“You talk a hell of a good fight, lawman,” he snapped. “We’ll see how loud you sing in due course!”
The crowd from the saloon was seeping sheepishly out of the building, sidling along the boardwalk, trying to overhear what was being said. Big Ed knew that his sovereignty had been threatened, knew his control and power had been lessened in their eyes and that now he had no choice any more. So be it: he would enjoy cropping this rooster.
“Enjoy the sunset, Mister Angel,” he said, his voice level but loud enough to be heard clearly. “You’ll never see another!”
“Jabber, jabber, jabber,” Angel said, and without warning, slashed the big man’s horse across the rump with the barrel of the shotgun. The unexpected blow startled the unsuspecting animal, which screeched with pain and jumped from a standing start into a wild run, almost unseating Ed Fischer as it rocketed off down the street. For a moment, the other men watched in startled shock, and then Trev Rawley wheeled his animal around, jammed his spurs into the brute’s sides, and led the others flat out into the sifting dust cloud which marked the passage of their leader.
Angel watched them go, his face reflective, the shotgun still resting negligently on Joe Fischer’s shoulder.
“Frank,” Dick Webb said. “This is Doc Day, Peter Day.”
“Doc,” Angel said. “I want to thank you for joining the party.”
“Glad to,” Day told him. “My pleasure, in fact.”
They were silent for a moment, watching the empty street. The dust had settled now, and they could see the small cloud of dust which marked the passage of the four Fischer men heading up the trail towards the Arabelas north of town. A brown dog meandered across the empty street.
“How many men can Fischer raise?” Angel asked aloud of nobody in particular.
“Too damned many for my liking,” Doc Day said.
“Uhuh,” Angel acknowledged, and if he saw Joe Fischer’s evil smile, he didn’t react. “Time for bed, Joe,” he said, gesturing across the street towards the jail.
Joe Fischer shrugged and made no complaint as he was herded across the rutted road to the jail. A night in the juzgado wasn’t going to kill him.
Chapter Six
“Let me go in and take him,” Francey King said. “Let me do it.”
“No,” growled Fischer.
“Ed, you know it makes more sense for me to do it. You got to let me go.”
The gunman’s pink eyes were bright with a special desire, and he leaned forward earnestly in his attempt to convince his employer.
“I don’t ‘got to’ do anything,” rumbled Big Ed.
They were sitting in the big old living room at the Flying Fish ranch house, Ed and his brother Mike, Trev Rawley and his deputies, Francey King, and the Flying Fish straw-boss, Don Teesdell, sprawled on the solid, simple furniture scattered around the big adobe. Old Michael J had built the place to last, built it like a fortress up here on the northern side of the Rio Arriba where it cut a canyon through the Arabelas, which loomed beetling and dark away to the northeast, peaks frosted with perennial snow. The ranch’s living room was a square, stone-floored room dominated by a huge fireplace built from native rock and surmounted by the dusty heads of animals old Michael J had killed—grizzly, wolf, moose. The latter’s magnificent antlers now had coiled ropes and old bridles hanging from them: the younger Fischers were all bachelors, and none of them had much of their father’s preference for order and tidiness. Even with their slovenly life style, however, it was a warm and cheerful room. Scattered bearskin rugs on the stone floors, brightly patterned Navajo blankets hanging on the flat-painted adobe walls softened the harsh lines. The sturdy furniture, much of it freighted in by old Michael J for his new bride almost forty years before, had seen better days, but still glowed with the polish of hard use.
“No,” Ed Fischer said, almost as if to himself. “This is one snake I aim to skin personally and enjoy it—hear me?”
“I hear you, Ed,” Francey King said. “But you’re not thinkin’ it through. Tell him, Mike.”
“Aw,” Mike Fischer said. “He knows that, Francey. He’s just mad right now, ain’t you, Ed?”
He knew—they all knew—that there were often times when Big Ed wanted to go at things like a bull at a gate. By and large, they usually managed to talk it through so he saw it in a different light. He nodded to Trev Rawley and the marshal got up from his chair, uncoiling his lanky frame and standing in front of the fireplace.
“Ed, you know as well as we do that all you have to do is give the word to the boys to saddle up, ride into the Crossing, and fillet it like it was a river trout. Nobody’d get in your way, Ed—nobody’d dare. You’d haul Angel and the kid out of the jail an’ string ‘em up on the nearest tree without a hand bein’ lifted against you. But it would be a mistake.”
“Go on,” Fischer said. “I’m listening.”
He swilled another sizeable shot of whiskey from the bottle into the glass at his elbow, then held out the bottle to Rawley. The marshal took a small shot and set the bottle on the table. Mike Fischer looked at it longingly and licked his lips.
“This Angel,” Rawley continued. “He’s Federal law, right? You don’t want to get mixed up with that, Ed. Not personally. You wipe out a Federal man and they never stop looking for why. So it’s got to be kosher. Which means you’re out of it. Besides, you got to think of your other interests.”
“Well,” Fischer said, as if reluctantly relinquishing the idea of personally killing Frank Angel. In actual fact, he was already a long way ahead of Rawley, had been from the start. He was just letting them think that the decision he had already made had been arrived at democratically: the first gift of the politician he planned to be. He was only too well aware that getting himself involved personally with killing a Federal officer would be a serious stumbling block to his political ambitions, and he had absolutely no intention of erecting it. He had his connections with the Ring in Santa Fe; he had certain assurances concerning a seat in the Legislature before very long. Maybe he’d take a shot at the governorship next term. Whatever he did, he certainly wasn’t going to let one whey-faced Government snooper imperil it. Mister Angel would be taken care of.
“Well,” he said again, “I can see your point.”
Rawley smiled. “That’s my boy, Ed,” he enthused.
“Nobody doubts we could bust them up in force,” Francey King said. “But that would be too easy. Like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We want the town to see that fixing friend Angel doesn’t even make you sweat, Ed. They’ll know: but they won’t be able to prove a thing.”
“And you keep your hands nice and clean,” Rawley finished.
“All right,” Ed Fischer said, stifling his own triumphant smile. “Tell me what you got in mind.”
“First, there’s Angel,” Rawley said.
“Yes,” Big Ed agreed, a world of meaning in the way he said the one word.
“He’s a pro, Ed,” Francey King said. “I watched him. He’s been up the trail and seen the elephant. He knows how to use guns.”
“Really?” Fischer said, letting the sarcasm come through strong.
“Let me finish,” Francey King said. “Odds are that he’s strong on guns and weak on everything else. They usually are: take my word for it.” He let an evil grin touch his bloodless lips for a moment.
“So?”
“Mike,” Francey said.
He let Ed Fischer think about that for a moment, and then saw the dawning smile on the big man’s face. Big Ed nodded.
“How will you get him to bite?”
“Flag of truce,” Rawley said. “Mike argues. Claims—very loudly—that Angel’s hiding behind guns, wouldn’t dare fight man to man.”
“And while he does that,” Francey King said, “me, Eddie and Bob here will take out the kid and the doctor—if he’s still with them. No—” he held up a hand to prevent Ed Fischer’s automatic question. “No, we won’t kill them. Might not be too careful abou
t how bad we hurt them, though,” he added sibilantly.
“It makes decent sense,” Rawley said. “Nice and quiet, no killin’. But everyone in town will see it and know.”
“All right,” Fischer said. You break Angel. You get Joe out of jail. The kid and the doc are out of the running. What makes you think they won’t wait up and try again, ‘specially this Angel?”
“Cause we’ll have an ace in our hole,” Rawley said. “And we’ll hang on to it until the game’s finished for good.”
“All right,” Big Ed said. “Tell me.”
Rawley told him. The others listened with dawning smiles of devilish delight on their faces as the marshal outlined his idea. It was a very simple one. And like all simple ideas, it could work. In fact, it was so simple, Rawley said, that they had almost overlooked it, but when he had thought of it, he had suddenly realized that not only did it seal off one particularly vulnerable area of inquiry, it also meant that Dick Webb and the doctor could no more lift a hand against the Fischers than fly. Nor would they let Angel, even if he was disposed to do so after Mike Fischer had finished with him.
“I like it,” Big Ed grinned. “It looks watertight to me. I like it.”
“Thought you would,” grinned Trev Rawley.
He reached for the bottle on the table and poured drinks for all of them.
“Success !” he toasted.
“Here’s to the first Angel that ever went to Hell !” Francey King replied.
They all thought that was very funny indeed, and thought of quite a lot more jokes about Angels before the bottle was emptied.
There was a sort of celebration going on at the Crossing too.
The townspeople had digested the astonishing fact that Big Ed Fischer and his bravos had been faced down publicly, and that the town was freed—however temporarily—from their domination. It was wine to their souls. The Silver King was jammed, full of men who wanted to take a drink with, shake the hands of, stand and gawk at the trio who had wrought this miracle. There was an almost boisterous, school’s-out air about the place.
Billy Luskam said he was going to buy everyone a drink to celebrate what he had seen, hard though it had been to believe, earlier that day.
“Never figured to see the Fischers told to git out of the Crossing,” he chortled. “Figured even less to see ‘em git, tails atween their laigs! So I aim to celebrate the event while the goin’s good!”
He poured himself a drink and held the glass high, rapping on the bar with a heavy bottle to attract the attention of the noisy, chattering throng in the saloon. When he had their attention, he climbed up on a stool and spoke.
“I’m proposin’ a vote of thinks to Frank Angel,” he announced. Anything else he might have been going to add was lost in the yell of approval which greeted his words. The crowd eddied and swirled around Angel, who stood by the bar with Doc Day and young Dick Webb.
There was just the faintest hint of a smile on Angel’s face; enthusiasm and whiskey, he thought, the one fueling the other, had created a marvelous feeling of rebellion and power here, but it was a euphoria which would vanish the moment that Fischer and his gunmen reappeared on the skyline—leaving a vacuum of fear in its place. He felt no contempt; there were farmers in this crowd, family men, smallholders, stockmen, goat herders. They were not fighting men and their aggressiveness was not real. Most of them would never have fired a gun in anger; some did not even own one, None would understand, or appreciate, the difference between themselves and a man like Francey King until they were down with a bullet in them.
The ordinary man would always hesitate a moment, a split second, the thought coming into his mind as he brought a gun into action, that when he pulled the trigger he would be killing another human being. Depending on his background and upbringing he might think about the Ten Commandments, about going to Hell; he might even think that the man he was about to kill could have wife, children, family who would grieve for him. And while he was thinking it, the professional gunman would have shot him dead, for the pros never thought about the rights or the wrongs or the moral necessity of it, or whether they would be forgiven by a merciful God. When a pro saw a man with a gun coming at him, he killed that man if he could. Any ponderings about right and wrong came subsequently. Which, of course, was no consolation at all to the poor bastard who was being rolled into a hole on the bare slope of the campo santo.
After a few minutes of being slapped on the back, urged to have a drink by complete strangers, Angel held up a hand for silence. The babble of self-congratulation died down enough for him to be heard, and he laid what he had to say to them down in a level, unemotional voice.
“I don’t want to kill off your enthusiasm,” he said quietly. “But I do want you to realize that this is a lull in the battle, not the end of the war. The Fischers aren’t going to take what happened to them lying down. Ed Fischer is going to come back for his brother and if any of you gets in his way he is going to kill you.”
The men nearest to Angel shuffled their feet a little, looking uneasily at each other. At the back of the room someone fired to courage by a deeper draught than wisdom might have dictated shouted, “Let him come!”
“Yeah!” someone else chimed in. “We’ll get guns. Let him come!”
A ragged cheer greeted this pretentious boast, and those nearest Angel nodded enthusiastically to show their agreement.
“Wait,” Angel shouted over the noise. “You’re not thinking this through. You men have wives, children. If Ed Fischer comes storming in here with all his men, loaded for bear and looking for trouble, it’s not going to be any Cakewalk. There’ll be shooting, killing. Fischer wants me. He wants Dick here, and Doc Day. Most of all he wants his brother. He’s not going to let shooting anyone stop him, is he?”
A silence followed his words. The grim reality of the picture Angel had just painted wafted a freezing chill across the alcoholic enthusiasm. There was a muttering in the crowd as the full import of what they might be getting into dawned on them.
“You staying on, Angel?” a man to one side of the bar asked.
“You better believe it,” Angel said.
“I’m staying,” Dick Webb added flatly. He pushed forward and placed himself alongside Angel at the bar. “How about the rest of you?”
“In for a penny,” Doc Day said, pushing through the crowd.
“Thanks Doc,” Angel said, meaning it.
“I’ll back you, Angel,” Billy Luskam said from behind the bar. He reached down and lifted up his sawn-off riot gun. The bang when he slapped it on the counter made one or two of the men watching jump visibly. He looked at them with lips curled by contempt.
“What about the rest of you men?” he snapped. “Ain’t there a one of you wants to fight for his rights?”
The nearest men edged backwards, reluctant to meet the challenge in Luskam’s eyes, and he watched them with deep scorn.
“Well, Jesus H. Christ,” he said, spitting on the floor. “What kind of a town is this, anyway?”
“Hell, Billy,” one of the men in the crowd who had spoken earlier said. “You ain’t got nobody to look out for ‘ceptin’ yourself. Some of us here has wives, kids. It’s like Angel there said: we ain’t fightin’ men.”
“You ain’t any kind of men!” Luskam began angrily, but before he could say more, Angel interrupted him.
“No use tryin’ to cuss them into it, Billy,” he said quietly. “He’s right. Any of you men use a gun regular?”
Heads shook. One or two said No aloud.
“Any of you serve in the Army, maybe?”
Again a series of negatives from the men ranged before them.
“Then you’re making the right decision,” Angel told them. “Don’t be ashamed. And don’t mind Billy here. He’s just fightin’ mad. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who can’t handle a gun is more of a liability than an asset. We’re going to have our hands full enough, without having to watch out for rabbits.”
“Hell, An
gel,” blurted a thickset, bearded man in the front of the crowd.
“We can’t expect you to face up to the Fischers without some kind of help. It’s us you’re protectin’, dammit, an’—”
“It’s my job,” Angel told them quietly. “What I get paid for. So you people get back to your homes. Keep your families off the street. Board up your windows, lock the doors, keep your heads down. One way or the other, stay out of the way until this is all over.”
“Now see here, Angel,” one man said, coming forward out of the body of the crowd. He was a short, dark-haired man, no longer young, his face creased by the winds and suns of many summers. “You can’t just take up on behalf of all of us. Someone’s got to back you up. Ain’t there nothing we can do?”
“There is one thing,” Angel told him thoughtfully. “I need a good man with a fast horse.”
“You got it,” the man said. “I’m Bry Leavey. Run the general store.”
“Glad to know you, Leavey,” Angel said. “Stick around. The rest of you people go on back to your homes. Do like I told you. If the Fischers string us up, you’ll be better off if you’ve been seen not to help. If they don’t . . .” He managed a grin he didn’t feel. “It won’t make no difference, anyway.”
He watched, they all watched, without expression as the crowd hesitated, breaking slowly, those in front reluctant to be seen moving away, while the others at the rear moved as unobtrusively as they could toward the bat-wing doors, through which they hurried out, not looking back. Then gradually the crowd thinned, the men at the front retreated with hanging heads, not looking at the men standing by the bar. Shamefaced, they went out. When they reached the street, their heads came up and they walked rapidly towards their homes. Angel continued to let nothing show on his face, but Billy Luskam couldn’t keep in his disgust.
“God damn them!” he snapped. “Lily-livered sons of bitches!”
“Leave them be,” Angel said, quietly. “Don’t blame them.”
He turned towards Luskam, putting a hand on the saloonkeeper’s shoulder.
“Billy,” he said, “I’m obliged for your support awhile back. But I’m not going to keep you to what you said. Go on, get yourself the hell out of this.”
Hang Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #4) Page 6