Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (13 page)

‘At ease, Major,’ he said.
‘Take a seat.’

The Major sat down stiffly,
his eyes wide at the opulence of Grant’s railroad
carriage.

‘Only way to travel,’ Grant
smiled. ‘Pity we can’t go all the way in it.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the Major said.
‘I wouldn’t mind going the rest of the way in this myself. It’ll
be,’ he added hesitantly, ‘a bit rougher riding from here on in,
I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t fret yourself,
laddie,’ boomed Grant.

‘I’m looking forward to the
journey. What have you got for me?’

‘We brought two ambulances,
Mister President,’ the soldier said. ‘Good teams. A light escort,
as specified.’

‘Right, right,’ Grant said.
‘Don’t want to look like an expedition. What’s our
route?’

‘It’s a fairly
straightforward one, Mister President,’ Godwin said. ‘From here we
follow the old Trail up to Trinidad. You are making a speech at a
dinner given in your honour by the Friends of the Republican Party
of Colorado in the Baca House . . .’

‘Speeches,’ grumbled Grant.
There was a world of feeling in the word.

‘Yes, sir,’ Godwin said.
‘From Trinidad we head down through the Raton to Fort Union. I am
commanded by my superior, Colonel Whitenfield, to present his
compliments, and to extend an invitation to dine with the officers
of Fort Union upon your arrival there.’

‘Fine, fine,’ nodded Grant.
‘May want to make a detour on the way, though.’

‘Sir?’ Godwin looked
dismayed.

‘Cimarron, boy, Cimarron,’
Grant said. ‘One of the best chefs I ever had opened an hotel
there. The St James. Ought to get a decent meal off Henry, wouldn’t
you think?’

Godwin remained silent, his
face a study in embarrassed confusion.

‘Well, boy, what is it?’
Grant barked. ‘Speak up, speak up! ’

‘Ah, begging the President’s
pardon,’ Godwin managed. ‘But the Cimarron. The St James. It — uh —
it hasn’t the best reputation, sir, I mean. There have been . . .
fights. Shootings.’

‘Killings, you mean?’ Grant
said, a smile spreading across his bearded face. ‘Good, good. Liven
things up.’

‘Yes, sir, Mister
President,’ Godwin said. He’d let Grant’s staff handle that one. If
he got back to Fort Union and told that fat fool Whitenfield that
he’d let Grant go rummaging around Cimarron, where a man could get
shot for spitting carelessly, his own commission wouldn’t be worth
the parchment it was printed on.

Grant stood up, ending the
interview.

‘Get your men ready, Major,’
he said. ‘We’ll leave as soon as the baggage is stowed aboard the
ambulances. Have you got a horse for me?’

Godwin’s mouth fell open
slightly.

‘You wish to ride, Mister
President?’ he managed.

‘Goddammit, boy, what else
would I want a horse for?’

‘I’d be honored if you would
accept the use of my horse, sir,’ Godwin said, recovering. ‘I’ll
put one of the men in an ambulance with your staff.’

‘Good.’ Grant nodded, and
the younger man went out. He watched the soldier go, with a smile
touching his lips. They must think I’ve forgotten how to fork a
goddamned horse, he thought. That’s what being a politician does
for you. Thirty-odd years in the Army and they think you forget how
to ride just because you sit in a fat chair in the White House. By
God, he thought, I might just show them a thing or two before this
trip is over. He lit another cigar and started putting his papers
together.

Denniston rode at the head
of his column, a smile on his lips. It was happening. Everything he
had planned, organized, built for, coming finally to its
preordained conclusion. He looked over his shoulder at the men
behind him. Cannon fodder, he thought. Every one of them would be
either dead or a criminal whose only end would be the gallows. He
knew his history: the conspirators who had murdered Lincoln had
been hunted down at enormous cost to the young Republic, but hunted
down one by one they had been — and then hanged. The Government had
taken no chances.

Nor would it this time.
There was no question but that the attack which he, Denniston,
would lead would bring about the greatest manhunt in the history of
the United States, and he relished the thought. His name would live
in history along with Grant’s, locked together at the moment of
Grant’s death, so that whenever men spoke of one they would
automatically speak of the other.

The irony of it, the full
truthful justness of that fact, made Denniston smile again.
Justice, indeed, he told himself. He had no illusions about his own
future. As soon as he knew Grant was dead — and his soul longed to
be the instrument, the actual visitor of that death — he would head
for Denver. Long, long ago he had placed funds in a bank there,
together with documents and letters which established a new
identity for him. With the money and the new identity, he could
head for San Francisco and there take a ship to England. In England
he would buy a farm somewhere, perhaps in the rolling hills of
Surrey, not too far from the pleasures of the metropolis, and spend
the rest of his days in quiet peace among the incurious British. If
his plan failed, he would kill himself. He did not think suicide
dishonorable; he knew that in their hearts most soldiers felt as he
did. The Paladins of old, the Crusaders, the Samurai of Japan, all
had a code in which dishonor equaled death, either death in battle
facing an enemy, or death by one’s own hand in the sight of
whatever God a man worshipped. Denniston had fled only once from
death. He knew he would never do so again.

Now the long march was
almost over.

He had led his men across
the mountain trails between Laughlin and Tinzja Peaks, the long
cavalcade snaking and twisting its way through the desolate awesome
mountain country and then up around the western edge of Raton Mesa,
down the long falling slope of the sierras until they came to the
tumbling, rushing waters in the gorge of the Picketwire River,
running north and westwards to Las Animas.

Around them and above them
the mighty peaks towered. The wind moaned in the canyons, and the
men shivered in the cold of the high altitudes. Rio de Las Animas
en Purgatorio — river of souls in Purgatory — Denniston rolled the
words around his tongue. How beautifully apt it was!

How just — the word kept
coming back to him when he thought of the culmination of his
plans.

It was fated to
be.

Now they were approaching
their final camp.

Tomorrow, if all went as
expected, Grant’s train would reach the end of the AT&SF line
at Las Animas. By that time, Denniston’s vedettes would be in
place, stationed strategically all along the possible routes that
the Presidential caravan might take, runners with the best horses
that money could buy ready to swing into the saddle and bring the
information back to him.

His lip curled as he thought
how cheaply, and how easily, he had bought the young Major at Fort
Union who had provided him with so much vital information. The
robberies, the ambush of the wagon train, had all been made
possible by information provided by the soldier, and the more
deaths Denniston’s men had wrought, the deeper into Denniston’s
toils the soldier fell.

Finally, he had managed to
get the one document which made the final coup possible. He had
not, of course, known why Denniston wanted it. It was simply one
piece of information among a number which he was told to get.
Denniston, like many other fanatics, worked very much on the need
to know principle. The Presidential itinerary was a simple one. He
was speechmaking across country: St Louis, Kansas City, Trinidad,
Santa Fe. There was a Republican Convention in Santa Fe at which he
would naturally be expected to appear, and Grant was wasting no
chance of capitalizing on the journey.

Denniston had considered the
possibility of an assassination by sniper at the Convention and
discarded it. He wanted Grant to know why he was dying. And the
military ambush which he, Denniston, was planning to effect would
be a fitting way for Grant to go. Again the word justice occurred
to him. Death by ambush in the canyon of the river of lost souls.
Just, indeed. Denniston’s face was set and cold. He looked out over
the tumbled land like an eagle seeking prey.

Angel watched them set their
trap.

Although he was no military
strategist, he could not help but admire the effectiveness of
Denniston’s dispersion of his men. Between the chattering
Picketwire and the road, at a place where the old Trail curved
around and almost back upon itself as it labored upwards into the
mountains, Denniston spread his men among the trees, where they dug
holes and shallow trenches, lying and mock-sighting the Winchesters
and Springfields on their imaginary target in the road. At the
crest of the curve itself, among tumbled boulders that frowned down
on the steeply-sloping Trail, Denniston’s men manhandled the
spindly Gatling gun into position, its brassy snout dulled now with
blacking, stacking brush and tree branches around it until it
blended with the broken land, its field of fire the curve below,
towards which men fired upon would unquestionably scatter. Behind
and around the gun other men were scooping out shallow dugouts,
rolling big rocks into position to provide cover, a further
addition to the terrible scything weight of fire which the
primitive machine-gun would lay down on the Trail below. The
opposite side of the Trail was simply a huge mound of broken rock,
boulders, sliding shale and scree, around which the Trail curled
like a snake skirting a stone. Among the jumbled, faceless rocks
Denniston placed the rest of his men. They merged into the scenery
almost as soon as they sank down to the ground.

The sum total of the
dispersion was a wall of death through which no living thing could
possibly go.

Angel nodded grimly. How
long did he have?

How far away was the quarry?
Why was the President of the United States coming through this
empty, forbidden place? It did not matter.

What did matter now was that
he find a way to head off the President, to ensure that no one
entered this place of death.

It was slow
going.

He could not allow himself
or his tired horse to make any noise, yet he must find a way
through mountain country he had never seen and get to the Trail
below the ambush. His whole body ached with fatigue. He had not
eaten a warm meal for three days and the stubble was thick and
rasping on his unshaven chin. His clothes felt heavy and sticky
with sweat.

He worked his way over
northwards, always bearing west when a canyon or a coulee offered a
path through the tumbling mountains. And always he kept the
tumbling Picketwire on his left, wary as an antelope for vedettes
from Denniston’s column, leading the stumbling horse as well as he
could, sometimes sliding down yards of broken stone to the edge of
the indifferent river.

He almost missed the first
lookout.

The man was leaning
indolently against a tree, his brown shirt and pants blending with
the darker greens of the pines, a brand new Winchester canted
across his forearm. Angel clamped a hand over the horse’s muzzle: a
whinny of alarm from the animal now could give the guard all the
time he needed to fire a warning shot, bringing reinforcements down
the canyon from the army above. Angel went on his belly and wormed
forward until he was within ten feet of the guard. The man was
peering off down the Trail, his face three—quarters turned away
from Angel as Angel came up off the ground in a long fast hard run,
the flat—bladed throwing knife already raised as the guard heard
the movement and turned, frantically trying to get the Winchester
into firing position, seeing Angel’s hand drop. For the merest
fraction of a second the man’s eyes picked up the whickering blade
and then it drove deep into his throat, smacking his head against
the tree as it went straight through, killing any sound he might
have made, and pinning the man momentarily to the wood behind him.
Then the dying weight of the guard against the razor edge of the
blade freed it slightly, and he went down in the soft pine needles
without a sound, thrashing slightly for a moment, and then as still
as the death which had claimed him. Angel looked about him quickly,
and, spying a cordon of rocks off near the edge of the river,
dragged the man down to it and unceremoniously tumbled the body
behind them.

Picking up the Winchester
and checking to see if it was fully loaded, he unhitched the horse
and went on down the gorge of the Picketwire, moving as fast as he
dared, ever alert for more guards.

It was well after noon when
he emerged on a bluff from which he could see far down the long
straight track leading back into the wooded declivities below. The
Trail was empty except for a slow—moving wagon with a six-ox team
toiling its way painfully down the long miles towards Las Animas.
Far off, Angel’s keen eyes picked up a trace of smoke on the smudgy
edge of a bluff; perhaps ten miles away. He nodded, and then pulled
the horse around, swinging aboard the sweating bare back and urging
the tired animal down the trail. If there were any of Denniston’s
men this far out of the mountains, they would not take any notice
of a man going away from the ambush. He had no doubt that any lone
rider or wagon team coming down the Pass would be allowed through
the cordon. They were only interested in one target.