Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (5 page)

‘
Hell, Wells,’ he said.
‘Out here, that kind of gossip is like water in a thirsty land. No
matter if it’s true or not. Nobody really takes Denniston
seriously.’

‘Funny,’ Wells said,
reflectively. ‘Here you have a man who hates the President of the
United States enough to tell people he’s an alcoholic and an
embezzler, a man who has a spread in a remote place surrounded by
guards and security, a man with military knowledge and experience,
a man with what you yourself called hard cases working for him —
and you don’t take him seriously? What does it take to get you to
take someone seriously, Sherman — does he have to walk around with
a lighted stick of dynamite in his hand?’

Sherman looked stunned, and
sat down heavily in his chair. ‘Wells,’ he said. ‘Listen. I mean, I
hadn’t even thought of it like that. You just don’t. I mean, it’s
so — wild, so improbable.’

‘I’ll grant you that,’ Wells
said grimly. ‘But I want you to put every man you’ve got on to
putting a dossier together for me about this Denniston. I want a
map of the Palo Blanco area, an Army survey map if you can get it.
I want to talk to the two deputies you sent up there. I want to see
the records of Denniston’s land filing—’

‘Hell,’ wailed Sherman,
‘they’re in Mesilla, Wells.’

‘I don’t care if they’re on
the goddamned moon, Sherman,’ Wells snapped. ‘I want to see them
and I want to see them fast. Now get me a pencil and paper, and
have someone stand by to take some messages to the telegraph
office. Washington can turn up this man’s military record if he has
one. Move, man!’

Sherman jumped, and almost
ran out into the office. He started shouting commands to his office
staff, and within minutes the place was a veritable hive of
industry. Sherman came back and stood looking at Wells, who was
scribbling furiously on the pad he had provided. He was trembling,
as if he had been physically attacked, and felt the sour bile of
resentment rising in his gorge. Who was this, this cripple, to come
in here and order him about? These Government people were all the
same — they came out here knowing nothing about the country or the
people and expecting everyone to kiss their asses on command. Well,
he for one wasn’t going to take any more crap. The next time —
Wells looked up and his cold eyes met those of Sherman. And for the
first time Sherman realized the kind of man Angus Wells was, and
every foolhardy ounce of bluster went out of his body as if it had
been siphoned off with a hydraulic pump.

‘Now we’re in business,’
Well said. If he had been tired when he arrived, he showed no sign
of it now. ‘Sherman, you’ve been a great help. Why don’t you let me
buy you a real drink while we’re waiting for the replies to these?’
He waved his hand at the sheaf of messages he had printed carefully
on the yellow ruled paper. Sherman let a watery smile slide on to
his face.

‘Why, uh, that’s be right
nice, Wells,’ he managed.

Wells stood up. ‘Call me
Angus,’ he said, and stumped out of the office, leading the way
into the street. He scanned the Plaza, saw a board sign that read
cantina and headed towards it at a rate of knots that had Sherman
trotting to keep up with him. Indians selling beads and colored
blankets beneath the porch of the Governor’s Palace stretched out
their hands to try to attract the attention of the Yanquis, but
Wells didn’t even see them. He went into the cool darkness of the
cantina and ordered tequila. The two men went through the courtly
south-western ritual with salt and lemon and salute, and let the
fiery liquid warm their bellies.

‘Aaaaahh,’ Wells said. He
sounded happy Outside the street was quiet in the afternoon sun.
They could not see Sherman ’s office, nor the man who came out of
it, looking first right and then left, staying in the shadow of the
squat adobe building until he came to the corner. Then he was
around it and going at a fast lope down the dusty alley, heading
south towards the Alameda.

He had some yellow papers in
his hand.

Kiowa was no great shapes as
a town.

It straggled along the Palo
Blanco canyon, houses and larger buildings scattered at each side
of a road that turned S-shaped like a snake between the beetling
hills that rolled back to even higher hills rising to the
eight-thousand-foot peak of Laughlin.

Angel rode in across the
wooden bridge that spanned the noisy river rushing on down towards
its confluence with Ute Creek and then onwards to the Canadian, his
eyes alert but his body slouched in the saddle like a man who has
come a long, hard way. As indeed, he had. It seemed like years
since he had reported to the Attorney-General in the big office
overlooking the muddy bustle of Pennsylvania Avenue.

News of the attack on the
military wagons had reached Washington almost simultaneously with
Wells’ messages from Santa Fe. The scale of the latest raid had
startled even the Justice Department: not only well over a hundred
brand-new Winchesters plus ammunition, but this time a disassembled
Gatling gun which had been on its way to Fort Marcy.

The Justice Department could
move very fast when it had to, and it moved fast now. Within two
days Angel had read every report, every file, and every dossier
that could be assembled on the people involved: the young
Lieutenant that Wells was even now interviewing in Fort Union; on
Colonel Rob Denniston, late US Army, cashiered for cowardice in the
aftermath of the battle of Chickamauga; on Johnnie Atterbow, ex-US
Army sergeant, who had deserted shortly after Denniston’s
court-martial and now ran the fenced-off enclave in the Palo Blanco
mountains, and who kept Denniston’s hard case crew in
line.

He had only had time to
spend a few hours with the Armorer, but no trouble had been spared
to get him what he needed. And now he was sifting down the
straggling street of Kiowa, and he looked every inch of what he was
posing as: a saddle tramp, looking for any kind of work that paid
well. Unshaven, dust-coated, his clothes stained with sweat and
grime, he moved down the street, noting the long looks he got from
men on the sidewalks, the absence of any sign of children in the
place, the packrats playing in the refuse between the tarpaper
shacks. There was only one big building, a saloon with a false
front and a long sign painted in red and gold that read ‘Levy’s —
The Traveler’s Rest’. There was a tacky-looking store with pans and
mining equipment hanging on strings from the porch roof, and at the
end of the street he found a livery stable of sorts. It looked as
if nobody really worked at keeping it more than nominally clean,
but he turned the horse into the dark cool interior. A man of about
forty with shifting eyes which never met Angel’s limped
forward.

‘Howdy,’ Angel said,
swinging down. ‘Like to leave the horse here. Overnight, mebbe.
Feed him and rub him down, will you?’

‘Anything you say, mister —
?’

Angel ignored the implicit
question. ‘Where could I get a room?’ he asked.

‘Levy’s is the only place in
town. How long you figgerin’ on stayin’?’

‘Levy’s, you say? That’s the
big place back up the street a ways?’

The hostler nodded his eyes
venomous. ‘Two dollars in advance for the horse,’ he
spat.

Angel fished in his jeans
and gave the man two silver dollars. He lifted the Winchester out
of the saddle scabbard and unfastened his war-bag from the cantle,
walking out of the stable into the sunlight.

The hostler limped after
him. ‘Hey, mister,’ he whined. ‘You never told me your
name.’

‘That’s right,’ Angel said
pleasantly and walked away, feeling the man’s eyes on his back the
whole way up the street. Nobody seemed to be taking a direct
interest in him, and yet he had the inescapable feeling that he was
being watched all the same. He shrugged. What else? He pushed into
the saloon.

It was just a big room.
Tables and chairs at one side. The usual gaming setups: faro,
chuckaluck, monte. A long bar running the length of the place on
the left hand side, ornate mirrors reflecting a display of bottles
that would have done credit to a New York hotel. The place was
clean by the usual standards appertaining in this part of the
world, and it wasn’t hard to figure the reason for that. There were
about twenty people in the place, and here and there between the
tables women in short spangled dresses moved, laughing with the men
playing cards or drinking.

Nobody took an awful lot of
notice of Angel as he found himself a place at the bar, but he knew
his arrival had been noted. He ordered a beer and sipped it slowly,
watching the faces behind him in the mirror. Once in a while he
caught a covert glance. Nothing more.

He signaled the bartender
for a refill.

‘Have one yourself,’ he
invited.

‘Thanks,’ said the man, a
florid-faced individual with strands of hair pasted on to his
balding skull and a heavy walrus moustache which concealed his
mouth. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

He scooped the foam off the
beer with a wooden spatula and lifted the tankard in
salute.

‘Salud
,’ he said.

Angel raised his glass to
return the salute.

‘Passin’ through? the
bartender asked.

‘Sort of,’ was the
non-committed reply. ‘Any work in these parts?’

The bartender looked
uncomfortable. ‘We don’t get that many people up here askin’,’ he
said.

Angel shrugged. ‘If I was
asking,’ he said. ‘who would I see?’

‘Only one spread in these
parts,’ the bartender said. ‘I ain’t heard they’re hiring.’ Angel
raised his eyebrows and the bartender went on, ‘Colonel Denniston’s
place up on the Blanco.’

‘What’s he run?’ Angel asked
mildly. ‘Cattle, horses — what?’

‘You better ask his ramrod,’
the bartender said, retreating down the bar to serve another
customer.

Angel smiled to himself. In
the mirror he could see several of the men at the tables listening
with unconcealed interest to his conversation. He turned to face
them and their eyes were hastily averted.

‘Any of you gents care to
tell me where this Denniston place is?’

His words produced a
strained silence, and for a moment he thought he’d pushed it too
far and fast. Then a man got up from a table at the back of the
room and pushed his way through to stand in front of Angel. He was
a giant. He had been sitting at a table with two of the women,
hard-faced harpies whose sagging breasts all but hung out of their
skinny dresses. He was dressed in heavy cord pants, a checked wool
shirt, good leather boots that bore the evidence of recent
polishing. His stance was erect. He was so obviously ex-Army that
it was almost painful. Angel grinned to himself: they never forget
how to play soldiers.

‘Who the hell are you?’ the
man said hoarsely.

‘Name’s Angel, Frank Angel.
And you?’

‘I’m Johnnie Atterbow.
Angel, you say? That’s a hell of a name for a man.’

‘Before you start straining
yourself thinking of a joke, I’ve heard them all,’ Angel cut in
roughly.

‘All I want to know is how
to get to this Denniston ranch.’

‘What do you want to get
there for?’

Angel sighed noisily. ‘Well,
you see, it’s like this, Johnnie. A long time ago, when I was a
bitty kid, my old lady introduced me to eating regularly. I kind of
got into the habit. But to keep on doing it, I got to work now and
then.’ He spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture. ‘You see my
problem.’ There was a snigger from someone behind Atterbow, who
whirled around, his eyes glaring. Whoever was responsible for the
sound ducked his head fast enough to fool Atterbow.

He snorted and turned back
to face Angel.

‘Witty, too,’ he snapped.
‘Denniston ain’t hirin’. We got a full crew. So you can just climb
back on your pony an’ head back the way you came.’

Angel smiled. ‘I really do
need a job,’ he said.

‘Tough shit,’ snarled
Atterbow. ‘Move on, cowboy.’

‘You do Denniston’s
hiring?’

‘You better believe it. An’
like I said, we don’t need no saddle bums.’

‘Suppose I ask
Denniston?’

‘Nobody asks Denniston
nothin’ without going through me.’ Atterbow snarled. ‘Now finish
your beer an’ get the hell on your way.’

‘You’re very noisy,
Johnnie,’ Angel said mildly, and hit him as hard as he could in the
belly.

Atterbow’s eyes bugged out
of his head as the fist drove into his flabby gut. He went
backwards like a runaway windmill, arms and legs flailing, smashing
a table into kindling in his fall, the men who had been sitting at
it ending up on the floor with him in a shouting jumble of bodes.
Angel stood right where he had been standing, aware that the entire
saloon was silent, awed, waiting for Johnnie Atterbow’s next move.
Angel watched his hands.

He hoped his gamble would
pay off. He didn’t want to have to kill the man.

Atterbow got slowly to his
feet, a frown knotting his heavy eyebrows. He shook his head. ‘You
just made the worst mistake of your life, sonny,’ he
rumbled.