UNINVITED GUESTS
Fargo loosed off three quick shots, hoping that the Murrays were stupid enough to be riding in front of the gang. Jed and the others opened up about that time, and the gang members started firing off their pistols and rifles. Bright muzzle flashes lit up the dark and showed the faces of the men in reddish light.
Someone fired in the direction of the muzzle flash from Fargo’s Colt, but Fargo had already flattened himself on the floor of the loft. As he reloaded, he looked over the edge at the fighting that was going on below and saw the vague outlines of black figures striking out with hoes and pitchforks and a scythe or two. He heard the grunting of their efforts and the yells of men being jabbed by a pitchfork or sliced by a scythe. Men were being pulled off their horses now, and it was becoming impossible for Fargo to distinguish between friend and foe. He decided it was time for him to leave the loft, and when a horseman passed beneath him, he dropped over the edge and landed behind the rider.
The horse reared up, and Fargo put his arms around the rider, finding to his surprise that he wasn’t behind a horseman at all but a woman. . . .
The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
Kansas 1859—
The bonds of marriage are meant to last forever;
but when the vows exchanged include revenge,
death may come before “I do.”
1
Skye Fargo wasn’t fond of weddings. He was a Trailsman, a man given to wandering, sometimes leading other people where they wanted to go, sometimes journeying on his own. He liked the mountains and the sky. He liked being able to see the far horizons, and he liked the feel of a good horse under him. He couldn’t quite grasp the idea of a man giving up his freedom to tie himself to one woman and one spot of earth. There was nothing wrong with settling down and having a family for other people, but it wasn’t for Fargo.
Sometimes, though, the celebrations leading up to the wedding were all right, especially if there was food, music, dancing, and pretty women. Jedadiah Brand had taken care to provide all those things, and Fargo surely appreciated them.
“This is a mighty fine celebration, Jed,” Fargo said as he looked out at the dancers in the big barn.
At one end of the barn, there was a small platform where a fiddler was sawing away, calling the dance at the same time, and Fargo could smell the dust that the couples on the floor were raising as they moved enthusiastically to the fiddler’s tune. There were several children there, cutting a rug in improvised dances of their own. Fargo knew men who would ride for two days to go to a good dance, and this was a good one indeed.
There was food, too, on long tables at the end of the barn opposite the fiddler: the smell of freshly baked bread mingled with the smell of the dust, and there was corn on the cob, green beans, yellow crookneck squash, and good Kansas beef. Fargo had already tried a little of everything, and he planned to eat some more later on.
Some of the women dancers were as pretty as Fargo had seen for a while. Of course, some of them weren’t, but that didn’t bother Fargo any. He liked women in general, and he was always glad to be around them.
“Hard to believe a man would get married,” Fargo said, “with all those beauties around to tempt him.”
“I can’t be tempted by any but Abby,” Jed said. “You know that, Skye.”
Abigail, known to all as Abby, was dancing with her father, Lemuel Watkins, a tall man with black hair going gray, wide shoulders, and big hands. Abby didn’t look a thing like him. She was small and blond, with very blue eyes and a figure that would make a deacon think twice about his marriage vows. Fargo figured she took after her mother, who had died a few years earlier.
“I can’t say as I blame you,” Fargo said, “but it didn’t use to be that way.”
The truth was that when Fargo had known Jed in former days, he had been after women like a bear after honey, pretty much the same as Fargo. Jed had guided a few wagon trains with Fargo, and more than once he had come close to getting himself shot because he couldn’t stay away from a pretty woman. All that had changed when he met Abby Watkins. According to Jed, the first time he saw her, he felt like a man who’d been kicked in the head by a stallion, and from that time on he’d never even thought about another woman.
“And you know, Skye,” he’d told Fargo, “women were all I used to think about. Even for a while around here, I couldn’t keep my hands off of ’em. But I’m a different man now.”
He surely was. He’d given up his wandering life, and he was going to be a Kansas farmer. Instead of leading wagon trains out of St. Louis, he was going to let other men, men like Fargo, take the pilgrims out of the plains. He was going to walk behind a mule, plow up the earth, and plant seeds. He was going to feed his chickens and grow his corn and cattle and try to make a living at it. Before long, if everything went the way Jed planned, he would have sons to help him out.
Fargo wondered a little about that. Lemuel Watkins had never had sons of his own, but he did have a pretty daughter and a big farm, along with a big barn and a tight-plastered house. Now, because of the daughter, he was getting himself a son to share the work, since Jed and Abby planned to live on the farm with him.
“It will be our farm when he passes on,” Jed had explained, so maybe he and Watkins were both getting something out of the deal.
And Jed was getting Abby into the bargain, so Fargo figured it wasn’t such a bad trade. Not one that he’d make, but not bad if that was what a man wanted.
“It’s going to be a good life, Fargo,” Jed said. “Different, that’s for sure, and not what I’m used to, but good. With Abby, it would have to be.”
“I wish you well,” Fargo said, “and now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a dance with your bride-to-be.”
“As long as you’re going to stand up for me tomorrow at the wedding, I can’t very well refuse you the pleasure of a dance,” Jed said. “But I know you from way back, Fargo. Just be sure to keep your hands where they belong and to talk about the weather or the music.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t trust me.”
“I trust you all right, but when a wolf is in among the hens, it pays to be a little extra careful. Lem lost nearly seventy-five hens to wolves last winter, and I don’t plan to lose Abby to any wolf, animal or human, not even you.”
Fargo laughed. “You’re already talking like a farmer, Jed. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’d never try anything funny with anybody you cared about. You know that.”
“You’re right. I do. So go have your dance, and have some fun. Not too much fun, though.”
The fiddler’s tune was over, and the dancers were taking a breath before he got started again. There were several young men moving in Abby’s direction, but Fargo got to her first, and the other men stopped and looked at each other disgustedly for a second or two before moving off to find other partners.