farmers.”

Fargo knew why Murray had started with the farmers. It was the smart thing to do because he could whip them more easily than the other groups. If he had mixed it up with the others, the army would have gotten involved, and that would have been the end of things for Murray right there. Which was why Fargo couldn’t figure out how Murray could go beyond the farmers.