Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) (9 page)

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The
first item, Mr. Froon: what is the situation?’

‘I sent two men down to
Vegas,’ Froon replied. ‘They followed the man and dealt with him.
They’re waiting to report.’

‘Good,’ said Denniston,
leaning back and steepling his fingers. ‘Have they come
in.’

Froon got up and went to the
door. A thicker man came into the room, his clothes dust-covered,
eyes respectful as he came to attention in front of the
table.

‘Your report, mister!’
snapped Froon.

‘Me and Rafferty did like
you told us, sir. Martinez in the Marshal’s office told us that the
snooper — beg your pardon, sir, the Government man — was on his way
to Fort Union. We trailed him and laid for him about ten miles from
Vegas.’

‘You killed him?’

‘That we did, sir. Deader
than a mackerel.’

‘Very good, Reed,’ Denniston
said. ‘Was he carrying any papers?’

‘Nothing we could find,
sir,’ Reed said.

‘Rafferty was slightly
wounded, sir,’ Froon put in. ‘Nothing serious. Reed brought him
back. He’s in the sick bay.’

‘Good, good,’ Denniston
said. ‘What else did Martinez tell you, Reed?’

‘Nothing much else, sir,’
Reed said, still standing stiffly to attention and gazing at a
point somewhere above Denniston’s head. ‘Just that this Wells was
from the Department of Justice and that he’d sent word back to
Washington for another man to come out here.’

Denniston put his hands Hat
on the table. ‘Another Government investigator?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ Reed
said. ‘Someone called Angel. Frank Angel.’

Andy Ayres was ten years
old.

It wasn’t really good
fishing weather: too hot. But he called his old dog, Shep, to heel
and went off down the creek in the afternoon sunshine, hoping to
find a pool somewhere that might have a catfish wallowing in the
pool shadows. His fishing rod was a supple willow pole, his bait
some chicken bits his mother had given him, and his faith
boundless. Shep bounded ahead, happy to be out and free on the open
grassland, sniffing away under bushes at the faint remaining scent
of prairie chicken or gopher, quartering back across the boy’s
path, occasionally looking back over his shoulder to make sure his
master was still coming.

There was a good pool by the
shoulder of the creek bed not far from the road to town that Andy
hadn’t tried yet, and he headed for this now. He scrambled down the
steep shelving bank of the creek and meandered along, picking up
pebbles for Shep to chase. As he approached the pool the dog
started barking wildly and the boy looked up in alarm. He was
frontier bred, and poised if the need arose to run fleet and fast
towards the farm —• although there hadn’t been an Indian scare for
the past ten years, his father always drummed vigilance into the
boy. There was always danger on the open frontier: he must never
take chances. He saw Shep circling around a jumble of rocks,
barking wildly at something inside them.

‘Shep!’ he shouted. ‘Come
out o’ there. What you got, anyway — a gopher?’

The dog took no notice, but
went on barking, rushing at the rocks and then backing off warily,
dancing from side to side. Andy went nearer, his eyes widening as
he saw what looked like a bundle of old clothes thrown among the
rocks. Then he realized that the bundle was in fact a man and that
the man’s chest and back were covered in blood. The man was sitting
up — no, trying to sit up would have been a more accurate
description.

He was trying to say
something, but the boy could not make out what it was. He was very
frightened and did not know whether to go nearer or run away. His
father’s stern warnings came back to him but his curiosity was
stronger: he went nearer. The man saw him and leaned back against
the rocks his face streaming with sweat, twisted with
pain.

‘Boy,’ the man said.
‘Boy.’

‘What’s the matter, mister?’
Andy said. ‘You hurt? Who are you?’

‘
Boy,’ the man said again.
‘Water.’

He made a little gesture
with his arm, and Andy realized the man was badly hurt, maybe
dying. He was frightened again.

‘Please,’ the man
said.

Andy ran down to the creek
where there was a slow trickle of clear mountain water. Then he
realized he had nothing to carry the water in. He ran back to see
if the man had a hat.

‘Water,’ the man said again.
His voice was fainter.

‘You got to come to where
the water is,’ Andy told him. ‘Can’t you walk?’

‘Water,’ the man said.
‘Walk.’

Andy just looked at him.
There was nothing he could do. The man was too heavy for him to
lift.

He didn’t know what to do.
He wished his father was here.

‘Wait,’ he said to the man.
He went closer to him, gingerly touching the man’s arm. ‘Wait here.
I’ll get help. Wait here.’ The man looked at him through eyes
washed pale by pain. But he seemed to understand. He
nodded.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Get
help.’

‘That’s right, mister,’ the
boy said, and turned and ran as if all the devils in Hell were
chasing him, the dog bounding along beside him,

running ahead and barking as
Andy scooted fleet-footed across the burned plain along the side of
the creek, then bore right and up the path towards his home,
running, running, running until he saw his father and ran to him
shouting, ‘Pa, Pa, Pa!’

John Ayres was a big man
with muscles corded from years of hard work on the little farm in
the fold of the hills. He ran towards his son, snatching up the
pistol and belt that hung always close to him as he
worked.

The boy blurted out his
discovery and Ayres frowned, buckling the belt on as Andy spoke.
His wife came out of the house, having heard the boy’s excited
voice, and Ayres quickly told her what had happened.

‘Stay here with your mother,
boy,’ he told his son, and when Andy made a moue of disappointment,
went on, ‘Someone’s got to look after her.’

His words brought a quick
smile of pride to the youngster’s face.

‘I’ll go down there and take
a look, Martha,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d better get a tub of hot
water ready. If what Andy says is true, this man’s bad
hurt.’

He strode off without
another word, a tall dark man moving purposefully across his own
land, the dog loping beside him through the scrubby grass and
sagebrush. Within ten minutes he was beside the wounded man,
dipping his neckerchief in the

creek and bathing his bitten
lips.

‘Thanks,’ Wells said. ‘Thank
you.’

He started to talk and Ayres
bade him be silent.

‘Talk all you like when I
get you back to the house,’ he said. ‘Right now you better save
your strength. From the look of that hole in your back you’re going
to need it.’

Angus Wells was not a small
man nor a light one, and he was too weak to give the tall farmer
any real help. But John Ayres picked him up as if he was a baby,
and got Wells across his shoulder.

Wells cried out once and
then collapsed into unconsciousness. Ayres nodded as though
obscurely pleased by this fact, and then strode off back towards
his house, covering the ground in good long strong strides, his
wife coming to the door as she saw her husband approaching with the
burden. They got Wells into the house and Mrs. Ayres stripped away
the bloody shirt with a butcher knife. She pulled the breath
sharply between her lips as she saw Wells’ wounds.

john,’ she said. ‘This is
work for a doctor. If the man doesn’t get medical help, he’ll
die.’

‘You’re right as usual,
Martha,’ John Ayres said.

‘Andy, you go out and
harness the mare. I’ll take the wagon. With luck I can be in Vegas
before nightfall. Come, help me, love. We’ll at least wash his
wounds and bandage them before he has to travel. It’s a bad
road.’

Two hours later, John Ayres
swung his wagon

out on to the road, and by
late afternoon he had reached Las Vegas. It was only a small place,
huddled around the tree-shaded plaza, its old streets narrow,
dusty, crowded. Women were standing near the fountain, gossiping.
They looked up incuriously as the Anglo drove past with his wagon.
John Ayres was a familiar figure in the town. He pulled up outside
a brick building three doors down the street from the offices which
housed the local newspaper, the Optic. A wooden sign jutted from
the wall, its paint faded by many years of sun. Ayres recalled when
it had been fresh and golden, eight years ago when Jack Cox had
come to town. He was an ambitious young doctor then. Now he was
just a doctor. He had found his vocation in Las Vegas, no child
ever needed to suffer pain or sickness if Cox could help. The
Mexicans rarely had money. When they could, they paid. When they
had nothing, he treated them anyway. Ayres happened to think he was
a very fine human being, but of course they had never been able to
talk about things like that.

He pushed into the office
and explained quickly why he had come. Within ten minutes Wells was
lying on the long leather—covered table in the back room, while Cox
surveyed his wounds with a practiced eye that did not miss any of
the other scars on Wells’ body.

‘Led an active life, this
one,’ he said, stripping away the bandages Ayres’ wife had wound
around Wells’ body. ‘Martha did a good job, john. As usual. Who is
he, do you know?’

‘We didn’t try to ask him
questions, Jack,’ Ayres said. ‘He was out most of the time
anyway.’

‘Hmm,’ said Cox. He got a
bottle of sal ammoniac from the bag and waved it under Wells’
nose.

After a minute or two, Wells
flinched from the bottle, his eyes flickering.

‘That’s the boy,’ cooed Cox.
He waved the bottle around again and this time Wells opened his
eyes.

‘Where—’ he said, trying to
sit up. Cox restrained him with a firm hand.

‘Easy, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t
you go getting excited.’

Wells nodded. ‘You a
doctor?’ Cox inclined his head, and Wells asked a
question.

‘You’re in my office in Las
Vegas,’ the doctor said. ‘This is john Ayres, who found you and
brought you here.’

‘I’m — I don’t know how —
’

‘Ach, no need of that,’
Ayres said. ‘What’s your name, man? What happened to
you?’

Wells told them his name and
what he was, told them what had happened to him on the road and his
suspicions about the reason for the ambush.

They listened without
speaking, and then Cox said, ‘You’ll be wanting us to get word to
Fort Union, then?’

Wells nodded. ‘Most urgent,’
he whispered.

‘Matter of life and
death.’

‘Whose, laddie?’ Cox said,
wryly. ‘Theirs — or yours?’

Wells didn’t answer. He had
fallen back on the bed, out again. But Cox looked at his
friend.

‘Was he telling the truth,
do you think?’

‘Why would he make up a
story like that, Jack?’

‘Why indeed,’ Cox said. ‘All
right, john — get yourself out of here. I’ve serious work to do.
I’ll try and patch up our friend so that he’ll hold together until
they can send an ambulance down from the Fort. If you go down the
street and see Pedro Chavez y Chavez, he’ll send one of his boys
over to the Fort. You can write some kind of note for him to take,
can’t you?’

‘I can do that,’ Ayres
agreed. ‘And I will. But what about Wells? Will he
live?’

‘Aye, he’ll live, John,’ Cox
said. ‘Whether he’ll like it when he finds out his spine has a
bullet lodged against it, I’m not so sure.’

‘What does that
mean?’

‘I wish I had the knowledge
and the equipment to tell you the answer to that, John,’ the doctor
said. ‘A fifty-fifty chance he’ll never walk again.’

He looked down at his
patient and stifled a curse as he realized that Wells had regained
consciousness and had been listening to every word he
said.

‘Hell,’ he said hastily, ‘I
don’t know anything, of course. I’m more than likely completely
wrong. Lie still, there, now. john, won’t you get on and arrange
that other business. Go on, go on, go on,’ he ranted on, bustling
the big man out of the room, making a big show of sorting out his
instruments and washing his hands, avoiding the eyes of the man on
the bed. Finally he turned to face Wells and his eyes widened with
surprise when he saw that Wells was grinning.

‘This is no damned laughing
matter, you know,’ he said, mock-angry, alarmed lest perhaps Wells
was becoming delirious or might even have tetanus. God, what he’d
give for proper equipment!

‘Take it easy, Doc,’ Wells
said. ‘Take it easy. Five hours ago I was as near dead as a man can
be. Now you’re giving me a fifty-fifty chance. I reckon by tomorrow
morning I’ll be up and around at this rate.’

Cox looked at his patient
with new respect. ‘By God,’ he muttered. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me
at all.’