Whoever fired the shots unwittingly firmed the rebels’ resolve. Their faces grim, the women moved to the windows and down the hall to other rooms. Fargo was caught off guard and had no time to bound back up the stairs, but no one glanced in his direction.
Soon only Argent and Patrice were near the door. Argent beckoned, and they moved toward the sitting room.
Turning, Fargo began to take a step but he bumped into Clover, who once again had come up close behind him. She was balanced on the balls of her feet on the edge of the step above so she could see over his shoulder, and when they collided, she grabbed him to keep from falling. In so doing, she dropped her rifle.
The thunk of the butt striking the stairs was loud enough to be heard halfway down the hallway, but it was nothing compared to the blast of the rifle when it discharged.
Fargo tried to grab it but it clattered to the bottom.
“What the hell?” Argent Meriwether barreled toward the stairs.
An arm around Clover, Fargo sprang to the top, and crouched. A shadow appeared. Then another. A hand thrust out and snatched Clover’s rifle. A foot rose toward the first step.
To discourage them, Fargo fired into the floor.
The foot disappeared and Patrice shouted, “Stay back! He can pick us off easy from up there!”
Whispering ensued, and Argent yelled up, “You have the advantage at the moment, mister. We can’t come up because killing you isn’t worth the cost. But you can’t come down, either. Not unless you and the betrayer want to be riddled with more holes than a sieve.”
“Patrice?” Clover yelled. “Don’t listen to her. I’ve always been your friend, haven’t I? Believe me when I tell you the men aren’t to blame for this stupid war. Talk to them. Go out under a white flag and hear their side.”
“Oh sure,” Patrice replied. “And be shot dead like they almost shot Martha a minute ago? No thanks.”
More whispering ended with Argent bellowing, “Remember, we have the stairs covered. Don’t meddle and you’ll live longer.”
Clover had the panicked expression of a trapped animal. “We’re boxed in.”
That they were, Fargo reflected. Going out a window would be suicide; the men would gun them down the moment they showed themselves.
A shout from outside resulted in a rush toward the front of the house. Fargo nodded at Clover and they hastened to the window facing the front yard.
Most of the men had dismounted. Porter had his hands on his hips and was impatiently rocking back and forth on his heels. “Patrice Jackson! I would have words with you! Step outside if you have the grit.”
The front door must have opened because Patrice said, “This is as far as I’ll come. I don’t trust you. Nor any of those with you.”
“Tell that to Elder Zebulon, lyin’ dead yonder. Or to the other three men who have breathed their last this day due to your childish female folly.”
“Some of us were shot too,” Patrice said coldly.
“Serves you right! Your side started it!” Porter fumed. “This bloodlettin’ is on your head, not mine! As it has been all along! You and that abomination of womanhood you’ve harbored!”
“What about the women you’ve killed?” Patrice railed. “Your soul is no cleaner than mine!”
“Again you’re talkin’ nonsense. I haven’t killed anyone. My knife was planted near Billy and Elly.”
“Liar!”
A shouting match would get them nowhere except lead to more slaughter. There had to be a way to end the madness before the Jacksons wiped themselves out. Squatting, Fargo opened the window just enough to yell down, “Porter! Bramwell! Listen to me! The women aren’t to blame.”
Porter jerked up his rifle but didn’t fire. “You! What are you doing here?” Bramwell said something Fargo couldn’t hear, and Porter nodded. “As I’ve been sayin’ all along, you’re in league with these biddies. How much are they payin’ you to do their dirty work?”
Patrice answered him before Fargo could. “He’s not on our side. He’s on yours. Don’t pretend different.”
“Who’s pretendin’, you silly female?” Porter growled. “You know how I feel about outsiders. It was bad enough we had to hire the schoolmarm. Do you honestly think I would have that yokel in buckskins do my fightin’ for me?”
“Yokel?” Fargo said.
“No, I don’t,” Patrice had answered. “You’ve always said the clan should handle its own problems. That outsiders bring nothin’ but trouble and we should shun them like they have the plague.”
“I haven’t changed my outlook any, I can tell you that,” Porter declared.
Argent must have shown herself because Porter’s face clouded with raw hate and he demanded, “What do you want, you hideous bitch? I didn’t ask you to take part. Go back inside.”
“I won’t let you bend these women to your will with your lies and intimidation,” was Argent’s rebuttal.
“What the hell are you babblin’ about?” Porter snapped. “I never lie. And I might be stern at times but only for the good of the clan.” He dismissed her with a gesture. “This is Jackson business. Get out of my sight.”
“Do as he wants, Sister Argent,” Patrice said. “He and I are finally talkin’ things out. Maybe the worst is over.”
“I say when it’s over, not this devious murdering bastard. Here’s what I think of him and his kind.”
The blast of Argent’s rifle riveted the men in astonishment. Bramwell’s mouth fell open and he gawked in horror as his father folded at the knees and oozed to the grass like a gob of hot wax oozing down a candle. No one moved, no one spoke.
“Did you see?” Bramwell found his voice, and jammed his rifle to his shoulder. “Kill them! Kill every last one!”
Above the thunderous blast of gunfire keened the scream of a terror-struck child.
18
The girl’s cry sent Fargo racing down the hall to the top of the stairs. He slowed just long enough to verify he had a round in the Henry’s chamber, and then he went down the steps three at a bound.
Two women were at the bottom standing guard but they were facing the front of the house and did not hear him until he was right on top of them. One spun, jerking her rifle up, and Fargo slammed the Henry’s stock against her temple. The other leaped back and brought up a pistol. She was fast, but not faster than Fargo, who darted in close and delivered an uppercut that left her lying next to her companion.
A battle raged. The weeks of boiling hatred and misunderstanding had spilled over into rampant violence. Many of the women were at windows, returning fire. Others reloaded. Others wanted no part of the madness and huddled in corners or behind furniture. The children were cowering in the kitchen, two older women trying to prevent hysterics.
Patrice and Argent Meriwether had made it back inside but Patrice was leaning against a wall, her left hand over a spreading red stain on her right arm. From the unnatural angle at which her arm was bent, the bone was broken.
Argent was bellowing commands like an army general. “Stay low! Aim for their chests! That way if you miss their hearts, you’ll still hit something!”
A woman at a front window was flung back, her face a red smear.
Clover tugged on Fargo’s sleeve and rose onto her toes to shout in his ear, “We have to stop this!”
That they did, and Fargo knew exactly how he was going to go about it. He stalked toward Meriwether and saw a woman of twenty or so on her knees, clutching her bosom and sobbing, “This is wrong! This is wrong! This is so wrong!” A woman at a window on his right cried out and fell. Another was wounded in the hip. The clan was being decimated by their own pigheadedness.
Fargo was only a few yards from the schoolteacher’s broad back when Evangeline materialized out of the gun smoke and came near to plowing into him. She had a Colt, his Colt, and she was hastily reloading.
“You!”
“Me,” Fargo said, and grabbing the barrel, he tore the revolver from her grasp and slammed the butt aga
inst her chin. Once again he could not bring himself to use all his strength for fear he would break her jaw and crush her teeth. But the blow left her on her back, moaning and quaking, and that was enough.
Argent was in the middle of the front room. She did not seem to care that a steady stream of lead sizzled by her. “That’s it!” she encouraged her followers. “Don’t stop! We want them all dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
Suddenly Clover screeched, “Skye! Behind you!”
Fargo spun. Patrice had raised her rifle to shoot him in the back but she could not hold it steady enough with only one arm. Grimacing in torment, tears filling her eyes, she let it drop and began crying.
Clover ran to her.
A tremendous blow jarred the door on its hinges. The men were attempting to batter it down. “Again, men! Again!” Bramwell’s voice rose above the din, urging them on.
Fargo turned and locked eyes with Argent Meriwether. Hers were fiery pools of blazing hatred. A hate so intense, it dominated every fiber of her being. Her face had a maniacal sheen, her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a feral snarl. She seemed more animal than human.
“I won’t let you stop me!”
Too late, Fargo realized she had a revolver pointed at him, and that she had the hammer thumbed back. He dived to the right as her trigger finger tightened, but instead of a shot and a spurt of gun smoke, there was a faint click. He charged her as she squeezed the trigger again and yet a third time. For once, though, luck was with him—the cylinder was empty.
Fargo was only a few steps from her when Argent hissed and threw the revolver at his face. He ducked, then had to sidestep to spare his groin from a vicious kick. Her hands sought his throat, her fingers gouging deep. God, she is strong! Fargo thought, as he let the Henry and the Colt fall and seized her wrists. He pulled with all his might but her fingers only dug in deeper, choking off his breath and threatening to rip out his throat by sheer brutish strength.
“You and your damned meddling!” Argent raged, spittle flecking her lips. “You’ll spoil my revenge!”
Fargo swung her to the right and then to the left but he could not shake her off. He drove a knee into her gut but it had no effect. Her insane hatred had infused her limbs with inhuman strength. Her fingers were iron stakes. He punched and pried and gasped for air that wasn’t there.
Then her mouth yawned wide and with a bestial howl Argent sought to bury her teeth in his neck. Fargo strained to keep her from succeeding. In their thrashing and struggling he backed against the rear wall and had nowhere to go. It enabled her to plant her legs so she could not be moved. Her teeth edged slowly but inexorably toward his jugular.
Fargo’s lungs were aching; he was close to blacking out. But he refused to give up. He refused to be beaten. Not by her, not by anyone. Again and again he smashed his fist into her face, a succession of punches that weakened her grip and her stance but were not enough to break her hold. She was bleeding from her nose and her mouth and she had a knot over one eye but still she clung on. Still she tried to throttle the life from him.
Raising both arms over his head, Fargo cupped his hands and brought them crashing down, clubbing her again and again and again. With each blow her grip loosened a little more. But even as her knees folded, she clung to him by force of will.
Covered with blood, battered and swollen, Argent looked up at him with undimmed hatred. “I should have shot you on sight!”
“The feeling is mutual,” Fargo said, and clubbed her a final time. She collapsed at his feet and he leaned back against the wall. It felt as if a grizzly had chewed on his throat and a lance had been driven through his lungs. But he could not stand there and suffer. The battle still raged, as he was reminded when a wild slug bit slivers from the wall next to him.
Forcing his legs to move, Fargo retrieved his guns. Argent was sitting up when he pressed the Henry’s muzzle to her head. “That’s far enough.”
Some of the women were reloading and the shooting outside had briefly tapered. In the lull Fargo shouted, “Not one more shot or she dies!”
Eleven women were in the sitting room, more in the room directly across from it. Several, like Patrice, were wounded. The rest were tired and scared, and Fargo could tell their hearts were no longer in it. They were sick of the fighting, sick of the bloodshed. “Lay down your guns!”
“But the men—” Prudence protested. Her hair was disheveled, her face streaked with grime.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” Fargo promised.
As if to put him to the test, the front door splintered to the battering impact of a fence rail the men had torn from the corral and into the house rushed Bramwell and others. They stopped in surprise at the sight before them, Bramwell’s brow furrowing in confusion. “What is this? You’re not on their side like Pa thought?”
“How many times must I tell you, you lunkhead,” Fargo said in exasperation. “I’m not on anyone’s side.”
Bramwell grinned with vengeful glee at Meriwether. “You did right fine, mister. Now step aside and let us finish it.”
“No.”
Stopping cold, Bramwell fingered his rifle. “What the hell do you mean, no? That bitch shot my pa. If you think she’s leavin’ here alive, you’ve got another think comin’.”
“Don’t you want to know what this was really all about?” Fargo responded.
Bramwell’s confusion climbed. “You’re makin’ no sense. We all know it started when the women blamed Pa for murderin’ Elly and Billy, and he did no such thing.”
“What if the women aren’t to blame, either?”
“Now you’re talkin’ in circles,” Bramwell said. “If it wasn’t the men and it wasn’t the women, then who—” He blinked at Argent Meriwether. “God Almighty! It was right in front of our noses the whole time.”
Argent was conscious. She slowly sat up and spat blood onto the floor. “You think you have it figured out but you don’t.” A grin curled her ruin of a mouth as red drops dribbled between her broken teeth and down over her pulped lower lip.
“Who else if it wasn’t one of us?” Bramwell pointed at Fargo. “It couldn’t be him. He didn’t show up until long after it began.”
“It’s not the who that matters,” Argent rasped. “It’s the why.”
“I don’t understand,” Bramwell said.
“Of course you don’t,” Argent spat. “You’re a jackass. An ignorant lout, like the rest of the Jackson men. And the women aren’t any better. Stupid as cows, the whole bunch.”
“What was that?” Patrice said, coming closer.
Argent tittered, a high-pitched laugh that did not sound entirely sane. “I fooled you all! Fooled every last one of you miserable murdering vermin! If not for him”—Argent bobbed her bloody chin at Fargo—“I’d have done it. I’d have wiped the Jackson clan off the face of the earth.” Her laugh swelled to a shriek of demented joy. “Or, to be more precise, you would have done it for me.”
Fargo stepped back and lowered the Henry. He had an inkling where this was leading, even if the others didn’t.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Clover asked. “We never did you any harm.”
“Didn’t you?” Argent said, and then screeched, “Didn’t you?” She tried to stand but she could not rise higher than her knees. She shook a thick finger at them, at all of them, one after the other, and as she did, she cackled. “Look at your stupid faces! You still don’t have any idea. You still don’t realize who I am.”
“You’re a teacher from Philadelphia,” Bramwell said.
“But that’s not where I was born and raised,” Argent revealed. Suddenly her voice changed. It acquired a Southern twang that made Fargo think of the hill folk of the Deep South, from states like Alabama or Georgia—or North Carolina. “How you ever beat my kin I will never know.”
Shock registered. Some of the Jacksons had divined the truth. Not Bramwell, though. As confused as ever, he said quizzically, “Your kin?”
“Yes, you brainless
lump.” Argent was shaking as she spoke but not from pain. “My father and my uncles and my cousins! People I cared most for in this world! People I loved!” Rage brought her to her feet. “I can see I’ll have to spell it out for you. Meriwether is my married name. My maiden name was Harker.” She paused. “Argenta Harker.”
They had it, then, every last one.
“My pa was Zechariah Harker, head of our clan.” Argent took a faltering step toward Bramwell. “It was your pa who tricked him by saying he wanted to end the feud, and when my pa showed up at the meeting place, your pa took him prisoner. It was your pa who sent word to the men in our clan that if they wanted to see my pa alive, they were to come to Smokey Hollow. It was your pa who set up the ambush that killed nearly every last male Harker.” She reached Bramwell and poked him in the chest. “Your father was a butcher and you’re no better!”
Bramwell was too stunned to reply.
“When the agency wrote me that Jacksonville was looking to hire a schoolmarm, I couldn’t wait to get here. I’d wanted a position further west but I never dreamed things would work out as they did. Here I was, the one person who hated you most in this world, free to walk among you and do as I pleased. Free to repay you for nearly wiping out my clan by wiping out yours.”
“So it was you who killed Elly and Billy!” Bramwell declared.
“No, Pa, it was me.”
Everyone turned toward the south window. The glass had been shot out, and the curtains were lying on the floor, shot to pieces. Just outside stood the man in black, his hat brim pulled low, a bandanna covering the lower half of his face. Only now he reached up and pulled the bandanna down around his neck. When his hands rose into sight again, each held a revolver.
“Samuel?” Bramwell blurted, going white as a sheet. “This can’t be.”
“But it is, Pa,” Sam said. “I’m in love with her. She promised she would go away with me if I did as she wanted. I helped her knife Elly and Billy. Ever since, we’ve taken turns doing the killin’. And you know what? After the first two, the rest were easy.” He gazed lovingly at Argenta. “I would do anything for her, anything at all.”
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