He had left his house within fifteen minutes of Lem’s visit. Fargo had given him a good lead and then gone after him. He was sure Rip would want to tell Murray of the big opportunity he was going to have.
There were two ways Murray could go when he heard the news. He could do as Lem had suggested to Rip and try to take over the farmhouses. Or he could go about setting up an ambush on the way to the cave, hoping to wipe out all the farmers at once. He hadn’t had much luck against them so far when you thought about it, picking off one at a time. He was losing more men than he was killing. But now he’d have a chance to get the whole bunch of farmers in one place.
Or so he thought. Fargo had no intention of letting anything like that happen. He had a couple of ideas of his own. Either the farmers would set up their own ambush or they’d attack Murray where he was hiding, probably the latter. It would be a complete surprise, since Murray would think they had other plans.
After he’d ridden in the trees along the creek for several miles, Fargo saw that the tracks turned to leave the cover. He thought it was time to be careful, so he dismounted and looped the reins over a tree limb, preferring to travel on foot.
When he came to the edge of the trees, he saw a dilapidated building that rose up from the ground like something out of a crazy dream. It didn’t look like any house that Fargo had ever seen. It was built up off the ground, unlike all the farmhouses Fargo had been in, and there was a skirting around it. It was three stories tall and had balconies on the second and third floors. There were lightning rods sticking up from all but one of the several cupolas that sat atop the third floor. The cupola that lacked a lightning rod had a weather vane that was bent over to one side.
Fargo had no idea how such a house had come to be there in the middle of nowhere. Some madman must have built it, he thought, a madman with a lot of money, but no one, mad or otherwise, had lived there for a long time. The house sagged to one side as if it were tired and about to lie down. The doors were missing.
But Murray was there. Fargo saw the gang’s horses, and Rip’s tracks led right up to it. The only guard was a man sitting on the porch that appeared to run all around the house. He was smoking a cigarette and not looking at anything in particular. It was plain that he didn’t expect to be bothered.
Fargo faded back into the trees and walked to the Ovaro. It was time to get a little surprise ready for Murray. And for Rip, too.
“We’ll go tonight,” Fargo told the small group gathered in the front of Lem’s house.
There were ten of them, the ones whose names Lem had called out to Rip and five others whom Fargo didn’t know. The last five lived a bit farther away than the other farmers, but they had been at the wedding party, and they were just as eager to get rid of Murray as anybody else. Fargo thought ten might be enough. Although he had fifteen or sixteen men, Murray wouldn’t be ready for any kind of attack. And his men hadn’t shown themselves to be especially good fighters in any of the other encounters Fargo had seen them in. Besides, if the plan he had come up with worked out, Murray might not have fifteen men left when the fighting started, at least not able-bodied men.
“Murray’s hiding at the Bigelow House,” Lem told the group.
He had explained to Fargo earlier that the house had been built about twenty years earlier by a former sea captain from back east. The story was that he’d had a bad experience on his last voyage out and vowed to move as far from the sea as he could get.
“When he found this place, he figured he’d made it,” Lem had explained. “You can’t get much farther from the ocean than this.”
But the sea captain hadn’t had any better luck in his new house than he’d had on his final voyage. His wife got sick and died within the first year of their move. The captain himself had died of a fever not long afterward. His only child, a son about fifteen years old, had disappeared after the funeral and never been seen again. The only things that remained of the captain and his family were the house and some vague memories.
“Nobody ever wanted to live there after the captain died,” Lem had told Fargo. “The house was like something you’d find in Maine, maybe, or someplace like that. Not here. Nobody who farms has time to take care of a house like that. And anyway the land wasn’t fertile around there. Nobody knows why, but things just wouldn’t grow. The house is just about falling down now, and nobody ever goes by there. Murray could stay there for a year, and nobody would ever know.”
The people who were gathered at Lem’s all knew where the Bigelow House was, though they never went near it. All of them also had ideas about what to do about Murray. And they all wanted to talk about them at once.
Lem quieted them down. “We’re going to leave that up to Fargo. He’s had more experience with men like Murray than we have.”
There was a little mumbling, but it died down quickly as people realized the truth of what Lem was telling them.
“We’ll leave here at about midnight,” Fargo told them. “We’ll stop on the way and get Rip. We’ll have to take him with us to be sure he doesn’t warn Murray.”
“Why don’t we just kill him?” Bob Tabor asked. “He’s got enough of us killed, the son of a bitch.”
“Why not give him a trial?” Fargo asked. “The sheriff might not want any part of this fight, but he’d have to keep Rip in his jail if you told him what’s been going on. Then you could see to it that Rip gets a legal hanging.”
There was some more mumbling and grumbling about that, but Lem calmed everybody down.
“Listen here,” he said, “Fargo’s got a plan about how to do this, and we don’t have to kill Rip to do it. If we want to stay on the side of the law, such law as there is here, we ought to try not to hang people just for the hell of it. Rip’s done us wrong, but he’s still our neighbor. We ought to give him a chance to defend himself.”
“I guess you’re right about it,” Cass Ellis said. “A man’s got a right to have his side of the story heard before he gets hung.”
“All right, then,” Lem said. “Now let Fargo tell you what we’re gong to do.”
19
Rip didn’t seem to know exactly what was going on. Which was just fine. Fargo didn’t want him to know.
“I didn’t think you’d show up here at this time of night,” Rip said.
He was standing on his front porch again, holding the lantern he’d lit while he was still in the house. His hair was tousled, and he didn’t look quite awake.
“I said morning,” Lem told him. “It’s past midnight, so it’s morning. You better get ready to go. We’ll help you.”
Cass and Bob were already off their horses and walking toward Rip, who was going to be trussed up and tossed across a saddle for his trip. As the two men reached him, Rip’s face changed. He seemed to know that something was wrong, and he turned back into his house.
Cass and Bob hesitated. They turned back and looked at Fargo as if to ask what to do next. In doing so, they gave Rip time to get to a gun.
The first shot came through the door and missed Cass by an inch or two. The second shot dropped Bob where he stood.
“Scatter,” Fargo said. “I’ll go around back.”
By the time Fargo got to the back of the house, the door was already opening. Fargo let Rip get outside. Then he said, “Put the pistol down, Rip. You’re not going anywhere.”
Rip held up the lantern so that the light spread out some more. Fargo was still outside the circle of radiance.
“We know all about you and Murray,” Fargo said.
“Then you’re going to kill me anyway,” Rip said.