Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) (6 page)

‘
Kill
the little bastard!’ someone shouted.

Angel
acted by blind instinct.

He
rolled to the side, over and over and off the edge of the sidewalk
into the dust, crying out as his wounded shoulder hit the hard
earth. The gun was in his hand and he saw the two dark shapes
running at him. Another shot boomed out and a huge chunk of
splintered wood torn from the sidewalk went whirring past his face,
tracing a long red finger across his cheekbone. He eared back the
hammer of the Army Colt and the gun leaped in his hand, the roar
blotting out sound. He saw one of the men slew to one side and go
down kicking in the street as the other fired again and missed. He
was on one knee now and he held the Colt steady in both hands, arms
outstretched to their full limit and let the running figure come
clear in the sights and then he released the hammer. The gun
blasted again and it was almost as if he could see the line the
bullet traced through the air. He saw the puff of dust clearly as
the bullet struck the running man high on the chest and he went
back as if he had been swatted. The gun flew from the man’s hand,
and Angel was up on his feet with the gun cocked again when Hickok
came out around the back of the jailhouse, both guns in his
hands.

‘
Stand still!’ Hickok roared, and Angel froze. He let the
barrel of the gun down.

‘
Uncock that thing and drop it!’ Hickok yelled.
‘Now!’

Angel
complied, and Hickok came forward. He looked at Angel’s shoulder
and then at the two men in the street. One of them lay quite still.
The other was writhing and groaning. Men were coming up the street
warily, and Hickok watched them with eyes like a cat’s, no movement
escaping him.

‘
Bill!’ someone yelled. ‘It’s Mike Williams. I’m coming
through.’

‘
Get
up here, man!’ shouted the Marshal. A man pushed through the crowd
with a shotgun canted ready in front of him. He turned and bayed
the crowd as Hickok went out into the street and knelt down by the
groaning man.

‘
Somebody get a doctor for this man!’ he said as he
straightened up. ‘The rest of you get off the street.

Move!’ He gestured with the Navy Colts and the crowd melted
back. ‘Move, I said!’ Hickok repeated, stalking towards them. The
knot of people broke, retreating away from the tall marshal, and
within a few minutes the sidewalk was empty again. Hickok turned to
face Angel.

‘
Get
into that office an’ let me take a look at your arm,’ he said
brusquely. When Angel made a slight movement of demurral, Hickok
cocked one of the Navy Colts loudly. ‘Do like I say, son,’ Hickok
said softly. Angel nodded and went in as Hickok stooped to pick up
all the fallen guns. He came in and turned up the lamp on the desk,
slicing Angel’s shirt away from the bloody shoulder with a
wood-handled knife that had a blade about a foot long.

‘
Arkansas toothpick,’ Hickok grinned, peering at Angel’s
shoulder.

‘
You’re a fool for luck,’ he pronounced. just burned skin.
Here … this ought to help.’ He uncorked a whiskey bottle, sloshed
some on his cupped hand, and slapped it on the gash in Angel’s arm.
Angel yelped, and Hickok grinned.

‘
Thank your lucky stars that’s all the hurt you got,’ he said.
‘One day someone’ll put a slug in you that’s got to be taken out
with a knife. Then you can really yell.’

He
sat down at the desk and arrayed the three guns he had picked up in
line abreast on it. He looked at them for a moment and then he
looked up at Angel.

‘
You
know what you’ve done,’ he said.

‘
I
had no choice,’ Angel said. His arm was stinging like hell. ‘You
going to arrest me?’

‘
My
job here is keeping the peace,’ Hickok said. ‘Right now, that means
getting you out of town as fast as I can. Those were Texicans you
burned down, sonny. This town is full of their friends. You want to
stay and discuss the question of self-defense with two hundred of
them when they’ve had time to likker up an’ come lookin’ for
you?’

‘
Not
much,’ Angel admitted. ‘Not very much at all.’

‘
What
I thought,’ Hickok said. ‘That’s the first good sense I’ve heard
out o’ you since I set eyes on you.’

‘
Will
it make trouble for you?’ Angel wanted to know.

Hickok’s eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘I’ve known it happen,’
he said. ‘Them cowboys aren’t what you could call my staunchest
admirers.’

‘
Then
— ’

‘ —
then nothing!’ Hickok said. ‘There won’t be any trouble I
can’t handle. As long as you’re not around. Tell me — where did you
learn to shoot like that?’

Angel
shook his head. ‘I didn’t even know what I was doing,’ he
said.

Hickok nodded. ‘Fools for luck,’ he sighed. ‘Well, boy, you
got to git. And fast. Only one thing more I can do for you.’ He
gestured at the guns on his desk and Angel reached for the Army
Colt.

He
was still reaching for the gun when he heard the door open and he
whirled like a cat, the Army Colt coming up cocked and ready. The
man in the doorway was Hickok’s deputy, Mike Williams. He stood
mouth agape, the shotgun dangling in his right hand, as Hickok
burst out laughing. Angel put the gun up, shrugging shamefacedly as
Williams came into the office.

‘
Meet
Mike Williams,’ Hickok grinned. ‘Special policeman at the Novelty.
He helps me out, sometimes. Mike - you nearly got separated from
yourself then. Maybe you’ll remember what I’m always tellin’ you —
never come up unexpected behind a man with a gun in his
hand!’

Williams shook his head. ‘I’ll remember next time,’ he said,
smiling. ‘Son, you sure are nervous. Put that thing away, will
you?’

Angel
pushed the gun into its holster and then strapped the rig on around
his waist. Hickok gestured at the other guns on the desk. There was
a beaten-up Navy 1851 and a pocket Colt, the 1848 model with
engraved sideplates.

‘
You
could take those,’ he offered. ‘Those fellows won`t be needin’ them
anymore.’

‘
I’ll
stick to this,’ Angel said.

Hickok smiled. ‘You may be right at that, way you handled it.
Mike, you look after things here a while, will you?’ He asked Angel
where he had left his horse and Angel told him. ‘I’ll walk this
youngster down to A Street. He’s leavin’ town and I do mean
now.’

Williams nodded. ‘Good thinking,’ he told Angel.

They
walked outside. Texas Street was bright with flaring oil lamps and
the saloons were roaring. Honky-tonk pianos were barreling away,
and coarse shouts of laughter and pleasure came from the bright
doorways. The sidewalks were crowded but Angel noticed that a
respectful path was always made for Hickok. They walked as far as
the railway depot and then the Marshal stopped.

‘
Far
as I go — alone,’ he said. ‘You got any money, son?’

Angel
nodded. ‘All l need,’ he lied.

‘
Here’s a stake, anyway,’ Hickok said, pressing a coin into
his hand.

‘
Don’t argue, just take it. It won’t hurt to have an Angel
thinkin’ good of me.’ The younger man could see his wry grin in the
flaring lights of Texas Street. Hickok did not extend his
hand.

‘
Where you headin’, Angel?

‘
New
Mexico,’ Angel said.

‘
Good,’ was the reply. ‘Don’t ever come into one of my towns
again. Sabe?’

‘
You
got a deal,’ Angel said. ‘Good luck, Mr. Hickok.’

‘
I
can use all there is,’ Hickok said and turned back towards Texas
Street.

He
cut their trail in Raton.

There
had been a fracas in the saloon, and several people remembered the
squint-eyed man called Milt who had tried to pistol-whip a man he
thought was cutting in on his conversation with one of the girls. A
heavyset, black-haired man had intervened, and when the sheriff had
turned up, smoothed things over by saying they were moving out
right away heading for Las Vegas.

It
figured, Angel thought.

Cravetts and his men had been out for a long time, and there
was money from the Fort Riley robbery burning a hole in their
jeans. They would head somewhere they could spend it. Las Vegas
might hold them for a while. Two days later he rode into the town
and hitched his horse outside the Plaza Hotel. There were shade
trees planted in the square, and everywhere the indolent air of
Spain: it was like another world after the flat harshness of Kansas
and the cool heights of Colorado. Somewhere in one of the low-lying
adobes across the square he could hear a woman laughing, and the
random strum of a guitar came from one of the cantinas.

He
asked for a room, and the desk clerk pushed the book across for him
to sign. Frank Angel scanned it quickly, but the scribbled names
gave him no clues. He needed time.

The
clerk sent a Mexican out to take care of the horse and Angel paid
him in advance for the room. He went out again into the square and
methodically visited the cantinas one by one. His eyes checked off
every white man he saw — for there were many shades of skin here:
Indian, Mexican, even one or two Negro troopers from Fort Union —
but saw no one who gave him any faint flutter of recognition. In
the cantinas though, they all looked at him.

Frank
Angel was tall, and wide-shouldered, and the cold eyes had the look
of a wary wolf in them. His travel-stained clothes, hard used on
the long journey, and the old Army Colt slung high on the right hip
drew attention. Men like him were hardly rare in places like this:
but the look on his face, the way his right hand stayed always near
the revolver, set him apart.

He
had to start somewhere, so he went back to the hotel. The desk
clerk looked up when he spun the gold coin Hickok had given him on
the desk, and made change for it without comment.

‘
Where’s the best place in town for poker?’ Angel asked him.
The clerk didn’t sneer but he came close to it.

‘
The
big games,’ he said, emphasizing the adjective, ‘are at the
Cattleman, down the street, two doors along from the Optic
offices.’

Angel
looked his question.

‘
The
Optic, the newspaper,’ the clerk explained impatiently. ‘But I was
you, I’d try one of the cantinas. Twenty bucks won’t get you more
than two hands at the Cattleman.’

‘
Big
stakes, huh?’ Angel said.

‘
You
could say that,’ the clerk said. ‘Take my tip an’ try something
more your size, son.’

‘
I
might at that,’ Angel replied and went out into the plaza. He
walked down to the southern end and turned left along the street.
The stores and business buildings were dark now, closed tight for
the night, but here and there pools of light spilled out on to the
sidewalk from cantinas, and throngs of passers-by bustled from one
saloon to the next. The Cattleman was a brick building with plate
glass windows on both sides of the batwing doors, crowded inside
with tables and chairs, a long bar going the length of the building
on the left hand side. In back of the room, a round table with a
green felt top was lit by an overhead lamp, and around it sat seven
men.

Kibitzers crowded around the table, which was littered with
poker chips, glasses and bottles. Cigar smoke wreathed upwards
towards the light, where dozens of moths fluttered around the hot
glass.

Frank
Angel bought a drink at the bar and carried it across the room to
where he could lean against the back wall of the saloon and watch
the game. The stakes, as the desk clerk had warned him, were big
enough: he reckoned there was about forty dollars in the pot. The
dealer was a thickset man with a black broadcloth coat and a fancy
vest across which a gold watch chain was linked. His hands were
cleft as they flicked cards to each of the players, two
deeply-tanned men, obviously local ranchers, a slim young fellow
with his hat tilted forward over his eyes, an elderly man with
grizzled hair whom the dealer referred to as ‘Doc’, a middle-aged
man in a blue serge business suit, and a narrow-shouldered man of
about forty who sat with his back towards Frank Angel and drank
regularly from the bottle on the table in front of him.

Angel
stood and watched the game for an hour, nursing his drink. He
listened as the conversation ebbed and flowed between hands,
putting names to the players. The dealer’s name was Singer, he
learned. The two ranchers, although they did not look at all alike,
were brothers, Brian and Peter something. A few rough jokes here
and there established the fact that ‘Doc’ was the town’s doctor,
and the man with the hat tilted over his face was called Kamins.
The narrow-shouldered man now drawing to a pair of sevens was the
only one for whom Angel did not have a name, but as the dealer
flicked the cards across the table the one called Kamins said ‘Come
on, Milt, see if you can get some o’ your money back.’

‘
Hell, Kamins, he ain’t lost that much,’ Singer
expostulated.

‘
If
you call five hundred not much,’ the one called Milt growled, ‘you
ought to let me know what much is, some time.’