‘Howdy,’ Angel said, swinging down. ‘Like to leave the horse here. Overnight, mebbe. Feed him and rub him down, will you?’
‘Anything you say, mister — ?’
Angel ignored the implicit question. ‘Where could I get a room?’ he asked.
‘Levy’s is the only place in town. How long you figgerin’ on stayin’?’
‘Levy’s, you say? That’s the big place back up the street a ways?’
The hostler nodded his eyes venomous. ‘Two dollars in advance for the horse,’ he spat.
Angel fished in his jeans and gave the man two silver dollars. He lifted the Winchester out of the saddle scabbard and unfastened his war-bag from the cantle, walking out of the stable into the sunlight.
The hostler limped after him. ‘Hey, mister,’ he whined. ‘You never told me your name.’
‘That’s right,’ Angel said pleasantly and walked away, feeling the man’s eyes on his back the whole way up the street. Nobody seemed to be taking a direct interest in him, and yet he had the inescapable feeling that he was being watched all the same. He shrugged. What else? He pushed into the saloon.
It was just a big room. Tables and chairs at one side. The usual gaming setups: faro, chuckaluck, monte. A long bar running the length of the place on the left hand side, ornate mirrors reflecting a display of bottles that would have done credit to a New York hotel. The place was clean by the usual standards appertaining in this part of the world, and it wasn’t hard to figure the reason for that. There were about twenty people in the place, and here and there between the tables women in short spangled dresses moved, laughing with the men playing cards or drinking.
Nobody took an awful lot of notice of Angel as he found himself a place at the bar, but he knew his arrival had been noted. He ordered a beer and sipped it slowly, watching the faces behind him in the mirror. Once in a while he caught a covert glance. Nothing more.
He signaled the bartender for a refill.
‘Have one yourself,’ he invited.
‘Thanks,’ said the man, a florid-faced individual with strands of hair pasted on to his balding skull and a heavy walrus moustache which concealed his mouth. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
He scooped the foam off the beer with a wooden spatula and lifted the tankard in salute.
‘Salud,’ he said.
Angel raised his glass to return the salute.
‘Passin’ through? the bartender asked.
‘Sort of,’ was the non-committed reply. ‘Any work in these parts?’
The bartender looked uncomfortable. ‘We don’t get that many people up here askin’,’ he said.
Angel shrugged. ‘If I was asking,’ he said. ‘who would I see?’
‘Only one spread in these parts,’ the bartender said. ‘I ain’t heard they’re hiring.’ Angel raised his eyebrows and the bartender went on, ‘Colonel Denniston’s place up on the Blanco.’
‘What’s he run?’ Angel asked mildly. ‘Cattle, horses — what?’
‘You better ask his ramrod,’ the bartender said, retreating down the bar to serve another customer.
Angel smiled to himself. In the mirror he could see several of the men at the tables listening with unconcealed interest to his conversation. He turned to face them and their eyes were hastily averted.
‘Any of you gents care to tell me where this Denniston place is?’
His words produced a strained silence, and for a moment he thought he’d pushed it too far and fast. Then a man got up from a table at the back of the room and pushed his way through to stand in front of Angel. He was a giant. He had been sitting at a table with two of the women, hard-faced harpies whose sagging breasts all but hung out of their skinny dresses. He was dressed in heavy cord pants, a checked wool shirt, good leather boots that bore the evidence of recent polishing. His stance was erect. He was so obviously ex-Army that it was almost painful. Angel grinned to himself: they never forget how to play soldiers.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the man said hoarsely.
‘Name’s Angel, Frank Angel. And you?’
‘I’m Johnnie Atterbow. Angel, you say? That’s a hell of a name for a man.’
‘Before you start straining yourself thinking of a joke, I’ve heard them all,’ Angel cut in roughly.
‘All I want to know is how to get to this Denniston ranch.’
‘What do you want to get there for?’
Angel sighed noisily. ‘Well, you see, it’s like this, Johnnie. A long time ago, when I was a bitty kid, my old lady introduced me to eating regularly. I kind of got into the habit. But to keep on doing it, I got to work now and then.’ He spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture. ‘You see my problem.’ There was a snigger from someone behind Atterbow, who whirled around, his eyes glaring. Whoever was responsible for the sound ducked his head fast enough to fool Atterbow.
He snorted and turned back to face Angel.
‘Witty, too,’ he snapped. ‘Denniston ain’t hirin’. We got a full crew. So you can just climb back on your pony an’ head back the way you came.’
Angel smiled. ‘I really do need a job,’ he said.
‘Tough shit,’ snarled Atterbow. ‘Move on, cowboy.’
‘You do Denniston’s hiring?’
‘You better believe it. An’ like I said, we don’t need no saddle bums.’
‘Suppose I ask Denniston?’
‘Nobody asks Denniston nothin’ without going through me.’ Atterbow snarled. ‘Now finish your beer an’ get the hell on your way.’
‘You’re very noisy, Johnnie,’ Angel said mildly, and hit him as hard as he could in the belly.
Atterbow’s eyes bugged out of his head as the fist drove into his flabby gut. He went backwards like a runaway windmill, arms and legs flailing, smashing a table into kindling in his fall, the men who had been sitting at it ending up on the floor with him in a shouting jumble of bodes. Angel stood right where he had been standing, aware that the entire saloon was silent, awed, waiting for Johnnie Atterbow’s next move. Angel watched his hands.
He hoped his gamble would pay off. He didn’t want to have to kill the man.
Atterbow got slowly to his feet, a frown knotting his heavy eyebrows. He shook his head. ‘You just made the worst mistake of your life, sonny,’ he rumbled.
That was what Angel had been waiting to hear.
He unbuckled his gun belt and laid it on the counter behind him.
‘If I’ve got to fight you to get to see Denniston, I’m about ready to get started,’ he said softly.
‘You’ll not be in any condition to see anyone when I’m through with you, bucko!’ snarled Atterbow.
‘It hasn’t crossed your mind I might whip you?’
‘Not the once,’ Atterbow said. ‘They’re goin’ to have to bury you in a sandbag to weigh your box down.’
‘Talk, talk, talk,’ Angel said. He stepped forward and cuffed Johnnie Atterbow lightly across the face. In the background he heard the indrawn gasp of astonishment from those watching and then with an inarticulate scream of rage Johnnie Atterbow launched himself at Angel, his huge fists flailing in killing arcs.
Wells made good time over the Glorieta.
Towards nightfall he was about a dozen miles from Las Vegas, hurrying the team along.
Sherman had organized a fine pair of bays and a surrey and he was making good time, frankly glad that he didn’t have to cover the mountainous ground on horseback. His old wounds ached.
There was thunder in the air above the Sangre de Cristos, rumbling like some faraway avalanche behind the clouds. Once in a while he felt the heavy smack of a raindrop hit his face. His mind kept going over the details of the ambush below Raton, trying to stretch his imagination to a point where he could see why anyone would want to steal a Gatling gun. Where before there had been the possibility that the stolen rifles and ammunition had been finally destined to Comancheros, or to be sold south of the border where there was an incessant market for guns, the hijacking of the Army w
agons and the disappearance of the Gatling gun with its enormous firepower scotched that theory completely. He simply could not imagine what whoever had stolen the field piece intended to do with it. Shaking his head, Wells gigged the horses to an even faster trot.
With luck he would make Fort Union by midday tomorrow. Maybe the young Lieutenant would be able to tell him something that might help.
Ahead of him loomed the lighter strip of Tecolote Creek. He slowed the horses as they approached the ford, timbered heavily on both sides low and close to the water. The horses splashed through the shallow flow, enjoying the cool sting of the snow-chilled stream, and Wells leaned over to scoop up some water in his hand.
The movement saved his life.
He heard the flat crrr-aaa-ng of the rifle and instantaneously the searing pain across the fleshy part of his right thigh. It was as if someone had touched him with red-hot steel. Without conscious thought he screamed at the horses, whacking them with the reins, startling the bays into a pounding gallop that took him through the soft earth at the other side of the creek with only two wheels touching the ground, dark heavy lumps of muddy loam flying high around him as the rifle spat at him again from the bushes off to his right. He heard the dull vawuzz as the bullet went by and now he had unshipped his old long-barreled Colt Army, earing back the hammer clumsily as the surrey bounced on the baked road, letting go in the general direction of the ambusher, not caring about anything except making his attacker duck his head while he, Wells, put distance between himself and the ambush. Something whacked one of the horses.
He heard the slug hit the animal, the right hand one of the pair, and it faltered, breaking stride, then picked up its stride again, the other horse and the momentum of their movement taking it along. Wells threw another shot and then another into the bushes, without much hope. The distance was far too great for accurate shooting with a revolver. Damnation! he thought. His rifle was firmly wrapped inside his bedroll in back of the surrey. Trying to get at it would require the skills of an acrobat, and he had no plans to stop and try unshipping it. Instead he concentrated on getting the best speed he could out of the horses.
But the right-hand animal was faltering now, and there was bloody foam whipping backwards towards Wells from its laboring head.
No choice, he thought.
He dragged the animals to a halt, his knife already in his hand as he got down, slashing at the braces, cutting the horses apart. He reached into the back of the surrey and lifted out his bedroll, the comforting weight of the rifle reassuring as he swung on to the bare back of the horse and kicked it into a run. Once more he heard the rifle behind him speak. He hunched lower on the saddle and kept going. If he had to outrun the man, at least he had a start. That last shot had sounded as if it had come from the same stand of timber and he grinned grimly. The man was either an amateur or an optimist to think he could hit a running man on horseback from more than four hundred yards. He was just congratulating himself when the second man in the rocks forty yards ahead of him shot the horse out from between Angus Wells’ knees.
Chapter Seven
In a way Angel was sorry for what he had to do to Atterbow. But he had no real choice. The man was huge. He towered a good four inches above Angel’s six feet, and outweighed the slighter man by at least forty pounds. There was no question of fighting what was laughingly called man-to-man. Atterbow would gouge and kick and maim if he could bring his superior height and weight to bear. If those ham like fists ever connected, Angel knew they would break whatever bone they hit.
So when Atterbow came at him, Angel simply swayed, summoning all of himself to that place, concentrating on his own ch’i, just as Kee Lai had taught him. Atterbow’s rocklike fist went whap past his left ear as Angel let the man’s brute rush take him across Angel’s body, turning his own shoulder to the right and down and then driving backwards with all his force added to the speed of the bigger man, his elbow cocked and rigid, driving like a ramrod into the unprotected ribs of Johnnie Atterbow, who went smashing into the bar face first, roaring with rage and the pain of at least two ribs cracked.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaahhh!’ he shouted.
It was not the pain, although the pain was in it.
It was the insane fighting raging roar of an outraged bull, and if there had ever been any science or skill inside Atterbow’s brain it was driven out now by the searing white burn of total madness, the madness of frustration and shame and rage at this slim, unconcerned man with the cold eyes standing unmarked before him.
He came forward without warning, very fast on his feet for a man so big, the meaty hands spread and reaching for some kind of grip on Angel. Angel let him come and when Atterbow got properly hold of him and started to pull Angel came forward all at once and with every ounce of strength he had, his hand coming up cocked backwards, the heel coming up beneath Atterbow’s unprotected jaw with smashing force, jarring the bear head back, bone going somewhere, mashing the cursing lips and driving Atterbow backwards and down to the floor. Spitting out broken pieces of yellow teeth, blood spraying from his torn lips, Atterbow came off the floor in a long diving movement, aiming for Angel’s middle, every ounce of his weight behind the man oeuvre which, had it been effective, would have whirled Angel off his feet and into a wrestler’s mauling tangle, where Atterbow would have all the advantage. It was a good move. It really should have done exactly what Atterbow — and every one of those watching — expected it would do. But it did not. Angel moved even faster than his opponent had and his two hands looped together and came down in much the same movements that they would have done if he had had an axe in his hand chopping wood. They hit Atterbow behind the ear with a dull meaty thwack that sounded like a butcher taking a cleaver to a side of beef and drove him face down to the board floor, smashing him flat in the bloody sawdust. Again Angel stepped back, untouched. A bystander gaped at him as if he were supernatural, then switched his attention back to Atterbow, who was again getting to his feet, his whole face a torn and awful smear of broken flesh and bone. He got to his feet, staggering, reaching again for his elusive opponent. Angel shook his head and hit him again.
His hand hardly seemed to move, and yet there was all the driving force he could muster behind the ramrod movement that drove his clenched fist, middle knuckles protruding in the karate fighting style, into Atterbow’s breast just below the heart.
The man stopped, paralyzed, his eyes bulging, face purpling as his astonished system tried to carry on pumping oxygen through to the heart literally stunned by the terrible force of the blow. Still the brain commanded the arms, and again Atterbow reached for Angel, his lips gaping like a newly-landed fish. Breath wheezed into his laboring throat. He staggered. Then he lurched forward, and Angel let him come, taking the man’s grip on his left arm, turning his own hand to clamp Atterbow’s right, pulling until Atterbow came forward on his toes. Then Angel hit the man across the forearm with his clenched fist. Everybody in the room heard the terrible sound of the bone going. It sounded like when a kid breaks a dead branch off a tree. Atterbow made no sound, so deep in shock and pain was he. He went down to his knees again, slumped in the centre of the bloody circle of astonished watchers, his left arm useless at his side. Somewhere in his brain, something tried to make the wrecked thing get to his feet.
‘Hel,’ the thing said. ‘Mu.’
Nobody moved. All eyes turned to see what Angel would do. No man had ever stood up to Johnnie Atterbow before. This one didn’t even look out of breath and yet he had broken Atterbow, broken the man the way an idler on a porch snaps a match. They regarded Angel with almost superstitious awe.
‘Help him! ’ Angel snapped. ‘He’s probably got more guts than all of you put together. Get him on a table. Bartender! Bring a cloth and some water. Somebody get a doctor if there is one in this dump!’
‘I’ll go, mister,’ one of the girls said, and ran for the door in a flicker of tarnished sequins and white, plump thighs. The bartender came around the bar, anxious now t
o help. Everyone was suddenly anxious to assist. They would probably have tried to fly if Angel had told them to do it; anything rather than see that cold killing light rekindle in the relentless eyes.
‘Mister,’ wheezed the bartender. ‘I never seed anything like that in all my days. Never once. What kind of fighting was that, anyway? He patted at Atterbow’s broken face with the cloth, wiping away the smeared blood, tutting as he worked.
When Angel made no answer, he went on, ‘Not that it matters. Your life ain’t worth a plugged nickel when the Colonel hears about this. If I was you I’d get the hell out of Kiowa before he does. Or he’ll kill you sure.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Angel said.
‘Indeed it will, sir,’ said a cold voice touched with venom behind him. He heard the metallic triple click of a revolver being cocked and froze, his eyes darting to the bar where his gun lay still in its holster. No chance. He let his shoulders relax.
‘Turn around, mister,’ the voice said. ‘I’d like to see what you look like before I kill you.’
Chapter Eight
They had him and Wells knew it.
All night he had lain hidden in the rocks alongside the trail where he had scrambled as the horse died beneath him. He had managed to get his war-bag and his rifle during the night, and had shifted around until he had a little centre point of rocks which could only be approached across open ground. He had hoped they might try to come after him during the night; there would have been a chance if they had. But he realized now that his ambushers were not amateurs as he had first supposed. The first man had been placed specifically to drive him into the sights of the second and now they were waiting for sunup to finish the job. He had no way of knowing how many more of them there were, or where they were hidden. But he had spent some time wondering who they might be and why they had laid for him at all. They could of course be common footpads, waylaying men travelling alone, but thieves would not set up so elaborate a whipsawing. Which meant that they were after him specifically. That, in turn, had to mean that his investigation had bothered someone enough to have them send men after him. And that in turn meant his hunch had been correct. There was something fishy about this Colonel Denniston. He grinned mirthlessly. Much damned good the knowledge was going to do him.
Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) Page 4