21
Hob and Sam had a plan, all right, and it didn’t include Fargo. They’d decided—or rather Hob had decided and Sam had gone along with him—that Fargo was too soft to get the job done right.
“He don’t want to kill anybody, not even Kane,” was the way Hob had put it to Sam as they got near the saloon.
“He’ll kill him if he has to,” Sam said. “He just don’t want to kill him for no reason.”
“We got a reason.”
“He ain’t us. We did Fargo a good turn, and he’s willing to pay us back, that’s all.” Sam didn’t mention that he was the one who’d persuaded Hob to help Fargo out. Hob wouldn’t want to hear that. “But he’s not going to help us by killing somebody. I can’t fault him for that. We’ve done some bad things, Hob, but we didn’t ever kill anybody.”
“Killing Kane’s the only way we’ll pay ’em back for Corby. He’ll never speak up for us and say the judge and them others sent him to kill us, you can bet on that.”
“What do you think we should do, then? Kill Kane ourselves? Even if we do, that won’t settle the others.”
“We’ll get Fargo to go after Kane. If he kills him, fine. If he don’t, well, we’ll be doing something on our own to get back at the rest of ’em.”
Sam asked what they’d be doing.
“We’ll be giving the judge something to think about, to start with,” Hob said.
They stopped their horses in front of Judge Lawrence’s house. The lamps were lit in the parlor, and Hob could see the judge sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. Hob couldn’t see the daughter, but he figured she was in the house somewhere or other.
“We just gonna walk right in there?” Sam said in a low voice.
“Best way to do it,” Hob said. He climbed down off his horse and took his shotgun out of the saddle sleeve. Sam didn’t move. “What’re you waiting for?”
“I don’t much like using a woman,” Sam said. “It ain’t right to do that. She’s not a part of this. Corby liked her, and she liked him.”
“Not enough to keep company with him when her daddy told her not to. And here’s something you’re forgetting: Corby wasn’t a part of this, either, and they killed him.”
Sam had to admit the truth of that.
“We won’t hurt the girl,” Hob said. “Not if they’ll confess to what they done to Corby and to killing that guard.”
“Even if they do, we’re going back to prison. We lose any way you look at it. Why don’t we forget all this and leave like Corby wanted to?”
“Godammit, Sam, you know why. It’s wrong for us to suffer for what others done. We got to make it right. Now you gonna stay out here all night and argue with me, or are we gonna go in there and do what we came to do?”
Sam didn’t argue any further. He dismounted and pulled his pistol.
The two of them walked up to the porch. Hob didn’t try the door, much less knock politely and wait for an answer. He kicked the door in, and it slammed back against the wall. He and Sam went through the doorway and into the parlor, tracking thick mud along with them.
Lawrence had dropped the paper to the floor, and it lay there like a little white tent. He looked at them in shock. Hob covered him with the shotgun.
“Just sit right there, you judicial son of a bitch,” he said.
Lawrence’s eyes bugged out, and his face turned red.
“Don’t say a damn word,” Hob warned him. “Not one.”
Martha was much calmer than her father. She had been reading a book of Lord Byron’s poetry. She put it on a little table by her chair and looked at Sam, who was pointing his .44 at her.
“You need to get up and go with us, ma’am,” he said.
Martha straightened in the chair. “And if I don’t?”
“Then Sam’ll shoot you,” Hob said without taking his eyes off the judge. “Much as he’d hate to, he’d do it. Ain’t that right, Sam?”
“Sure is,” Sam said with just a touch of regret. “I’d be sorry to do it, but I would.”
Martha stood up and said, “Very well. I’ll go.”
“Good,” Hob said. “You got the right idea. Now here’s what’s going to happen, Judge. We’re taking your girl with us. You’re going to get your friends together and talk things over. All me and Sam want is to clear our names about that bank guard. Soon’s you explain to the law about what really happened, you’ll get the girl back.”
“My name is Martha,” Martha told him. “You can stop calling me the girl.”
Hob ignored her. “You hear what I said, Judge?”
“I heard you. You won’t hurt Martha?”
“You got a lot of nerve to ask me that. You think we don’t know you sent Custis Kane out after us? You’ll be proud to know he killed Corby.”
Martha gasped and looked at her father, who lowered his eyes.
“He didn’t get me and Sam, though,” Hob continued. “We managed to get away from him. So we’ve decided to get a little justice of our own.”
“But Martha has nothing to do with any of this.”
“She’s your kin, and that’s enough for us. But here’s the deal. Soon as you clear things up with the law, you can have your girl back.”
“How can I believe you?” Lawrence said.
“You don’t have a hell of a lot of choice, do you?”
The judge looked down and shook his head.
“Let’s go, Sam,” Hob said. He looked at Martha. “You, too.”
Martha walked out of the parlor ahead of Sam, who kept his pistol trained on her back. Hob stood in front of the judge, his shotgun unwavering.
Martha took her shawl off the coat tree by the open door. The chilly air was already seeping into the house.
“I’m not dressed for riding,” she said when she saw the horses.
“You’ll just have to make the best of it,” Hob said, coming out of the parlor. “Let’s go.”
They went out to the horses. Sam mounted and then reached down to grab Martha around the waist. He pulled her up onto his lap, encircling her with his arms.
“Where’re we going?” he said to Hob.
“Just follow me,” Hob told him.
Fargo had been to the judge’s house only the night before, so he found the way easily enough, with Stink trailing along after him.
When they arrived, they saw that lamps were lit in all the rooms and in all the neighboring houses.
“Too late,” Stink said. “The Bryans have been here and gone.”
A crowd was gathered in front of the judge’s house, and Fargo dismounted to drift over and see what he could find out.
He stopped on the edge of the group that had gathered and asked a man what was going on.
“They say it was the Bryan brothers,” the man said. “They came riding up a little while ago and went into the judge’s house bold as brass. They came back out with his daughter and rode off with her.”
“Which one’s the judge?” Fargo asked.
“The big fella up there, the one rubbing on his face with a handkerchief.”
Fargo saw him on the porch, talking to a man wearing a badge. The Trailsman didn’t have any desire to get mixed up with the law, so he walked on back to the horses.
“Well?” Stink said. “Did they get her?”
“They got her.”
“We gonna do anything about it?”
Fargo wondered why Stink had said we, since he hadn’t done a lot so far. On the other hand, he was the one who’d figured out what the Bryans were up to.
“What would you do if it was you?” Fargo said.
“You mean if I had the judge’s girl?”
Fargo nodded. While Stink was thinking it over, Fargo got out his makin’s and rolled a smoke. He was worried about Martha, and not just because he’d had some fun with her. He was worried because he’d genuinely liked her. She was a young woman with a lot of living left to do, and it wouldn’t be right if the Bryans cut her time short.
Fargo had changed his mind about the Bryans. He’d wanted to like them because they’d saved his life. He knew there was some good in them—had to be.
But the truth was that when it came right down to it, they were outlaws. They robbed stages, and they robbed banks, and although they swore they drew the line at murder, they didn’t seem to mind kidnapping. They claimed they wanted justice, but when the least little thing went wrong, they changed their minds and wanted bloody revenge.
It could be that he was being too hard on them. After all, it was their brother who’d been killed, and they’d been powerfully affected by that—had every right to be—but that still didn’t make it right for them to take Martha Lawrence. Even if they didn’t plan to kill her, even if they were just going to use her to get at the judge, what they’d done was wrong, and Fargo would do what he could to set it right.
He threw the cigarette to the ground and mashed the glowing tip into the mud. “You come up with anything?” he asked Stink.
“Looks like you were the one doing all the heavy thinking. I’d say you might’ve come up with more than I did, which is nothing.”
Fargo had come up with something, all right. Somewhere in the meanderings of his thoughts, he’d stumbled across something that should have come to him before. He just hadn’t let it, he guessed, but now that it had, he had a feeling it was the truth. Too late, maybe, but the truth just the same. Not that it would do him any good.
“I haven’t come up with anything that’ll help,” Fargo said. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. I was trying to think where they might go with that girl. If it was me, I’d never have took her in the first place, so it’s hard to say where I’d go with her if I had her.”
Fargo was beginning to understand what Stink was saying without having to give it too much thought. He wondered if that was a bad sign.
“They can’t go back to that cabin,” Stink went on. “We know where that is, and they got to figure you’ll be after them. So they’ll have to take her somewhere else.”
Stink was right, Fargo thought. They’d want to be somewhere near enough to the judge so they could get word to him about what they’d do to his daughter if he didn’t tell the world the truth about the robbery.
Looking at it that way, Fargo thought that the judge wouldn’t be able to do anything one way or the other until he consulted with his friends Tomlin and Orcutt.
“They’ll be here in town,” Fargo said. “Where could two men and a woman hide out in town? Wouldn’t have to be for long. They’ll give the judge a deadline.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Stink said. “The kind of work I do, I know most ever’ place in town where a fella could hide. But this is a good-sized town, and there’s a lot of places.”
“Don’t think too long,” Fargo said. “We need to get after them.”
The man with the badge had come to the edge of the judge’s front porch and was telling everybody to clear out. Fargo walked closer so he could hear.
“We got things well in hand here,” the lawman said. He had a flowing mustache and wore a flat-crowned hat. “You go home now, and before you know it, things will be right back the way they always were.”
He had the words, Fargo thought, but the tune sounded a little sour, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. Nobody questioned him, however, and people began to leave by ones and twos, talking quietly as they went, speculating on Martha’s fate. Fargo overheard a couple of them say something about a ransom, but he knew what the Bryans really wanted.
Fargo walked back to where Stink was waiting.
“You got any good ideas yet?” Stink said. “I hope you do, ’cause I can’t think of a thing.”
“I have an idea,” Fargo said. “Don’t know if it’s a good one.”
“Bound to be better than nothing.”
Fargo wasn’t so sure.
Fargo was in back of the judge’s house, waiting for the lawman to leave. He’d sent Stink to the livery with the horses and told him to go on home.
“Can’t do that,” Stink had said. “I’m gonna help you whether you want me or not. You’ll need me sooner or later to show you around the town, if you ever find out where those Bryans have got the girl, which I don’t see how you think you can.”
Fargo hadn’t told him his idea. He’d just told him that it might be dangerous and that he didn’t want Stink around for a while.
“I’ll take these horses,” Stink said. “But then I’ll be back.”
Fargo watched him go. He hoped the little man wouldn’t come back. He didn’t want to have to watch out for him.
It was dark under the big cedar tree where Fargo waited, and water dripped on him from the limbs. He hadn’t put his slicker back on, so some of the water got down the collar of his shirt and made cold tracks down his back.
After another quarter of an hour or so, the lawman left. He and the judge had spent a lot of time talking in the parlor, but Fargo hadn’t ventured close enough to overhear anything they said. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what the judge said to Tomlin and Orcutt. Fargo thought he’d be paying them a visit soon.
Sure enough, not five minutes after the lawman’s departure, the judge went out the front door and started down the street.
Forgetting about Stink, Fargo went after him.
