“Well?” Murray said when Fargo didn’t answer. “Is that your name or not?”
“It’s my name,” Fargo said. “Not that it matters. What matters is that if you want your daughter to stay alive, you need to get your men together and ride away from here. And not in the direction the farmers went.”
“That’s an interesting proposition. And what’ll you do if I don’t?”
“Your daughter’s nothing to me,” Fargo said. “I’ll pull the trigger, and you’ll get to see the top of her head come off.”
Murray waved the pistol he was holding loosely in his right hand.
“What if I just shoot you instead?” he asked.
“You could do that,” Fargo said. “But you’d still see the top of her head come off. You ought to know that. I have my finger on the trigger, and if you shoot me, there’s no way in hell I won’t pull it. Even if you kill me, I’ll pull it.”
Murray sat easy on his horse and looked over Fargo’s head at the men who’d come from the barn. He nodded at them. They holstered their pistols and went to get their horses.
“Supposing I let you live,” Murray said. “What then?”
“Your daughter lives, too.”
“You mean you’ll let her go, don’t you? You live, I get my daughter back.”
Fargo gave him a tight grin.
“No, Murray, that’s not the way it works. I don’t trust you any more than I’d trust a diamondback rattler. As soon as I let her go, you’d gun me down where I stand. So you’re not getting her back.”
“If I’m not getting her back, then just what did you have in mind?”
“She goes with me. I see to it that her wound gets taken care of. When she’s ready, she comes back to you.”
Angel didn’t seem to think much of the idea. She tried to pull herself out of Fargo’s grasp, but he pushed her arm a little higher and kept the pistol barrel punched into her chin.
“She’s got spirit, Fargo,” Murray said. “But you’re the one with the pistol.”
“I guess that means you’re going to take the deal.”
“You don’t trust me,” Murray said. “But I’m supposed to trust you, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Fargo said.
“Well, to hell with that, you son of a bitch. I’d lay odds you’re the one killed my son last night, and today you’ve shot my daughter. And now you want me to trust you?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn whether you trust me or not. That doesn’t have anything to do with it. We’re talking about your daughter’s life here, Murray. I shot her, but she’s alive. That’s more than I can say for the others I shot.”
The two men lay not far from where Fargo stood. Neither of them had moved since hitting the ground, and they weren’t likely to move ever again.
“If you don’t let your daughter go with me,” Fargo said, “she’ll wind up as dead as they are. I don’t see that you have much choice.”
Angel spoke for the first time. “Kill the son of a bitch.”
“You heard her Murray. Go ahead. Maybe it’s worth a try. It’s either that or ride away. Your choice.”
Murray sat and thought it over. For all the anxiety that showed on his face, he might have been considering whether to wear a black shirt or a blue one.
“Suppose I go along with you,” he said after a couple of long minutes had gone by. “How long do you keep her?”
“I told you. Until she’s ready to ride away.”
“That won’t be long,” Angel said. “You bastard.”
Murray went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“And you’ll just let her ride away?”
“You have my word on that.”
“I don’t know what your word’s worth, Fargo, but it seems like I’m going to find out.”
“Just make up your mind,” Fargo said. “This pistol’s getting heavy. My finger might slip.”
“All right,” Murray said. “I guess you have me over a barrel. But I have to warn you about something.”
“What’s that?” Fargo asked.
“If anything happens to Angel, I’m going to come after you and kill you. There won’t be anything to stop me. And while I’m at it, I’ll burn every house and barn and field within fifty miles. You have my word on that. And my word’s good.”
“I believe you,” Fargo said, but Murray wasn’t listening. He nodded at his men, and they rode past Fargo, joining the men who waited at the barn.
“You son of a bitch,” Angel said. “Let go of my arm.”
“Not yet,” Fargo said. “I don’t trust your father enough to do that.”
“He’s not going to do anything. Let go of me.”
Murray and his men rode away without a backward glance. When Fargo judged they were out of firing range, he let go of Angel’s arm, and she promptly fainted dead away. Which made it a lot easier for Fargo to throw her on a horse and take her away from there.
“You should’ve killed him,” Molly said. “You had him right there, and you let him get away.”
“If I’d killed him, there would still have been plenty of others to get rid of me and come after you,” Fargo reminded her. “And come after everybody else, too.”
“And you promised him you wouldn’t kill Angel. Dammit, why did you have to do that?”
“Because I wanted to get out of there alive, for one thing, and I didn’t want Murray killing everybody else, which is what he would have done.”
“Damn. But you’re probably right. I’ll bet you always keep your promises, too, don’t you.”
Fargo nodded.
“I knew it. That’s the kind of man you are. So you can’t kill her. How about if I kill her?”
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.”