Blood Wedding

As he reached the doorway, Fargo heard something over the crackling of the flames. He turned to see the wagon bearing down on him. Murray was behind it, pushing, but with nothing to guide it in the front, it didn’t go straight for the door. It veered to one side and headed for the wall, exposing Murray, who jumped to get behind it again.

Fargo had only a couple of shots left, and he wanted to make them count. He stepped back into the barn, which was rapidly becoming an inferno, and looked for Murray.

The smoke was thick and stung Fargo’s eyes. He took shallow breaths. After a couple of seconds, he saw Murray standing to his right. In the light of the flames, Murray looked like some kind of demon. He had his back to the burning wall, and his pistol was in his hand. He was about to pull the trigger, but Fargo didn’t give him a chance.

Fargo fired one shot, and the pistol jerked from Murray’s hand and flipped backward. Murray looked down at his hand in wonderment, then looked back at Fargo.

“That was a lucky shot, Fargo. Now I don’t have a gun.” Murray had to stop and cough for a second. The smoke was getting to him. “But I don’t need one. You’re a man of honor, Fargo, and you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man. I know that, and so do you.”

“I have one bullet left,” Fargo said. “Just how sure are you that I won’t use it on you?”

He took a step forward, pointing his pistol at Murray’s head.

“I’m sure,” Murray said. “Men like you will kill in an even fight, but you’d never take an unfair advantage. I’m going to walk right out of here.”

“Jed Brand was a good friend of mine,” Fargo said. “You didn’t kill him, but you caused his death. You caused plenty of misery and death before he died and more since. No one would blame me if I shot you.”

Fargo took another determined step forward, and Murray took another back. The fire must have been blistering his back, Fargo thought.

“But you won’t.” Murray coughed. “I know you won’t.”

Murray had been splashing coal oil all around the barn. There was no way he could have avoided getting some of it on him, Fargo thought, and he was right. As Murray started to take a step forward, his clothing suddenly ignited. Sometimes you just had to let a man bring about his own destruction.

“No,” Fargo said, “I won’t shoot you. But you might wish I would.”

In an instant Murray was enveloped in flames. His clothing burned. His beard and hair were afire. He screamed and ran toward Fargo, who stepped aside and let him go. Murray had dropped his pistol. Fargo thought he recognized it and picked it up. It was hot to the touch, but Fargo didn’t drop it. It was his own Colt. Murray knew a good weapon when he stole it. Fargo put it in his holster and continued to hold Molly’s gun in his hand as he went out of the barn.

Murray was rolling on the ground, still screaming. He could roll for a long time, Fargo thought, without putting out the fire.

“Shoot me!” Murray screamed. “For God’s sake, Fargo!”

“I wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” Fargo told him. “You said so yourself.”

Murray continued to scream, but Fargo could no longer make out the words. The Trailsman walked over to Angel, lifted her up, and carried her into the house.

21

It was a little after first daylight when Lem, Abby, and Molly came riding up. There was nothing left of Lem’s barn but a pile of ashes and blackened timbers. A smaller pile of charred debris remained not far away, but nobody noticed it.

“Good God a’mighty, Fargo,” Lem said, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the burned barn and of something else that was harder to identify. “What happened here?”

Fargo gave them a short account of the fight with Murray.

“That’s him over there,” Fargo said, pointing to the burned carcass.

“I thought I smelled something funny,” Lem said.

“Doesn’t look like much now, does he?” Molly said. “Hard to believe he had us all running scared for so long. Well, we won’t be running now.”

“He still managed to cause a hell of a mess of trouble,” Lem said. “No matter how he looks and smells now. And he finally got to my place, too.”

“He got your barn,” Fargo said, “but he didn’t get your house. And he didn’t get anybody else’s house. Not today.”

“We can build a new barn,” Abby said. “It’s just a building. Where’s Angel?”

Fargo told them about that, too.

“She’s inside,” he added. “I laid her on the table.”

“I’d be proud to sit up with her,” Lem said.

“So would I, I think,” Abby said. “Even if she did try to bury me alive, she wasn’t all bad.”

“She wasn’t all good, either,” Molly said, “but even at that she didn’t deserve the kind of family she had.”

“What about you?” Fargo asked them. “How did things turn out at the Bigelow House?”

“We got all the bastards,” Lem said. “Some of them are just wounded, but we left them to take care of each other. If they do, that’s fine. They won’t be bothering anybody for a while. And if they don’t, well, to hell with them. We gave them every chance.”

“Jed would be glad to know you settled everything for him,” Abby told Fargo. “I knew you could do it.”