Chapter Nine
Finally, Big Ed Fischer was in a cold, empty, killing rage.
He sat now in the big armchair in the empty living room of the big ranch, letting it build and build, stoking, nursing it by going over and over and over the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
At first it had been an uncontainable rage mixed with shame which had found an outlet in physically kicking out of the house the blubbering cretin who had brought him the news of how Angel had killed Mike Fischer and Francey King in the empty street of the Crossing. The man had made it sound as if Angel had placed a dozen guns on the rooftops, and that there had been no chance for them to do what they had gone into the town to do. For Mike, his brother, Big Ed felt no grief. Mike had never been bright, never really much use to Ed in his ambitions. What he felt was shame: shame that the crawling morons who infested the shanty to which his father had given a name should now see that name humbled in the dust of its street. Rage and shame possessed him, but they did not as yet fire him to stupidity: Ed Fischer was many things, but he was not a fool.
He sat and considered Angel. The man was not to be underestimated: somehow or other he had killed Mike; he had killed Francey King. The garbled chattering of a demented second-rater gave Ed Fischer very little to go on in the way of evidence as to how Angel had done it, but in the ultimate analysis that didn’t matter. He had done it, and therefore some other way had to be found to take him.
What if some stupid farm kid, with notions of chivalry probably culled from Walter Scott, took it into his head to start trouble in the Crossing? That could be handled. What if, on top of that, ill-luck brought a wandering representative of the Department of Justice into the town? That could be handled too: he wouldn’t be the first of his breed to disappear without trace out in the vastness of the West. It was the combination which was wrong, the twin chance of Angel alive and Joe in jail that he saw looming as a threat to his ambitions, to the opening of the first doors into the Legislature. But he would not compound those chances into a major blow by acting rashly, although his body and mind seethed with racing red anger and the desire to exact vengeance publicly before every sniveling cur in the town. That would come, he told himself, sitting back in the big chair and banking the fires of his rage. That would come when Rawley got back with the Webb girl.,
So Francey King had been wrong in supposing he could take Angel by surprise. That was no great loss. There were plenty more guns for hire. He had almost a dozen men ready to ride whenever he gave the word.
But Francey’s other idea: to kidnap the girl, use her as exchange bait, a swap for Joe—that idea had a simple, sledgehammer effectiveness that Fischer had liked. No devious scheming, no tortuous planning which could break down because of ineptitude on the part of the men sent to carry it out. One bold stroke—he rolled the phrase around in his mind, liking it, planning to commit it to memory for use on other occasions. One bold stroke. The girl was only a pawn, and like all girls she’d come around once the thing was over. She’d see the light, marry Joe, and then the Webb place would become a part of the Flying Fish, the biggest spread outside of Chisum’s and the Spanish grant ranches in the Territory. The girl ought to jump at the chance of marriage to the brother of a future Governor, he told himself, not really believing it, not really caring whether he believed himself or not—just calming his own anger. Anger was a stupid failing, and angry men made stupid mistakes.
So Ed Fischer poured himself some more whiskey, lit himself another of his fat cigars, and watched the clock crawl across the hours until he could wait no longer, and sent three of his riders out to look for Rawley. They came back with the news that finally drove Ed Fischer into his cold, empty, uncontrollable rage.
The Webb ranch had been locked and shuttered, deserted. In the bushes near the river they had found Rawley’s chestnut and Don Teesdell’s bay, but no sign at first of either man. After a careful search, they found Teesdell lying dead in the barn, shot in the back at close range. Nothing else, except a set of tracks that made no sense. One rider and a man on foot had set out west along the trail towards the Crossing. A buckboard had gone the other way, most likely heading for the Fort Union road. They had followed the tracks of the horseman and the man on foot, puzzled by them, but had not caught up before they reached the point in the trail where it forked north towards the Flying Fish.
It was grossly unfair of him to expect ordinary riders to work out what had happened at the Flying W, and Ed Fischer knew it, but he ranted at them for twenty minutes just the same, working himself to a peak of anger as he cursed their dumb stupidity, damned their obtuseness, and spat upon their lack of enterprise and imagination. Didn’t they have eyes to see? Brains to think with?
The men stood with their heads bowed, like cattle waiting for a storm to pass. They knew better than to demur when the Boss was in this mood.
Finally, the tirade was over and they were dismissed. They trooped out with sullen faces while Big Ed hurled himself into the easy chair, clamping his teeth on his cigar as if it were a live thing. He sloshed more whiskey into his glass, pouring it down his throat as if it were water, mind turning over what he conjectured to have happened.
Somehow Angel had anticipated his every move.
Rawley and Teesdell, instead of taking the girl, had been deadfalled, tricked. Teesdell was dead, which meant they were keeping Rawley for something else. Angel would want witnesses, of course. Who better than Rawley, who knew more of Ed Fischer’s activities than any other man? The buckboard going toward the Fort Union road meant only one thing. Someone—the girl, more than likely—was presently on the way to the Fort for help, no doubt carrying word from the Justice Department man. And much too far ahead for anyone to be able to catch up with her.
How long did he have—today, tonight, tomorrow? Not much more than that. He shook his head like a taunted bull. Francey King gone, Mike gone, Teesdell gone—some of his best men. With Rawley in Angel’s hands, Joe in jail, there was only himself left. All this in so short a time! All this because of one man! He spoke the name.
“Angel!” he said. It was a curse, a threat, a promise. “Angel!”
He rose to his feet and shook his fist at the sky he could see through the grimy, dust coated windows. “Angel!” he shouted. “God damn your soul to Hell!”
Dickie Boyd, a rider who’d been with the Flying Fish spread since the days when old Michael J. was alive, came running into the house, gun in hand, drawn by the shouts of inarticulate rage, and found Big Ed smashing his fist against the rough adobe wall, his knuckles torn and bleeding, mouthing the name of the Justice Department man over and over again. Big Ed’s eyes were empty, lit only by madness. His brain was possessed by a blind, cold, empty killing rage. When Boyd laid a hand on his arm, Big Ed shook it off as though it were a bothersome insect.
“Ed !” snapped Boyd. “Ed, for Christ’s sake, what is it?”
“Angel!” Fischer sobbed. “Angel!”
“Ed r Boyd tried again. “Get hold of yourself, Ed!”
Fischer turned, facing the older man with wild, staring eyes, his whole body shaking now with the strength of his anger.
“Get every man on the place into the saddle!” he shouted. “Every man armed! Rifles, anything you can lay your hands on!”
“Listen to me, Ed!” Boyd shouted back. “Wait. You’re not thinkin’ straight!”
“Do what I tell you!” thundered Ed Fischer, and Dick Boyd quailed at the rage in the man’s voice. “Do what I say!”
“All right, Ed,” Boyd said, edging back away from the big man. “All right. Take it easy!”
“Easy is it?” Fischer growled. He was getting himself under control, the madness was going out of his eyes, and Dick Boyd breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I’ll show you what easy is, bucko! We’re going down to the Crossing and we’re going now. Once and for all, I’m going to put an end to that Justice Department son of a bitch!”
“Ed—” Boyd tried for the
last time.
“Move, damn you!” Fischer whirled on him.
Boyd argued no more. He knew better than to try to reason with Big Ed when rage possessed him like this. He ran out into the yard, shouting orders. Riders tumbled out of the bunkhouse towards their gear. Within a few minutes the place was a milling hive of activity, men saddling horses, checking weapons, stuffing ammunition into saddlebags or pockets. Twenty minutes later, Ed Fischer came out of the ranch house to where they waited expectantly in a half-circle, not speaking. Miraculously, Big Ed had clamped down a lid on the seething cauldron of his rage. He was just cold, killing mad. They moved out behind him on to the trail leading down the canyon, silent as ghosts and deadly as the plague.
“Sweet angels of mercy!” Doc Day shouted. “Will you look at that!”
That was Dick Webb riding across the wooden bridge at the southern end of town, coming up the center of the wide, empty street with Trev Rawley stumbling ahead of him at the end of a rope. As if by magic, faces appeared at windows and doors opened as people tried to see the incredible sight of the town marshal being brought in like some renegade Apache. Rawley’s clothes were covered with thick layers of dust that had caked and been turned to runnels of mud on his face by either tears of rage or streams of sweat. His fine, soft leather boots were in tattered ruin, and he was limping heavily on the right leg. His hair was matted, his eyes as wild as those of a captive beast; and when he saw the people coming out on to the street to watch his ignominy, a steady stream of croaking sounds that might have been curses stuttered from his broken lips. He cursed the people for seeing him like this, and he cursed whatever gods he believed in because the fact that they stared and no one helped him meant that Angel was still in control of the Crossing. So he stumbled on, head swinging from side to side. The boy rode behind him on the horse, head up, as if he were leading a circus into town. Dick Webb had a shotgun cradled across his forearms and he looked as proud as a new lieutenant on his first patrol.
Angel got to his feet on the porch of the Silver King as he heard Doc Day’s shout. He could see Billy Luskam scrambling to get down from the roof of the store, wanting to see this spectacle at closer range, and shouted to the saloonkeeper to stay where he was. Billy either didn’t hear or didn’t want to. He kept on coming, and it was at precisely the moment that he came out into the street that Big Ed Fischer led his riders into the northern end of the street at a flat, attacking run.
Just like that they were suddenly in full view, and the men and women who had come out to see Trev Rawley being led through the street scattered off the boardwalks like startled blackbirds. Rawley looked up and saw Big Ed in front of his men and something like a scream left his parched lips. He started to run towards deliverance, forgetting the rope, which twanged tight with a humming jerk that yanked him off his feet. In the same moment Dick Webb involuntarily pulled the head of his horse around as he saw Fischer’s men bearing down on him and the bewildered Billy Luskam, who was caught flatfooted in the middle of the street, rooted to the spot in panic and indecision.
Billy Luskam turned fast now and tried to make it to the safety of the porch of the store, but as he made the decision, Fischer’s men were on him with their guns blazing. He went down in the dirt, his body riddled by a dozen close-range shots. The thundering phalanx of horsemen rolled right over his tattered corpse even as Dick Webb hauled his animal around. The beast was twisting, startled by the rattling boom of the gunfire that the advancing riders were throwing at Webb.
Frank Angel reached the shelter of the saloon porch, emptying his own six-gun and the spare he had been carrying in a rolling fusillade of shots that took two Fischer men out of their saddles. Angel’s shots turned the column sharply aside, the men yanking their horses around so that they were between the house in the open space between the saloon and the livery stable, piling out of the saddle to scurry to cover behind the stable’s walls. Now Angel could hear Doc Day’s big old Sharps booming regularly from the roof of the jail. The added firepower had momentarily saved Dick Webb’s life. Reloading with fingers that fumbled from haste, Angel angled himself to the corner of the porch ready for a run to assist the kid, but the Fischer men, hunkered down and steadied behind the livery stable, threw out a volley of shots. Dick Webb threw up a hand as if pointing the way to heaven, reeling in the saddle, trying to stay on the horse. Then his leg came out of the stirrup and he went over and down like a broken toy. He hit the ground with a heavy, hopeless thud.
The panicked horse buck-jumped away from the inert figure. Something—perhaps the burn of a too-close bullet, or simply the sudden renewed rattle of firearms—spooked it. The horse reared up high, forelegs coming down perilously close to the head of the fallen youngster, and then it lit out. Ears back, eyes rolling, it went straight across the street from standing start into full gallop. The rope attached to the pommel spanged taut and whipped Trev Rawley off his feet. He went up and came down flat behind the screeching horse, agony distorting his face into a terrible mask as his flailing fingers tried to loosen the noose on his neck.
“Kill that horse!” someone screamed, and Angel saw a man run out from behind the livery stable, throw himself ‘flat in the dirt of the street, leveling a Winchester on cradling elbows. He never fired it, From the roof of the jail, Doc Day’s old Sharps thundered, and the man flopped up and down, dead, while the panicked horse, only the whites of its eyes showing now, stampeded up the street, dragging the thrashing, flailing, bumping thing that was Trev Rawley behind it. There was an awful silence, and then someone Angel did not know ran out into the street and tried to stop the animal, arms spread-eagled. The horse ran straight into the man, smashing him in a heap to the ground, then veered wide, the awful tattered thing behind it skidding around in the burning dust and slamming against the verticals of the boardwalk with a dull heavy sound that carried clearly the length of the street. Then the horse was past the livery stable, a hail of shots driving it off the street with the bumping, bloody, ragged, obscene thing behind it.
For a brief moment the men behind the livery stable watched the spot where the horse had disappeared between two houses in silent awe. Angel realized that this was about the only chance he was going to get, and without stopping to think about it, he ran out into the middle of the street where Dick Webb lay. As he reached the kid, a great shout went up from Fischer’s men and they laid down a hasty volley of shots. One ran out into the street to get a better aim, and Doc Day whanged him off his feet with a bullet from the Sharps as Angel hoisted the groaning youngster on his shoulder and ran like a deer for the doorway of the jail. Bullets zipped past, chunked into the adobe, smacked whirring splinters from the wooden shutters as Doc Day fell down the ladderway inside the jail; throwing open the door through which Angel stumbled, half falling, his breath gone as he heaved Dick Webb inside and fell in after him. Doc flung the heavy door shut and slammed the solid crossbar into place as great hammering sounds signaled that the Fischer riders were venting their frustration on the door and walls. Slices of wood burst from the heavy oak, but none of the bullets actually penetrated it. Angel pushed Doc Day aside, vaulting up the ladderway and on to the roof, throwing himself prone behind the foot-high parapet. Two men were running flat out across the street toward the jail, their rifles cocked upwards in their hands, attention fixed on the doorway beneath Angel.
“Steady now,” Angel said to himself.
Then he shot them both as calmly as if he had been practicing targets in the echoing Armory in the basement of the Justice Department building. The first man went sideways into the dust, his legs kicking high in agony. The second one stopped abruptly, an astonished look on his face. There was a bright red spot between his squinting eyes and he was dead long before he fell beside his companion, burying his face in the hock-deep dust.
Once again there was a momentary silence, then a yell of rage followed by a chattering volley of shots that hammered hunks out of the adobe walls, chipping flickering fragments of stone off the e
dges of the parapet as Angel, keeping his head down, wormed back towards the trap door and called down to Doc Day below.
“How is he, Doc?”
Day was bending over Dick Webb, who lay on the floor where Angel had dropped him. The boy’s chest was dark with blood where Day had ripped away his shirt. The doctor grunted an unintelligible reply to Angel’s question, his mind fully occupied with tending the boy’s wound. Once more Angel reloaded his guns, firing a few shots at random towards the livery stable, more to let the Fischer gang know that their shots had been ineffective, more an act of defiance than anything else.
“Doc?” he called again. “How’s the kid?”
“He could be better,” was Day’s tight-lipped reply. Looking down, Angel could see that Dick Webb’s eyes were open, glazed with pain.
“Frank?” Dick Webb said. “You there?”
“Lie still,” Day told him. “Frank’s here.”
“Uh?”
“You’ve been hurt,” the doctor said. “Just lie still.”
“I remember,” Dick said weakly. “I remember Rawley in the street.”
“Damn fool play,” Day grunted.
“What happened then ?”
“Your timing was perfect,” Angel told him. “You came in one end of town, and Ed Fischer came in the other exactly the same time. After that, things got—interesting.”
“Interesting!” snorted Doc Day.
Dick Webb tried to smile, but before he could get his face shaped right the smile slid off and he went over the edge of consciousness into a dead faint. Doc Day laid him down gently, rolling his jacket to make a pillow for the youngster’s head. He looked up at Angel and nodded, and Angel gave him a thumbs-up sign. It was probably as well that the kid was out of it for the moment, anyway.
Now he checked his gun belt, and then Dick Webb’s, piling the cartridges in front of him. He saw the Doctor looking up at him and raised his eyebrows, holding up a cartridge.
Hang Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #4) Page 9