“It’s Murray!” Molly yelled, and Fargo looked over her shoulder to see the leader of the gang, with Angel still at his side, not far away.
Murray and Angel weren’t running away. They were sitting on their horses, silhouetted against the night sky, waiting with drawn pistols for Fargo and Molly to get closer.
Molly got off a couple of shots, but then the hammer of her pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
“Damn!” she said.
With the gang coming up behind him and Murray waiting in front, Fargo didn’t have much choice of where to go. He jerked on the reins, hoping to turn the horse to the right, but the animal was moving too fast and the footing wasn’t certain. The next thing Fargo knew, he and Molly were flying through the air, asses over elbows, and then he hit the ground, hard, and didn’t know anything for a long time.
When Fargo came to, he had no idea where he was. Total darkness surrounded him. He might as well have been tied up inside a heavy leather bag for all that he could see. He was in a sitting position, and there was something hard against his back, something that felt like a rock. His head throbbed as if he’d been kicked by a horse.
The thought of being kicked in the head brought back the memory of his fall. He must have hit his head somehow. He was lucky that his neck wasn’t broken. Maybe it had been. Maybe he was dead and in hell. He knew there were plenty of people who’d wished him there over the years. The place he was in now didn’t seem hot enough for hell, though. In fact, it was a little cool, and the rock at Fargo’s back seemed damp. He had a feeling there wouldn’t be a lot of damp rocks in hell. He couldn’t smell any brimstone, either, and there weren’t any fires. There was nobody with hooves and a forked tail. There was nothing, in fact, but the blackness. And the silence. Fargo realized for the first time that he couldn’t hear a thing.
Then he realized that he couldn’t feel his hands.
Had he gone deaf?
Had someone cut off his hands?
He tried to move and found that he couldn’t. His feet were tied together, and his arms were behind him. Probably tied at the wrists, tied so tightly that the circulation was cut off. Which was why he couldn’t feel them. That wasn’t good. It could lead to some serious problems later on.
“Anybody here?” Fargo said. His voice was a hoarse croak.
His voice echoed off stone walls, and a voice not far away said. “Just me.”
“Molly?”
“That’s right. Are you all right, Fargo? I thought for sure you were dead.”
Fargo’s head pounded and his shoulders had started to ache.
“I might be better off if I was. Do you know where we are?”
“Murray’s hideout. Don’t talk too loud or somebody will hear us.”
Fargo didn’t think he could talk loud even if he wanted to. His throat felt as if it might be full of sharp-edged stones.
“I was wondering where the hideout was,” he said, his voice rasping. “But now that I’m in it, I still don’t know where it is.”
“It’s a cave. We’re in a little valley not far from the Missouri River. This cave was carved out a long time ago when the river first came this way, I guess.”
Fargo tried to take that in. “How far from Wesley’s farm are we?”
“A pretty good distance. You’ve been out for a long time.”
Fargo thought about that. The inside of his mouth was dry and tasted like it had been stuffed with burned chicken feathers.
“Why didn’t they just kill us?”
“They were going to at first. That’s what Murray wanted to do, but Angel talked him out of it. She said something about you being different from the rest of the farmers, that maybe you’d throw in with them, but I don’t think she fooled Murray much. He knew what she really meant.” Molly chuckled. “You get around, don’t you, Fargo.”
Fargo didn’t see any point in talking about that. He said, “What about you? They could have killed you.”
“I guess they figured that if they were going to keep you around for a while, they might as well keep me, too. Or maybe Murray fancies me.”
“I wouldn’t blame him if he did,” Fargo said.
“That’s mighty gallant of you, Fargo, especially considering that we’re trussed up like a pair of turkeys. But I don’t really think Murray fancies me. I don’t think they’ll keep either one of us alive for very long.”
As he got more accustomed to the dark, Fargo realized that the blackness wasn’t quite as intense as he’d at first believed. There was a faint glow almost directly across from him. It wasn’t much, but he knew that the cave must have several rooms. Murray’s gang was in one where there was light from fire and torches, while Fargo and Molly had been stuck back in one of the other, darker rooms.
Fargo wiggled his arms, trying to stimulate the circulation in his hands. He didn’t have any luck.
“Why did you come charging up to Wesley’s house like that?” Fargo asked. “You’re lucky you didn’t get killed right then and there.”
“I was just so damn mad,” Molly said. “I thought that by the time I got there, everybody from all around would have come to help Alf out. But there was nobody. Well, except for you, and I didn’t know you were around. It made me mad that nobody cared about Alf, and I guess I just lost my head. Now I’ll probably lose it anyhow.”
“Maybe not. Maybe we can get out of here.”
“Sure. Any minute now Angel will come in and cut you loose because she likes you so much. Let me set you straight, Fargo. You’re good, but you’re not that good. Besides, even if she cut the ropes, you’d never get past Murray.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Angel. I thought maybe you could cut these ropes. If you don’t, I’m going to lose my hands.”
“I don’t have a knife, and I don’t think I can chew these ropes in two. If there was a rat around, maybe he could do it for you.”
Fargo didn’t much like rats, and he’d just as soon Molly hadn’t mentioned them. But there weren’t likely to be any rats in a cave. He said, “I carry a knife in my boot. If we can get it out, and if you can get hold of it, we can at least get loose. After that, we can see about getting away from here.”
“A knife? Why didn’t you say so sooner? How can we get to it?”
“Can you get over here?”
“I can sure as hell try.”
Fargo heard a muffled flop as Molly fell over and then a scratchy scraping sound as she snaked her way across the floor on her stomach. Within a minute or two, he felt her head bump his leg.
“I’m here,” she said. “Now what?”
“Now we see if we can get to the knife.”
Fargo wasn’t actually sure the knife was there. Whoever tied his feet together might have noticed it and taken it. But Fargo didn’t think that would have happened. The knife had been overlooked before and had gotten him out of more than one scrape. He slid down the wall until he was lying on his back with his arms and hands beneath him. It was just as well he couldn’t feel anything back there, he thought. He’d probably be screaming if he could.
He managed somehow to raise his legs until they were pointing just about straight up at the ceiling. The knife didn’t fall out of the boot. There were two possible reasons: either someone had removed it, as he’d feared, or the ropes that held his feet were tied so tightly that the knife was stuck.
“Damn,” Fargo said, and then he explained the problem to Molly.
“Kick your feet around,” she said. “Maybe you can shake it loose. If it’s there, which I wouldn’t count on.”
Fargo bent his knees and kicked straight up. Nothing happened. He tried it again, and he thought he felt something move inside the boot. He couldn’t be sure because by now he couldn’t feel his lower legs and feet much better than he could feel his hands. Whoever had tied him had certainly done a good job of it. Or a had job, depending on your point of view.