Fargo kicked again. The knife fell out of the boot, but its scabbard stayed inside. The hilt of the knife hit Fargo squarely on the breastbone, sending a sharp pain through his chest. He clamped his teeth shut and didn’t cry out. He thought it was a good thing he’d been struck by the hilt and not the point of the blade. The knife bounced off his chest and hit Molly’s head before falling to the floor.
“Now all you have to do is get your hands on it,” Fargo said. “I’d do it myself, but I can’t feel a thing.”
“My fingers feel like pieces of cordwood,” Molly said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
She got into a sitting position and fumbled around for the knife. While she was groping, Fargo squirmed back up against the wall to wait until Molly got hold of the knife, if she ever managed it.
It took a while, but finally Molly said, “I think I have it. Scoot over here, and let’s see what I can do.”
Fargo dug in with his heels and pulled himself across the floor. When his feet encountered something soft, Molly said, “That’s me. Turn around and back up to me.”
Fargo did his best, and eventually they were back to back.
“Now’s the hard part,” Molly said. “I think I have the knife with the sharp edge of the blade facing you. I can hold onto it, maybe, if you can move your arms up and down.”
Fargo didn’t know of any other way to do it. Not being able to feel his hands, he was probably going to get cut pretty badly, but it wouldn’t matter if the ropes got cut as well.
“Can you feel where I am?” he asked.
“You’re about right. Get to moving.”
Fargo moved. It was slow work because the knife occasionally slipped from Molly’s hands, and then she was forced to pick it up and get it back into position. Fargo didn’t ask why the knife slipped away. It could have happened because Molly’s fingers were too numb to hold it. Or it could have been that her hands were slick with his blood. If it was the latter, he didn’t want to know about it.
After what seemed to be several hours, though it was more like ten minutes, the ropes parted and Fargo’s arms separated. But he couldn’t do anything to help Molly, not then. He had to wait until the circulation returned to his hands and fingers.
That took another few minutes, and they were mighty painful ones. It was as if someone had stuck Fargo’s hands into a fire and then stuck red-hot needles into his hands. When he could finally flex his fingers, the pain ran all the way up his arms. He found that his hands were covered with blood, but he couldn’t feel the cuts yet. That would come later, and he didn’t let it worry him. He found the knife and cut his feet free. Then he cut the ropes that bound Molly.
She groaned a little when her circulation began to come back, but not enough to be heard by anyone in another part of the cave.
“Well, we’re loose,” she said when she could speak again. “What now? We can’t just walk out of here.”
“We don’t have a lot of other choices,” Fargo said. “But at least we don’t have to go out the front way.”
“Who says there’s another way?”
“Nobody. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. We’ll just have to find out.”
“You might not have noticed,” Molly said, “but it’s darker than the inside of a black cat at midnight in here. And if we start going farther back, it’s just going to get darker.”
Fargo couldn’t argue with that. He said, “You can go out and face Murray if you want to. I figure you’d get about one step into the light before you got shot four or five times. I’d rather take my chances in the dark if there’s another way out of here.”
“So we feel our way along, is that it?”
Fargo nodded, then realized that Molly couldn’t see him. He said, “That’s it. We’ll either find a way out or get stuck somewhere and starve.”
“I could do with missing a few meals, but I don’t much like the idea of starving. And what about the bats?”
Fargo didn’t know anything about bats.
“They’re not in this part of the cave,” Molly told him, “but I heard Murray talking about them. They’re in here somewhere, and I don’t like the idea of running into them.”
“Bats won’t hurt you.”
“They’ll tangle up in your hair. I don’t think I could stand that. I lost my hat when we fell, or I wouldn’t be worried.”
Women never ceased to amaze Fargo. Here was one who’d charged at Murray and his gang even though she was outnumbered fifteen or twenty to one, and she was worried about bats.
“Bats don’t get in your hair,” Fargo said. “That’s just a tale some folks like to tell.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. The only thing you have to worry about is that the floor under their roost will be mighty nasty.”
“As long as they don’t get in my hair, I don’t care.”
“Then let’s see if we can find a way out of here,” Fargo said.
14
Fargo stuck his knife back in his boot, and he and Molly limped to the back wall of the room, where they started feeling their way in opposite directions: Fargo to the right and Molly to the left. Judging from the glow that Fargo could see across from them, the room was a fairly large one, though that didn’t mean there was another exit or that it would be large enough for them to squeeze through even if it existed. And if there was an exit from the room, it might not lead them out of the cave. It could just as easily lead them deeper underground and have no outlet. Still, Fargo figured the risk was worth it. The outcome of facing Murray without a weapon other than a knife was pretty much a certainty. At least this way there was a chance, no matter how small it was.
“I found something here,” Molly said after Fargo had gone only a few feet. “It’s not very big, though.”
“It might not be the only way out,” Fargo said. “Keep looking.”
They looked, but neither of them found any other way out. They met at the opening Molly had located, and Fargo tried to gauge its size by running his hand around the edges.
“I can see why Murray didn’t bother to put a guard on us,” he said. “He didn’t think we could get out through here even if we did get loose.”
“Was he right?” Molly asked. “Usually I don’t mind being big, but there are times when I wish I was as small as Abby. This is one of them.”
Fargo judged that the opening, which started almost at the level of the floor, was at most a couple of feet high and not much wider. They could snake along through it if it didn’t get any narrower. Maybe it would widen out. Maybe not. If it didn’t, they’d be stuck. But it was the best chance they had.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “If it gets too tight, you can back out.”
“Not if I’m stuck.”
“You won’t get stuck,” Fargo said with more confidence than he felt. “If I can make it through, so can you. Or you can stay here. That’s up to you.”
Fargo lay down on the floor and scooted into the opening. His shoulders cleared the sides by only a few inches, and it was even darker in there than where he’d just been. The absence of light was total. God only knew what he was getting into. Somebody had told him once that it was better to face the devil you knew than to take a chance of facing the devil you didn’t know. He’d always thought that was a pretty craven way of thinking, but right now he wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t good advice.
Too late to worry about that, though. He slithered along as best he could, keeping his head low so as not to hit it on the rock above him. He didn’t think he could help yelling if he did, since his head was still as sore as if he’d been scalped.