Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (15 page)

Now the troopers under
Angel’s position raised a cheer and fired a volley into the air,
and up the Trail from their position away behind the President’s
caravan came a motley crowd of railroad men; steel men and gandy
dancers, track layers, navvies, ferried up the side of the pass in
big supply wagons with canvas tops, every one of them armed with
repeating rifles, spreading like a swarm of ants behind the men
entrenched there and showing no one an ounce of mercy.

The troopers in the trees
got to their feet now, racing along behind Major Godwin, who ran
flat out ahead of them towards the bluff on which Denniston stood,
the Gatling gun still churning out its rain of death on the milling
figures below.

It mattered nothing to
Denniston whose men the terrible Gatling gun shells killed. No man
down there was his friend.

‘Shoot, shoot, shoot,
shoot!’ he screamed monotonously on and on, knowing that he had
been tricked, realizing that Grant was not there, that the whole
thing had failed. The soldiers below kept on coming and now the
troopers coming over the top of the rise were charging into the
melee. One detachment veered to the right, led by a young
lieutenant with corn yellow hair flying in the wind of his gallop,
his arm outstretched, a Colt’s revolver glinting in the
sun.

Denniston saw the soldier
fire and felt the wind of the bullet on his cheek as he screamed at
his men to swing the Gatling gun around to face this new threat.
The noise and confusion were too intense: his men did not hear him.
And then the cavalrymen were on them. The young lieutenant launched
himself from the back of his horse on to the shoulders of the man
operating the crank handle of the Gatling, feeling the man beneath
his flying weight.

Denniston looked right,
left, rapidly seeking an escape route. The road leading towards
Trinidad was clear now, the last trooper embroiled in the fighting
going on in the road and alongside it.

Shots whistled everywhere.
Men were sprawled brokenly on both sides of the road, some of them
in the dark blue of the US Army. Denniston edged around two men
fighting on the ground, saw a trooper coming at him in the same
instant and shot the man in the face. The soldier went down in a
welter of spraying blood and brains as Denniston ran hard and fast
towards the left hand side of the road where trees came almost to
the very roadside itself. Once in the tall timber he would have a
chance. All he had to do was get across one high rocky ridge that
loomed in front of him and he would be out of sight. He ran towards
it with maniacal intensity, his only thought to get over it and
away.

He actually had his hands on
the rock when a remembered voice cut through the white panic in his
brain.

‘Don’t say you’re leaving
just when the party’s getting interesting, Colonel?’

He whirled around, pure
disbelief on his face.

‘You!’ he choked.

‘Me, indeed,’ said President
Grant. ‘And Mr. Angel you also know.’

Denniston took it all in.
Below and behind the two men in front of him the firing had
stopped.

The soldiers were herding
together a half-dozen or so sullen survivors, their hands raised
above their heads as the troopers poked them together with rifle
barrels none too gently. There were bodies sprawled everywhere in
the hot sun, some of them in Army blue, many more not. The last
faint wisps of powder smoke drifted away and the hot sun shone down
forgivingly, long shadows darkening the bloodstained
trail.

It was all over. Denniston
frowned. How could it be all over? Then his eyes focused on the two
men in front of him and his mind snapped.

There are medical terms to
describe that exact occurrence. It can be caused by a shock beyond
the powers of the brain to reject. On other occasions it is caused
by a rush of rage so intense that inside the delicate frontal lobes
small nerve cells break apart, and on still others it is a complete
loss of all normal control.

Whatever it was, Denniston
felt it go, just as the two men standing in front of him saw the
bright glare that flickered to Denniston’s eyes.

There was a pure bright
blinding light behind Denniston’s eyes and he knew finally that he
was invulnerable, invincible. He knew too that because he was all
these things his mortal enemy was delivered into his hands. All he
could see in the whole astonishing bright world he now lived in was
Ulysses S. Grant, awaiting his punishment, his execution, as the
droning sound of the ‘Rogues’ March’ filled Denniston’s mind and he
lifted the gun out of its closed-top holster, savoring the moment
he would pull the trigger. Somewhere in another part of the mind he
heard Angel shout something, but whatever it was had no meaning, no
place in this perfect world, so he ignored it, lifting the Navy
Colt and cocking it deliberately, the triple click as loud as
thunder. He felt as if he were on the top of some snow-covered peak
high in the mountains, alone, perfected. And he felt no pain at all
when Angel shot him dead.

Grant’s speech at the Santa
Fe Convention was, they read, tremendous. ‘The President,’ Angel
read aloud, ‘received a standing ovation lasting more than ten
minutes, and many of those present were not ashamed to be seen
wiping tears from their eyes.’

‘It actually says that?’
Wells asked.

‘Right here,’ Angel said,
pointing to the paragraph in the Optic.

‘Doesn’t sound like the
President Grant we all got to know and love,’ said Lieutenant
Philip Evans. He was in the bed next to Wells, recuperating from a
flesh wound he had received in the fighting at the pass, ten days
before.

Grant had come down from the
mountains like a grizzly with a sore head. Colonel Whitenfield had
been ordered to put an expedition into the field immediately, to
ride up into the mountains above Kiowa and wipe out whatever
remained of the Denniston compound. They had found the place
deserted except for buzzards picking on what was left of the men
Angel had killed, and burned it to the ground.

Angel had telegraphed his
advance report to Washington, advising them that Wells, although
wounded, was not dead. The day before Grant left for Santa Fe, he
had sent for Angel.

He had gone into the
officers’ quarters in the big adobe on the north side of the
sprawling fort and found Grant sitting there, whiskey at his elbow,
cigar stuck into his face at the old jaunty angle.

‘Wanted to thank you,’ Grant
began with grace. ‘Officially.’

Angel thanked him and Grant
waved him to a chair.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ he
said testily. ‘Don’t be so hard to get.’ He got up and walked
around the desk, sitting on the edge and stabbing his cigar at
Angel.

‘Want you on my personal
staff,’ he said abruptly. ‘Like your style, Angel.’

‘Thank you, Mister
President,’ Angel said. ‘But—’

‘But me no buts, boy,’ the
President said. ‘I’ll talk to the Attorney General about it.
Dammit, I’ll order him to transfer you to me. One of the nice
things about being President.’ He peered at Angel. ‘Well, what do
you say, man?’

‘With respect, Mister
President,’ Angel said. ‘I’d prefer to stay where I am. I think it
would be better.’

‘Can’t go along with that,
Angel,’ Grant said, getting off the desk and going back to his
chair. ‘I need men like you around me. God! I can still see that
man pointing that gun at me.’

‘I don’t think he really
knew what he was doing, sir,’ Angel said.

‘Maybe, maybe,’ Grant said,
‘but I stood there hypnotized. I’ll never laugh at anyone who tells
me about birds and snakes again, I assure you. Now, about that job.
Say you’ll take it.’

‘No, sir,’ Angel said. ‘I
can’t do that.’

‘Can’t?’ Grant erupted.
‘Can’t do what the President of the United States tells you to
do?’

‘No, sir,’ Angel said,
straight faced.

‘You better come up with a
damned good reason, boy!’ warned Grant. ‘A damned good
reason.’

Angel nodded. ‘I got one,’
he said. ‘You see, Mister President — I’m a Democrat.’

Grant looked at him for a
long, long moment, trying hard to hold the scowl on his bearded
face.

It was no use. The laughter
bubbled up and spread all over it, and he threw back his head and
shouted his laughter so loud that the orderly opened the door and
poked in his head to make sure all was well.

‘What is it?’ said Grant,
his shoulders heaving.

‘Everything in order, Mister
President, sir?’ the sergeant said.

‘Yes,’ wheezed Grant. ‘Fine.
Fine. Mister Angel is a Democrat, you see.’

The clerk looked at Angel,
then back at Grant.

‘Oh, yes, Mister President,
I see,’ he said, retreating into his own office and tapping his
head significantly in response to the inquiring look of the other
orderly sergeant, who nodded.

Everyone knew that Grant was
mad. Drank some, too, they said.

In the hospital, Angel stood
up and stretched.

‘How long before you’re fit
to travel?’ he asked Wells.

‘Month, six weeks, they tell
me,’ Wells grinned.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if
it took longer.’

‘You want me to tell the Old
Man that?’

‘Well, Frank,’ Wells beamed,
unashamed, ‘it’d come so much better from you — you being a hero,
and getting that special commendation from the President, like. You
know, you’ve got clout now.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Angel said.
‘Sure.’

‘Never know,’ Wells said
teasingly. ‘The Old Man might even let you take that lovely
secretary of his out to dinner.’

‘She pretty, Gus?’ Evans
asked from the other bed.

Wells pursed his lips and
made one of those movements with both hands that men make to
indicate loveliness.

‘Ahah,’ Evans said. ‘Now we
know why Frank’s in such a hurry to get back east.’

Angel said something rude
and turned to leave. As he did, he caught Wells’ eye and
grinned.

‘See you at the May Ball,’
he said.

‘I’ll be there,’ Wells
promised. ‘And I’ll be dancing.’

Angel nodded and went out of
there. He got his horse, standing ready with his bedroll strapped
behind the saddle. He swung aboard and took one last look at Fort
Union. Then without regret he kicked the horse into a canter and
rode out through the gates on to the trail leading up into the
mountains. If anyone had seen him just then they might have been
surprised, for he was smiling.

He knew just the place he
could take her.

Check out our other Frank
Angel adventures

FIND ANGEL!

SEND ANGEL!

Coming Soon

FRAME ANGEL!

Available from Piccadilly
Publishing

Frederick Nolan, a.k.a.
'Frederick H. Christian', was born in Liverpool, England and was
educated there and at Aberaeron in Wales. He decided early in life
to become a writer, but it was some thirty years before he got
around to achieving his ambition. His first book was The Life and
Death of John Henry Tunstall, and it established him as an
authority on the history of the American frontier. Later he founded
The English Westerners' Society. In addition to the much-loved
Frank Angel westerns, Fred also wrote five entries in the popular
Sudden series started by Oliver Strange. Among his numerous
non-western novels is the best-selling The Oshawa Project
(published as The Algonquin Project in the US) which was later
filmed by MGM as Brass Target. A leading authority on the outlaws
and gunfighters of the Old West, Fred has scripted and appeared in
many television programs both in England and in the United States,
and authored numerous articles in historical and other academic
publications.

The brainchild of Amazon
Kindle Number One Bestselling Western writers Mike Stotter and Ben
Bridges, Piccadilly Publishing is dedicated to reissuing classic
popular fiction from the 1970s, 80s, 90s and Beyond!

To visit our website, click
here

To visit our blog, click
here

To follow us on Facebook
click here