Abby got to her first and lifted her to a sitting position. There was blood on the front of Angel’s shirt, but she was alive and her eyes were open.
Abby tore the shirt off and Fargo got a look at the wound as he came up. He didn’t think it was serious. The only bad thing about it was its location.
“He shot her in the same shoulder you did,” Abby said. “The son of a bitch.”
Lem shook his head in disapproval of his daughter’s language.
“You ought not to talk any such way,” he said, “but a man that would shoot his own child is a son of a bitch in my book, too.”
“We’ll take you back to our place,” Abby said. “We’ll take care of you again. You won’t have to deal with that son of a . . .”
“Hold it,” Lem said. “We can take care of her without saying what her daddy is. Fargo, you go cut down Frank. Him hanging there like that’s just not right.”
Fargo and Molly went to the scarecrow. Fargo took his knife out of his boot and cut the ropes that held Conner up. Molly caught him as he sagged forward and lowered him to the ground.
“Those bastards,” she said. “But we got four of them. I say let the buzzards have them.”
“We need to do a little better than that for them,” Fargo said. “But not much. Can you round up some help?”
“There’s not that many of us left. And if this keeps on, there won’t be any.”
“It won’t keep on,” Fargo said.
“What are you going to do to stop it.”
Fargo shook his head and told her he didn’t know.
17
The next few days passed without any more incursions by Murray. Fargo figured he was looking for a new hideout, since Angel had told them where he’d stayed after leaving the cave. The drunken doctor had come out and removed the bullet from Angel’s shoulder, and she was healing again. Fargo and Lem tried to decide what to do about Murray.
“There aren’t that many places around here he could go,” Lem said. “If we could find out where he is, we’d go after him.”
“Who’s we,” Fargo wanted to know.
“I’ve talked to Cass Ellis and Bob Tabor. Both of them would throw in with us. And they think they could find some others. Murray shouldn’t have hung Frank from that scarecrow. That made people madder than anything he’s done so far.”
“What about Rip Johnson?” Fargo asked.
Rip had been by a couple of times already, trying to get Abby’s attention, hoping to make some time with her.
“Rip’s ready to ride anytime we say. He told me to let him know first thing, just as soon as we decide on a plan, so he could be ready. He and Frank were friends, just like he and Tom were. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed like them, and he knows it.”
Fargo thought about that and decided to ride over to Talley’s place, or Molly’s, since it was hers now by virtue of the bank and her own persistence.
He stopped in Angel’s room first. She was propped up on some pillows and smiled when he came in.
“I guess we’re even now, Fargo. I stuck up for you when Pa wanted to kill you, and you stuck up for me the other day. I was just about sure Pa was going to kill me.”
“He almost did. I need to know where he’s hiding out these days.”
Fargo had already asked that question more than once, and Angel kept putting him off. He wasn’t sure if she really didn’t know anything or if she was still protecting her father even though he’d shot her.
“I’d tell you if I knew. He could be back in the cave, though. That’s like something he’d do. He’d try to outsmart you, and if he believed you wouldn’t expect him to be there, he might head straight for it. It would be worth a try.”
Fargo had already considered that possibility. He didn’t think Murray would go back to the cave. It was too easy to get trapped in a cave if you didn’t know the way out, and Fargo didn’t think Murray would want to exit by the route Fargo had used. It was too uncomfortable, and it took too long. And Fargo would know where he’d be coming out.
“We could check the cave,” Fargo said, not really meaning it. “There’s something else that’s been bothering me.”
Angel tried to sit up a little straighter, hardly wincing at the pain she must have felt.
“What’s bothering you?” she asked.
There were a lot of things. Fargo had a whole list of them, but he didn’t want to go through them with Angel. So he told her one of them.
“Seems to me your father always knows what’s going on with the farmers. He knows when the funerals are, and he knows who’s going to be there. He knows whose house the bodies will be in, and he knows who’ll be sitting up with them. I don’t see how he does it.”
“I don’t know, either, but I see what you mean. If Paul were alive, he could tell you. Pa always let him in on the plans. He never told me anything. He let me ride with him, but that was only because I wouldn’t stay behind. You know something, Fargo?”
Fargo didn’t like guessing games, so he didn’t reply. Angel apparently didn’t expect him to, and she answered her own question.
“I should have left Pa long ago. I must have been crazy to stay with him when I saw what he was doing.”
“I’m not too clear on what he’s doing.” Fargo said. “You told me a while back that there was more to it than I knew, but you never explained what you meant by it.”
“That’s because I don’t know much more than you do. But Pa and Paul used to go off all the time to discuss their plans. That’s probably when they met with their spy.”
“How do you know there was a spy?”
“You said it yourself. Pa always knew everything. There had to be a spy. I thought you knew that. I just can’t tell you who it was because I was never there when they met.”
Fargo had figured out the spy part for himself. He even thought he knew who the spy was, which was why he was going to see Molly.
“You must have some idea about the plans,” he said.
He had a vague idea, himself, but he couldn’t quite make sense of all the ideas rattling around in his head.
“All I know is that Pa was upset with everybody when Ma was killed,” Angel said. “He hates the farmers, he hates the free-staters, he hates the slaveholders. Sometimes that’s all he can talk about. I don’t know how he thinks he can whip all of them, but for some reason he started with the farmers.”
Fargo knew why Murray had started with the farmers. It was the smart thing to do because he could whip them more easily than the other groups. If he had mixed it up with the others, the army would have gotten involved, and that would have been the end of things for Murray right there. Which was why Fargo couldn’t figure out how Murray could go beyond the farmers.
“He talks about the South a lot, too,” Angel said. “Sometimes I thought he might want to go there to live. But he doesn’t. He says that nobody can run him off and that he’s staying right here where he belongs.”
That was a new fact for Fargo to think about. He wasn’t sure that it meant anything, but maybe it fit somewhere with all the other things he was mulling over. He thought that he might be able to pull it all together when he talked to Molly.
“Where will you go?” Fargo asked Angel.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’d like to stay here if the people would have me. I’m willing to work, and I can learn about farming. They might not want me, though. I’ve been fighting against them for a good while. I wouldn’t blame them if they hated me.”
“You should talk to Abby about it.”
“I don’t know what to say to her. It’s my fault that Jed was killed, and they were going to be married.”