She whistled. From the shadows next to the house the wolfhound came running, lean and purposeful. He stood next to her. “He’ll kill you if I tell him to.”
“I don’t have much time, Helen.” He walked toward her.
“You stop right there.”
“There could be a lynching in town tonight. An innocent man could die unless you tell me who you saw murder the Byrnes boy.”
“Who said I saw anything?”
“The way you’re acting, Helen. You’re hiding something. Something you’re scared about. My guess is that the killer has threatened you. And you don’t scare easy. So that means he must have some kind of power. He thinks—and you think—that he can kill you and get away with it.”
The night winds soughed in the trees and filled the air with the scent of pine and the snow that had fallen on the lower parts of the mountains. A good night for sleeping in a warm bed. Sounded pretty good to Fargo.
“Who’s the man they’re going to lynch?”
“Ned Lenihan.”
“Ned Lenihan!” she said. “Why, he’s one of the most decent people I’ve ever known. He’s a good man. He was friends with both of my husbands.”
“Well, there’s some evidence against him so I had to bring him in. Now I’m wondering if I should have.”
He moved closer to her. A deep growl sounded in the wolfhound’s throat but it remained still.
“Three men are dead, Helen. Their families deserve some answers.”
“Well, I’m sorry for the families, Fargo. But I don’t have no answers to give.”
An owl flew downwind, elegant against the moonlight sky.
“Maybe you’re trusting the wrong people, Helen.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe you’re scared to tell the truth because somebody threatened you.”
“You’re wrong there, Fargo. I’m not scared of nobody. I didn’t know that body was anywhere near here.”
“Look, Helen, you’ve lived out West a long time—maybe all your life. You know how animals respond to something like a human body. You’ve got a dog and cats and you probably get around your land pretty much every day. Kind of hard to believe that Clete Byrnes could have laid out there without you knowing anything about it. Unless you stayed inside your house for a couple days.”
The rifle lowered a few inches. “I don’t have many years left. I want to die peaceful. Enjoying myself. I don’t think that’s asking a lot.” Outlined in the silver light of the half-moon she looked small and bent. Her usual vigor was gone.
“I don’t think you want to die knowing that Ned Lenihan was sentenced for three killings he didn’t commit. That wouldn’t make for a very peaceful life. You’re too good a woman to live with something like that hanging over you.”
“How about the threat of death hanging over me?”
“I can take care of whoever’s threatening you, Helen. Take care of him once and for all.”
The sigh indicated that she was shifting toward telling him. He had kept his voice gentle, reasonable. “Whoever he is, Helen, he’s going to kill you one way or another. He has to. You’re the one person he fears. The one person who can tell the truth about him. Maybe he won’t kill you right away but he will kill you. That you can bet on.”
She was silent a moment. He could see her eyes watching him, wondering about him. She’d want to know if he really would protect her, if he really could protect her. He didn’t blame her. A woman her age and all alone, she was especially vulnerable.
He would never know if she had made up her mind to confide in him or not. The rifle shots cracked in the darkness. Before he could push her to the ground and out of the path of the bullets, he saw her forehead split open like a chasm. She wobbled backward on her feet and then fell forward into Fargo’s arms. He grabbed her and held her as he flung them both to the ground, rolling, constantly rolling, as the continued shots tried to pick them off. The gunman was in a stand of jack pines.
“Dammit, Sam. You missed Fargo.”
Kenny and Sam Raines. The slimiest bastards in Cawthorne.
There was nothing he could do for Helen now so he eased his arms from her, sensing that her life force had already left her body. He wanted to be more reverent with her but there was no time. There were two men he was going to kill.
Amy Peters forced her way to the front of the crowd that had gathered outside the sheriff’s office. To her the sight was as lurid as the illustrations in cheap magazines. Around thirty drunken men, some of them holding torches, shouting for Tom Cain to let them have Ned Lenihan for a hanging. The stink of kerosene was on the air as the torch flames whipped in the wind. The faces of the men were cold and grotesque from their anger. Several of them held pint bottles of rotgut whiskey in their hands. A few waved pistols. Cain had drawn the curtains and had made no appearance. To Amy this meant he was expecting the worst and was hunkering down. She was afraid that he’d give in to them. He’d pretend that he didn’t have any choice but would secretly be happy to see them drag Ned out of his cell and push him down the street to where the old hanging tree sat behind the general store.
She shouted, “Listen to me! Listen to me!”
Her words made them only more belligerent. They shouted back, “Get out of here, Amy, unless you want to get hurt!” “You know he’s a killer but you just won’t admit it!” “He deserves to die and you’re not gonna stop us!”
One drunkard even rushed for her but a larger man grabbed him by the collar of his denim jacket and pulled him back.
Amy stood in a flat-brimmed black hat, a sheepskin, a red sweater and jeans. To show that she was serious, a Colt dangled from the fingers of her left hand. Only now were a few of them beginning to notice her gun. She decided to let the others know in a dramatic way. She angled the gun so that the bullet would pass safely over their heads. And then she fired.
They stopped shouting. Drunken ears rang with the sound of the gunshot. Drunken eyes narrowed, fixed on the pretty woman standing in front of the sheriff’s door.
“I want you to listen to this. Sheriff Cain himself asked Skye Fargo to look into the killings. Fargo found enough evidence to arrest Ned. But Fargo is the first to admit that most of the evidence seems shady. As if somebody had set Ned up. And if you don’t believe me you can ask Fargo.”
“Fargo don’t live here!” a man bellered, his Stetson painted a reddish-gold from the torch he held. “And he ain’t got no right to decide what happens in this town!”
The rumble went through the crowd again, animals making threatening noises to their perceived enemy, the woman who was defending the man they wanted to lynch.
“You men need to wait until you’re sober! You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret!”
“Who said we’ll regret it?” a man shouted.
And the crowd laughed.
Amy wanted to empty her gun into them. Stupid, drunken animals, all of them.
The door opened behind her. She turned to see Tom Cain, a sawed-off shotgun in one hand, step out onto the plank walk and stand next to her.
“We want you to let us have him, Cain!”
“And right now! Right damn now!”
“He’s the killer and you know it!”
Cain said, “Amy’s right. We don’t want any lynching here. This is a law-and-order town. And I mean to keep it that way.”
Amy was surprised by how confident and certain he sounded. There was a real threat in his voice. But then he turned to her and even before he spoke his face parted into a grin, his sneering grin, and he said, “Of course I can’t hold these boys off forever. They get ten more out here I’ll have to turn him over. I’m not going to sacrifice my men for the sake of Lenihan.”