Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 (13 page)

‘
By God,
Angel,’ Sherman said. ‘You sound as if you know him.’

‘
I’m
beginning to think I do,’ Angel replied.

He went back into the outer
office and pulled a pad of telegraph blanks toward him. Picking up
a pencil, he wrote the words
‘Personal Attention of the Attorney General Only.’
Then he put what he knew and what he suspected into
words.

It was Vargas who spotted
the
Norteamericano
first. He hissed a warning to Chavez and Montoya
and jerked his chin at the three men coming down Guadalupe Street
toward the railroad depot.

Two of them they knew very well already:
John Sherman and the sheriff, Mike Hogben. The third fit exactly
the description of the man they planned to kill.

The depot was an adobe building
with a long canopied ramada similar to the one outside the Palace
of the Governors
– the same
viga
poles, the same three-foot thick adobe pillars, the same
rounded corners, even the same apathetic Indians from San Ildefonso
or Santo Domingo, their wrists jangling with bracelets, their arms
burdened with gaily striped blankets. The three lawmen came on with
long, purposeful strides as an elderly looking, white-haired man
came bustling out of the office to the right of the loading
platform and hurried toward them.

‘
Here
comes Gray now,’ Hogben said.

Robert Gray, district supervisor for the
Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, bustled toward them,
mopping his brow even though it was scarcely a few hours past
dawn.

‘
Mr.
Angel?’ he said. ‘I’m Robert Gray, and I want to tell you that I’ve
never been put to so much trouble in all my years with the Santa
Fe. Why, do you know my Head Office …?’

Angel let the man babble on, not
really listening to him, intent on seeing for himself whether the
engine was ready to go. Through the dark-shadowed arches he could
see a locomotive at the siding. An engineer in a blue-striped coat
was leaning out of the side with the kind of expression men have on
their faces when they
’ve been told to hurry and then have to hang around waiting
for the people who told them to hurry.

‘
You’ve
cleared the right-of-way?’ Angel asked, cutting across Gray’s
self-justifying chatter. ‘All the way up the line?’

‘
Yes,
yes, you’ve no idea how difficult it was,’ Gray said. ‘I’ve been up
most of the night, what with one thing and another … ’

Jabber, jabber, jabber, Angel
thought; what does he think we
’ve been doing all night, drinking tequila and
chasing whores? His eyes were gritty from the hours spent waiting
by the telegraph. Each time it erupted into spiteful chatter, it
demanded more justification, detail, and evidence which he had no
way of providing.

The evidence was in Trinidad,
Colorado. The only way he could prove his case was to go there and
get it. He said it again and again by means of the telegraph, and
finally, almost as if wearying of the argument, the machine
had clattered the
attorney general’s permission. Given, if he knew the old man, with
the utmost reluctance. But given. He knew that the feverish
activity he had begun in Washington would continue, the checking
and double-checking would go on until something was found. But in
the meantime he was alone again, the way he preferred it. He shook
hands with Sherman and Hogben, thanking them for all they had
done.

‘
This
way, Mr. Angel,’ Gray said, going ahead into the depot. ‘The
engine’s waiting.’

He gestured toward the panting locomotive on
the far side of the yard and turned as if to lead him on.

‘
That’ll
be fine, Mr. Gray,’ Angel said, ‘just fine. No need for you to get
your shoes all muddy out there.’

Gray looked at his spotless
shoes and then at Angel
’s scuffed and dirty mule-ears. He frowned. It was
true, the ground around and between the right-of-ways was filthy
with oil spill, charcoal, coal ash, and soot. Even though Santa Fe
was a spur line – the main track ran through Lamy, ten miles to the
south, and up through the Glorieta Pass via Canoncito – they got
enough traffic up here to filth the place up, no matter how much
time and wasted breath he spent telling the engineers and their
crews not to let people use the facilities when the train was in
the depot, no matter how often he raked them over the coals for
throwing out their oil-stained rags and their cigar
butts.

‘
Very
well, Mr. Angel,’ he said.

Angel nodded and stepped down
off the depot platform, quartering across the rails toward the
engine. The depot building was a squat oblong facing east. Behind
it was a long platform with steps leading down to two passenger
platforms. The carriage shed hulked black and gloomy on the
north-western corner of the area. There were three sets of buffers
behind the depot and four on the northern edge of the yard.
There
the
rolling stock awaiting loading or unloading could be switched to
keep the passenger bays free. Between these lines and the passenger
bays was a water tower, perhaps twenty feet high, which loomed now
over four empty flatbed trucks standing on the farthest incoming
passenger line. Angel walked the passenger platform alongside these
wagons, heading for the open area west of the water tower where the
waiting locomotive stood. And every inch of the way, from the time
he stepped off the platform with Robert Gray, who was watching his
retreating back uncertainly, Angel was in the sights of three
rifles. Vargas had the best spot.

He had climbed the water tower
and was stretched flat on the platform which ran around it, his
body curved a little uncomfortably but with plenty of room for his
cradled elbows and the Winchester with which he was going to kill
the Anglo. Across on the southern side of the yard was a switchbox,
a crude cover for the control levers. It
stood about two feet high and behind
it, kneeling, Montoya steadied his rifle, waiting for Vargas’s
signal. Over on the south side of the depot, where the rear
platform hugged the southern wall of the building, he knew that
Chavez was crouching behind a pile of wooden crates, awaiting the
next downhill train. Angel was out in the open now. No cover – he
was about fifty yards from the platform and roughly the same
distance from the panting engine. Vargas adjusted his elbow
slightly, took a deep breath, and gently squeezed the trigger of
the Winchester, leading slightly to compensate for Angel’s
purposefully swift walk. The other two opened up almost
simultaneously, and Angel went down as if he had been hit by a
thunderbolt. Vargas was already clambering down the metal rungs of
the ladder on the side of the water tower. Montoya and Chavez
leaped to their feet, running across the tracks where the fallen
Angel lay, aiming past the dead man for the same place for which
Vargas was now scuttling – a wooden stairway at the northern edge
of the yards. All they had to do then was jump over a low barbed
wire fence that wouldn’t have stopped a three-year-old.

Gray
’s squalling shouts brought Marshal
Sherman and Sheriff Hogben thundering through the depot building
and to a skidding stop beside the quaking rail-road man.

‘
They
just shot him!’ he screeched. ‘Look at them running, there,
there!’

Sherman and Hogben were already
moving, guns drawn. Sherman ran around the far side of the water
tower to try to intercept Vargas, who was now crossing the siding
and about halfway over. Hogben ran straight to where Angel lay in
the middle of the passenger bay. The two Mexicans veered off toward
the west when they saw him coming, and Hogben threw a shot at them.
They were more than thirty yards away, however, and he
didn
’t expect
to hit anything. They were almost in a straight line ahead of him
now, leaping across the second pair of rails when Hogben saw Angel
rise off the ground. The two Mexicans shied away as if a dinosaur
had suddenly spiraled up from nowhere, one of them working the
lever of his Winchester furiously, whipping the carbine around to
try another shot at this apparently indestructible man.

He never had a chance.

Angel
’s hand had flickered toward his hip
with a speed that defied sight, and the gun was up and spouting
fire. The rolling boom of the shots was like a short clap of
thunder. Hogben saw the first Mexican catapult backward, his
Winchester flying into the air. He fell in a twisting circle in
dream-like motion, his face wiped away by the two heavy caliber
bullets. The second man was falling even as the first went down,
slapped off his feet as though someone seventy feet tall had hit
him with a flat plank wielded horizontally.

Hogben ran toward Angel, but the
tall man waved him back, gesturing to Sherman
’s direction. Hogben twisted
around, scrambled between the connections of two of the standing
flatcars, and came out beside the water tower. He could see Sherman
crouched behind the farthest set of buffers on the siding, his
six-gun coughing. The third assassin was bayed at the base of the
wooden stairs, which Sherman’s fleet-footed pursuit had prevented
him from climbing in time. Hogben ran quickly toward the buffers,
vaulting over them and coming up alongside Sherman, combining his
own six-gun fire with the marshal’s. The assassin shifted
desperately: his position was insecure, the ancient wooden stairs
no protection against the smashing impact of the lawmen’s bullets.
Vargas broke and ran. Dodging and weaving, panicking as if a
trapped bird was caught in his throat, he ran like a rabbit toward
the looming carriage shed, to the safety of thick walls and dark
corners, to the bolt-hole of open ends and shrouding brush on all
sides of it. He ran knowing that his life depended upon getting
there, and he bent every single ounce of effort and concentration
he possessed.

He wasn
’t more than twenty yards from the
yawning entrance to the sheds when he saw Angel coming across the
lines. He knew it was impossible, knew his shot could not have
missed, yet here was the dead man running across to intercept him,
pistol in hand.

Without breaking stride, he
levered the Winchester and threw a shot at Angel, but it was
panicked and wide. Angel acknowledged the shot merely by swerving
slightly in his run. Vargas levered the Winchester again and
flinched when he saw Angel
’s hand move. The six-gun boomed, and the earth
erupted a foot from Vargas’ left leg. Squealing with fear, he
leaped into a run, dashing like a rabbit across Angel’s path. He
saw the engineer clambering down from the train, shouting
something, but the white fear drove him blindly forward. Ten
yards,
¡
Dios, por
favor!
Only ten yards! He saw the tall man go down on one knee,
leveling the six-gun, both hands clasped solidly around the butt,
elbow resting on his right knee, and he knew that he was dead. But
no shot came.

With a gesture of disgust, Angel looked at
the empty gun in his hand. He was on his feet again, although this
time he lurched slightly as he moved. Vargas was no more than
twenty feet from him, perhaps the same distance from the carriage
shed. Angel paused to touch the side of his boot where the throwing
knife was nestled. He shook his head. He was good. But not good
enough to hit a running man at that kind of distance. He stood
waiting until Sherman and Hogben came panting up, their feet
crunching on the oily gravel. Both men were winded, perspiration
streaming from their faces.

‘
In the
name of God, Angel!’ Sherman said. The entire side of Angel’s body
was a pulsing mass of blood from the wound Vargas had given him. It
should have killed him. The bullet had ploughed into his body just
below and behind his right arm, where the long solid muscle was
ripped as if by some ugly predator. He had been lucky; the bullet
had hit a rib, and instead of turning inward, it had ricocheted
outward, ripping a lacerated tear perhaps seven inches long across
the front of Frank Angel’s chest. Montoya’s bullet had torn a hole
through the flapping tail of his coat. Chavez had missed, God alone
knew how.

‘
Sherman, cover this end,’ Angel said, ignoring the
marshal’s reaction to his wound. It wasn’t as bad as it looked,
although he could feel the first faint, flickering flutters of
warning weakness inside his head. There was a point when your body
could no longer be pushed by adrenalin: the shock came up like a
tide rising on the Continental Shelf, irresistible, consuming,
total – and then you went down. He knew that would come, but he
wanted the man who had tried to kill him before it did.

‘
I’ll
take the far end,’ Hogben said.

‘
You all
right, Angel?’

Angel nodded. With fingers which fumbled
very slightly, a fumbling he did not allow them to see, he reloaded
his six-gun.

‘
All
right,’ he said. Tm all right.’

‘
Let me
go, man,’ Sherman said. ‘Or Mike.’

‘
No,’
Angel said, flatly. ‘I want this one alive.’

‘
For
God’s sake wait, then,’ Sherman snapped. ‘I can get a dozen men
down here to flush him out!’