Hang Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #4)

by Frederick H. Christian

“Not too damned many,” Day told him. “How about you.”

  “The same,” Angel said. “We get all our good news at once, don’t we?”

  Surrounded, low on ammunition, outgunned and outnumbered, the kid wounded and no chance of help before sundown tomorrow at the earliest, their picture could hardly have been called rosy. Even the jail, although it was solid, wasn’t impregnable.

  Ah, well, he thought. He wondered what had happened to Trev Rawley.

  Chapter Ten

  Trev Rawley wasn’t dead, but he was damned near it.

  He lay on a pile of straw in the livery stable, where Ed Fischer’s men had brought him. The panicked horse had tangled itself in some scrub behind the house across the street; Dick Boyd had sent a couple of men over there during a lull in the firing. They had carried the bleeding hulk down along the arroyo beneath the bridge at the south end of town and up behind the houses to the stable.

  Big Ed looked down at the mess of Rawley’s face and body and he shuddered. Raw, pulped, a mass of torn flesh with great skinless patches that looked like peeled tomato, the marshal’s whole frame was an obscene mess of black and yellow and purple and bloody red, the clothing hanging in tattered strips, stuck to the dozens of deep gashes and ragged cuts which oozed blood on to the heedless straw. His hair was matted and thick with dried blood, his throat an awful raw thing totally stripped of skin by the searing rope. Rawley’s voice was totally gone: he could not speak, nor cry out in search of relief from the scouring, burning agony which was devouring him. Twisting, whimpering, he rolled and bucked on the makeshift palliasse, lost in some mad red world of pain.

  “God damn you!” Big Ed said to the thing on the ground.

  Dick Boyd heard the words, and came over to stand beside Fischer.

  “Take it easy, Ed,” he said, softly. “He’s bad hurt.”

  “Good,” snapped Fischer savagely. “If it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t be bayed up here like some wagon train full of pilgrims in Comanche country! If it hadn’t been for him being led like some kind of stinking circus animal in front of the whole rotten town, we’d have just rode in and taken Mister Angel like that!” He snapped his fingers to show how easy it would have been. “Instead of which, the bastard is forted up in the strongest building in town, it’s damned near nightfall, and it’ll take . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked thoughtful.

  “Who the hell is in there, anyway?” he said softly.

  “Dunno,” Boyd told him. “But whoever it is, they can shoot. By the sound of the gun, it’s Doc Day. Angel and the kid, of course, we know are in there. Mebbe others: I dunno. But those bastards can shoot, Ed. We’ve lost half our men, and I’ve got three others wounded.”

  “You see,” Fischer said, kicking the ruined sole of the marshal’s boot. “You see?”

  Trev Rawley rolled his head from side to side, his eyes staring and wide, clouded with immense pain. If he understood what Ed had said, there was no sign of it.

  “All right,” Fischer said, “Get a couple of men over to the store. See if there’s any blasting powder in there. If there is, bring everything you can carry down here!”

  “Blasting p— ?” Dick Boyd’s mouth fell open. “But Ed—you aiming to blast them out? What about Joe? The whole place will go up! You can’t—”

  “Can’t?” roared Ed Fischer. “Can’t?”

  He caught the man in a viselike grip, smashing Boyd back against the wooden wall of the stable, shaking the door-frame. Boyd’s breath whistled out of his body, and he shook his head in panic.

  “You—tell—me—I—can’t?” snarled Ed Fischer.

  “No, Ed—no,” Boyd managed. “No!”

  “I can do anything I want to do!” Fischer told him, releasing his hold. Boyd slumped back, eyes wide with fear. “My stupid brother got himself in this mess. Expects me to get him out the same way I always have. Well, the hell with him! This time I look after Number One! Number One!” Fischer shouted, smacking his fist against his chest. If he noticed the astonished look of his remaining riders, he did not show it.

  “Well?” he roared at Boyd. “Get at it, damn you!”

  For a moment, Dick Boyd just stared at his leader, and then he broke and ran, tapping two of his men on the shoulder and running crouched from the back of the stable across the alley to the rear of the saloon and again to the store next door to it.

  Twenty minutes later they were back. They had blasting powder in cans, coal-oil, caps, everything they needed.

  “Now,” Fischer gloated, looking out of the shattered window towards the looming hulk of the jail, a solid darker blur in the shadowed darkness of the street outside. “Now, you stinking rats! Let’s see how you like these apples!”

  Apart from a few sporadic shots from across the street, it had been quiet since nightfall. Doc had boiled up some pretty revolting coffee on the big potbellied stove while they took stock of their situation. They fed some of the bitter, hot brew to the kid, who was sitting up, but wincing every time he moved his wounded shoulder.

  Angel confessed himself somewhat puzzled by the fact that Fischer and his men had not tried to rush the jail. They had everything going for them: superior weight, more firepower. It didn’t figure, unless Fischer’s crew had been more badly hurt than he thought. He tried to recall how many men he’d seen in the rushing moments when the column had thundered down the street. Ten, twelve? It was hard to say. He looked at Doc’s powder-grimed face, the wrinkles at the corners of the medico’s eyes looking as if they had been painted on white. Dick was alert now, and if worst came to worst, could probably handle a pistol with his left hand.

  “I sure as hell could use a skillet of bacon and eggs,” the kid said with a wry grin. “How about you?”

  “Sure,” Angel said.

  “Maybe we could just step up the street to the Chinaman’s and get us some,” Doc suggested.

  “Love to,” Dick Webb said, playing the tired joke along. “But right now business is a little confining.”

  They fell silent for a moment, then Dick Webb spoke.

  “Frank,” he said. “You think we’ve got any chance at all?”

  Angel shrugged.

  “Hard to tell,” he said. “If your sister can make it through to Fort Union, or even Springer, we can pull through.”

  “Hell, don’t try that on me,” Dick Webb said. “That’s a good two day’s riding.”

  “Don’t spit on your luck,” Angel said. “They might run into a patrol.”

  “And pigs might fly,” the doctor said. “What the hell are those guys shooting at now ?”

  The cause for this question was another heavy outburst of firing directed against the front of the jail. The guns boomed and boomed again across the street, flashes of lancing flame streaking out from the windows and doorways of the livery stable. They heard the flat whack of lead smashing into the adobe, and Angel turned toward the doctor with a quizzical look, his eyebrows raised.

  It was at that moment that the explosion happened.

  The jail was built in the shape of a thick “L,” with its lower arm fronting the street. In the upright, the two big cells were paralleled by a corridor which had a door at its far end, behind the building, through which the prisoners were taken to the latrines. Another door halfway along this corridor led into the big room in which Angel and his friends were si ting. It burst open with a tremendous crash, tearing from its hinges and smashing into the corner of the room as the enormous explosion ripped half of the wall behind the jail apart with a thunderous roar.

  With a shouted warning to Doc Day, Angel’s hands flashed for his guns as three men loomed dark and huge in the doorway, misted in swirling dust and fumes, their guns blasting wildly through into the room. Angel threw himself to one side, and his own gun blazed four times as he rolled across the floor. Two of the dark shapes folded to the floor in front of him. Behind him he thought he saw Dick Webb thumbing a fast shot into the murk, but he had no time to look longer.

 
He moved out fast into the hallway, stumbling over fallen brick, guns up and ready as he saw a man running towards the back of the jail across the open ground outside. He saw the man’s gun come up and fired in the same instant that the running man did. A streak of red hot pain touched Angel’s body beneath his right arm and he spun off to the left, smacking against the wall of the cells, half falling in the jumbled darkness. The man outside cartwheeled over and down and Angel didn’t see him anymore.

  Then there was a moment of complete silence, as if God had ordained a moment for the living to identify the dead. Angel turned around and there behind him was Joe Fischer, stepping over the fallen door of his cell. A gun in his hand and the feral light to murder in his eyes.

  “Angel?” he said.

  Doc shot him from about three feet away with the Sharps, and Angel would remember the awful meaty smack of the bullet hitting Joe Fischer’s body for many and many a long nightmare. Joe’s whole body was smashed against the adobe cell wall as if some mighty hand had swatted him like a fly, and he slid down into the rubble, leaving a ghastly smear streaking the wall.

  Day stepped into the broken corridor, his eyes glaring through a mask of adobe dust. There was blood on his shirt, and Angel put out a hand to touch it, but Doc smiled and waved him away.

  “It’s from Dick’s shoulder,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  His reassuring tone suddenly altered, his eyes widening as he looked over Angel’s shoulder.

  “Fire!” he shouted. “They’ve set the place afire!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Hell’s teeth!” shouted Angel.

  He ran into the jumbled room where Dick Webb lay sprawled, the six-gun still ready in his left hand. The boy’s face was white with pain and his eyes looked slightly fey, as though his thoughts were not altogether there. He needed better attention than the doctor could give him in this mess, Angel thought. But there was no time for that now. He grabbed the water bucket and ran towards the back of the building, hurling the water at the place where he could see the first reaching yellow tongues of flame, seeking an entrance between the curling, blackening floorboards.

  The sound of them was a steady, whirring roar, and over the stink of smoke was a resiny, sharp tang that told Angel the fire had been started with coal oil. The water forced the flames into retreat for a moment, and then he saw Doc come stumbling across the broken brick, over the fallen bodies of their attackers, another water bucket in his hands slopping over. Angel took it from him and hurled it into the center of the once-more vigorous flames.

  Again there was the hiss of defeat, the clouds of steam from the frustrated fire, but now there was no more water, and nothing with which to fight the flames but an old sack. Angel beat at the surging flame with the smoldering sack, sparks flickering up along the door jambs, flames following them around him as he worked, coughing, retching, hearing the slight fizz of his own hair singeing, driven back remorselessly by the increasing heat. His clothes were scorching now and he could no longer get near the dancing, wicked spread of flame that was advancing eagerly into the narrow corridor fanned by the draught of wind that came through the broken walls and doorway. Small pieces of charred wood and ash floated in the heavy, hot air. It would only be minutes before the entire jail was an inferno from which nothing could escape. Angel fell back from the roiling black smoke, his eyes gummed with dried tears that never formed in the immense heat.

  “Can’t stop it!” he shouted, falling back near Day and the kid. They looked at each other, but said nothing. Dick Webb got to his feet slowly, painfully, hitching at his belt with one hand.

  “That’s all, then,” he said, to no one in particular, cocking the gun in his left hand. There was another, stronger, sweeter smell now, and they gagged on it. The bodies sprawled in the shattered corridor were beginning to burn.

  Angel touched Day’s shoulder and gestured with his chin toward the heavy bar on the door. There was no place left to go but out through there, out towards the waiting guns of the Fischer riders. Dead if they stayed, dead if they didn’t. He looked at Dick Webb. The kid’s face was grim: he wanted to go out fighting. Angel’s brain raced furiously. He had to find some way to stop the kid rushing out with a gun in his hand to certain, sudden death.

  “Angel!”

  He heard the voice through the angry roar of the flames and knew it was Big Ed Fischer.

  “I hear you!” he yelled back.

  “You’re finished, Angel!” screamed Fischer. “Come on out while you can—or burn, damned if I care which!”

  “We’re out of chips, kid,” Angel said softly.

  Dick Webb looked at him, his face surprised, contempt creeping into his eyes.

  The kid looked at Doc who was watching Angel with a puzzled expression.

  “We can make a run for it, Frank!” Doc coughed. As he spoke, one of the heavy roof beams crashed to the floor at the far end of the corridor. A long spiraling shower of sparks climbed up into the star-studded velvet of the sky.

  “We’ve got maybe a minute,” Angel said tightly. He raised his voice to a shout. “All right, Fischer!” he shouted. “We’re coming out!”

  There was a ragged shout of triumph outside, then they heard Ed Fischer’s voice again. “Throw out your guns!” he shouted.

  Angel nodded to the other two, tossing his own six-gun out as he unbarred the door and swung it open. After a moment, with a look of utter contempt plain now on his face in the bright redness of the flames, Dick Webb followed suit. Angel nodded to Day, who threw his Sharps away from him as if he suddenly detested it.

  Frank Angel swung wide the heavy door and stumbled out into the street, followed by the other two. The whole area was bathed in a terrible bright red light from the burning jail behind him, and with the added draught caused by the opening of the door, the flames surged higher and higher, as if rejoicing in their victory. Coughing, retching, eyes streaming from the smoke, the three men came out into the street where Ed Fischer stood triumphant, a Winchester repeater cradled in his ham like hands, alone in the middle of the glaring dusty street.

  “Get out here where I can see you!” he yelled. “I’m going to enjoy this!”

  Behind the three men there was a roaring rumbling crash as the roof of the jail finally collapsed, great lumps of flaming wood and ash floating high like giant fireflies in the night sky, huge spirals of glowing sparks wending upwards into infinity. They could see now that a ring of townspeople, their faces strained in the flickering red light, were standing watching the awful denouement of their resistance. Fischer seemed oblivious of everything: the fire, the people, everything except the three men who stood now helpless in front of him, their clothes smoldering with tiny burns, faces grimed from the billowing smoke.

  “Get over here!” he yelled, gesturing abruptly with the Winchester.

  “I want everyone in this stinking town to see you!”

  “You better let us move away from here, Fischer,” Angel said. “Or we’ll fry in this heat!” He moved forward a few tentative steps.

  “You’ll fry all right,” Fischer gloated. “But in Hell!”

  He gestured again with the rifle: move! and Angel made a cautious half circle around to the side, his eyes on the ground as if afraid to stumble.

  “Now they’re going to see something!” Fischer gloated, triumph in his voice. “Now I’ll hang you and they’ll watch, and they’ll remember who hanged you and why. They’ll all think twice before they ever challenge a Fischer again! It’s still my town, Angel! Still my town!”

  His head was thrown back toward the sky as he shouted the last words, glorying in them like some victorious, insane animal.

  “You-don’t have to hang us, do you?” Angel croaked, and Doc Day’s head came up sharply as he heard the tone in Angel’s voice. He could have sworn there was fear in it. He shook his head in disbelief, but Angel’s next words confirmed it.

  “Please,” Angel begged. “Just let us ride out of here. We won’t give you
any trouble. We’ll—”

  “Listen to him!” screeched Ed Fischer, waving a hand at the people who still stood, stock-still, watching. “Listen to him! Get over here, all of you! I want you to see him crawling, begging for his life!”

  Nobody moved.

  “Get over here!” Fischer shouted again, turning his head towards the unmoving spectators. “Get over here!”

  And in the moment that he turned his head, Frank Angel moved.

  Chapter Twelve

  Angel had worked it out, figured the odds.

  In this one incredibly fast movement he put everything he had on the line, using every ounce of the strength and skill he had acquired during his long months of training with the Department of Justice, every iota of himself summoned in this half second, to this place, his body a machine to do the bidding of his racing brain.

  His right arm shot sideways, jarring Dick Webb off his feet with a shout of pain, knocking the boy down to the ground. Fischer whirled around, the Winchester bearing down on the source of the sound and giving Angel the fraction of a second he had gambled for. The Winchester takes just that millisecond longer to move, to use, than a six-gun and in it Angel had dropped left and rolled, his own right hand finding the six-gun close to which he had so carefully placed himself, the same six-gun that Dick Webb had earlier tossed contemptuously into the dusty street.

  Fischer was very fast, his reactions galvanized by the adrenaline already pumping through him, and he lined up desperately on the rolling figure of Frank Angel. He was very good, not an easy man to take; but he had been that half second behind Angel all the way and that made him a dead man. Angel’s shot smashed upward into the open, snarling mouth and drove straight through, bursting Fischer’s skull and splattering the man’s brain outwards in a ghastly misting spray of pinkish-grey. The. Winchester exploded in the reflexive jerking of the dead man’s finger, but the bullet drove harmlessly into the earth two yards from Angel, who was now up on one knee, sighting as Dick Boyd reacted to the sudden movement, eyes wildly seeking a target as his men scattered for some kind of shelter, snatching at their guns as Boyd went down flat dead with Angel’s second bullet in his heart, the drawn six-shooter sliding from his nerveless fingers into the dirt beside him.