Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3)

by Frederick H. Christian

  He pushed into the office and explained quickly why he had come. Within ten minutes Wells was lying on the long leather—covered table in the back room, while Cox surveyed his wounds with a practiced eye that did not miss any of the other scars on Wells’ body.

  ‘Led an active life, this one,’ he said, stripping away the bandages Ayres’ wife had wound around Wells’ body. ‘Martha did a good job, john. As usual. Who is he, do you know?’

  ‘We didn’t try to ask him questions, Jack,’ Ayres said. ‘He was out most of the time anyway.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Cox. He got a bottle of sal ammoniac from the bag and waved it under Wells’ nose.

  After a minute or two, Wells flinched from the bottle, his eyes flickering.

  ‘That’s the boy,’ cooed Cox. He waved the bottle around again and this time Wells opened his eyes.

  ‘Where—’ he said, trying to sit up. Cox restrained him with a firm hand.

  ‘Easy, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t you go getting excited.’

  Wells nodded. ‘You a doctor?’ Cox inclined his head, and Wells asked a question.

  ‘You’re in my office in Las Vegas,’ the doctor said. ‘This is john Ayres, who found you and brought you here.’

  ‘I’m — I don’t know how — ’

  ‘Ach, no need of that,’ Ayres said. ‘What’s your name, man? What happened to you?’

  Wells told them his name and what he was, told them what had happened to him on the road and his suspicions about the reason for the ambush.

  They listened without speaking, and then Cox said, ‘You’ll be wanting us to get word to Fort Union, then?’

  Wells nodded. ‘Most urgent,’ he whispered.

  ‘Matter of life and death.’

  ‘Whose, laddie?’ Cox said, wryly. ‘Theirs — or yours?’

  Wells didn’t answer. He had fallen back on the bed, out again. But Cox looked at his friend.

  ‘Was he telling the truth, do you think?’

  ‘Why would he make up a story like that, Jack?’

  ‘Why indeed,’ Cox said. ‘All right, john — get yourself out of here. I’ve serious work to do. I’ll try and patch up our friend so that he’ll hold together until they can send an ambulance down from the Fort. If you go down the street and see Pedro Chavez y Chavez, he’ll send one of his boys over to the Fort. You can write some kind of note for him to take, can’t you?’

  ‘I can do that,’ Ayres agreed. ‘And I will. But what about Wells? Will he live?’

  ‘Aye, he’ll live, John,’ Cox said. ‘Whether he’ll like it when he finds out his spine has a bullet lodged against it, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I wish I had the knowledge and the equipment to tell you the answer to that, John,’ the doctor said. ‘A fifty-fifty chance he’ll never walk again.’

  He looked down at his patient and stifled a curse as he realized that Wells had regained consciousness and had been listening to every word he said.

  ‘Hell,’ he said hastily, ‘I don’t know anything, of course. I’m more than likely completely wrong. Lie still, there, now. john, won’t you get on and arrange that other business. Go on, go on, go on,’ he ranted on, bustling the big man out of the room, making a big show of sorting out his instruments and washing his hands, avoiding the eyes of the man on the bed. Finally he turned to face Wells and his eyes widened with surprise when he saw that Wells was grinning.

  ‘This is no damned laughing matter, you know,’ he said, mock-angry, alarmed lest perhaps Wells was becoming delirious or might even have tetanus. God, what he’d give for proper equipment!

  ‘Take it easy, Doc,’ Wells said. ‘Take it easy. Five hours ago I was as near dead as a man can be. Now you’re giving me a fifty-fifty chance. I reckon by tomorrow morning I’ll be up and around at this rate.’

  Cox looked at his patient with new respect. ‘By God,’ he muttered. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Denniston said.

  You had to hand it to him, Angel thought. He didn’t blow his cool at all — just a slight rise of the eyebrows and even, perhaps, a hint of a smile at the corners of the patrician mouth.

  It was the kid, Jackson, who reacted. He was on his feet in an instant, the chair going over backwards away from him as he faced Angel across the table, his hand poised over the tied-down gun. The tableau froze: nobody moved.

  ‘All right, you treacherous bastard! ’ snapped the kid. ‘You said you could use your gun. Let’s see you do it!’

  Angel looked at Denniston, who returned his gaze blandly. Frank Angel shrugged and cocked the gun he was holding beneath the table. The kid heard it and his face went white.

  ‘That’s right,’ Angel told him.

  He let them all think about it for a moment, then spoke again. ‘The gun I’m holding under the table is loaded with soft-nosed bullets, and each one of them has a cross cut into it,’ he lied.

  ‘I hope I don’t need to give you a detailed description of what would happen to any of your bellies if I were to cut loose with it.’

  He let them think about that, his own mind racing. Getting the drop on the men in this room was one thing. Getting out of the building and then out of the compound was something else again. It might have been that some of this showed on his face, for Denniston smiled and spoke, laying his hands flat on the table and leaning forward carefully, so as not to precipitate violence.

  ‘Put the gun on the table, Mr. Angel,’ he said. ‘There is no way you can get out of here alive.’

  ‘He’s telling you the truth, bach,’ the man on Angel’s left said.

  ‘Sure,’ Angel replied. He got up and pushed his own chair back, his eyes watching all of them for any sudden move. But with the exception of the kid, who still stood looking as if he would like to go for his gun, the men around the table looked relaxed — as though they had no wish or need to try to prevent his escape.

  ‘Listen to me, Angel,’ Denniston said. ‘Just listen.’

  ‘Talk away,’ Angel said. He eased over to the window, taking in the layout of the compound, adding what he could see to the mental map he had drawn on his first arrival. He knew without looking that there were buildings on each side of the one he was in: Quarters for the ‘officers’ of Denniston’s ‘army’. He was facing north: the gate and its bridged ditch lay straight ahead. Off to the right was a stone building, the south wall of which was sandbagged and reinforced with timber to take the impact of the bullets fired at the targets standing before it — the rifle range. On the western side of the compound stood six barracks and in the far north-western corner he knew there was a high wire-mesh compound that housed patrol flogs — Alsatians, he had guessed. All this he took in swiftly, his gaze checking off the number of men in the square outside, the distance involved, the odds for and against the several plans that came into his mind to be immediately discarded.

  ‘If you should get across the parade ground to the gate — which is highly doubtful — you have to cross the bridge. There are four guards on the bridge day and night and two guards in each of the vedettes flanking the gate. Let us suppose,’ Denniston droned relentlessly on, ‘you even managed somehow to get past the guards and over the bridge, you would be in no—man’s land. The trail you came in here on is the only way in or out. If you step off it, you will be in no-man’s land. There are trip wires linked to explosives buried everywhere out there, Angel. There are man-traps hidden beneath soft sand, under bushes — they would take the hoof off a horse and certainly cripple a man. Let us suppose, however, that you neither hit a tripwire nor stumbled into one of the traps, you would be alone in the wilderness, your wits and your pistol all you would have to sustain you. I, however, would send a hundred men out to find you, hunt you down, kill you. The dogs in the compound are man killers. They can find you in land where an Apache would lose a trail. There is no way out, Angel. Put down your gun.’

  ‘Very con
vincing,’ Angel said. ‘I almost believe you.’

  Denniston threw up his hands in a gesture of near—disgust. ‘I thought you were an intelligent man, Angel,’ he said. ‘Instead, I see that you’re a fool. Very well, I wash my hands of you.’

  Angel raised the window. It moved easily on its sash cords. When it was open about three feet, he bent in one smooth movement and stepped on to the ramada outside the building. As he did Ray Adam stood up and in the same moment flipped the gun he had drawn beneath the table level, easing back the hammer and letting fly as Angel stepped swiftly to one side, moving fast across the face of the building and down the alley between it and the officers’ quarters adjacent, running flat out as he heard shouts and the sound of running feet crunching on the gravel of the parade ground. Ahead of him reared the high wire fence.

  It looked enormous, unscalable, but he thrust the pistol into his holster and ran at the fence, using the vaulting-horse technique they had taught him in the gymnasium in Washington. His left hand acted as a pivot, gripping the wire about his own shoulder height, hurling his body flat on to the wire, and arcing on the pivot of the hand like someone vaulting a stile, the powerful surge of run and whipcorded muscle taking his right leg across the top strand of the wire, the jagged ends tearing into his skin as he switched his weight over and then dropped down to the far side. Men came skidding around the corner of the building and saw him. He heard one of them shout something and threw a shot towards them, the slug aimed high to make them hunt cover rather than to kill. They dived to both sides of the alley, getting as near to the walls of the buildings as they could.

  ‘Come back!’ he heard someone shout. ‘Come back!’

  He threw another shot at the sound just for luck and then turned and hunted cover down the steep side of a low shelf that overhung a thin wash perhaps fifteen yards from the wire. He whirled sharp left, moving up the wash towards the west, where the peaked edges of the divide above Kiowa reared sharp against the sky. He was thinking about the climb up there when he hit the tripwire and the world blew up in his face.

  Angel surveyed his prison.

  It was a square stone room, with a barred window: set high on the wall opposite his bed.

  There was a table with a tin washbowl on it, a chair. Into the right hand wall was set a massive wood door with a judas window. He could hear the sounds of men marching on the parade ground outside. He eased his position in the bed and winced. Every muscle of his body ached. He felt as if he had been stepped on by some gigantic monster. His hands were bandaged. He had no mirror so did not know that his face was lacerated and that most of his body was one solid bruise.

  They had come out and carried him in unconscious, every shred of his clothing tattered and ripped by the flat hard force of the explosion that had been set off when he hit the tripwire. He grimaced, and tried to sit up. The world swam and he fell back on the cot, panting. Great, he thought.

  After a while he tried again. This time the dizziness was not so bad and he was able to sit up and then swing his legs down to the floor. He was sweating as if he had lifted heavy loads for an hour. No good. He wasn’t in any condition to go anywhere yet. He went across and dragged the chair towards the wall, standing on it to look out of the window. There seemed to be a lot of activity outside. The men were being assembled, horses being led across the parade ground, orders shouted. He heard footsteps. in the passageway outside the door of his cell and stepped down quickly from the chair, putting it back beside the table and sitting down. The judas window slid aside and he saw someone look in.

  Then keys ratted in the lock. The door swung inwards and Denniston stepped into the room.

  ‘Well, Mr. Angel,’ he said. ‘I see you’re up and about.’

  The prisoner said nothing. He just looked at Denniston expressionlessly.

  ‘Well,’ Denniston said, unabashed by the silence, ‘I thought I would bid you farewell. I’m afraid I shall not be able to witness your execution.’

  ‘You’re breaking my heart,’ Angel said. ‘What execution is this?’

  ‘Tomorrow, at sunrise,’ he was told, ‘you will be taken from here and shot. I have no further use for you. It is mere chance that you were not killed in your foolish escape bid. Since, however, you were not, then we shall execute you according to military procedure.’

  Angel sneered, letting the contempt he felt for this nonsense show on his face. He desperately wanted to put Denniston off-balance, jar the man into self-exposure. But Denniston wasn’t having any.

  ‘Think what you like,’ he said. ‘You’ll be shot anyway.’

  ‘First Wells, now me,’ Angel said. ‘You think you can take on the entire United States Department of Justice?’

  Denniston threw back his head and laughed, and for the first time Angel caught the note of incipient madness in it.

  ‘You stupid fool!’ Denniston snapped. ‘You have no conception of the size of my plans!’

  ‘Tell me, then,’ Angel said softly. ‘What exactly are your plans?’

  Denniston looked at his prisoner for a long moment and then nodded, as if coming to a decision.

  ‘I suppose you ought to have some recompense for dying so young,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I shall tell you.’ His burning eyes fastened on Angel’s, there was a haunted look far back in them.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘were you in the War?’

  ‘In a way,’ Angel said.

  ‘But not the Army?’

  ‘No. Not the Army.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Denniston, as if that explained everything. ‘Then you have never seen a man being drummed out of camp?’

  Angel shook his head. ‘That what they did to you?’

  The burning eyes widened a fraction, and then a wicked smile touched Denniston’s lips.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said softly. ‘You’d know about that, of course. The knowledge seals my intent more strongly than ever, now you have to die, Angel.’

  ‘We all have to die,’ Angel said. ‘Even you, Denniston.’

  The man shook his head, the evil smile lingering at the corners of his thin lips.

  ‘I have been dead for many years,’ he said. ‘Many years. Let me tell you about how I died, Angel. It was not the physical death that all men seem to fear, oh, no. It was the death of the spirit that is more cruel, more agonizing than any wound inflicted by bullet or knife. The death of the spirit,’ he repeated. His eyes were vacant, as if his thoughts were far away. ‘You see, what they do if you show you are afraid in battle is so obscene, so vile, that you can hardly understand what is happening to you. They assemble all the officers, and strip your uniform off you, button by button, badge by badge. They snap your sword. They revile you openly, disavow you publicly. Then four soldiers with fixed bayonets are placed behind you as guards and they march you through the camp, the fifes and drums playing. The fifes and drums playing.’ He faltered, hearing in his mind the drone of the ‘Rogue’s March’ and feeling the rough poking pricks of the bayonets in the hands of the jeering soldiers, stumbling across the camp ground with his eyes blind with tears, every man in the entire regiment hooting, jeering, cursing.

  ‘The fifes and drums?’ Angel said softly.

  ‘Uh?’ Denniston’s head snapped up. ‘Oh. Yes. No matter. I prefer not to discuss it further. Let us simply say that I could never, ever forgive the men who disgraced me that day. The man who above all others was responsible for treating me — me, who had ,fought with honor a dozen major battles, more — like a slinking cur. I was drummed out, Mister Angel. Drummed out. A West Pointer. Do you know what kind of death that is?’

  Angel shook his head. The kind of pride the military had was one he had never attempted to understand. It had to do with passing examinations and family connections and knowing the right people and never getting your copybook blotted and seemed anyway like a hell of a way for a man to spend his life. He said none of this, however.

  ‘Now I have my own army,’ Denniston said. ‘Trained men. You have seen the re
sults of their training.’

  ‘The raids on the Army posts,’ Angel said. ‘The ambush of the wagon train? You could have used renegade Apaches and got the same result. Trained men only kill when they have to, not gratuitously like mad dogs.’

  ‘No, no,’ Denniston held up his hand in remonstrance. ‘No, they killed those men under my orders. It was imperative that no one who had seen us, no one who threatened our eventual mission was to be allowed to live. That is why your colleague was killed. Why you will be killed. Why anyone who stands in my way will be killed.’

  His voice had risen slightly, and he was breathing faster, as if angered by his own words, moved by a sort of self-hypnotism.

  ‘Your eventual mission?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Denniston said, his calm returning. ‘I promised you, did I not? Well, my digression had point, although it may have puzzled you. Tonight my men and I ride out of here. We will take the guns we — ah — liberated and the ammunition. And, of course, the Gatling gun.’

  He shook his head in self-admiration. ‘A stroke of pure genius, that, I think. Well. Tonight we march. We march to — a destination I think I shall not reveal to you. Mister Angel, although it is not a long way away. There we shall prepare for a battle. Along both sides of a canyon my men will be lying in wait, those beautifully accurate Army weapons aimed and ready, the Gatling gun loaded and carefully located where its lethal firepower can do the most damage. And down that canyon will come the man who gave the order to have me drummed out of the camp at Chickamauga ten years ago — the man who is now President of the United States, Ulysses Simpson Grant!’

  His words hung in the still air like some monstrous black bird. Angel reacted the only way he knew how.

  ‘You’re insane,’ he said.

  just for a second the fires of madness consumed the brain behind the glaring, iron-gray eyes. Denniston’s hand swept across in a tight arc.