“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.
Fargo didn’t really blame them. They had their own homes and families to think of. On the other hand, Fargo couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to help out a neighbor, even though it would be a risk. Maybe that was another reason he’d never become a farmer.
He left the Ovaro on the far side of the cornfield and made his way through the tall rustling stalks. He didn’t have to worry about making noise. The gang members were riding around the house and barn, brandishing torches, shooting their pistols into the air, and yelling as if they’d had plenty to drink before coming to raid Wesley’s property. They weren’t going to hear a man walking through a cornfield. They probably wouldn’t have heard a buffalo stampede.
In the light of the moon and the flickering torches, Fargo could see Alf Wesley’s body lying sprawled a few feet away from the front of his house. He wasn’t moving, and Fargo didn’t doubt that he was dead. A rifle lay a short distance from one outstretched hand.
Peter Murray sat astride his horse near the house and watched the frolic with the dignified air of a circuit-riding preacher. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and a little thick through the middle. He had a thick, bushy beard that was mostly black, though it was silvered by the moon. Fargo couldn’t really see his eyes, but they glowed crimson in the reflected torchlight, and Fargo thought he could see the ghost of a smile through the wild tangle of beard.
Angel was near her father, but she didn’t seem quite so pleased with what was going on. She wasn’t smiling, and her shoulders slumped. That could have been a result of her wound, but Fargo thought it was the result of her disapproval. He chuckled to himself. He was getting soft if he thought Angel didn’t endorse what was happening. She knew what was going to happen before she rode out with the gang.
Fargo was a little sorry she was there because he was about to do something that would hurt her more than the death of her brother. He was going to kill her father. He didn’t see anything else he could do. He couldn’t fight the whole gang, which had grown back to its original size or larger already, so he’d deal with it the way he’d deal with a snake: cut off the head and hope the body would die. It was a little like bushwhacking, and Fargo didn’t like it. However, Murray hadn’t given Wesley much of a chance, either.
Fargo pulled his Colt from the holster and brought it up to shoot, but before he could pull the trigger, someone came riding up, firing a shotgun and shrieking like a gut-shot antelope.
It was Molly Doyle, the only farmer with the gumption to take a hand in things. Instead of sneaking up on the gang like Fargo, she’d apparently decided to shoot it out single-handedly. Maybe she thought that they’d believe she was crazy and that would scare them away. If that was her idea, it didn’t work, but it did slow things down a little.
Not because anybody was afraid of her. Crazy or not, she was using a gun with a limited range and with only two shells in it, not the kind of ordnance to strike fear into the heart of anybody with even a little knowledge of firearms. Anybody who got nicked by the buckshot fired from a distance was going to be more peeved than hurt. Several of Murray’s men stopped riding around in circles and sat watching to see what Molly would do next.
Not having hit anybody with her shotgun, Molly simply tossed it away from her and pulled her pistol. She did a little better with that, and Fargo was surprised to see her shoot one man out of the saddle.
Probably just luck, Fargo thought. It wasn’t easy to shoot straight while you were riding full tilt on horseback.
When the man fell from his horse, Molly turned and rode toward the spot where Murray and Angel had been. But they were no longer there. As soon as Molly had come into view, they had ridden away, and Fargo didn’t know where they had gone. All he knew was that Molly had spoiled his chance of killing Murray and that she wasn’t likely to catch up with him and do the job herself.
All she was going to do was get herself killed.
Unless Fargo did something to help her out.
He ran out of the cornfield, firing his pistol. He didn’t think he’d hit anybody. He was just trying to create a momentary distraction, to do something that would turn the attention to him and away from Molly.
It worked. Murray’s men started shooting at Fargo, who ran a zigzag trail toward Molly. Approaching her horse from behind, Fargo holstered his pistol. He made a running jump, placed his hands on the horse’s rump, and propelled himself onto the horse’s back behind Molly. The horse reared up in surprise, but Fargo held onto Molly’s waist and didn’t fall. Reaching around her ample body, he grabbed the reins from her hands and snapped them against the horse’s neck. The horse had recovered from its shock at the sudden addition to its load, and it jumped forward at a run.
Instead of heading away from the house, Fargo ran the horse straight toward Murray’s men, who were so surprised at his audacity that they forgot to shoot for a second or two. By the time they remembered, Fargo was right in the middle of them, and then past them.