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

‘
Here’s
to you, Angel,’ he said. ‘It ain’t often I can drink to a man who’s
yeller clear through.’

He tossed back his drink, and
his companion followed suit, slamming the glass down on the counter
as he finished.
‘Gimme — ’ he began.

In that moment a shot rang out
shattering the glass an inch from his fingers. He snatched back his
hand as though it had touched a red hot stove,
whirling with blazing eyes which
widened with shock when he saw Angel standing at the bar, leaning
nonchalantly on his left elbow, the right hand holding a smoking
.45 which menaced Georgie and his friend with indiscriminate
friendlessness.

‘
Should’ve warned you there are all kinds of angels,’ he
said, easily. ‘I’m the short tempered kind.
Now:’
His voice was suddenly as cold as
shifting ice — in some polar sea. ‘You with the mouth: what’s your
name?’

‘
Go to
hell,’ snapped the man. ‘You’re so far out of line you’ll never
leave town alive.’

‘
You’re
tempting me,’ Angel told him. ‘Dangerous thing to do with an angel
— look what happened to Satan. I’ll ask you nicely one more time
and then I think I’ll shoot your ear off. Or try, my hand shaking
like this I might just blow your head off by mistake.’ He lifted
the cocked gun and put a pantomime shake into his hand that made
the man along the bar blanch: if that ringer tightened, the slug
would take his head right off at this range.

‘
Stop
waggin’ that damned gun about!’ he said harshly, just the faintest
shade of fear in his voice.

‘
Then
introduce yourself like a gentleman,’ Angel said, levelly. ‘I don’t
have all week.’

‘
Blantine’s the name, Angel. Harry Blantine.’

‘
Ah
ah,’ Angel said. ‘You one of those Blantines Georgie was telling me
about?’

‘
You’re
damned right he is,’ blurted Georgie. ‘An’ you don’t know how much
trouble you’re in, mister!’

‘
Story
of my life,’ Angel said. ‘You must think you’re pretty big around
these parts, Blantine. Maybe someone ought to take you down a few
inches.’

‘
Talk’s
cheap with a gun in your hand,’ sneered Blantine. ‘You better put
it away an’ get the hell out o’ this country, my friend. Pullin’
that iron’s the worst mistake you ever made. All I got to do is
yell, an’ yo’re a dead man.’

‘
Of
course, I could put a bullet in your windpipe,’ Angel mused. ‘At
least you wouldn’t yell.’ He said it in such a way that Blantine
went white. This saturnine newcomer looked very capable of doing
exactly what he said. Then Blantine’s bluster returned. This was
Blantine country. The men watching were waiting to see if he would
let the stranger get away with running this bluff. If he did, the
Old Man would kick up hell.

‘
Damn
yore eyes!’ he snapped. ‘I got half a mind — ‘

‘
It
shows,’ Angel said coldly. ‘No need to advertise it.’

He ostentatiously holstered
his
six-gun,
and turned to the bartender, who had been watching the proceedings
open mouthed. No man had ever faced down a Blantine in Agua
Caliente before. No man he had ever heard of would show his supreme
contempt of their power by then surrendering his edge on one of
them by putting his gun up and giving a Blantine half of an even
break. Every one of them was fast with the six-gun and he had seen
Harry in action. He stood rooted to the spot with fear and awful
anticipation, dreading what he knew must inevitably
follow.

‘
Uh ...
uh?’ he said.

‘
That’s
right,’ Angel said encouragingly. ‘Another drink. Blantine there’ll
pay, seein’ it was him spilled the last one I had.’

There was a silence in which
anyone present might have counted two, and then Blantine shouted an
oath, his hand darting for the
six-gun at his side. Angel let him get started,
wanting everyone in the place to see it. As Blantine’s hand closed
on the butt of the six-gun, Angel moved. One moment his hand was
negligently hanging at his side, empty. The next moment there was a
gun in it, leveled, blasting fire. It was almost too fast for the
eye to follow, and considerably faster than Blantine, who was no
slouch. Angel’s bullet burned through Blantine’s left forearm
muscles, tearing the flesh open to a depth of about an inch,
ripping the tissue like a red hot iron, bringing a scream of purest
agony from the man, whose gun clattered to the floor. A greasy sick
look came into Blantine’s eyes as the shock passed and he felt the
first sear of pain, and he doubled up shouting, his knees buckling
with the agony of his wound.

Angel watched him
dispassionately, watched Georgie hastily rip off his bandanna and
roughly bind the wound, which had now drenched the
man
’s shirt
with blood. Blantine struggled to his feet, his face a mask of
agony and hatred.

‘
By
God, Angel,’ he ground out. ‘You’ll pay for this.’

‘
Sure,’
Angel said. Then to Georgie: ‘Get him the hell out of
here!’

For a brief moment the
hostler
’s
courage returned; as if he knew instinctively that there would be
no more shooting, that Angel’s command indicated it.

‘
You’re
as good as dead, Angel,’ he said. ‘The Blantines’ll take you
apart.’

‘
You
better bring a lot of them if they’re all that quality,’ Angel
said, nodding towards the keening Harry Blantine. ‘I’ve seen
puppies with more
cojones.’

‘
Big
talk, Angel,’ gritted Harry Blantine, clutching his arm to his body
and rocking it like a little girl rocks a favorite doll. ‘Big talk.
When we come back lookin’ for you, you won’t be talkin’ so
big.’

‘
Get
him out of here,’ Angel said to Georgie. ‘Get him out of here
before I shut him up permanent.’ He gestured abruptly with the
six-gun and Georgie went pale, retreating a hasty step, his hand
held out with the palm forward.

He half dragged Blantine towards the cantina
door, Blantine cursing as his steps jarred his wounded arm, causing
the pain to surge up in searing waves. He turned at the
doorway.

‘
Sleep
well, tinhorn!’ he shouted. ‘It’ll be the last time. Tomorrow we’ll
be back, and God help you then!’

‘
Who
else would He help except angels?’ grinned Angel, coldly.
‘Git!’

Another gesture with the gun made Georgie
quickly pull the gesticulating gunman outside the building. The
door swung back and clunked solidly against the frame. There was a
deep silence in the saloon.

‘
Now:
what about that drink?’ Angel said to the bartender.

The bartender poured the drink with a
shaking hand that spilled liquor all over the planked bar, gawping
at Angel as if, truly, he had just come in through the ceiling
clothed in celestial glory with tidings of great comfort and
joy.

‘
He
what?’
screamed Yancey Blantine.

Harry Blantine told him again.

‘
An’ —
an’ you
let
him?’ screeched the old man.

‘
I
—
I
couldn’t — ‘

‘
Damn
your rotten liver!’ shouted Yancey Blantine. ‘You ought to be lyin’
dead in town! If you was a man you’d have died afore lettin’
anybody face you down in Agua Caliente!’

‘
He
never gave me no chance, Pa,’ Harry essayed, sullenly.

‘
Chance? Chance? Who’s talkin’ about chances?’ The old
renegade was in a towering temper and everyone in the big room at
the stone ranch house up in the hills above Agua Caliente knew
better than to intervene. Harry must take his medicine. They’d all
had to do it at one time or another. Crossing Yancey Blantine was
as dangerous as stepping barefoot on a rattlesnake.

‘
He
took Harry unawares, like, Mr. Blantine,’ the hostler, Georgie,
offered.

‘
Shut
your sniveling mouth!’ rasped Blantine, rounding on the man, who
quailed and stepped backwards to safety some yards out of Yancey
Blantine’s reach. ‘I’ll teach this whelp to crawl in front of my
town!’ He snatched a quirt from the wall and it whistled through
the air, lashing across Harry Blantine’s shoulders, bringing a
shout of pain from him. Again the old man struck and again, as
Harry cowered away from him, pursuing his son around the room like
some grim old prophet out of the old Testament, purging sins.
Finally, he stopped, chest heaving.

‘
Now,’
he said, ‘now! Tell me who he is.’

‘
Angel,
Mr. Blantine. He said his name was Angel.’ This from the
hostler.

‘
Never
heerd of him,’ the old man snapped.

‘
Me
neither,’ said Burke Blantine.

Burke was the youngest of the
Blantine brood, a husky six-footer with light curly hair and a
deceptively boyish face. Broad shouldered, narrow hipped, a natural
athlete and horseman. Burke was a ladies
’ man but nonetheless as dangerous in
combat as a wolverine. He had never met a man who could beat him to
the draw.

‘
Any o’
you ever heard the name?’ the old man demanded querulously. One by
one his sons shook their heads: Harry, sniveling on the floor,
rubbing his burning, shoulders with his good hand. Burke, lazily at
ease in a wood-and-rawhide chair. Gregg, the dull-witted giant,
huge even in this land of tall men, his long arms swinging apelike
and loose, his low forehead creased by a deep frown as he tried to
follow the rapid shifts in the conversation.

‘
You
others — someone musta heerd o’ the man!’ snapped Blantine. ‘He
ain’t just been minted to give me trouble.’

‘
It
ain’t a name you’d easy forget,’ Dave Ahern said. He was Blantine’s
straw boss, the leader of the riffraff who were recruited along the
border when the Blantines went riding.

‘
He’s
right, chief,’ chimed in Pete Gilman. ‘I never heard o’ no long
rider with a moniker like that.’

Blantine nodded. If Gilman
hadn
’t heard
of him, the man had never operated in this part of the world
before. Gilman knew the name and records of every owlhoot in the
border country. He was the quartermaster for Blantine’s renegade
army. Gilman, and his sidekick Gene Johnson, the slow-spoken
Minnesotan who stood always silently at Gilman’s elbow and rarely
if ever spoke, were the men who procured ammunition, traded in
stolen guns, bargained for stolen horses and all the other
impedimenta the Blantines needed when they mounted their
raids.

‘
Mebbe
he’s usin’ the moniker to throw dust in my eyes,’ the old man
wheezed. ‘Whoever he is, he’s trouble as long as he’s in Agua
Caliente.’

He paced up and down for a few moments, his
brow furrowed. He shook his head once or twice, muttering to
himself.

‘
It
don’t figger,’ he said once. ‘It don’t figger at all.’

They watched him, waiting. No decision would
be made that was not made by the Old Man. Few of them actually
liked him. That had nothing to do with their fear of him, their
innate respect for his mad genius. Yancey Blantine was crazy like a
fox, they always said. He would put up an idea that sounded
completely mad, and then challenge them to knock it down. The more
they tried the more they convinced themselves of the essential
Tightness of the idea.

Yancey was about sixty now, and
the years had bowed his shoulders more but little else about him
was changed. The energy and determination were those of a much
younger man, who could still outride many of his men, outshoot all
of them except Burke. The
lines running from the corners of the eagle’s beak
of a nose were deep, and around the eyes and mouth were furrows put
there by years of decisions and power. For over a decade no man had
stood against Yancey Blantine and lived. South of Agua Prieta, west
of the Baja California, east almost as far as the Chihuahua line,
Blantine’s word was law and few men that rode the owlhoot trail did
not know of it. His pale blue eyes now held that querying, questing
look, the look of a man with the answer within his grasp and yet
unable to touch it. They were cruel eyes. They had watched many a
good man die, many a bad one.

‘
A
lawman!’ he said finally.

‘
What?
Here in Agua Caliente? Yo’re jokin’!’ said Burke.

‘
I’m
tellin’ you,’ the old man repeated. ‘Only thing that
fits.’

‘
If
he
is
a lawman — an’ I’m
not going along with you for a second — he’s crazy as a bedbug to
come south o’ the border in the first place and here in the second
place,’ Ahern said.