Helen Hardesty cackled. “That’s my warning shot. You should see your face, mister. You don’t look so strong now. I taught Samson to leap like that but then stop short. Scares the hell out of intruders. The next time I give him an order, though, he don’t stop short. He goes right for your throat.”
“You’ve got it all figured out.”
“I sure do.”
“Except for the killer. You’re worried he’ll come back on you and you don’t know what to do about it.”
“We’re done here, mister. Now I’m goin’ back inside and Samson’s gonna sit right where he is. I give him the order, he’ll tear you apart. You understand?”
She was true to her word. She did an about-face and stalked back to her soddie. Samson stayed in place.
She was right, Fargo thought. They were done here.
Less than a minute later he was in his saddle and headed out.
5
Karen Byrnes came home to the small frame house on the edge of the creek and put herself to work. Her mother had not been able to sleep all night. She’d sat in her rocker crying endlessly about her dead son. Now, exhausted, she slept.
Karen wanted to find the killer. She knew that Skye Fargo was working with Tom Cain but she assumed that she could help Fargo by talking to some of her friends. Her grief would come later.
Once home, she changed from her gingham dress into her Levi’s and green woolen sweater. She needed to start making candles today, not her favorite task but they were running low. She wanted to work in the large garden she’d planted. She’d been putting up vegetables for the coming winter for three months. But right now candles had to come first.
She set herself up and began the tedious process of hand-dipping. The problem was that if you topped the candle it would get too hard and would snap in two.
Somebody knocked on the door.
“Come in.” She spoke softly, not wanting to wake her mother. She didn’t mean to be unkind but she needed a rest from her mother’s sobbing.
Ingrid Haller was a typical frontier woman. Many men were open about wanting to marry stout women because they were like having a second horse. Some women found that sentiment amusing. The slender Karen wasn’t one of them and she resented the fact that men thought of women that way. Karen’s outspokenness had frequently caused her trouble.
Karen put a finger to her lips. Ingrid, square-shaped in a man’s red-and-black-checkered shirt and jeans, nodded her understanding and walked over on tiptoe.
“My mother’s sleeping. She had a terrible night.” She nodded to the blanket strung across the rope. The two beds were on the other side.
“I’m still having a lot of terrible nights myself.” Ingrid’s son Michael had been the first victim of the killer.
Ingrid knew not to interrupt Karen’s work. She drew up a thatched chair so she could sit close enough to talk without raising her voice. Karen continued to work.
“There’s something we need to talk about, Karen.”
“Oh?”
“The others don’t want to talk about it and neither did I, but now I don’t have any choice and neither do you.”
Her bluntness surprised Karen. She had a feeling that Ingrid was going to tell her something terrible.
“It’s what everybody’s talking about—behind our backs.”
“You’re being very mysterious, Ingrid.”
“You’ve had the same thoughts I’ve had but you’ve been afraid to admit them.” The woman had a wide, pleasant, freckled face. “I don’t like to think about them, either.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what you’re talking about?”
“I’m talking about the stagecoach robbery about a month ago. I saw my son get mad about everything right before it happened. He only acted that way when he was worried about something. I think he was worried about the robbery.”
“He could’ve been worried about a lot of things.” She kept on dipping the thin pole holding the wicks into the hot tallow.
“I don’t think you’re facing facts. Three of them dead right after the robbery.”
“Who’d kill them?”
“Two men died in that holdup. Maybe one of their kin.”
“I don’t see how that could be the case. Most people would have a hard time killing three people.”
Ingrid leaned back in her chair. Shook her head. “You need to be honest with yourself.”
“I’m trying to be.” A deep sigh. “I’ve thought about it, too, Ingrid.”
“I figured you had. Same with Maddie about her boy. She brought it up to me. She was the one who put the idea in my head. I didn’t want to believe it, either. But here we have her son, your brother and my son dead following a stagecoach robbery. And we all know how nervous they were beforehand.”
“So who killed them and where’s the money?”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“Neither do I.”
“I just want whoever killed them punished.”
“The worst thing is thinking about those men dying in the robbery.”
“I can’t believe that any of them would’ve done it on purpose. It had to be some kind of accident.” Tears gleamed in Ingrid’s blue eyes. “My son wouldn’t kill anybody. I know that for sure.”
Damned candles, Karen thought. She wanted to stop and relax. Confront the suspicion she’d had for several days. But they needed the candles. The winds from the mountains told of any early winter.
“What do you think about this Fargo man?” Ingrid said.
“I met him. I liked him. And I trust him.”
“Tell him this. Rex Connor saw somebody talking to the three boys down by the bridge just before the first murder. At night. He was fishing when he saw them. You’re a good friend of Rex.”
“I sure am. I bake bread for him.” Then: “People are going to turn against our kin, Ingrid.”
“Let them. My boy’s dead. All I care about is finding his killer. If any of those boys killed the driver and the Englishman, it had to be a mistake. They weren’t killers.”
“No,” Karen said gently, “no, they weren’t.”
Karen liked the woman. A good, honest woman. And it was more and more likely that they shared a dark secret.
Ingrid reached out and the women gripped their hands together. “You talk to this Fargo. Tell him about Rex.”
“I’ll do that, Ingrid. Thanks.”
Karen sat thinking of how strange and terrible life had become.
Fargo was walking back from the livery when he heard a bourbon-raspy voice say, “I’m afraid I was a little rude last night. At least from what I can remember, Mr. Fargo.”
The voice couldn’t possibly belong to anybody else in this town except for one man named O’Malley. Fargo wondered wryly if he’d ever met the man walking toward him. Now, as last night, O’Malley crept up behind him.
From what he could remember, Fargo reasoned that the man was still in the same clothes. He’d shaved but his ruddy face was a crosshatch of nicks and cuts. The eyes were as red as a matador’s cape. That he was upright and ambulatory was amazing. That he spoke clearly—as if he hadn’t had a drink in days—was even more startling.
