Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) (9 page)

Angus
Wells got lucky in Lincoln.

He
spent three days talking to the commanding officer at Fort Stanton,
his brother officers, enlisted men, to the post traders Murphy and
Dolan. Murphy, a Satanic-looking, hard-drinking Irishman, had held
officer rank in the Army and was known universally as ‘the
Colonel’.

He
had served in Carleton’s California Column and remembered Richard
Cravetts. He told Wells that the ex-Captain had settled on a ranch
in the Tularosa Valley in the late sixties, and been raided out by
Mescaleros.

‘
Lost
track of him after that,’ he recalled, pouring another liberal
glassful of whiskey out and drinking it greedily. They were sitting
in the rambling building on the edge of the sprawled fort, looking
out at the parade ground, dazzling white in the burning
sun.

‘
You
sure you won’t have another, Mr. Wells?’ Murphy asked.

Wells
shook his head and Murphy poured himself another drink. It seemed
to make no difference to his speech or posture.

‘
We’ve been having our own troubles in these
parts,’

Murphy went on. ‘Lot of rustling, some killings over at
Placita — Lincoln, they call it now — the county seat. Old John
Chisum’s jingle-bob warriors take it hard when someone steals their
boss’s beef.’ He grinned as if it was a huge joke. ‘But I recall
Cravetts had some real trouble over in Lincoln. A shooting affair,
as I recall. You ought to ride over and talk to Ham Mills, the
sheriff. He’ll probably be able to tell you more.’

Wells
rode across the hills to the little town of Lincoln.

It
lay athwart a noisy stream called the Bonito, straggling along a
street shaped like a flattened S, adobes and crude y shacks well
spaced on both sides. Ham Mills was a huge man, with a white scar
on his jaw. He scratched his head awhile, then plunged into the
welter of papers and books in his old roll-topped desk. Eventually
he found the document he was looking for.

‘
Here
you go,’ he said. ‘Cravetts, Richard. Assault with a deadly weapon,
intent to kill. I remember that now.’ He leaned back in his chair.
‘Early last year, it was. He came up here to sell some horses. Him
and another fellow, young tough with tow hair an’ a Southern
accent. Lee something.’

‘
Monsher?’ Wells supplied, and Mills smacked his thigh with a
hand like a hammer. ‘Monsher it was!’ he said. ‘Bad lot, I
reckoned.’

‘
What
happened? Wells asked.

‘
Forget the details,’ Mills said. ‘But I recall it was in
Patron’s place. Some hombre named Goss, Gross, somethin’ like that,
came to me an’ claimed Cravetts an’ that Monsher feller stole his
horses off his ranch down Alamogordo way, wanted me to get his
money off of them. I told him he’d have to swear out a complaint
afore the justice, “Green” Wilson, but he swore at me an’ said he
didn’t have no time for that kind o’ fiddle-faddle. Next I know he
went down Patron’s saloon an’ called those two jaspers out. There
was a shootin’ and Cravetts an’ Monsher lit out, leavin’ Goss three
parts dead.’

“
Didn’t anyone try to stop them?’

‘
Oh,
sure,’ Mills said. ‘We got out a posse an’ chased them clear across
to Three Rivers, but they headed out into the malpais, an’ you
couldn’t track a elephant in the White Sands, mister.’

Wells
nodded. He knew the vast and featureless expanse that was called
White Sands. Hundreds and hundreds of square miles of glaring white
gypsum sand stretched from Socorro in the north almost as far south
as the San Agustin Pass through the Organ Mountains. Men who did
not want to be caught could find no better refuge from pursuers
than that trackless waste.

‘
Have
you any idea where Cravetts and Monsher came from?’ Wells asked.
‘They told me over at the Fort that Cravetts used to have a ranch
in the Tularosa valley.’

‘
Afore my time,’ Mills told him. ‘I heerd they was from out
Arizona Territory. Lordsburg was what I heerd.’

‘
Lordsburg,’ Wells said. ‘Sounds likely, anyway.’

‘
Likelier than they’d stay in Lincoln County anyways,’ Mills
told him.

‘
I
still got a warrant out on both them jaspers they ever show their
faces around here again.’ Wells rose to leave.

‘
I’m
obliged to you, Sheriff.’

‘
No
trouble,’ Mills said. ‘You ketch up with them jaspers, let me know.
We got a quiet little town here an’ I aim to keep it that
way.’

Wells
headed on out of the sleepy little placita and up the canyon
towards Fort Stanton. It was a long way to Mesilla and well over a
hundred miles to Lordsburg from there. He kicked his horse into a
run.

The
man on the stairs had his hands above his head.

‘
You,
mister!’ he shouted. ‘I ain’t armed. Don’t shoot!’

He
was short and pudgy, and the light from the grimy windows flickered
on his eyeglasses. Angel could see the man’s tongue nervously
touching thick, rubbery lips.

‘
Where’s Torelli?’ he said flatly.

‘
He —
I — he’s not here, mister,’ the man said. He started down the
stairs, eyes fixed on Angel, moving carefully, slowly. He kept
talking all the way down as though by talking he could prevent
anything from happening to him.

‘
Torelli ain’t here, mister,’ the man droned. ‘He left earlier
this mornin’. Headed for Las Cruces. That stupid Carmen thought she
seen him upstairs but it was me she seen, not Frank.’

He
kept on coming down the stairs and Angel watched him every inch of
the way. He watched the man’s eyes and when he saw them flicker
towards the window he moved, one swift leap lifting him over the
top of the bar and behind it as the glass from one of the windows
shattered inwards with the booming roar of a gun and Angel heard
the fat smack of the slivered slug hitting the other side of the
bar. He went sideways along the floor, stretching upwards to where
he had earlier seen the bartender reaching, his hand closing on the
stock of a shotgun. He pulled it down, still rolling, as the man on
the staircase ran into the space in front of the bar, a six-gun in
his hand, pumping shots, scrabbling in the blaze of noise to get
around behind the bar and at Angel. Angel eared back the hammers on
the shotgun, whose barrels were sawn off at about the ten inch
mark, and as the man came around the bar, eyes glaring behind the
spectacles, lining the gun down on the squirming Angel, he pulled
both triggers. The awful flat voommmph! sounded like a thunderclap
in the enclosed space and the close-packed shot had spread only
about a foot when it hit the thick-lipped one. It tore a hole in
his upper body the size of a plate and hurled him back against the
wall with a force that shook the building. In the same instant,
guns blasted from the doorway as two men came running crouched into
the room, diving for the shelter of tipped-over tables, laying down
a hail of bullets where they thought Angel was. But Angel had moved
and he came up above the counter and threw two shots fast at the
man on the left, who lurched in mid-stride as he went down behind
cover, his legs kicking high and a bubbling scream of pain breaking
from his lips. The third man fired hastily at Angel, scrabbling
back away from the side of the room towards the door. Angel went
down again on the boards behind the bar, squirming on his elbows
towards the huddled body of the man with the eyeglasses. There was
a huge, sticky puddle of blood staining the splintered duckboards
but Angel ignored it as he wormed towards the open end of the bar.
Before he reached it he heard the frantic scramble of boots and
leaped to his feet in time to throw an unaimed shot after the man
who burst out of the door. Angel’s bullet took a huge chunk of wood
out of the door frame and then his target was outside. He heard
running feet and shouts from the bartender and the girls outside.
He ran catlike towards the door and edged towards it until he could
see outside. The bartender was on one knee in front of the
building, a bolt-action rifle aimed directly at the doorway. The
girls were scattering towards the outbuildings and Angel heard the
beat of hoofs behind the house.

He
cursed aloud and then whirled as he heard the scrabble of boots on
the floor behind him. A man came up from behind the overturned
table across the room. There was a huge bloodstain beneath his left
arm, coating his entire body from armpit to waist. He lurched
drunkenly, trying to level the heavy gun in his hand, his eyes
squinted tight against the pain in his body.

‘
Damn
you!’ the man shouted and pulled the trigger in the same instant
that Angel squeezed off his own bullet. He felt the raw burn of
white pain across his side as the slug sliced along his ribs and he
reeled across the open doorway. The bartender saw him and fired,
his bullet whacking through the batwing door and shattering the
slats into a thousand flying splinters. Angel, down on one knee,
saw the man across the room slide forward on his face to the floor,
the gun spilling from his nerveless hands. The bartender came
running forward across the yard and Angel let him come. The man
came flying into the room, the rifle ported ready in his hands and
saw Angel in the same moment that Angel laid the barrel of his Army
Colt alongside the bartender’s head. The man went down hard on his
knees and Angel hit him again and then again. The bartender
retched, emptying his belly in a pool of stinking vomit as he slid
into unconsciousness.

There
was an acrid stink of cordite in the air, and the slight breeze
through the doorway swung the smoke as if it were tangible. Angel
walked out into the sunlight.

He
saw the white faces of the girls peering through the window of the
outhouse and then the two teamsters who had been drinking earlier
at the bar came out into the open. They came warily across the yard
as the girls came out, fear in every movement they made. Jesus,
mister,’ one of the teamsters said. Jesus.’

‘
Get
those girls over here,’ Angel said brusquely. ‘I want to know who
those men are. Or were.’

The
teamsters looked at him thunderstruck.

‘
Mister, you shot them fellers down an' you don’t know who
they were?’

Angel
nodded. ‘One of them was called Juba,’ he said. ‘The other one is
one of the Torellis. I don’t know which one.’

‘
Hell, that’s easy, mister,’ the teamster said. ‘You musta cut
down Steve Torelli, ’cause Frank was the one lit out of here like
his ass was afire.’

‘
That’s right, mister,’ the second man said. They followed
Angel into the building, their eyes widening at the havoc. One of
them went over and looked down at the man behind the bar. He turned
away, his face white and sick.

‘
Denny Juba,’ Angel said. He turned as the girl Carmen came
downstairs into the room. ‘That right?’

She
nodded. Her lips were a thin and bloodless line and now he saw how
young she really was.

‘
Him
over there?’

‘
That’s — that was Steve Torelli,’ she whispered. ‘He — they
made me do it, they — ’

‘
Forget it,’ he told her. ‘It figured they’d try to whipsaw
me.’

The
girl nodded. ‘What about him?’ she said, nodding towards the
bartender, who was trying to sit up, groaning and holding his
bloody head. Angel smiled grimly.

He
went across the room and yanked the man to his feet. The bartender
cringed away, his face a sweaty mask of fear. ‘You know any reason
why I should let you stay alive?’ Angel asked him. His voice was
level and quite normal. He spoke in the tone of a man asking a
reasonable question. The bartender gulped and struggled to
speak.

‘
Uh —
I — ’

‘ —
you tried to cut me down with that,’ Angel said, gesturing
towards the rifle on the floor. ‘That means you’re my meat. Unless
— ’

‘ —
listen, mister,’ the bartender gasped. ‘I’ll do anything.
Listen — ’

‘
You
listen!’ Angel snapped. ‘Your life’s worth exactly

what
the next information you give me is worth. Where will Frank Torelli
have gone?’

The
bartender’s face fell.

‘
Jesus, mister, he’ll kill me if I tell you that!’ he
ejaculated.

‘
An’
I’ll kill you if you don’t!’ Angel said. ‘So you don’t have a hell
of a choice. Except that I’ll kill you now. You might have a chance
to get some miles between you an’ Torelli — always supposing he’d
come back here.’

‘
But,
mister, listen — ’

‘
Talk, damn you!’ Angel said. ‘We’re wasting time!’

‘
He —
he might have headed for Mesilla,’ the bartender managed. ‘He might
— ’

‘
This
is your last chance, my friend,’ Angel said. His voice had lost its
edge now and he was calm. The very quietness of his tone frightened
the bartender more than anything that had happened this far. He
went a fish-belly white and his eyes rolled up in his head as Angel
thumbed back the hammer of the Army Colt and placed the barrel to
the man’s temple.

‘
Lordsburg!’ he screamed. ‘He’ll head for Cravetts’ place in
Lordsburg!’