Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (7 page)

As if in direct response to
his thought, another carbine whanged a shot at his position. The
bullet caromed off the rock face to one side, and fell spent
against the side of another. Then the second rifle opened up, but
this time the man shooting it kept on levering and firing in one
long continuous roll,
whang-whang-whang-whang-whang
his
slugs moving across the redoubt where Wells had flattened himself
to the ground, the ricochets screaming, flickering blurs of stone
and flint stinging the hiding man’s exposed body.

He had to move, and he knew
they were doing this to make him, which meant he couldn’t move. Yet
if he stayed put, those seeking, ricocheting bullets would
eventually find the correct place, the perfect angle — and turn
inwards into him. He shuddered at the thought of being hit by one
of those deformed, tumbling bullets. They would tear a man open
like a fighting bull with a broken horn.

He rolled over on his back
and sat up, levering his own Winchester and throwing a curving arc
of four shots at the places where he figured the shots had come
from. If he hit anything there was no sign of it. Then he got down
again quickly as the second rifleman again whacked two shots at
him. The sun was climbing high now. The stink of cordite clung to
the tiny space in which Wells crouched. But he felt about one thin
shade better than before. He thought now he knew where his
ambushers were — give or take a few yards. One was up on the side
of the shaley slope, about fifty yards or so straight ahead. The
other was on the left hand side of the road, about twenty or thirty
yards back, down below the crest of the falling ground and out of
Wells’ shooting line. Knowing where they were didn’t improve his
chances, though. If he ran up for the crest on his right, using the
rocks for cover, he would be fully exposed to the ambusher in the
rocks ahead of him, and as soon as he moved, the other man could
run in a long half-circle and come out on the rimrock above. So
Wells did the only thing he could do. He got out of his hiding
place, keeping the biggest rock between him and the man in the
rocks. And then he ran full tilt, the best way he could, weaving
and dodging, straight at the man hidden below the crest of the
falling ground on the left hand side of the trail, working the
action of his Winchester fast and laying down a hail of bullets
which he hoped would keep the man’s head down.

It worked like a dream for
the first ten yards because the big rocks behind him effectively
screened him from the man on the slope and his hail of bullets
whacking into the man in front of him. But in the eleventh yard
Wells’ form came clear of the protecting boulder and the man on the
hillside calmly shot him in the back.

Wells went on forward,
carried by his own momentum and that of the bullet that slewed him
sideways and over the crest at the side of the trail, tumbling and
rolling over and down and crashing through the thickened sage and
prickly pear, the rifle flying out of his nerveless
fingers.

The man on the roadside
yelled in triumph and jumped to his feet, pumping wild shots at the
bundling, rolling figure in its scurry of dust, but that was a
mistake because Wells was not now falling, but deliberately
rolling, keeping moving and ignoring the blinding pain that felt as
if someone had poured molten iron into his upper body, his only
instinct now to stay alive, all the years of wariness and training
telling him to go on moving when every nerve in his body screamed
at his brain to stay still. Wells came to a stop, pawing the old
Army Colt up as the man ran towards him, throwing a shot through
the dusty haze his scrambling fall had made, grunting with
satisfaction as the man yelled and fell to one side, his Winchester
going off as it hit the ground. Wells got to his knees, and then
rolled again down and forward trying now for the coulee not fifteen
yards in front of him, everything else going out of his mind except
the animal need to find cover.

The man on the hillside had
started running down towards the trail as he saw Wells go forward
and over the first time, and he had quartered across the ground so
that he was level with Wells’ position and perhaps thirty yards
away as Wells made his second try for safety. He went down on one
knee and leveled the carbine, beading the floundering figure of the
thrashing justice Department man. He took his time and squeezed off
the shot and saw Wells hesitate in mid-movement, knowing he had hit
Wells again. The last desperate lunge had carried Wells to the
brink of the coulee and he went off the edge, going down to the
stony creek bed with his hands spread like some broken bird. The
man ran up to the edge of the wash and looked down. Wells lay there
broken and unmoving, his body splashed with bright blood. The man
grinned, the wicked smile of a coyote that sees a calf pulled down,
and levered another shell into the breech to deliver the coup de
grace, but at that moment his companion yelled something and he
hesitated. He looked for a long moment at Wells’ still form as if
deciding something, then ran towards his friend, who was on his
feet, curing and trying to stem the pumping flow of blood from the
bullet hole in his upper thigh.

‘Goddammit, Reed, get over
here, will you?’ he shouted.

Reed ran towards his
companion and laid down the Winchester, ripping off a strip of the
man’s shirt and fashioning a makeshift tourniquet. When the
bleeding was staunched, he slapped his friend on the
shoulder.

‘There you go, Mike,’ he
grinned. ‘You’ll live.’

‘Goddammit, Reed,’ the one
called Mike ground out, ‘I thought you got him sure the first
time.’

Reed gestured at the wound
on Mike’s thigh. ‘Shows how wrong you was,’ he said flatly. ‘But no
sweat. He’s dead now all right.’

‘Where is he?’ Mike
asked.

‘Down in the creek bed,’
Reed replied. ‘I better go make sure.’

‘Shit, Reed, you hit him
twice, didn’t you?’

Mike grimaced. ‘Even if he
ain’t dead, he’s gonna bleed to death down there. Ain’t nobody
gonna come find him. Let’s get the hell out of this: I got to get
to a doctor.’

He put his weight on the
wounded leg and swore.

‘Go get the goddamned
horses, will ya?’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look at our friend, if you
like.’

‘Naw, you’re right Mike,’
the other one said.

‘He’s done for. Let’s get
out of here. We don’t want no one coming up the trail and finding
us here’

They climbed laboriously
back up the slope, Reed supporting his wounded comrade as best he
could until they got to the stand of trees where they had left
their horses. Within three minutes they were out of sight around
the bend in the road that led towards Las Vegas. Behind them
nothing moved except a buzzard, high in the sky, wheeling and
swooping in search of dead flesh.

After a while it came
lower.

Angel looked down the bore
of the Navy Colt and showed his teeth in a feral grin.

‘Pull that trigger and I’ll
kill you,’ he promised flatly lifting his eyes to meet the equally
hard gaze of the man with the gun. It had to be Denniston.
Iron-gray cropped hair, eyes to match, an aquiline nose flanked by
deep furrows making an arch to the thin, patrician lips. A
thin-boned, aristocrat’s face: or the face of a fanatic.

Denniston was dressed in a
dark coat and pants which somehow had a strong military flavor, as
though they might have been cut and sewn by the army tailor. The
dark trousers were tucked into the tops of fine leather boots which
even with their patina of dust glowed with the rich sheen of many
polishings.

Denniston
hesitated.

‘You believe that, don’t
you?’

‘I know it,’ Angel
said.

‘For a man inches from death
you’re very sure of yourself, Mister — ?’

‘Angel’s the name. Frank
Angel.’

‘Perhaps that explains your
confidence,’ murmured Denniston. ‘It seems a shame not to test
it.’

‘It would be a waste,’ Angel
said. ‘Of both of us.’

Denniston thought about that
one for a moment, and then smiled.

‘I admire your nerve,
Angel,’ he said, lowering the gun. ‘It’s uncommon.’

Angel let his own tension go
a little. He felt everyone in the room do the same. Denniston’s
men, ranged in a half circle behind their leader, looked puzzled.
But Denniston ignored them. Shoving the revolver into a
closed-topped holster on his belt, he went across to where Atterbow
lay unconscious.

He touched the broken face
lightly and then looked at Angel again, his eyes
narrowing.

‘What was it?’ he asked.
‘Karate?’

‘Aikido.’

‘Aikido,’ mused Denniston.
‘You are indeed an uncommon saddle-tramp, Mr. Angel. Suspiciously
uncommon.’

Before Angel could reply to
that, a little man bustled into the room, thrusting Denniston’s men
aside with unceremonious scorn. He went straight to where Atterbow
lay and opened the leather bag he was carrying, ignoring everyone
else. Fishing a stethoscope out, he listened to the man’s heart,
and then grunted.

‘Get him across to my
office,’ he said to nobody in particular. Two men came forward and
lifted the unconscious form, panting under the weight as the old
man turned to face Denniston, his eyes full of malice.

‘Who took your man apart,
Colonel?’ There was scornful emphasis on the last word that brought
two spots of bright color to Denniston’s cheeks. But the iron
control was rigid.

‘Doctor,’ Denniston said
drily. ‘How nice to see you sober.’

‘You better pray I am if you
expect that one to fork a horse this side of Christmas,’ the old
man retorted unabashed. ‘He’s been worked over better than anyone I
ever saw.’ Without another word he bustled out after the men
carrying Atterbow’s supine form.

Denniston turned to Angel,
who grinned unrepentantly. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Do I get the
job?

‘Job?’

‘I asked Atterbow if you had
any work. He said I had to talk to him first. I just got through
doing that.’

‘I see,’ Denniston said.
Angel let him think about it, saying nothing. There was a long
silence in the room. Someone shuffled his feet. Another coughed
nervously. Then Denniston nodded. ‘Let’s take drink on it,’ he
said. ‘Levy, give everyone a drink.’

And then the tension was
gone completely.

Men crowded to the bar, and
talked to Angel, asking him questions about the fighting technique
he had used. Denniston watched him as he tried to avoid the pawing
that people always give the man who had come through a dangerous
situation. His own men drank in a tight group at the other end of
the bar. They eyed Angel with surly resentment, and Denniston
grinned. Mister Angel might have a tougher row to hoe than he
expected. The next time he had trouble Angel would find that it was
gun trouble. And there wasn’t a man in the Denniston enclave who
wasn’t very, very good.

Three hours later they were
on the high divide looking down the scoured canyon on the Palo
Blanco. Far behind them and below the town looked like a dirty set
of building blocks left scattered by a thoughtless child. Around
them tumbled the lower reaches of the mountains that went off in
rising masses to Laughlin Peak and Tinzja beyond it. Off on the far
side, the mountains went rolling back and upwards towards the
Sierra Grande. It was a vast and lonely place, and the ten-man
cavalcade looked like a column of ants in its emptiness.

Denniston and Angel rode at
the head of the column and Angel asked the leader a
question.

‘Why here? Because of the
land, man. Here one is truly close to the grandeurs of Nature.
Man’s efforts seem pygmy-like compared to them. That’s a healthy
thing for any man to have around him. And of course,’ he added with
a sly grin, ‘I need isolation. I want it. I cannot succeed without
it.’

‘Succeed at
what?’

‘All in good time, Mr.
Angel,’ was the uncommunicative reply ‘All in good time. Ah, there
it is!’

Angel looked down the
scarred valley falling away from them. The Palo Blanco canyon was
cut deep into the soft stone, its sides high and steep and
treacherous on both sides of the pebble-strewn watercourse. Ahead
of them the river bed turned back almost on itself, making a
finger-like promontory across from which stretched a wooden bridge.
Built Army-style, solid and imposing, it reached forty feet across
the broken bed of the Palo Blanco. At each end two men
patrolled.

On the far side of the river
was the fence.

There was a gate facing the
end of the bridge, perhaps a quarter of a mile from it. The fence
stretched as far as Angel could see from this point — perhaps three
or four miles of it, seven feet high, glinting in the
sunlight.

‘I can’t see the ranch,’ he
said.

‘We have some way to go yet,
Mr. Angel,’ Denniston replied. ‘Quite some way.’

He gigged his horse on down
the slope and approached the two men at the nearer end of the
bridge.

‘Ho!’ one of them shouted.
‘Ho, the guard! It’s the Colonel!’