Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (6 page)

That was what Angel had been
waiting to hear.

He unbuckled his gun belt
and laid it on the counter behind him.

‘If I’ve got to fight you to
get to see Denniston, I’m about ready to get started,’ he said
softly.

‘You’ll not be in any
condition to see anyone when I’m through with you, bucko!’ snarled
Atterbow.

‘It hasn’t crossed your mind
I might whip you?’

‘Not the once,’ Atterbow
said. ‘They’re goin’ to have to bury you in a sandbag to weigh your
box down.’

‘Talk, talk, talk,’ Angel
said. He stepped forward and cuffed Johnnie Atterbow lightly across
the face. In the background he heard the indrawn gasp of
astonishment from those watching and then with an inarticulate
scream of rage Johnnie Atterbow launched himself at Angel, his huge
fists flailing in killing arcs.

Wells made good time over
the Glorieta.

Towards nightfall he was
about a dozen miles from Las Vegas, hurrying the team
along.

Sherman had organized a fine
pair of bays and a surrey and he was making good time, frankly glad
that he didn’t have to cover the mountainous ground on horseback.
His old wounds ached.

There was thunder in the air
above the Sangre de Cristos, rumbling like some faraway avalanche
behind the clouds. Once in a while he felt the heavy smack of a
raindrop hit his face. His mind kept going over the details of the
ambush below Raton, trying to stretch his imagination to a point
where he could see why anyone would want to steal a Gatling gun.
Where before there had been the possibility that the stolen rifles
and ammunition had been finally destined to Comancheros, or to be
sold south of the border where there was an incessant market for
guns, the hijacking of the Army wagons and the disappearance of the
Gatling gun with its enormous firepower scotched that theory
completely. He simply could not imagine what whoever had stolen the
field piece intended to do with it. Shaking his head, Wells gigged
the horses to an even faster trot.

With luck he would make Fort
Union by midday tomorrow. Maybe the young Lieutenant would be able
to tell him something that might help.

Ahead of him loomed the
lighter strip of Tecolote Creek. He slowed the horses as they
approached the ford, timbered heavily on both sides low and close
to the water. The horses splashed through the shallow flow,
enjoying the cool sting of the snow-chilled stream, and Wells
leaned over to scoop up some water in his hand.

The movement saved his
life.

He heard the flat
crrr-aaa-ng
of the rifle
and instantaneously the searing pain across the fleshy part of his
right thigh. It was as if someone had touched him with red-hot
steel. Without conscious thought he screamed at the horses,
whacking them with the reins, startling the bays into a pounding
gallop that took him through the soft earth at the other side of
the creek with only two wheels touching the ground, dark heavy
lumps of muddy loam flying high around him as the rifle spat at him
again from the bushes off to his right. He heard the dull
vawuzz
as the bullet
went by and now he had unshipped his old long-barreled Colt Army,
earing back the hammer clumsily as the surrey bounced on the baked
road, letting go in the general direction of the ambusher, not
caring about anything except making his attacker duck his head
while he, Wells, put distance between himself and the ambush.
Something whacked one of the horses.

He heard the slug hit the
animal, the right hand one of the pair, and it faltered, breaking
stride, then picked up its stride again, the other horse and the
momentum of their movement taking it along. Wells threw another
shot and then another into the bushes, without much hope. The
distance was far too great for accurate shooting with a revolver.
Damnation! he thought. His rifle was firmly wrapped inside his
bedroll in back of the surrey. Trying to get at it would require
the skills of an acrobat, and he had no plans to stop and try
unshipping it. Instead he concentrated on getting the best speed he
could out of the horses.

But the right-hand animal
was faltering now, and there was bloody foam whipping backwards
towards Wells from its laboring head.

No choice, he
thought.

He dragged the animals to a
halt, his knife already in his hand as he got down, slashing at the
braces, cutting the horses apart. He reached into the back of the
surrey and lifted out his bedroll, the comforting weight of the
rifle reassuring as he swung on to the bare back of the horse and
kicked it into a run. Once more he heard the rifle behind him
speak. He hunched lower on the saddle and kept going. If he had to
outrun the man, at least he had a start. That last shot had sounded
as if it had come from the same stand of timber and he grinned
grimly. The man was either an amateur or an optimist to think he
could hit a running man on horseback from more than four hundred
yards. He was just congratulating himself when the second man in
the rocks forty yards ahead of him shot the horse out from between
Angus Wells’ knees.

In a way Angel was sorry for
what he had to do to Atterbow. But he had no real choice. The man
was huge. He towered a good four inches above Angel’s six feet, and
outweighed the slighter man by at least forty pounds. There was no
question of fighting what was laughingly called man-to-man.
Atterbow would gouge and kick and maim if he could bring his
superior height and weight to bear. If those ham like fists ever
connected, Angel knew they would break whatever bone they
hit.

So when Atterbow came at
him, Angel simply swayed, summoning all of himself to that place,
concentrating on his own ch’i, just as Kee Lai had taught him.
Atterbow’s rocklike fist went whap past his left ear as Angel let
the man’s brute rush take him across Angel’s body, turning his own
shoulder to the right and down and then driving backwards with all
his force added to the speed of the bigger man, his elbow cocked
and rigid, driving like a ramrod into the unprotected ribs of
Johnnie Atterbow, who went smashing into the bar face first,
roaring with rage and the pain of at least two ribs
cracked.

‘Aaaaaaaaaaahhh!’ he
shouted.

It was not the pain,
although the pain was in it.

It was the insane fighting
raging roar of an outraged bull, and if there had ever been any
science or skill inside Atterbow’s brain it was driven out now by
the searing white burn of total madness, the madness of frustration
and shame and rage at this slim, unconcerned man with the cold eyes
standing unmarked before him.

He came forward without
warning, very fast on his feet for a man so big, the meaty hands
spread and reaching for some kind of grip on Angel. Angel let him
come and when Atterbow got properly hold of him and started to pull
Angel came forward all at once and with every ounce of strength he
had, his hand coming up cocked backwards, the heel coming up
beneath Atterbow’s unprotected jaw with smashing force, jarring the
bear head back, bone going somewhere, mashing the cursing lips and
driving Atterbow backwards and down to the floor. Spitting out
broken pieces of yellow teeth, blood spraying from his torn lips,
Atterbow came off the floor in a long diving movement, aiming for
Angel’s middle, every ounce of his weight behind the man oeuvre
which, had it been effective, would have whirled Angel off his feet
and into a wrestler’s mauling tangle, where Atterbow would have all
the advantage. It was a good move. It really should have done
exactly what Atterbow — and every one of those watching — expected
it would do. But it did not. Angel moved even faster than his
opponent had and his two hands looped together and came down in
much the same movements that they would have done if he had had an
axe in his hand chopping wood. They hit Atterbow behind the ear
with a dull meaty thwack that sounded like a butcher taking a
cleaver to a side of beef and drove him face down to the board
floor, smashing him flat in the bloody sawdust. Again Angel stepped
back, untouched. A bystander gaped at him as if he were
supernatural, then switched his attention back to Atterbow, who was
again getting to his feet, his whole face a torn and awful smear of
broken flesh and bone. He got to his feet, staggering, reaching
again for his elusive opponent. Angel shook his head and hit him
again.

His hand hardly seemed to
move, and yet there was all the driving force he could muster
behind the ramrod movement that drove his clenched fist, middle
knuckles protruding in the karate fighting style, into Atterbow’s
breast just below the heart.

The man stopped, paralyzed,
his eyes bulging, face purpling as his astonished system tried to
carry on pumping oxygen through to the heart literally stunned by
the terrible force of the blow. Still the brain commanded the arms,
and again Atterbow reached for Angel, his lips gaping like a
newly-landed fish. Breath wheezed into his laboring throat. He
staggered. Then he lurched forward, and Angel let him come, taking
the man’s grip on his left arm, turning his own hand to clamp
Atterbow’s right, pulling until Atterbow came forward on his toes.
Then Angel hit the man across the forearm with his clenched fist.
Everybody in the room heard the terrible sound of the bone going.
It sounded like when a kid breaks a dead branch off a tree.
Atterbow made no sound, so deep in shock and pain was he. He went
down to his knees again, slumped in the centre of the bloody circle
of astonished watchers, his left arm useless at his side. Somewhere
in his brain, something tried to make the wrecked thing get to his
feet.

‘Hel,’ the thing said.
‘Mu.’

Nobody moved. All eyes
turned to see what Angel would do. No man had ever stood up to
Johnnie Atterbow before. This one didn’t even look out of breath
and yet he had broken Atterbow, broken the man the way an idler on
a porch snaps a match. They regarded Angel with almost
superstitious awe.

‘Help him! ’ Angel snapped.
‘He’s probably got more guts than all of you put together. Get him
on a table. Bartender! Bring a cloth and some water. Somebody get a
doctor if there is one in this dump!’

‘I’ll go, mister,’ one of
the girls said, and ran for the door in a flicker of tarnished
sequins and white, plump thighs. The bartender came around the bar,
anxious now to help. Everyone was suddenly anxious to assist. They
would probably have tried to fly if Angel had told them to do it;
anything rather than see that cold killing light rekindle in the
relentless eyes.

‘Mister,’ wheezed the
bartender. ‘I never seed anything like that in all my days. Never
once. What kind of fighting was that, anyway? He patted at
Atterbow’s broken face with the cloth, wiping away the smeared
blood, tutting as he worked.

When Angel made no answer,
he went on, ‘Not that it matters. Your life ain’t worth a plugged
nickel when the Colonel hears about this. If I was you I’d get the
hell out of Kiowa before he does. Or he’ll kill you
sure.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ Angel
said.

‘Indeed it will, sir,’ said
a cold voice touched with venom behind him. He heard the metallic
triple click of a revolver being cocked and froze, his eyes darting
to the bar where his gun lay still in its holster. No chance. He
let his shoulders relax.

‘Turn around, mister,’ the
voice said. ‘I’d like to see what you look like before I kill
you.’

They had him and Wells knew
it.

All night he had lain hidden
in the rocks alongside the trail where he had scrambled as the
horse died beneath him. He had managed to get his war-bag and his
rifle during the night, and had shifted around until he had a
little centre point of rocks which could only be approached across
open ground. He had hoped they might try to come after him during
the night; there would have been a chance if they had. But he
realized now that his ambushers were not amateurs as he had first
supposed. The first man had been placed specifically to drive him
into the sights of the second and now they were waiting for sunup
to finish the job. He had no way of knowing how many more of them
there were, or where they were hidden. But he had spent some time
wondering who they might be and why they had laid for him at all.
They could of course be common footpads, waylaying men travelling
alone, but thieves would not set up so elaborate a whipsawing.
Which meant that they were after him specifically. That, in turn,
had to mean that his investigation had bothered someone enough to
have them send men after him. And that in turn meant his hunch had
been correct. There was something fishy about this Colonel
Denniston. He grinned mirthlessly. Much damned good the knowledge
was going to do him.

The sky was lightening
rapidly now and the long low rays of the dawning sun were diluting
the purple of the shadows at the base of the hills to the west. It
would be full light in a very short while. The morning warmth was
welcome, and he eased his cold, cramped legs. He could have done
with some coffee.

Wells moved very carefully
forward and poked his hat around the rocks on the end of his
carbine barrel. Almost immediately a rifle spoke up in the rocks,
smacking splinters off the boulder and whining away into infinity.
Wells pulled back, chilled by the ambusher’s proximity. That shot
had come from no more than fifty yards away. He tried to remember
the lie of the land, but his impression of it was vague. The trail
snaked ahead, he knew, to a bend that had run between two heavy
stands of pine skirting the road. The land rose to the right of the
road in a sharp incline, boulders and chunks of rock scattered on
it, detritus from some prehistorical earth movement. On the left
hand side of the road, the land sloped on down into a coulee.
Probably a wash, he thought, a little stream running into Tecolote
Creek. And probably fifty yards from where he was across ground
without any form of shelter except stunted sage and prickly pear.
No way, he told himself. Even if you could run, which you can’t.
Not for the first time Wells damned the man who had crippled him,
hoping that whatever hell Cravetts was in it was good and hot. No
escape that way. But he had to move soon. Those bushwhackers
weren’t going to wait much longer.