“What if they’re not lucky?”
“Then they get killed.”
“I can see why Lem doesn’t want to get mixed up in it. But Jed has always had a mind of his own.”
“He has more responsibilities now,” Abby said.
If Fargo was peeved by her casual assumption that men like him had no responsibilities, he didn’t show it. After all, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know how things were out on the trail or in the settlements farther out west. There were responsibilities aplenty for anyone who’d take them, and Jed had never been shy about doing it. He wasn’t shying away now, either, to hear Abby tell it.
“So you want Jed to forget about Murray and stick to his farming,” Fargo said.
Abby smiled. She had a nice smile that made little dimples appear in both cheeks.
“That’s right,” she said. “I want him to. But do you think he will?”
“Not likely.”
“You do know him, don’t you? But I haven’t told you everything.”
No wonder Jed had looked so shifty, Fargo thought. He asked what else Abby had to tell him about.
“Angel Murray,” Abby said. “She and Jed used to be . . . friends.”
Angel was the daughter of Peter Murray, the gang leader, and the sister of Paul, Peter’s son and second in command. Fargo didn’t have to ask how Angel and Jed had known each other. If Angel was as pretty as the stories had it, Jed wouldn’t have asked her much about her family’s habits when he first met her.
“I guess they were pretty good friends,” Fargo said.
The look in Jed’s eyes when they’d discussed the outlaw gangs was pretty much explained now, and Fargo figured that there had been other women as well, knowing Jed, even though he was interested only in Abby now.
“Yes, they were good friends,” Abby said. “If that’s what you want to call it. But now they’re not. She hates Jed because he quit seeing her when he found out about what she and her family did. And that’s why he needs a friend like you. Most of the people in there . . .” Abby paused and looked back at the barn. “Well, they’re good people. Like my father. He’d do anything for me, or for his neighbors. But they think they can stay out of a fight if they just look the other way. It doesn’t work like that.”
Fargo thought maybe he’d underestimated her. She wasn’t as naive as she’d sounded only a few seconds before.
“So,” she went on, “I was hoping you could stay around for a while. We could use a good hand around here.”
“I’m not much good at farming,” Fargo told her.
“I wasn’t thinking about farming.”
“I was afraid of that,” Fargo said. “You think Jed’s in danger, then.”
“I think we all are. You said you knew about the Murrays.”
“Revenge,” Fargo said. “That’s what they claim causes them to be the way they are.”
“That’s right. Their story is that they’ve been done wrong by everybody in the territory, and all they’re doing now is getting a little of their own back.”
“By killing and burning and stealing,” Fargo said.
“Any way they can. That’s what they say. I think they just do it because they like it.”
Fargo thought the same thing, but he was surprised that Abby did. She was seeming less innocent by the minute.
“You didn’t happen to invite them to the wedding, I guess.”
“No, of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think they might be on the way,” Fargo said.
2
Fargo could hear the music coming from the barn, the clucking of the chickens on their roosts, the sound of the wind in the cornstalks. Those were the things that most people could have heard, if they’d listened for them. But Fargo had spent most of his life listening for things that not just anyone could hear, and now he heard the distant sound of hoofbeats, headed in the direction of the farm.
“You think the Murrays are coming here?” Abby said.
“It might not be the Murrays,” Fargo said, “but it’s a lot of riders. I think we should get back to the barn.”
Abby didn’t waste any time questioning him further, another point in her favor. She gathered her skirts and ran for the big open doors of the barn.
She had a head start, but Fargo, with his long, loping strides got there just a little ahead of her. He started swinging the tall doors shut while Abby ran to stand beside the fiddler and shout a warning.
“The Murrays are coming!”
She had to yell it twice before anybody paid her any attention. The second time, the fiddler stopped playing, his lively song ending on a squealing note that trailed off into nothing. The dancers stopped and turned to the stage.
“The Murrays are coming,” Abby said again into the silence that had settled in the barn.
The only other sound was the squealing of door hinges, and Fargo thought he and Abby were going to look pretty foolish if the riders passed the farm by or if they were only more guests, arriving late to the dance.
“What are we going to do?” somebody called out.
Fargo hadn’t thought much about that, but then he realized that the people in the barn were farmers. They wore pistols. They didn’t carry rifles. Of all the men there, only he and a couple of others, including Jed, had weapons. And they weren’t carrying them. They’d put them aside when the dance started.
“Get your guns,” Fargo said. “And then see if you can block the door with something.”
Barn doors weren’t made to be barred from the inside, and there was nothing more needed than a gentle push to open them. The Murray gang could ride right on in.
Fargo went over to the wall where he’d hung his gun belt on a nail. He took the belt down and buckled it on while Jed and several other men started stacking grain sacks against the doors. Fargo knew the bags wouldn’t stop anyone for very long. He looked around the barn for more weapons. There were a few tools, but that was all.
“Pitchforks in the loft,” Lem said at his side. “I got a shotgun in the house.”
“Too late for the shotgun,” Fargo said. “Grab a hoe.”
He smelled the dry hay as he started up the ladder to the high loft that ran half the length of the barn. There were no lanterns hanging up there, but Fargo thought how easily the whole barn could go up.
“Put out the lanterns,” he called.
It wouldn’t matter if the barn were in darkness. In fact, it would make things better. There was no danger of any of Jed’s guests shooting each other, since they weren’t armed, and the darkness would make it harder for the gang to find targets.
He reached the loft and tossed down a couple of pitchforks with long, curving tines.
“Don’t hit anyone who’s not on a horse,” he said.
Lem caught a pitchfork and said, “Get those lanterns out, like he told us.”
Several of the young men ran around the barn and doused the lights as the thudding of hoofbeats shook the ground outside the door.
There was one lantern left on, and long shadows danced around the barn walls before it was extinguished. In the sudden darkness there was gunfire from outside, and bullets smacked into the hard wood of the barn doors.
No doubt about it, Fargo thought, it was the Murray gang, all right.
There were only a few shots and then more silence. Fargo could hear the people in the barn moving around as they sought through the darkness for a place to hide. One of the younger children started crying, but the noise was cut off as someone covered his mouth. Fargo didn’t blame him for crying. There wouldn’t be much use in hiding if the Murrays got inside. People were going to die, and most of them would be farmers, not gang members.
Fargo could hear yelling outside, and then the barn doors began to slide slowly back into the barn. Fargo pulled the big Colt from its holster and got ready. The only advantage he and the other couple of armed men had was that they were in almost total darkness, whereas the Murrays would be silhouetted against the faint light from the moon and stars. Fargo hoped Jed had enough sense to hold his fire until more of the gang was bunched in the doorway.