‘Uccchh,’ Harvey said.
‘Move!’ Angel told him. ‘You too, Beautiful!’
‘Listen—’ Broken-Face stammered.
‘Why the way you boys are acting, you’d think there was someone out there,’ Angel said. ‘You wouldn’t have been trying to get me to walk into a deadfall, would you?’
‘Hell, Angel!’ Harvey said. ‘We’re tryin’ to help you.’
‘Sure,’ Angel said. Without the slightest change of expression he shot Harvey in the backside. The scorching burn of the slug seared a yelping screech from the man, who fell backward against the wooden wall, smearing it with blood. Broken-Face looked at his comrade aghast.
‘Out!’ Angel said.
‘No,’ Broken-Face said, holding up a hand with the palm toward Angel.
‘Out!’ Angel said. His face was like something carved from granite. He eared back the hammer of the gun and Broken-Face cringed back. Harvey screamed in terror like a horse going over a cliff, a dark stain spreading downward across the leg of his pants. He scrabbled for the door and yanked it open, shouting ‘Don’t shoot, boys, it’s—!’ but that was as far as he got. As he yanked open the door and Angel stepped quickly back around the right angle of the wall, the stuttering boom of two or perhaps three shotguns tore the night apart. The flash from the guns illuminated the alley like summer lightning and the whickering hail of heavy slugs ripped Harvey and Broken-Face to ribbons, smashing their torn bodies against the bullet-riddled door like tattered puppets, filling the air with whispering lead and splintered wood and glass and the ugly sweet smell of fresh blood. Angel whirled as he heard footsteps pounding through the opening behind him, and Dan Sheridan skidded to a stop, the heavy Greener ready in his left hand. He looked at the carnage and his face set.
‘Good Christ in Heaven!’ he breathed. ‘Who’s - who was that?’
Angel told him. He told him what had happened.
‘No use going after them,’ he said. ‘We know who they were.’
A thought occurred to him and he asked Sheridan a question.
‘Sherry Hardin,’ Sheridan said. ‘She came lickety-split the minute she heard shooting. Howie’s there with her, don’t worry. Anyone tries to get near Burt’s liable to get himself blown every damned way but up. Sherry’s as nervous as a scalded cat, and Howie’s just about the most miserable thing you ever saw.’
Angel nodded, moving out into the saloon. The two men he’d noted earlier were gone. The man who’d tried to speak to him came over.
‘I tried,’ he said falteringly. ‘But they had guns pointed at us, under the table. I’m sorry.’ He was abject, standing there.
‘Don’t be,’ Angel told him. ‘You told me with your face. I guessed what was happening. The whole thing smelled of a set-up right from the start. If Hugess or his men wanted to shoot me in the street I reckon they could make a better job of it than that fellow did.’
‘It’s terrible,’ the man said. ‘Terrible. Can’t something be done?’
‘We’re doing what we can,’ Sheridan said. ‘Everything we can.’
‘We’re afraid to walk the streets,’ another man said.
‘It’s about time Larry Hugess was told he can’t take the law into his own hands,’ said the third.
‘Well,’ Sheridan said, no humor in his eyes, ‘if you see him, you tell him that.’
He led the way back across to the jail, and Sherry Hardin opened the barred door. Her eyes were full of anxiety, but they softened when she saw the tall figure behind the marshal. Sheridan saw the look and his own expression changed slightly. He’d been so damned wrapped up in what had been going on in Madison that he’d missed the most important development of all. He realized he was going to have to do some adjusting of his thinking about Sherry Hardin. You could have cooked a meal on the warmth in her eyes as she looked at Angel.
‘Listen,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Listen,’ he said again, ‘Howie here isn’t going to sleep worth a damn tonight and neither am I. Why don’t you grab a decent night’s sleep, Angel? I can manage things here. You can probably. . . .’ He trailed off with a wry grin as he realized he was selling it too hard. Angel was looking at him with surprise, and he grinned at Sheridan’s guilty expression.
‘Matchmaking, Dan?’ Angel said. ‘Isn’t that sort of out of your line of country?’
‘Go to hell,’ Sheridan said.
‘Angels don’t go to hell, Dan,’ came the reply. ‘Only town marshals who read romantic novels.’
‘Hey,’ came the injured voice of Howie Cade. ‘Isn’t anybody going to talk to me?’
‘Sure, Howie,’ Sheridan said, waving Angel and Sherry Hardin out of the jail. ‘Sure.’ He gave them a so-long signal, and as he closed the door and barred it again, they heard him say, ‘I’m going to talk to you, all right. And you’d better believe it!’
They walked back to the hotel together. Once in a while their hands brushed together, or their shoulders kissed. They didn’t speak the whole way. The town was silent now. The Professor had quit playing at the Palace. The lights were all out in the Oriental. They went inside together.
‘Well,’ Angel said.
Before he could say anything else, or Sherry reply, the little Chinaman came out from his kitchen. His button eyes were shining and he looked at Angel with unconcealed admiration. ‘You want eat?’ he said. ‘I fix.’
It was the first time Angel had ever heard him speak. He said so.
‘Ah,’ said Chen. ‘Special ’casion.’
‘Well, thanks, Chen But I’m really not hungry. I could use a drink, though.’
‘You bet!’ Chen said. He scurried over to a cupboard and clinked about with bottle and glasses. He brought a drink for Sherry, too.
‘Chen,’ she said warningly. ‘What is all this?’
‘Celebrate living,’ he said. ‘Sleep good.’ He managed somehow to include Angel and the girl in the one phrase and smiled as he shuffled off back to his kitchen, leaving them looking at each other. They finished the drinks and put the glasses down on one of the tables.
‘Good night, Sherry,’ Angel said.
‘You’re tired,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. His eyes were dark with fatigue. The tensions of the day, the sharp angry moments of action had all to be paid for. He nodded in reply. ‘I could use some sleep,’ he said.
She turned away, picking up the glasses, speaking with her back to him. ‘My door’s right opposite yours,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it open.’ She didn’t look at him as she brushed past and hurried up the stairs. He waited until he heard her door open and close, and then he went up. Outside her door he paused. He could hear her moving on the bed and he touched the doorknob, turning it. She hadn’t been lying: it wasn’t locked.
He turned away and went into his own room. It looked sparse and cold. The curtains lifted slightly in the faint night breeze and he could hear the far-off yowl of a hunting bobcat. He pulled off his boots, thinking about Larry Hugess, wondering what the big man was planning, how he would have reacted to the death of so many of his men, the failure of each of his attempts to kill Sheridan, or Howie, or himself. Maybe Hugess had decided to give up, now. Maybe he would let them put Burt on the train and take him to the capital for trial. And maybe the moon was made of green cheese. Angel grinned tiredly. He lay on his bed and watched the square of moonlit wall, his thoughts jumbled. He kept trying to concentrate on tomorrow, to put himself into Larry Hugess’s place and anticipate the man’s plans, thoughts, ideas. But all the time the face of Sherry Hardin floated into his mind and he saw her toss her head and remembered her hair catching the sunlight.
He must have dozed because a slight sound woke him.
He was awake instantly, the gun in his hand. But the noise had not been in the room. Outside? He eased off the bed without making it creak, moving across the room close to the wall where no floorboard would protest his weight. He turned the doorknob easy and silently. There was no one outside. The place was as silent as a
n undisturbed tomb. Sherry Hardin’s door was ajar. He could see the counterpane turned back. The bed was empty. Frowning, he eased along the hall and down the stairs, keeping to the wall side of each tread. The foot of the staircase was a pool of utter blackness but his senses told him there was someone in it. He could hear the faint sound of breathing, his keen hearing told him it was not the rasping, tensed breath of a hiding man. At the foot of the stairs, swaddled up in a huge red-and-black blanket that looked as if it belonged on a Christmas sleigh, was Sherry Hardin. She was fast asleep, and her long copper hair spilled across the checkered material like a cascade of dark golden water. She had a nickel-plated Colt Peacemaker with a nine-inch barrel in her hand. It lay in her lap as big as a cannon, and Angel smiled in the darkness at her brave folly.
‘Sherry,’ he said, softly.
She stirred in her sleep and he took the heavy gun out of her nerveless hand. Warmth glowed from her curled-up body as he lifted her, and she said his name as she burrowed her face into the angle of his neck. Her lips were dry but he felt her kiss him as he started up the stairs. Although she was not a small girl, it seemed to him that she weighed hardly anything at all.
Chapter Twelve
One more day, Larry Hugess told himself.
He sat in the big, sprawling living room of his ranch, face set in a heavy scowl, and faced the unalterable fact that he had totally underestimated his opposition. It wasn’t easy for him to admit that a crippled marshal, a reformed drunk, and a government snooper had not only faced, but overcome the very best men he could put up against them. But Larry Hugess was not a stupid man. Bull-headed, obstinate, full of pride, he was all of those and knew it. But not stupid. He realized now that he had been using a sledgehammer to kill an ant, and it had cost him dear, very dear. If he did not now use his brain instead of his strength it would cost him the rest of what he owned and he was not about to let that happen. He slouched in the heavy chair, legs stretched out in front of him, a hunting dog asleep with its head on his burnished leather boots, a big man rendered powerless by insignificant enemies, as powerless as is the dog to make war on the flea.
They had brought him the news of his setbacks, of the death of good men, hesitantly, perhaps instinctively knowing the fate of bearers of bad tidings. Larry Hugess had heard them out impassively. The death of such as Johns, Evans, even Johnston, moved him no more than the death of one of his steers. They took the money, therefore they knew the risk. Losing them was a setback, but nothing vital. There were plenty of men willing to sell their guns to a man who paid well. If only he had more time!
He reflected again upon the unassailable fact that time was running out. The train would arrive and unless Burt was freed by then, he was through. Not even Larry Hugess could take on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. He had considered, and rejected, the idea of mounting all his men, taking over the town, and daring Sheridan to walk down the street to the depot with his prisoner. Sheridan, with Angel alongside him, would do just that, forcing Larry Hugess to kill him out in the open where the whole town could see it done. Angel, too, would have to be killed, and Larry Hugess wanted no witness who could inform the Department of Justice of the circumstances of the government man’s death. Life was too short and too precious to spend every hour of it looking over one’s shoulder for another pursuer from the Justice Department. Yet the equation remained, no matter how he approached it, no matter how he turned it over in his mind. The cement holding together the barrier to realizing his intent was Frank Angel. Remove Angel from the equation and it collapsed: Sheridan was a good man, but he couldn’t fight one-handed. Cade wasn’t even worth wasting time thinking about. So it came ineluctably back each time to the same solution: Angel must die. If Angel did not die, then Larry Hugess had no future, and he could not, would not face that possibility. He had worked too hard for the things he had.
He looked around the room in which he sat, as if seeing it for the first time. It was a fine, high room, painted white and styled in the Spanish fashion, with arched doorways and black fretted ironwork at the windows. A massive oil painting of himself hung above the fireplace and dominated the room: Larry Hugess with imperious stance and haughty eyes, dressed in the long white coat and low-crowned hat of a Mississippi plantation owner, head thrown back, hand on holstered hip, looking out across some spacious vista, confident, unassailable, strong. The fireplace itself was big enough to roast half a steer, although it had been many years since the blackened cooking pots had been used, the carefully arranged logs set afire. A fine imported carpet covered the red-tiled floor, and the furniture was good, hand-hewed oak that sat solid and dependable around the room. The table was huge, like one you might see in a refectory; it had seated twenty many times, for when Larry Hugess entertained he did so royally and without stint. One wall of the room was filled with shelves of books in fine tooled-leather bindings. Huge oil lamps hung from the beamed ceiling. At night, they picked glinting highlights from good silver and fine crystal. By day, the big windows let in the burning sunlight to fill the room with molten gold. Larry Hugess loved this room, this house. He had worked all his life to own what it contained and what it represented. He had sweated and he had lied, he had worked and he had cheated, fixed what needed fixing and paid whatever prices had to be paid, and he had come to where he was now because he was strong and ruthless, lavishly generous when necessary, his table rich, his wines impeccably selected, his guest book filled with all the right names. Before very much longer this territory was going to send someone to the Congress of the United States and when it did, that man was going to be Larry Hugess. It would be the fruition, the realization of everything he had worked for, the reward for all the years of doing favors, of wheeling, dealing, fixing -yes, and even killing, he thought - that had passed since he had planted his marker on this land and begun to build the Flying H with little more behind him than a milch cow and a bellyful of guts. He had put his life, his wealth, his sweat, his blood into this thing and he would have his reward. But not if Angel lived.
One more day.
He admitted to just the faintest sense of unease. He took great care to conceal any sign of it, but it was there just the same. He dare not show weakness in front of such men as rode for him these days: they were rats with an extra-sensory perception for weakness, who would run from a sinking ship as cold-bloodedly as they knew he would abandon them if he had to. He got up and paced the floor, lighting a thick Havana cigar from a humidor on a Florentine table beside his chair. The dog rolled back and looked at him, realized he wasn’t going out, and went back to sleep.
‘Good boy,’ Hugess said automatically.
He looked at the whiskey decanter and then shook his head, angry at himself. There weren’t any solutions to the problem in there. Afterward, he told himself, afterward he would get monumentally, roaring drunk in celebration. But not now: time was short and he had to come up with some way of defusing Frank Angel.
There was something: something one of the men had told him. He had laid it aside, the way a man will lay aside a useful tool in case he cannot do what he wants to do with his hands. He went over the surly monosyllabic reports from his riders, trying to remember what they had said, word for word, when they had brought him the news that Angel had eluded the trap at the Oriental and caused the death of two more men.
Ken Finstatt had stood in the middle of the room, beneath the portrait of his master, turning his Stetson around in his hands, putting into mumbling words the latest catastrophe. Hugess had heard him through in silence: the Justice Department man coming out of the Hardin place, the decoy shot and Angel’s unexpectedly accurate return shot that had clipped Stu Bennick’s arm badly enough to put him out of any further action. He heard how Harvey Macrae and Gene Sanchez had been stampeded out into the alley by Angel and cut down by the blasting shotguns of Ken Finstatt and his sidekicks.
‘We skedaddled out of that alley,’ Finstatt had told him, ‘round to the jail, ready to make our play with Angel de
ad. You can imagine how we was dumbstruck when he come out of the Oriental large as life an’ twice as ugly.’
‘And then?’ Hugess had asked.
‘Well,’ Finstatt told him, ‘nothin’ much. Angel went on back up to the hotel. Sheridan an’ Cade was back in the jail. We was stuck.’
Hugess nodded. They never took any initiative, men like Finstatt. You told them what they had to do and they tried to do it. If it worked, they came back like children with a puzzle solved. If it did not, they came back so you could tell them what to do next.
‘Of course,’ Hugess had said, silkily sardonic, ‘it never occurred to you to finish Angel off in the street, did it?’
‘Sure it did!’ Finstatt protested. ‘Exceptin’ your orders was that if we got Angel, it didn’t have to look too . . . too. . . .’
‘Blatant was the word I used,’ Hugess said. ‘Although how you could be less blatant than to lie in ambush with three shotguns I fail to see.’
‘Yeah,’ Finstatt said, either missing the sarcasm or avoiding it. ‘Well, if we’d’ve gone for Angel, we’d’ve had to kill that Hardin woman, too.’
‘Sherry Hardin?’
‘Right! She was walkin’ up the street to the hotel with Angel, right close, cozy as two cats in a basket.’
That was it!
Larry Hugess slapped his thigh, and the hound looked up at him reproachfully. Hugess didn’t even see it. He knew he had the lever for which he had been looking in his mind, knowing he had laid it aside there for possible use.
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ he had asked Finstatt.
‘Well,’ Finstatt said uneasily. He put the first bits of a leer on his face, as though needing permission to add the rest. Finstatt was aware that Larry Hugess knew and perhaps even had ideas about Sherry Hardin.
‘Well?’ Hugess had snapped, knowing why Finstatt hesitated and implicitly giving him permission to continue. He felt like a pimp for encouraging the man, sensing what Finstatt would imply. It was true: Sherry Hardin was a handsome woman, and he had often thought how well she would look at his side. An intelligent, beautiful woman could be a great advantage to a man setting out on a political career. He had set aside his intention to let her know of his interest for an appropriate time which had never come. But he was aware of her. and knew she had been aware of him.
Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) Page 10