Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) (12 page)

Wells
overplayed his hand.

Lordsburg was a long straggling collection of adobes and
one-storey frame buildings stretching along the main trail from Las
Cruces to Tucson with its road forking at the western edge of town
up towards the mining towns of Safford and Globe. When he got in,
Wells went directly to the telegraph office. Identifying himself,
he was given a telegraph message from Washington, which he broke
open there and then and read, cursing. No personnel from the
Justice Department in this area. He went to the counter and asked
the clerk for some paper, writing a message to the Commanding
Officer at Fort Bowie in Arizona. It was succinct and
peremptory.

NEED
MILITARY ASSISTANCE ARREST OUTLAWS RESPON-

SIBLE
ARMY PAYROLL ROBBERY KANSAS STOP

WANTED MEN HERE IN LORDSBURG TELEGRAPH

REPLY
IMMEDIATELY STOP

‘
Sign
it Wells, Department of Justice,’ he told the clerk who looked at
him goggle-eyed, his mouth open. ‘I’ll wait for the reply.’ He sat
down on the hard bench that ran across one of the walls and fanned
himself with his Stetson. It was as hot as the hinges of hell
outside, and inside the cluttered little shack which housed the
telegraph office the temperature was near to the hundred mark. He
listened to the stuttering metallic chatter of the telegrapher’s
key and imagined the wires loping across the long empty spaces,
under the shadow of the Dos Cabezas, through the vicious lonely
territory of the Chiricahua Apaches to the heat-blasted hell-hole
in the very foothills of Cochise’s old stronghold — Fort
Bowie.

He
rolled a cigarette and smoked it. Later he smoked another, and was
halfway through it when the telegrapher’s key started chattering
again. He got up quickly, crushing out the cigarette on the earthen
floor, and waited impatiently as the clerk wrote down the
message.

When
the man came across to the counter Wells snatched the paper from
him and scanned it eagerly.

Then
he crumpled it into a ball and threw it at the wall, giving vent to
a muted oath.

Its
words lingered in his mind’s eye, mocking him.

REGRET IMPOSSIBLE DETACH PATROL ASSIST YOU

DUE
RECENT OUTBREAK APACHES STOP ALL

AVAILABLE MEN AT FULL READINESS HOSTILITIES

STOP
GOOD LUCK STOP

It
had been signed by the Commanding Officer of the Fort.

Wells
turned to the clerk.

‘
Where can I get a room?’ he asked.

‘
Hotel’s up the street a couple o’ blocks, Mister Wells,’ the
clerk said. ‘Turn right as you leave.’

He
watched the tall lawman leave and then scuttled around the counter
and picked up the crumpled piece of paper Wells had left on the
floor. Crossing quickly to the door, he checked that Wells was
indeed on his way to the hotel, and then ran back to his desk,
switching off the machine. He let himself out of the back door of
the telegraph office and ran up the alley until he came to the
adobe wall which stood behind the hardware store.

There
was a gate in the wall, through which he let himself, running up to
the back door of the store and into its cool darkness.

‘
Johnnie here?’ he asked the slatternly woman behind the
counter. She looked up and nodded. ‘He’s aroun’ heah someplace,’
she said listlessly, then screamed

‘
Johnnneeeee!’ Several screams later a freckle-faced lad of
about twelve poked his head warily around the screen door and said
‘Huh?’

The
clerk beckoned him forward and pushed a silver dollar into his
hand. ‘You get on your pony an’ ride out to the Cravetts place with
this note, son,’ he said. ‘You tell Mr. Cravetts I sent you an’
he’s to give you another dollar.’

The
boy looked at him with wide eyes. ‘Two whole dollars? he
said.

‘
Get
goin’ now, boy,’ the clerk said. He watched anxiously as the boy
ran out to the corral alongside the building and threw a saddle and
blanket on the pinto standing in the shade. The boy whirled off in
a cloud of dust, heading southeast as straight as an arrow, and the
telegraph clerk watched him go and then slowly smiled, the anxiety
lifting from his shoulders. Dick Cravetts was the biggest rancher
in these parts, and he had made an arrangement some time ago with
the telegraph clerk that anything of especial interest going across
the wires should be passed on to him. He said it helped him with
his business, and the clerk figured it must, since every time he
had passed on items of information, Cravetts had given him twenty
dollars, one time fifty. This Justice Department business would be
worth another gold eagle sure, the telegraph clerk told himself. He
walked back to his office with a wide smile on his face, tipping
his derby to two women shopping in the street.

They
gave Wells absolutely no chance at all.

He
was in a cantina on the east end of town when the four men came in
out of the night. Two of them sat at a table, and the other two
went to the bar, one on each side of Wells. He did not notice them
at first, for the place was crowded and noisy, but eventually he
looked up and saw the man along the bar on his right. The tow hair
gleamed dull gold in the lamplight and the man grinned at Wells and
raised his shot glass in a mock salute. Wells checked to the left,
where he saw a big man with a broken nose standing, left arm on the
bar, right hand hanging loose near a holstered six-gun. He cursed
himself silently for his own stupidity, his mind racing to find a
way of giving himself any kind of a fighting chance.

He
turned around slowly and then his heart sank completely. At a table
in front of him was sitting a man who could only be, from the
description that Wells knew by heart, Dick Cravetts. He smiled,
showing fine strong white teeth.

‘
Mr.
Wells,’ he said. ‘Understand you’re looking for me.’

His
voice was hardly raised and yet everyone in the place heard what he
said. The phrase was in no way unusual, and yet within fifteen
seconds the room was cleared, with everyone who had been in there
outside on the sidewalk, craning to see through the windows and
over the top of the batwing doors.

‘
You’re Cravetts? Wells said.

Cravetts nodded. ‘On my left, here, Frank Torelli. By the bar,
on your right Johnnie Vister; on the other side Lee
Monsher.’

Wells
nodded. ‘The telegrapher?’ he asked.

‘
Right first time,’ Cravetts said. He lifted the hand that had
been concealed beneath the table and showed Wells the Navy Colt
held in it.

‘
Not
even a fighting chance? Wells said. He was breathing very softly,
tensing up slowly for the next thing he was going to have to
do.

“
Not
even,’ Cravetts said and eared back the hammer.

In
that moment Wells went up on his toes and over the bar backwards.
He was in peak condition and trained to a hair, and his movement
startled Cravetts enough to fire hastily. The .36 caliber slug hit
Wells’ right hip as he flipped backwards on his shoulders and
whacked his body around so that he fell in a sprawling heap
behind

the
bar, the lower part of his body a tearing mass of pain.

Now
everything he had learned in fourteen years with the Justice
Department came into play and the gun which had already been in his
hand even as his back hit the bar came up and boomed into the face
of Johnnie Vister as he jumped up on to the bar for a clear shot at
the sprawling lawman. Vister’s face dissolved into a red smear and
he went over backwards in a huge whirling pile, smashing tables and
chairs to kindling as his heavy body landed. Cravetts and Torelli
were both on their feet moving crabwise across the cantina towards
the corners of the room and Lee Monsher was on the floor in front
of the bar. He gave a thumbs up signal to Cravetts and emptied his
gun through the thin timber facings below the heavier bar, spacing
the bullets about six inches apart. They tore through the soft wood
like butter, and would have cut Wells apart had he been able to
move.

That
he had been badly hit, however, the raiders did not know, and
Monsher’s shots went wild. Cravetts scuttled for the end of the bar
near where Vister’s grisly corpse lay and dived full length for the
floor, coming around the bar enough to throw a shot behind the bar
where he thought Wells might be. The bullet would have taken the
lawman about belly height had he been crouching where Cravetts
expected him to be, but Wells was still lying on his back and the
bullets whined over him. He fired at the flash of Cravett’s Navy
and his bullet burned a long furrow down the man’s back from left
shoulder to buttock. Cravetts gave a long scream of pain and rolled
out of range cursing as Lee Monsher, his gun reloaded, vaulted over
the bar in one smooth sweeping leap. He came down with both heels
on Wells’ outstretched legs.

Wells’ head went back against the dirt floor as the terrible
pain smashed into his brain and he felt nothing as the tow-haired
man kicked the gun out of his hand.

‘
OK,’
Monsher said, standing up.

Cravetts was standing now as well, blood spreading a dark
stain across the back of his shirt. He cursed at the pain of
movement and snarled ‘Bring him around here!’

Monsher and Torelli dragged the half-conscious lawman around
the bar and dumped him on the floor.

Cravetts picked up a whiskey bottle and poured it on the man’s
face until he spluttered and tried to sit up.

‘
Hold
the bastard!’ he snapped. Monsher and Torelli half lifted Wells
upright, while Cravetts slapped his face openhanded and
contemptuous, until Wells moaned and opened his eyes. The first
thing he saw was the sentence of death written in Cravetts’ eyes,
and he waited for the shocking pain of the final bullet.

‘
No,’
Cravetts said. He let the rage seep out of his eyes.

His
iron will was assuming control, straightening him up, cold and
pitiless as a warring Apache.

‘
Lawman,’ he said softly.

Monsher and Torelli looked at him and then stepped away. Wells
swayed, trying to keep his feet. The pain in his wounded hip was
white and intense but he would not let himself go down on the floor
again.

‘
Lawman,’ Cravetts repeated. ‘I’m going to let you live. But
only so that you’ll be a living reminder to your Justice Department
friends of what will happen if they send anyone else after
me.’

‘
You
don’t … you don’t think anything you … do to me will stop them, do
you?’ Wells managed.

‘
Be
interesting to find out,’ Cravetts said, and shot Wells through the
right thigh. Wells screamed and fell writhing on the floor, blood
gouting from the shattered mess of flesh and bone. His hands
thrashed on the dirt floor and blood spilled from his mouth where
he had bitten right through his tongue. Cravetts laughed and then
shot Wells’ right hand to bits. There was a terrible silence, for
Wells’ was unconscious, deep in the blackness of total agony.
Gunsmoke swayed in the still air. Torelli and Monsher looked at
their leader with white faces.

‘
We
oughta kill him, Dick,’ Monsher said.

‘
No,’
Cravetts said softly. ‘Let him live. He’ll never walk properly
again, never use a gun with that hand. He’s finished.’

‘
He
knows what we look like,’ Torelli said, nervously. ‘Who we
are.’

‘
So
what?’ Cravetts said. His grin was like Satan’s death mask.
‘Tomorrow we head out for California. No more waiting. Johnnie’s
gone. Milt an’ Howie aren’t here and the deadline is past. We split
the money three ways and disappear.’

‘
What
about the ranch?’Monsher said.

‘
Sold, two months back,’ Cravetts grinned. ‘The money’s
already in the Cattleman’s Bank in San Francisco.’

He
looked down at the maimed thing on the cantina floor and spat on
it.

‘
Vamonos!’ he said.

In
four weeks Angel was well enough to ride.

Although his wounds were by no means fully healed, he worked
hard at the job of blanking out the pain until he could adjust to
it, live with it, a constant companion which was always there, an
old acquaintance whose foibles he knew well. It was an act of will
which astonished the old doctor who had cared for him, and which
for some reason he could not altogether pin down made Sheriff
Harvey Whitehill nervous. He had long before this extracted from
the boy a straight-faced promise that when he was better he would
head back East for Kansas, forget all this business of trying to
catch Cravetts and his raiders. Angel had nodded and agreed with
all of Whitehill’s conditions, He had gotten himself a part-time
job waiting table at the Star Hotel, and when he had saved enough
money he went to the livery stable and bought himself a horse. He
also bought himself a new Colt’s Army model, but he did not tell
Whitehill about that, or the soft leather gun belt in which the gun
nestled beneath his bed. Finally the day came when he told
Whitehill he was heading out.