Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) (18 page)
Read Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) Online
Authors: Frederick H. Christian
Tags: #texas, #old west, #western fiction, #zane grey, #louis lamour, #william w johnstone, #ben bridges, #mike stotter, #piccadilly publishing, #max brand, #neil hunter, #hank j kirby, #james w marvin, #frederick h christian, #the wild west, #frank angel
Then
he heard the sound he had been hoping for. A dry, whispering sound
a little like a rattler giving its first warning — the sound of a
match being taken from a box.
Then
the match flared and simultaneously Cravetts saw Angel moving and
fired in the same instant that Angel’s Army Colt boomed. The muzzle
flames lit the whole cavern for a second and Angel heard Cravett’s
bullet smack meatily into the wall, bringing down a small shower of
dirt from the roof overhead. Angel’s bullet turned Cravetts around
to the left and smashed him against the wall, the gun spinning from
the man’s hand.
Cursing in a huge bellowing roar, a bull taunted to its limits
by the banderilleros, Cravetts tried to get to his feet but Angel’s
shot had gone right through the big meaty muscles of the upper
thigh and Cravetts’ left leg would simply not obey him. He levered
himself into an upright sitting position as Angel came across the
tunnel in a low, seeking, instinctive dive, shaking the Derringer
loose as the younger man’s shoulder crashed into his chest,
slamming Cravetts back against the wall without a breath left in
his lungs. Angel hauled the man half upright again and smashed the
edge of his hand across Cravetts’ upper lip. Cravetts’ head went
back against the stone wall with a flat dull sound and then he slid
over half unconscious in the dirty clay of the mine. Angel stood up
wearily, his muscles trembling. Groping around, he found the box of
matches and struck one. He kicked the Derringer away from Cravetts’
reach and then saw a pine torch stuck into a bracket at an angle on
the wall near the timber supports. He lit the torch and looked down
at Cravetts, whose face and body were matted with clay-colored
dirt, his beautiful suit and white shirt spattered and
filthy.
Coursing sweat cut rivulets through the muck on his forehead.
The light of hating madness was in the haunted eyes.
‘
Get
it over with then, damn you!’ screeched Cravetts.
Angel
looked at him, then at the Army Colt in his own hand. It still had
four bullets in it. He cocked the hammer. The triple click sounded
like thunder in the enclosed tunnel.
‘
Go
on, do it, do it!’ yelled Cravetts. ‘You’ve dogged me all across
the country. Now do what you came after me for!’ Angel pointed the
long barrel at Cravetts. The man looked eagerly into the bore of
the gun.
‘
Go
ahead,’ he shouted. ‘Kill me, damn you!’
Far
off, Angel caught a sound on the edge of his consciousness. It was
as if he had faintly heard the surf breaking on some distant coast.
He knew it then for what it was, the sound of a crowd coming up the
hill. His skin crawled with the urge to kill Cravetts.
‘
Don’t you want to know why?’ he said quietly. ‘Why I tracked
you all across the country — why I came after you at all — why I’m
going to kill you?’
‘
Who
knows?’ Cravetts seethed. ‘Who cares? Must be a thousand people
want me dead, boy. Go ahead and pull the trigger. Shoot, damn
you!’
He
watched with widening eyes as Angel let the gun down, uncocked it,
and put it back into the shoulder holster.
‘
What
are you, some kind of yellow half-breed?’ screeched Cravetts.
‘Can’t you even pull a trigger, you chicken-livered
sonofabitch?’
Angel
shook his head, letting a soft smile touch his lips.
‘
You’re going to hang, Cravetts,’ he said quietly.
‘
Kill
me, damn you! God rot your whey-faced soul — shoot me!’ Cravetts
slammed his fists against the rock wall of the tunnel in
frustration.
‘
Wells was right,’ Angel mused aloud. ‘You’d rather commit
suicide than pay for what you did. Goddammit, Cravetts, you’re not
worth wasting a bullet on!’
Cravetts was still cursing his captor in a mindless monotonous
scream when Sheriff Nisbet came running along the tunnel with a
lantern held on high, two deputies behind him porting rifles. Angus
Wells hobbled along behind them, his face streaked with sweat. He
took in the whole scene with one sweeping, all-encompassing glance
and then something like a smile touched his eyes.
It
had been a hard ride for Angus Wells, but he looked at this moment
as if he didn’t mind a bit.
‘
Angel,’ he said levelly, ‘you’re looking good.’
Frank
Angel smiled slowly. ‘Angus,’ he replied, ‘I’m feeling good,
too.’
Then
they went out of there together.
This
time they saw all of San Francisco.
They
brought Cravetts down from the high country and a few days later
put him, heavily manacled and guarded by two hefty deputy US
Marshals on a train bound for Kansas City, where he would be tried.
Monsher, fully recovered now, went on a train the following
day.
In
questioning Cravetts, a further aspect of the man’s amoral perfidy
was revealed. When Angel asked him how he had known it was not
Torelli asking for him in Virginia City, Cravetts had
laughed.
‘
You
got to picture it, Wells,’ he said. ‘I get a message saying Frank
Torelli is in town and wants to see me. Now how can that be, I ask
myself, because I killed Frank Torelli!’
He
went on to tell them that he had murdered Torelli because the man’s
nerve was completely broken and he knew he would never be able to
keep his mouth shut back East. He had dumped the body in San
Francisco Bay, bought a ticket in Torelli’s name for the New York
clipper, made sure his name was on the passenger manifests, then
simply thrown the ticket away. He had taken Torelli’s share of the
robbery money and used it to set himself up in style in Virginia
City.
‘
In
fact if I hadn’t been throwing that party that night, I’d have
taken care of you myself, Angel,’ Cravetts had grinned, totally
unrepentant. ‘I’d have fixed your wagon. But I had to stay at the
house to meet my guests.’
Now
with duty done, reports filed, answers received, queries replied
to, they set out to do the town. Wells said that there was some
kind of reward from the Army, and that he figured the Justice
Department could advance Angel some pin money. Angel needed no
prompting to get himself fitted up for a good broadcloth suit and
some shirts, underwear, socks, soft leather boots. He hired a
handsome barouche and a fine pair of trotters and Larry James
showed them his city, proud of it as any San Franciscan is,
displaying all the jeweled facets of ‘the most beautiful city on
the American map’, to his friends.
They
ate heathen food in Chinatown, using chopsticks, drinking rice wine
served by giggling Chinese girls. They went out to the Cliff House
and had drinks on the wooden balcony overhanging the sea, watching
the seals on the rocks offshore through telescopes provided by the
management. James introduced them to the Barbary Coast, where
broad-bosomed madams received them in regal splendor in houses that
would not have disgraced railroad tycoons. They ate crab and
lobster and shrimp at waterside places in Sausalito, a little
fishing village across the Bay.
They
tried the fancy French cooking on Nob Hill, and they climbed to the
top of Telegraph Hill one clear day to see the lovely wide panorama
of the city below them and the bright blue Bay beyond.
They
talked and talked, James telling them about the early days in San
Francisco, and about Junipero Serra and Yerba Buena before that. He
told them about the forty-niners and the vigilantes, and his memory
of the crowds in the streets to see the first Pony Express rider
thunder up Market Street and unsaddle outside the Wells Fargo
offices on Grant.
The
time slipped swiftly away, and then word came through on the
telegraph that the date of the trial had been fixed. They packed
their things and met Larry James for a last drink on the porch of
the hotel.
‘
What
will you do — afterwards, Frank?’ the DA’s man asked.
Angel
watched the traffic going by on Montgomery Street for a while in
silence, then shrugged.
‘
I
guess I haven’t anywhere to go now,’ he said. ‘I’ll look for
something when I get back to Kansas.’
James
opened his mouth to say something then closed it abruptly as he
caught the signal in Wells’ eye.
‘
Ever
been to Washington, Frank?’ Wells asked artlessly.
‘
Washington DC? No, I haven’t,’ Angel replied.
‘
You
could ride with me,’ Wells said. ‘Be glad of the
company.
‘
Hell, Angus,’ Angel said. ‘What would I do in
Washington?’
‘
Few
people there I’d like to have you meet.’
Angel
emptied his beer glass and put it down on the table.
‘
Like
who?’ he asked.
‘
Attorney-General of the United States for one,’ Wells said.
‘Fact is, he told me specifically to bring you back. Wants to meet
you.’
‘
Meet
me? What for?’
‘
Who
knows, F rank?’ Larry James said. ‘Maybe he wants to offer you a
job. With the Department.’
‘
Oh,
sure,’ Angel grimaced. ‘I can see it now.’
‘
Good
job, Special Investigator with the Department,’ Wells
said.
‘
All
expenses paid,’ James added. ‘See the country as well as serve
it.’
‘
Pension when you’re sixty-five,’ James added.
‘
If
you live to collect it,’ grinned Wells.
‘
Washington’s mighty pretty this time of year.’
‘
All
those orange blossoms.’
‘
Fish
for catfish in the Potomac.’
‘
Hey,
hold on there,’ smiled Angel, holding up a hand. ‘You boys are
working awfully hard. What is this, some kind of
conspiracy?’
‘
l
guess you could say it was that all right,’ Wells grinned even
wider. ‘l reckon you’d be one of the best men the Department ever
had.
‘
Amen
to that,’ James said.
‘
Lots
of pretty girls in the Justice Department offices,’ Wells
said.
Frank
Angel grinned.
‘
That
does it, boys,’ he said. ‘When do we leave?’
‘
Tomorrow,’ Wells said, ‘I already got you a
ticket.’
Frank
Angel just looked at him. Then they all burst out
laughing.
series, Send Angel, coming soon!
Chapter One
When
they come at you out of the darkness, there is perhaps one second
to make the choice: kill them or run. MacIntyre was a good man,
trained to think fast, but he wasn’t expecting trouble and so he
made the wrong decision. The two men were professionals and good at
their job and they had the advantage of surprise. They left him
huddled dead in an alleyway on the north side of town and moved
away silently into the night without arousing a flicker of interest
from the passers-by on the brightly lit street a few yards
away.
Two
days later Mike Stevens was efficiently knifed outside a cantina in
San Patricio. Two miners going in for a drink saw the scuffle and
ran into the street as they saw Stevens fall. His throat was slit
and the blood was still pumping in a red arc from his jugular vein
long after the sound of hoofbeats faded into the night. Somebody
said later that there had been two men, one of them tall and dark
haired.
Inside the same week someone discovered what was left of
Oliver Freeman. He was staked out in a patch of prickly pear, his
eyelids cut off the way the desert Apaches used to do it, and S
smeared with molasses to attract the ravenous red ants. He had been
out there a while, and they had to bury him on the spot because
nobody would bring his body into town.
Chapter Two
The
Attorney General’s office was a high-ceilinged, spacious room on
the first floor of the huge building which housed the Department of
Justice. Outside it stood two armed Marines flanking the big,
brass-studded, leather-covered doors. One of them opened the doors
now for the Attorney General’s private personal secretary, Miss
Rowe. A tall girl, with honey-colored hair falling loosely about an
oval face, her blue eyes were impish as she said to the
visitor:
‘
He’s
expecting you.’
‘
Ma’am,’ said the man.
Annabel Rowe regarded him speculatively. Tall, rangy, his
broad shoulders straining the seams of the dark grey suit, Frank
Angel had the look of far horizons in his eyes. Annabel Rowe knew
that he was a Special Investigator for the Department; this was by
no means his first visit to this office. From time to time she had
seen letters and reports from him mailed in godforsaken spots out
West: Texas, Indian Territory, once even Oregon. She had also seen
his terse reports at the end of his assignments and knew that the
man smiling as he went past her into the big sunlit office was a
killer.
The
Attorney-General rose and came around the desk to meet his visitor,
his hand outstretched.
‘
Frank, I’m glad to see you! he exclaimed. ‘How’s that
arm?’
‘
Good
as new now,’ Angel said. ‘Little stiffness for a while, but it wore
off. I got plenty of exercise down at the range.’
The
Attorney-General nodded. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, motioning
to a chair, and proffered a box which contained some very long dark
cigars. Angel grinned and shook his head.
‘
I’ll
stick to tobacco if you don’t mind, sir,’ he said. ‘The last time I
smoked one of those things it took three days for my voice to get
back to normal.’
The
Attorney-General sniffed, and selected one of the evil-looking
cigars from the box, lighting it and pulling on it, inhaling the
noxious smoke with every evidence of huge enjoyment.
He
let the smoke drift from his nostrils in a long, slow, luxurious
exhalation.
‘
Aaaah,’ said the Attorney-General. ‘Wife won’t let me smoke
these in the house — damned interferin’ woman. Still, that’s
neither here nor there. Now, Frank … ’
Angel
leaned forward infinitesimally in his chair.
‘
You’ve been briefed?
‘
Prosser down in Records was very thorough,’ Angel told him.
‘Showed me the reports on Maclntyre and Freeman. Wasn’t much on
Stevens.’
‘
And
your conclusions?
‘
Hard
to say,’ Angel replied. ‘Freeman, now. That could’ve been some
drunken buck off the Reservation. It isn’t likely, but it’s
possible. Whoever did kill Freeman had the soul of a Chiricahua, if
not the blood.’
The
Attorney-General nodded. ‘And so?’
‘
So —
no coincidence.’
Again
the man behind the desk nodded. Angel waited until the cigar was
relit and then the Attorney-General leaned forward, hands
clasped.
‘
I
sent them all out there, Frank. All looking for different bits of
the same puzzle.’
‘
You
think they were on to anything?
‘
No,
I think they were killed to make sure they didn’t get on to
anything.’
Angel
leaned back in the armchair. ‘Better fill me in,’ he
said.
‘
OK,’
the Attomey General said. ‘We had a few scattered reports of
thieving at first. Nothing much, just a line in the US Marshal’s
reports that ranchers in the Daranga area were complaining about
rustling. Then another report, this time from the Indian agent at
San Simon. He told us he was being offered cattle well below market
price, as many as he wanted.
He
had to buy them; on the allocations he gets for his Apaches, every
dollar counts. But he mentioned it, and I added that information to
the fact that two men named Birch and Reynolds were buying every
piece of land in the Rio Blanco country that they could lay hands
on, and every piece of property they could get into. They purchased
the franchise for the post tradership at Fort Daranga, and we got
one or two complaints that they were charging monopoly prices for
goods. When people tried to go someplace else, they found the
market controlled for a hundred miles around by these same two men.
They pretty well bought up Daranga — the hotel, the general store,
built a fancy saloon, started living it up like feudal barons. None
of which was in itself illegal, but it made me curious. I sent
MacIntyre to Baranquilla to check on the land office records there.
Stevens was checking up on some men we’d heard were supplying
stolen beef to Birch and Reynolds. Freeman was scouting the
country, asking questions.’
‘
And
they all turned up dead,’ Angel mused. ‘Interesting.’
‘
Interesting is hardly the word,’ was the harsh reply. ‘Frank,
I’m worried. I have the uneasy feeling that something big is
brewing down there, and whoever is behind it has access to
knowledge about this Department. I can’t put a finger on it, but I
smell something and I want to know what it is.’
‘
Three of our men dead is enough,’ Angel said
gently.
‘
Damned right it is!’ snapped the Attorney-General, slapping
his desk with the flat of his hand. ‘I want you to get out there
and snoop around. Find out what’s going on. It stinks of politics,
and I want to know who and I want to know why, Frank.’
‘
All
right,’ Angel said. ‘I’ll get started tomorrow.’
‘
Draw
two hundred dollars as expenses,’ the Attorney-General said. ‘You
can account for it when you get back.’
‘
If I
don’t come back do I get to keep the money?’ grinned Angel. His
remark brought a grim smile to the face of the man opposite
him.
‘
That’s not such a hell of a joke, boy,’ he said. ‘There’s
someone out in that country who’s quite willing to kill without
warning or mercy to protect whatever scheme he’s concocted. Tread
softly, play it carefully.’
Angel
nodded, his face sober.
‘
How
will you travel?
‘
I’d
say Missouri Pacific to Trinidad,’ Angel said. ‘I can head down the
Rio Grande to Las Cruces and across into Arizona from there. Be in
Daranga about a week from now.’
‘
Good,’ the Attorney General said, rising abruptly. ‘Take good
care of yourself.’ His face was set and unsmiling.
‘
Always do,’ Angel replied. He didn’t smile either.
