Kill Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #6) (18 page)

The Mexican doctor put a hand
under the big man
’s elbow, steadying him.
‘Senor,’
he said, in alarm, ‘are you all
right?’

Gregg Blantine nodded.
‘I’m all right,’ he
said. He shook off the helpful hand. ‘I’m all right, I
said!’

The doctor ducked his head and said no more.
There was no point in telling this one to look after his wound, to
avoid exertion, not to ride, not to lift. There was the look in
those eyes, the tension in the giant frame, the way the huge hands
curled and unclenched all providing him with direct evidence that
nothing he said would be heard. He was a good doctor, by his
lights, and he regretted stupidity. But this great giant of a man
would kill himself no matter what he was told.

Gregg Blantine went down the
street to the stable and bought a horse. He hardly looked at the
animal, although he got a good one because the man who sold it to
him was too frightened to do anything else. It
didn
’t matter
to Gregg Blantine. He knew he was going to kill the animal
anyway.

They rode into Arivaca just after noon.

There was nothing much special
about the place, just another sleepy little Arizona town scattered
along both sides of one street. A general store here, a hardware
store there, a livery stable with a smithy next to it, and at the
Tucson end of town a false fronted frame building with the
legend
‘The
Oasis: H. Poirot, Prop.’.

‘
I
wouldn’t mind a dust cutter, Frank,’ Gates said, easing his body in
the saddle. ‘How about you?’

Angel nodded.
‘Not a bad idea,’ he
said. He stood back while Gates helped Yancey Blantine down out of
the saddle. Since their experience in the alleyway in Nogales, they
had taken no chances at all with the old man, who had reverted
again to the sullen silence which had characterized him throughout
the major part of their flight from Agua Caliente and all the way
to the border. They both knew now, though, that the agile brain
never stopped figuring and planning, running this way and that like
a rat in a maze, gnawing at the problem until it saw a solution and
when it saw the solution — Well, they didn’t plan on providing
Yancey Blantine with any solutions between here and
Tucson.

They pushed into the saloon and
sat Yancey Blantine down at one of the tables. Gates went to the
bar and ordered beer, while Angel sat opposite the old renegade.
Blantine spat on the
saw dusted floor.

There was no one in the place,
unless you counted a drunken cowboy with his head in his arms,
asleep at one of the tables in the rear. Two girls were drinking
beer at the end of the bar. They started over to the table but
Gates stopped them and said something. They looked at Angel and the
prisoner and shrugged, going back to their stools. The bartender
opened his newspaper
and started reading it.

‘
Maybe
we should get some steak an’ eggs,’ Gates said. ‘I got a lot of
eatin’ to catch up on.’

‘I’d
as soon push on,’ Angel said. ‘We can
eat in Tucson. I’ll buy you the best dinner the Scat Fly can
cook!’

‘
That’d
be — ‘

Whatever Gates had been going to
say was lost in the terrible booming crash of a shotgun that
blasted the windows of the saloon into shivering, whirring shards
of broken glass whose sound blended with the whickering purr of the
slugs. Gates was snatched out of his chair as the far wall erupted
in splinters of plaster and wood, a picture clattering to the
floor. Angel was already going sideways out of the chair, dragging
Blantine down to the floor with him, the
six-gun in Angel’s hand bucking
against his palm as he threw two shots at the looming shape outside
the saloon.

One of the girls screamed, a
short sharp terrified sound, as Gates tried to
get up from where he had fallen,
going around in a half circle on the floor that was slick with his
blood.

Angel slid across the floor and tipped a
table forward, moving to the assistance of his fallen friend as the
doors swung open and he saw the muzzle of the shotgun poke into the
room. Again the twin barrels erupted with smoke and flame and he
heard the heavy gauge slugs smash into the table, tearing great
chunks of wood out of it which flickered past his face. He felt
blood trickling down his cheek.

‘
Pa!’
he heard a broken voice shout. ‘Pa! You in there, Pa?’

He saw Yancey Blantine scuttle around behind
the table where they had been sitting. His face was alight with
savage joy.

‘
Gregg!’ Yancey Blantine yelled. ‘In here, boy! You got one
o’ them!’

Yancey Blantine edged towards
the shattered window and shouted hoarsely,
‘Throw me a gun, boy! A gun, a
gun!’

Angel threw a shot at the old
man,
more
meant to keep him out of the fight than to hit him, and his slug
smashed shards of the broken window in a shower over Yancey
Blantine’s head. The old man ducked down as a six-gun was lobbed in
through the window, landing with an iron
clunk!
within a few feet of the old renegade’s
reaching left hand. Angel fired without sighting and his slug
smashed the six-gun spinning across the floor, whipping it away
from the reach of the old man.

‘
Where
is he, Pa?’ he heard Gregg Blantine yell. There were sounds out in
the street, the sounds of other men shouting, feet stamping along
the board sidewalks.

‘
Right
opposite the door, boy,’ shouted Yancey Blantine. ‘Behind the
table!’

Angel saw the batwings part
again ad he was on his feet as the barrel of the shotgun poked into
the room, moving as fast as he knew how across the floor of the
saloon. The shotgun
went off again with an enormous sound that flattened his
eardrums, and then he grasped it in both hands and heaved Gregg
Blantine into the saloon. The big man came in on the run, catching
his balance as he ran and Angel stepped forward and with every
ounce of strength he could muster, slammed the barrel of his gun
down on the bony point directly behind Gregg Blantine’s left ear.
The terrible force of the blow drove the giant to his knees, but it
did not knock him out. He shook his head, trying to clear it, as
Angel stepped closer to him and raised the six-gun for another
blow. This time Gregg Blantine whirled on his knees and caught
Angel around the waist. His huge arms clamped around his quarry
like the paws of a grizzly, and Angel felt the breath rush out of
his lungs as Gregg Blantine lifted him off his feet. He pounded the
gun butt into the giant’s face, grinding, murderous, punishing,
breaking blows that smeared Gregg’s nose into a broken pulp,
splitting the brows, the whole mad face dissolving into a bloody,
macabre mask of torn flesh and bone, and still Gregg Blantine
raised Angel higher, roaring in agony and rage, up until Angel was
level with Gregg Blantine’s chest. Then with one surging sweep,
Gregg Blantine threw Angel against the bar. Angel’s back hit the
bar and the wave of pain that shocked through him made him black
out. He fell forward on to the saw dusted floor, his head spinning,
every muscle in his body paralyzed and incapable of obeying the
frantic signals his brain was sending to them. Gregg Blantine
lurched over to where Angel lay on the floor and raised his foot,
putting the weight of his whole body behind the kick that landed in
the small of Angel’s back. Angel’s body lifted a foot off the
ground and he lay huddled in the corner, fighting to breathe,
sucking air desperately into lungs which felt as though they had
turned to stone. He lay there with his eyes open as Gregg Blantine
bent down and picked up the shotgun. Yancey Blantine came out from
his hiding place behind the over-turned table and watched as Gregg
poked a shell into each of the two barrels. The giant snapped the
gate closed and pointed the gun at Angel.

None of them had seen Gates get up.

He came across the room half
crouched, his shoulder down, and the force of his charge swept
Gregg Blantine against the wall. The shotgun exploded into the air,
smashing huge chunks of wood and plaster from the ceiling, breaking
one of the oil lamps into a thousand flying fragments. Fighting for
every breath, Angel tried to rise. He saw, but could hardly believe
that he saw the strong, solid body of Pearly Gates, spattered with
the multiple marks of shotgun slugs, blood dappling his body with a
strange pattern of bright reds and darker browns, throw a strong
forearm around Gregg Blantine
’s neck from behind, then clamp his left hand upon
the wrist of the arms around the giant’s neck.

Angel saw
Blantine
’s
eyes start from his head. He whirled around, trying to fight Gates
off his back, but Gates hung on. His teeth were set deep into the
lower lip and Angel could see it was bitten clean through in Gates’
agony, but Gregg Blantine could not shake off the man on his back,
and Gates kept on increasing the terrible pressure on Blantine’s
throat. Blantine’s tongue protruded and he made an awful, choking,
retching sound, his arms thrashing behind him, turning and bashing
against the wall, hurling himself in blind and unreasoning terror
around the room to dislodge the terrible killing thing on his back.
For the first time, Angel got a full breath into his lungs and
tried to move his feet, trying for a handhold on the bar as Gregg
Blantine blundered back again into the wall of the saloon, the
glasses and bottles behind the bar jingling and tinkling with the
weight of the impact.

Angel saw now too that there was
bright red blood staining Gregg Blantine
’s middle, and as he watched the
bright stain became a pumping spurt, as though something had broken
open inside the man. Gregg Blantine went down to his knees and
Gates went with him. Gates’ eyes were completely closed now, and
his legs scrabbled for a moment on the floor before they found the
purchase they needed. Angel saw the arm muscles tighten even more
and Gregg Blantine’s eyes went up into his head. Then Yancey
Blantine stepped forward and emptied his six-gun into Pearly Gates’
back. It was done so suddenly that Angel had no chance to prevent
it, and he saw the old man start back as Gates’ shirt flickered
briefly into a flame which quickly died, shouldering, acrid smoke
rising from the blackened bloody pit in the big man’s back. Gates
at last slipped from Gregg Blantine’s back, and Blantine turned
around to look at his father, his hands reaching for the old man,
and started forward. Angel saw that the bullets which Yancey
Blantine had fired at such terribly short range into Pearly Gates’
back had gone right through the big man and smashed Gregg
Blantine’s spine. Gregg Blantine fell at his father’s feet and then
Yancey Blantine saw what he had done and finally went completely
insane.

‘
You
say neither of them had relatives, dependants?’ the
Attorney-General asked. Angel shook his head.

‘
It ...
I wish there were something I could do,’ the older man
said.

‘
There’s nothing,’ Angel told him. ‘I did all there was.’ It
was a fortnight later, and it was all over.

Angel had brought
old Yancey Blantine
to Tucson, a dribbling, haunted, insane wreck of a man who screamed
throughout the night and wept uncontrollably through the day. There
was no trial. The United States Marshal had sent a deputy with
Yancey Blantine to Yuma Penitentiary. They would do what they could
for him there, but the doctors who had examined him in Tucson did
not think he would live long. The power of the renegade Blantines
was utterly broken along the border anyway. Not a man but moved in
that dangerous wilderness had not heard of the things that had
happened in the Santa Eulalia country and the word was out: the
Blantines are finished.

‘
They
were good men, Frank,’ the Attorney-General said softly. ‘I’m sure
it was how they would have wanted it to be.’

‘
They
wanted it to be fun,’ Angel said bitterly, ‘Fun! They were going
down there for a jaunt, a diversion. Then they were coming back,
Chris to his girl in Abilene, Gates — ah, the hell with
it!’

He got up and walked across the
room, staring out of the window at the people on Pennsylvania
Avenue. What the hell did they care about two good men dead? What
did they care about the men who kept their laws? Not a damned
thing. They ate and slept and fornicated and
quarreled and competed and lived
and died and never cared.

‘
You’re
due some leave,’ the Attorney-General said quietly.

‘
I know
it,’ Angel said. ‘I thought I might go up to New York for a few
days.’

‘
Good
idea,’ enthused the Attorney-General, leaning back in his chair. He
took one of the black cigars and lit it, smiling as it wreathed his
face in thick blue smoke.

‘
Miss
Rowe around?’ Angel asked casually.

‘
Why,
no,’ the older man replied, just as casually. ‘Why do you
ask?’

‘
I
thought I might take her to dinner.’