“But you won’t.” Murray coughed. “I know you won’t.”
Murray had been splashing coal oil all around the barn. There was no way he could have avoided getting some of it on him, Fargo thought, and he was right. As Murray started to take a step forward, his clothing suddenly ignited. Sometimes you just had to let a man bring about his own destruction.
“No,” Fargo said, “I won’t shoot you. But you might wish I would.”
In an instant Murray was enveloped in flames. His clothing burned. His beard and hair were afire. He screamed and ran toward Fargo, who stepped aside and let him go. Murray had dropped his pistol. Fargo thought he recognized it and picked it up. It was hot to the touch, but Fargo didn’t drop it. It was his own Colt. Murray knew a good weapon when he stole it. Fargo put it in his holster and continued to hold Molly’s gun in his hand as he went out of the barn.
Murray was rolling on the ground, still screaming. He could roll for a long time, Fargo thought, without putting out the fire.
“Shoot me!” Murray screamed. “For God’s sake, Fargo!”
“I wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” Fargo told him. “You said so yourself.”
Murray continued to scream, but Fargo could no longer make out the words. The Trailsman walked over to Angel, lifted her up, and carried her into the house.
21
It was a little after first daylight when Lem, Abby, and Molly came riding up. There was nothing left of Lem’s barn but a pile of ashes and blackened timbers. A smaller pile of charred debris remained not far away, but nobody noticed it.
“Good God a’mighty, Fargo,” Lem said, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the burned barn and of something else that was harder to identify. “What happened here?”
Fargo gave them a short account of the fight with Murray.
“That’s him over there,” Fargo said, pointing to the burned carcass.
“I thought I smelled something funny,” Lem said.
“Doesn’t look like much now, does he?” Molly said. “Hard to believe he had us all running scared for so long. Well, we won’t be running now.”
“He still managed to cause a hell of a mess of trouble,” Lem said. “No matter how he looks and smells now. And he finally got to my place, too.”
“He got your barn,” Fargo said, “but he didn’t get your house. And he didn’t get anybody else’s house. Not today.”
“We can build a new barn,” Abby said. “It’s just a building. Where’s Angel?”
Fargo told them about that, too.
“She’s inside,” he added. “I laid her on the table.”
“I’d be proud to sit up with her,” Lem said.
“So would I, I think,” Abby said. “Even if she did try to bury me alive, she wasn’t all bad.”
“She wasn’t all good, either,” Molly said, “but even at that she didn’t deserve the kind of family she had.”
“What about you?” Fargo asked them. “How did things turn out at the Bigelow House?”
“We got all the bastards,” Lem said. “Some of them are just wounded, but we left them to take care of each other. If they do, that’s fine. They won’t be bothering anybody for a while. And if they don’t, well, to hell with them. We gave them every chance.”
“Jed would be glad to know you settled everything for him,” Abby told Fargo. “I knew you could do it.”
There’d been times when Fargo hadn’t shared her confidence, but he figured he’d done what Jed would have wanted. And he’d done what he wanted. He couldn’t let his friend be murdered and just walk away.
“I guess you’ll be leaving now,” Molly said.
She was right. Fargo didn’t have anything to tie him to the farmers now.
“I’ll head out tomorrow,” he said. “After Angel’s funeral.”
“And you’re sure there’s no way we could make a farmer of you?” Molly asked.
Abby looked at her suspiciously and asked, “Have you been thinking about farming, Fargo?”
“Not a whole lot,” Fargo said. “I’ve been thinking more about mountains with snow on the tops, and some country where there aren’t a lot of farms all jammed up together.”
Lem laughed. “I wouldn’t say we’re all jammed together here, Fargo. Plenty of room for another farm. Lots more of them, to tell the truth.”
“It may look that way to you. Not to me, though.”
“Well,” Molly said, getting another suspicious look from Abby, “if you’re ever back this way, Fargo, stop in and visit for a while.”
Fargo never knew where he might be the next week or the next month, but he knew how way led on to way, and he didn’t think he’d ever find himself in this part of the country again, at least not for a long time.
“I’ll be sure and do that,” he said.
LOOKING FORWARD!
The following is the opening
section of the next novel in the exciting
Trailsman series from Signet:
THE TRAILSMAN #261
Desert Death Trap
Nevada Territory, Summer 1861—
Deceit, danger, and death at every turn.
Over a low rise to the east appeared a young maiden, running as if her life depended on it. Long raven hair streamed behind her as she swiftly descended a game trail. She moved with the natural grace of an antelope, a comparison heightened by the buckskin dress that clung to her lithe form.
Skye Fargo was about to saddle up after a good night’s sleep when he spotted her. He watched with keen interest, enticed by the flash of her shapely legs. She was so intent on running, she didn’t spot his camp, hidden in the brush less than a stone’s throw from the bottom of the rise.
The reason for her flight became plain when three men sprinted over the top of the hill.
Fargo’s lake-blue eyes narrowed. The trio were also on foot, which in itself was remarkable. No one in their right mind tried to cross the high desert country between the Great Salt Lake and the Cascades without a horse. Even more peculiar was that one of her pursuers was white, the other red, and the third black. “What the hell?” he wondered aloud.
The white pursuer wore just about the silliest outfit Fargo ever saw, a two-piece affair that resembled bright red longjohns. Bushy sideburns and a thick mustache framed his pale face. His gait was as odd as his appearance; he loped in long, stiff-legged motion, attended by the windmill pumping of broomstick arms.
Next was a husky Indian more sensibly attired in a breechclout and knee-high moccasins. Fargo couldn’t be completely sure at that distance, but it sure looked to him that the warrior was an Apache. Which was preposterous—Apache territory was many leagues to the south.
Last came the black man. A strapping specimen, he had on a pair of faded jeans and a floppy brown hat that hid half his ruggedly chiseled face. He didn’t seem to be exerting himself all that hard yet he had no trouble keeping up with the others.
The maiden looked back, saw them, and ran faster.
Fargo didn’t know what was going on, but he wasn’t about to stand there and let the men catch her. Experience told him they had to be up to no good. The maiden dashed past his camp without a sideways glance. Dropping his bed-roll, Fargo turned toward his horse. The Ovaro was twenty yards away, slaking its thirst at a small spring. He intended to mount up but a quick look showed the three men were already near the bottom of the rise.