The Avenging Angels

by Michael Dukes

  Brownwell still wasn’t anywhere near at ease around Johnny Blake, but he wouldn’t go so far as to fathom that all that buttering-up had been done just to make a name for himself by putting a bullet behind Kings’s ear. A man could lie like a rug to achieve whatever ends he sought, but the worshipful light that came into the kid’s eyes when Kings reined in alongside him the first day out, or when he’d reached across the fire last night to refill the kid’s coffee cup . . . Well, there weren’t many outside a Memphis painted lady who could counterfeit that.

  And yet, even as Brownwell finished hitching his horse outside the bank, the rankling thought came again—why the hell had Kings let the boy come along? This was a job for men, and he’d never been one for taking on disciples before.

  Brownwell had been unable to get a straight answer. The old Gabriel Kings, who would have let light shine through a challenger for a look he didn’t like, might have tied this kid to a tree or whupped him till the homestead seemed like New Jerusalem, then sent him a-running. Not so long ago, he might have had the stomach for that sort of business. But, as Kings had noted and as Brownwell had to allow, there was something to be said of a fellow who would ride blindly into the labyrinthine canyons called home by the Avenging Angels, just to repeat a question that had already been answered . . .

  “Trouble in here.”

  Spooked, Brownwell whirled, hand on his gun. He saw that the left-hand door had been eased open from the inside, and it was Kings speaking from the darkness. “Let’s go.”

  Brownwell decided he could puzzle over the acceptance of Johnny Blake some other time. Leaving Yeager and Woods to stand guard, he unlimbered a sack from his saddle horn, which clinked and rustled faintly as it moved. Though he was by no means a safecracker of Tom Seward’s caliber, Brownwell possessed enough basic knowledge to feel confident wielding the sundry tools presently in his care. But what was this, now, about trouble?

  Mounting the raised platform, he shuffled past Kings into the bank, crossed the lobby, and vaulted lightly over the high counter. The door to the narrow closet that served as a vault in the rear of the building stood ajar, Kings having broken the hasp minutes before, and as Brownwell moved in he made out a black, stove-sized safe.

  Even in the poor light, something about it made him hesitate. He extended a hand and ran it down the side of the durable cast-iron frame, the action almost reverential, but Brownwell’s brow creased as he realized this was not the lockbox he had expected.

  Kings’s cautious footsteps were marked only by the faint chiming of his spurs. “I know,” he said, reading the set of Brownwell’s shoulders as easily as a man reads a face. “It’s a beefy sonovabitch.”

  “And it’s new,” Brownwell said shortly. “I don’t think I brung enough sticks to blow this door off.”

  Kings scraped a match along the underside of his boot, then removed the globe from a lamp he found on the counter. He touched the flame to the wick, let it catch, and set the lamp beside Brownwell to be positioned at his convenience. The light glittered over the raised lettering of the manufacturer’s stamp, playing off the dull gleam of the safe door and its blunt, resolute dial. It veritably mocked the men who knelt before it.

  “I can try and crack ’er,” Brownwell suggested, speaking to himself as much as to Kings.

  Kings turned his head, spat on the floor. “Get to it, then. Failin’ that, we’re gonna have to blow it. Door doesn’t come off all the way, we can use our guns to do the rest of the negotiatin’.”

  “Dick failed to mention this after his reconnoiter,” Brown-well said, unknotting the throat of the sack.

  Kings was frustratingly calm. “Said they kept the vault closed, remember? Four hours of watchin’, and not a one of them tellers ever needed somethin’ from the vault.”

  On the street, Dick Osborn thought he heard something. He bent an ear to the stillness of the air—straining, willing the noise to sound again. When it finally did, he identified it with confidence as nothing more than an old tomcat, yowling halfheartedly as it slunk along the boardwalk opposite. Dick let his breath slide free, and the tensed muscles of his face relaxed in the faint glow of his cigarette.

  Across the way, Johnny Blake’s knuckles were white from gripping his carbine so tightly. His eyes, having failed to locate the true source before it disappeared into a cluster of crates, darted to and fro like minnows, covering every dark corner, every false front, and every window for witnesses that weren’t there.

  Watching him, Osborn shook his head. The nerves were finally getting to the kid. Jittery as he was, if his horse so much as farted he was apt to squeeze off a shot, and that was one thing Osborn didn’t need. He hissed at Johnny, went unheard, then tried waving an arm to get his attention. Johnny’s head and shoulders turned, and for an instant Osborn thought he might be on the receiving end of that accidental shot. When no bullet came, Osborn exhaled and motioned for the kid to breathe easier.

  Within the bank, Brownwell had started the work. The Missourian sat cross-legged, shoulders forward, with a binaural stethoscope in his ears and one hand steadily, imperceptibly moving the dial one tick this way, then that, then back again. No one knew how Seward had first come by this instrument, which had not yet been universally fine-tuned and was hard enough to come by in the Old South of a decade past, let alone the Hoot-Owl. It seemed fitting, however, that the scope had been made by Fergusun’s, London, and that it would be used to crack a safe made by Edward Tann & Sons, London.

  The work was tedious, not for the faint of heart or short of patience. Every passing second elevated the threat of discovery, but this was the only way. There was no bank teller on duty to whose head a gun could be pressed and no manager to open the safe for them. Though far from ideal, and not a feature of the original plan, this method was preferable to a full-fledged dynamiting. Brute force, with the type of attention it drew, would be their very last resort tonight.

  Kings was by the door, keeping an eye on the street and the men in it. He had passed through here once before, more than a year ago, studying, noticing, sometimes sketching the physical layout of this place, its dimensions, its geography. Just as importantly, he had taken stock of the population. As a general rule, the citizens were a hardened and rawboned bunch, and many of them good shots. Most folks hereabouts were like that—by necessity, if nothing else—and so Kings had been obliged, prior to arrival, to enlighten the boys as to this truth.

  It was one of the first lessons he’d learned, having veered off the straight and narrow—that when a man does that, he marks himself, oftentimes for life, as an enemy of the people. And in a place like Texas, the people were to be respected, if not feared. Only a handful had not turned their backs to him and his men, and he intended to pay that handful a visit very soon. Provided they made it out of here in one piece . . .

  Brownwell sat back suddenly with a bitter oath. He rolled his shoulders, cricked his neck, then leaned back into it. That wasn’t a good sign. The task required discipline, precision, and already, not even an hour in, the cussing had started. The bank clock ticked slowly, and Kings sighed. He caught an inquiring look from Yeager through the glass and signaled that it wouldn’t be much longer.

  Light began to break over the rooftops. By now, even Kings’s inhuman composure had weakened a bit, though one would have to look hard to see it in him. He’d twice had to rub the slight dampness of his palm on his trouser leg, but otherwise, his expression was stony, his eyes lifeless. Brownwell had cursed twice more, and twice Kings had stepped over for a closer look. Despite his aggravation, the Missourian was working deliberately, but that was the nature of safecracking. The clicks on the other side of the heavy door were faint, and the mechanisms anything but precise.

  Glancing at the bank clock, Kings estimated that Brownwell had been working for nearly ninety minutes. Another thirty and the sun would be up. He looked to the vault, saw his man stretch one leg out to massage a cramp, and decided it was time.

  “Leroy?”r />
  Brownwell looked over his shoulder, still rubbing.

  “Blow it.”

  Brownwell used all he brought, and, when the sticks had been properly situated, the fuses joined, Kings tapped on the front window. He gave Yeager a thumbs-up, and the gesture was returned. Kings waited until Woods had stepped down to ensure the security of the tied horses before he gave Brownwell the goahead. The Missourian raised the lamp and lit the fuse, then sprang over the counter and lay flat, eyes level with Kings and the dust motes.

  The peace of earliest morning was shattered in the explosion. Dull echoes spiraled across the street, trailed closely by the sound of glass raining down from window panes broken by the uncontained blast.

  Brownwell was right—it hadn’t been enough to take the door completely off its hinges, but he and Kings fired a round each into the right spots and watched with satisfaction as the door tumbled loose. Coughing harshly, Brownwell stood to one side, holding the tool sack open as Kings squatted to peer in.

  All he saw were four banded sheaves of greenbacks, probably no more than $3,000, and six coin trays, mainly in silver. He wasted no time filling the sack, then went through the drawers. What he found, he took.

  From farther up the street there was the sound of return fire. The kid had mounted, but his big red horse was frantic, fighting the reins, which meant that Johnny’s carbine may as well have been a cork-gun. Woods had spurred off to lay down cover fire for Osborn, who was fumbling with his stirrup. When Os-born finally swung aboard, he turned his grullo back into the welcoming maw of the alleyway. Woods and Blake followed.

  The criminals branched off in two separate directions. Kings, Yeager, and Brownwell charged down Main Street, attracting most of the civilian gunfire, while Woods, Osborn, and Johnny skirted the buildings by way of the alley, drawing fire only once.

  They regrouped once they cleared town and rode east. A few more shots rang out after them, but the distant puffs of smoke were as threatening as dandelion tufts against the lightening sky.

  To preserve the strength of their animals, the gang slowed to a canter. After a bit of riding Kings twisted in the saddle to do a head count and saw that Brownwell and Yeager were close behind. Woods followed by a few lengths on the right wing, and Osborn was on the left. In the rear, Blake was slowing, his posture slackening. With a frown, Kings reined to the side and saw the kid’s shirtfront darkening with blood.

  It was then that the men witnessed a heretofore unseen sight. Gabriel Kings, with a look of dread, kicked free of the stirrups, practically leaping to catch the sagging body of the dying youth and ease him gently to the scrubby ground.

  The bullet had entered just below the right shoulder blade, probably tearing through the lung before exiting out the boy’s chest. Kings said his name, was forced to repeat it, and Johnny’s eyes focused on him. The corners of his mouth raised in one last smile.

  “Mr. Kings,” the boy said as a line of blood ran down his chin. He groaned. “Oh, God, what—? Why does it hu—hurt—?”

  “Don’t talk so much, kid,” Kings told him. “It’ll pass soon.”

  The column had done an about-face, horses rearranged in a defensive semi-circle. Some of the townies were sure to pursue, at least for a few miles, so the men sat their mounts with eyes and guns at the ready. For the moment, though, there was no sign of life from Agave Seco.

  Woods dismounted to kneel beside Kings and Blake. As the band’s de facto surgeon, he felt he ought to at least examine the back-shot youngster, but, like Kings, he recognized immediately that all was lost. The blood told the story, and it wouldn’t be worth the agony to unbutton the kid’s shirt and turn him over. Frowning, Woods shook his head at Kings.

  He may have been dying, but Blake caught the silent exchange. He looked up at Kings and managed another few words. “Sh-shame I’ll never get to see them canyons again. They was some sight.”

  As the boy bled out in the sparse grass, Kings could not but wonder at the clench in his gut. He had looked down on the face of many a dead man—and many a dead young man, torn and shot to doll rags on the field of battle. But this was different. This time around, it had been Kings himself who put the pen and paper in the hand of another, not some tasseled-andstarched, pencil-pushing officer. He couldn’t answer for those good Virginia boys, whose faces, in the end, had gone grayer than the uniforms they wore, but he knew that ultimately, the blood on this particular boy’s shirt belonged where it was—on his hands.

  Before Kings could find the right words, articulate the right apology, the familiar sound of a death rattle rose from within the chest of John Allen Blake. His eyes slowly widened, his pupils unfocused, and life left him in one long sigh.

  For a moment, the boy looked to be at peace, and silence settled over the scene. Even the town that lay behind them, roiling in chaos minutes before, had fallen quiet. There were no shots, no shouts, no galloping horses. At the moment, there was absolutely nothing.

  Nevertheless, Kings heard Brownwell’s anxious pitch. “Gabe, they’ll be gettin’ themselves together. We gotta move.”

  Kings spoke flatly into deafened ears: “Agave’ll bury you better’n we can, kid.” Then he stood and returned to his waiting stallion. He gathered the reins, and, in the time it took for him to sweep his leg up, over, and into the stirrup, he reverted—once again stoic and unfeeling.

  He was a man acquainted with death, after all, and his inner voice echoed Brownwell’s—tracks had to be made; they oughtn’t to dally.

  As black ants began to speckle the hands of Johnny Blake, Gabriel Kings gave his horse the spurs and loped ahead into the new dawn.

  CHAPTER 13

  The East Frio River country was an area with which a man like Arthur Jackson could fall madly in love. He left the South twenty-four years ago, seeking to build a new life for his young family on an unclaimed stretch of land on this branch of the Frio, but it would be three more years before the Jacksons finally settled in the truest sense of the word. At the time, the Mexican government and its people were still reeling from their territorial and economic losses at the hands of the U.S. Army—an army from which Jackson himself had only recently been discharged—and Indian raiding parties kept the oncoming wave of settlers more or less at bay. Strong men had withered and died in that country long before the Jacksons ever set down wagon-tracks there, and of the five children born to Arthur and his wife, Martha, they’d buried three between 1857 and ’61. But Jackson was one of those who preferred to look his problems in the eye, and against the odds, he came out a winner.

  He’d had a mind to breed and sell horses in the land of Texas, and with him he brought a hearty stallion and three spirited mares of good stock. Within a year, his small herd had multiplied to seven. Another year passed, and the number increased again. The next year, a clan of nomadic Irish horse traders supplied two mares and a tall black stallion of Hunter blood to the ranks of Jackson’s remuda, and so it had gone.

  That encounter with the Irish had been over twenty years ago. Now, the herd numbered upwards of three hundred animals—some of American blood, some of Irish, some of Indian mustang ancestry—all of them free to roam and graze on over five hundred acres of grass, drink from the cold waters of the Frio, and rest under shady copses of pecan and live oak trees.

  It was the closest thing to heaven Jackson had ever seen. The Comanche threat had by now been handily subdued, thanks to the combined efforts of the Texas Rangers and the army, with frontier ranchers like Jackson doing their small part as well. There were still periodic brushes with American rustlers and Mexican bandits, but since long before the Civil War it had become common knowledge in that part of the country that if you had your sights set on thieving Jackson horseflesh, you better be able to shoot. The men he employed certainly could, and they shot to wound, because Jackson preferred to settle grievances in the old-timers’ fashion—by hanging.

  As a major in Zachary Taylor’s Army of Occupation, Jackson had slung a saber through a mass of Mex
ican infantry, screaming like a man possessed. He had held and aimed a rifle that brought down stock thieves on the fly, and he had plaited the rope that sent a good deal of those thieves kicking into the next world. But as hard and unforgiving as he could be, Major Jackson was proud of the fact that he had done a fair job in raising his children.

  His youngest and only surviving son, Titus, was a handsome man of nineteen who could have ridden into Austin and had his pick of any of the pretty women there, like apples from a tree. A first-rate horseman, a fine shot, and with a sharp mind, he would be ready to take a more prominent role in his father’s business in another year or so.

  The Old Man’s success in raising such an admirable son came from the practice he’d had in raising an admirable daughter, although his wife had objected—more than once—to the style of her upbringing.

  Taught the way of the horse and bridle before the way of the needle and loom, Belle could ride like the wind, and, if it came down to it, she could shoot just as well. Whenever she took her early morning ride down to the banks of the Frio, her prized Winchester rifle went with her. With that same rifle she had consistently proven herself a finer long-distance shot than even her brother.

  Yet withal, she was as much a lady as her mother. There could be no question, given the number of promising young bachelors who had darkened their door at one time or another, but all of Martha Jackson’s hopes for grandchildren had been dashed time and again as the major scared each of these suitors away. None of them had been good enough for his daughter, and, apparently, Belle was of the same mind. She’d never shown much interest in any of them and had turned down more secret proposals and offers of elopement than either of her parents knew.

  Recent years brought the major to the realization that he might have turned away one boy too many. Belle was now cresting the ridge on twenty-seven, was unmarried, and had a mother convinced she was doomed to perpetual spinsterhood.