The sky was lightening rapidly now and the long low rays of the dawning sun were diluting the purple of the shadows at the base of the hills to the west. It would be full light in a very short while. The morning warmth was welcome, and he eased his cold, cramped legs. He could have done with some coffee.
Wells moved very carefully forward and poked his hat around the rocks on the end of his carbine barrel. Almost immediately a rifle spoke up in the rocks, smacking splinters off the boulder and whining away into infinity. Wells pulled back, chilled by the ambusher’s proximity. That shot had come from no more than fifty yards away. He tried to remember the lie of the land, but his impression of it was vague. The trail snaked ahead, he knew, to a bend that had run between two heavy stands of pine skirting the road. The land rose to the right of the road in a sharp incline, boulders and chunks of rock scattered on it, detritus from some prehistorical earth movement. On the left hand side of the road, the land sloped on down into a coulee. Probably a wash, he thought, a little stream running into Tecolote Creek. And probably fifty yards from where he was across ground without any form of shelter except stunted sage and prickly pear. No way, he told himself. Even if you could run, which you can’t. Not for the first time Wells damned the man who had crippled him, hoping that whatever hell Cravetts was in it was good and hot. No escape that way. But he had to move soon. Those bushwhackers weren’t going to wait much longer.
As if in direct response to his thought, another carbine whanged a shot at his position. The bullet caromed off the rock face to one side, and fell spent against the side of another. Then the second rifle opened up, but this time the man shooting it kept on levering and firing in one long continuous roll, whang-whang-whang-whang-whang his slugs moving across the redoubt where Wells had flattened himself to the ground, the ricochets screaming, flickering blurs of stone and flint stinging the hiding man’s exposed body.
He had to move, and he knew they were doing this to make him, which meant he couldn’t move. Yet if he stayed put, those seeking, ricocheting bullets would eventually find the correct place, the perfect angle — and turn inwards into him. He shuddered at the thought of being hit by one of those deformed, tumbling bullets. They would tear a man open like a fighting bull with a broken horn.
He rolled over on his back and sat up, levering his own Winchester and throwing a curving arc of four shots at the places where he figured the shots had come from. If he hit anything there was no sign of it. Then he got down again quickly as the second rifleman again whacked two shots at him. The sun was climbing high now. The stink of cordite clung to the tiny space in which Wells crouched. But he felt about one thin shade better than before. He thought now he knew where his ambushers were — give or take a few yards. One was up on the side of the shaley slope, about fifty yards or so straight ahead. The other was on the left hand side of the road, about twenty or thirty yards back, down below the crest of the falling ground and out of Wells’ shooting line. Knowing where they were didn’t improve his chances, though. If he ran up for the crest on his right, using the rocks for cover, he would be fully exposed to the ambusher in the rocks ahead of him, and as soon as he moved, the other man could run in a long half-circle and come out on the rimrock above. So Wells did the only thing he could do. He got out of his hiding place, keeping the biggest rock between him and the man in the rocks. And then he ran full tilt, the best way he could, weaving and dodging, straight at the man hidden below the crest of the falling ground on the left hand side of the trail, working the action of his Winchester fast and laying down a hail of bullets which he hoped would keep the man’s head down.
It worked like a dream for the first ten yards because the big rocks behind him effectively screened him from the man on the slope and his hail of bullets whacking into the man in front of him. But in the eleventh yard Wells’ form came clear of the protecting boulder and the man on the hillside calmly shot him in the back.
Wells went on forward, carried by his own momentum and that of the bullet that slewed him sideways and over the crest at the side of the trail, tumbling and rolling over and down and crashing through the thickened sage and prickly pear, the rifle flying out of his nerveless fingers.
The man on the roadside yelled in triumph and jumped to his feet, pumping wild shots at the bundling, rolling figure in its scurry of dust, but that was a mistake because Wells was not now falling, but deliberately rolling, keeping moving and ignoring the blinding pain that felt as if someone had poured molten iron into his upper body, his only instinct now to stay alive, all the years of wariness and training telling him to go on moving when every nerve in his body screamed at his brain to stay still. Wells came to a stop, pawing the old Army Colt up as the man ran towards him, throwing a shot through the dusty haze his scrambling fall had made, grunting with satisfaction as the man yelled and fell to one side, his Winchester going off as it hit the ground. Wells got to his knees, and then rolled again down and forward trying now for the coulee not fifteen yards in front of him, everything else going out of his mind except the animal need to find cover.
The man on the hillside had started running down towards the trail as he saw Wells go forward and over the first time, and he had quartered across the ground so that he was level with Wells’ position and perhaps thirty yards away as Wells made his second try for safety. He went down on one knee and leveled the carbine, beading the floundering figure of the thrashing justice Department man. He took his time and squeezed off the shot and saw Wells hesitate in mid-movement, knowing he had hit Wells again. The last desperate lunge had carried Wells to the brink of the coulee and he went off the edge, going down to the stony creek bed with his hands spread like some broken bird. The man ran up to the edge of the wash and looked down. Wells lay there broken and unmoving, his body splashed with bright blood. The man grinned, the wicked smile of a coyote that sees a calf pulled down, and levered another shell into the breech to deliver the coup de grace, but at that moment his companion yelled something and he hesitated. He looked for a long moment at Wells’ still form as if deciding something, then ran towards his friend, who was on his feet, curing and trying to stem the pumping flow of blood from the bullet hole in his upper thigh.
‘Goddammit, Reed, get over here, will you?’ he shouted.
Reed ran towards his companion and laid down the Winchester, ripping off a strip of the man’s shirt and fashioning a makeshift tourniquet. When the bleeding was staunched, he slapped his friend on the shoulder.
‘There you go, Mike,’ he grinned. ‘You’ll live.’
‘Goddammit, Reed,’ the one called Mike ground out, ‘I thought you got him sure the first time.’
Reed gestured at the wound on Mike’s thigh. ‘Shows how wrong you was,’ he said flatly. ‘But no sweat. He’s dead now all right.’
‘Where is he?’ Mike asked.
‘Down in the creek bed,’ Reed replied. ‘I better go make sure.’
‘Shit, Reed, you hit him twice, didn’t you?’
Mike grimaced. ‘Even if he ain’t dead, he’s gonna bleed to death down there. Ain’t nobody gonna come find him. Let’s get the hell out of this: I got to get to a doctor.’
He put his weight on the wounded leg and swore.
‘Go get the goddamned horses, will ya?’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look at our friend, if you like.’
‘Naw, you’re right Mike,’ the other one said.
‘He’s done for. Let’s get out of here. We don’t want no one coming up the trail and finding us here’
They climbed laboriously back up the slope, Reed supporting his wounded comrade as best he could until they got to the stand of trees where they had left their horses. Within three minutes they were out of sight around the bend in the road that led towards Las Vegas. Behind them nothing moved except a buzzard, high in the sky, wheeling and swooping in search of dead flesh.
After a while it came lower.
Chapter Nine
Angel looked down the bore of the Navy Colt and sho
wed his teeth in a feral grin.
‘Pull that trigger and I’ll kill you,’ he promised flatly lifting his eyes to meet the equally hard gaze of the man with the gun. It had to be Denniston. Iron-gray cropped hair, eyes to match, an aquiline nose flanked by deep furrows making an arch to the thin, patrician lips. A thin-boned, aristocrat’s face: or the face of a fanatic.
Denniston was dressed in a dark coat and pants which somehow had a strong military flavor, as though they might have been cut and sewn by the army tailor. The dark trousers were tucked into the tops of fine leather boots which even with their patina of dust glowed with the rich sheen of many polishings.
Denniston hesitated.
‘You believe that, don’t you?’
‘I know it,’ Angel said.
‘For a man inches from death you’re very sure of yourself, Mister — ?’
‘Angel’s the name. Frank Angel.’
‘Perhaps that explains your confidence,’ murmured Denniston. ‘It seems a shame not to test it.’
‘It would be a waste,’ Angel said. ‘Of both of us.’
Denniston thought about that one for a moment, and then smiled.
‘I admire your nerve, Angel,’ he said, lowering the gun. ‘It’s uncommon.’
Angel let his own tension go a little. He felt everyone in the room do the same. Denniston’s men, ranged in a half circle behind their leader, looked puzzled. But Denniston ignored them. Shoving the revolver into a closed-topped holster on his belt, he went across to where Atterbow lay unconscious.
He touched the broken face lightly and then looked at Angel again, his eyes narrowing.
‘What was it?’ he asked. ‘Karate?’
‘Aikido.’
‘Aikido,’ mused Denniston. ‘You are indeed an uncommon saddle-tramp, Mr. Angel. Suspiciously uncommon.’
Before Angel could reply to that, a little man bustled into the room, thrusting Denniston’s men aside with unceremonious scorn. He went straight to where Atterbow lay and opened the leather bag he was carrying, ignoring everyone else. Fishing a stethoscope out, he listened to the man’s heart, and then grunted.
‘Get him across to my office,’ he said to nobody in particular. Two men came forward and lifted the unconscious form, panting under the weight as the old man turned to face Denniston, his eyes full of malice.
‘Who took your man apart, Colonel?’ There was scornful emphasis on the last word that brought two spots of bright color to Denniston’s cheeks. But the iron control was rigid.
‘Doctor,’ Denniston said drily. ‘How nice to see you sober.’
‘You better pray I am if you expect that one to fork a horse this side of Christmas,’ the old man retorted unabashed. ‘He’s been worked over better than anyone I ever saw.’ Without another word he bustled out after the men carrying Atterbow’s supine form.
Denniston turned to Angel, who grinned unrepentantly. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Do I get the job?
‘Job?’
‘I asked Atterbow if you had any work. He said I had to talk to him first. I just got through doing that.’
‘I see,’ Denniston said. Angel let him think about it, saying nothing. There was a long silence in the room. Someone shuffled his feet. Another coughed nervously. Then Denniston nodded. ‘Let’s take drink on it,’ he said. ‘Levy, give everyone a drink.’
And then the tension was gone completely.
Men crowded to the bar, and talked to Angel, asking him questions about the fighting technique he had used. Denniston watched him as he tried to avoid the pawing that people always give the man who had come through a dangerous situation. His own men drank in a tight group at the other end of the bar. They eyed Angel with surly resentment, and Denniston grinned. Mister Angel might have a tougher row to hoe than he expected. The next time he had trouble Angel would find that it was gun trouble. And there wasn’t a man in the Denniston enclave who wasn’t very, very good.
Three hours later they were on the high divide looking down the scoured canyon on the Palo Blanco. Far behind them and below the town looked like a dirty set of building blocks left scattered by a thoughtless child. Around them tumbled the lower reaches of the mountains that went off in rising masses to Laughlin Peak and Tinzja beyond it. Off on the far side, the mountains went rolling back and upwards towards the Sierra Grande. It was a vast and lonely place, and the ten-man cavalcade looked like a column of ants in its emptiness.
Denniston and Angel rode at the head of the column and Angel asked the leader a question.
‘Why here? Because of the land, man. Here one is truly close to the grandeurs of Nature. Man’s efforts seem pygmy-like compared to them. That’s a healthy thing for any man to have around him. And of course,’ he added with a sly grin, ‘I need isolation. I want it. I cannot succeed without it.’
‘Succeed at what?’
‘All in good time, Mr. Angel,’ was the uncommunicative reply ‘All in good time. Ah, there it is!’
Angel looked down the scarred valley falling away from them. The Palo Blanco canyon was cut deep into the soft stone, its sides high and steep and treacherous on both sides of the pebble-strewn watercourse. Ahead of them the river bed turned back almost on itself, making a finger-like promontory across from which stretched a wooden bridge. Built Army-style, solid and imposing, it reached forty feet across the broken bed of the Palo Blanco. At each end two men patrolled.
On the far side of the river was the fence.
There was a gate facing the end of the bridge, perhaps a quarter of a mile from it. The fence stretched as far as Angel could see from this point — perhaps three or four miles of it, seven feet high, glinting in the sunlight.
‘I can’t see the ranch,’ he said.
‘We have some way to go yet, Mr. Angel,’ Denniston replied. ‘Quite some way.’
He gigged his horse on down the slope and approached the two men at the nearer end of the bridge.
‘Ho!’ one of them shouted. ‘Ho, the guard! It’s the Colonel!’
They rode past the man in phalanx and Angel tried to conceal his surprise at the way in which each man the Colonel passed snapped to impeccable present-arms, slapping his carbine as if it was an Army Springfield and the man passing in review Phil Sheridan himself.
‘Hold it right there, friend,’ a voice growled in Angel’s ear. He turned to see one of the riders, a thin-faced youngster of perhaps twenty whom he’d noted earlier on account of the two tie-down guns the boy had been sporting, idly cocking a six-shooter which was aimed in the general direction of Angel’s midriff.
Angel raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘Nothin’ personal, friend,’ the kid said. ‘The Cunnel just don’t like no one peekin’ over his shoulder when he opens the gates. One of his little funniosities, you might say.’
‘You mean no one can get in or out unless he opens the locks?’
‘That’s what I mean, sunshine. So don’t you go gettin’ no ideas about leavin’ us, unexpected-like.’
‘How do the guards get in and out?’
‘Shucks, that’d be tellin’ now, wouldn’t it?’ grinned the kid. He sheathed the gun as he saw Denniston turn his horse and the gate swing open.
‘Let’s go, Angel,’ he said, and the phalanx moved forward through the gate. Angel covertly checked the fencing as he rode past. It was heavy wire mesh, a quarter of an inch thick, woven into squares about nine inches wide and long. He supposed a man could get through it if he had to.
They had said the perimeter was patrolled, though. He could see no one.
Now they were riding through broken country, the trail rising slightly uphill all the time, and ahead Angel could see a gap between two huge shoulders of rock that formed a natural gateway.
Presently they were level with this, and again he saw the hidden guards snapping to present arms as their leader rode by. Now, below, he saw the Denniston place, but it was like no ranch he had ever seen. It was laid out on the level of a green and fertile mountain plateau
from which every tree and shrub over the height of two feet had been removed, and its rectangular rows of buildings serried on two sides of what looked like a parade ground had the appearance, shape and style of Army buildings. It was not the buildings, though, not the parade ground — if such it was — not yet the bustling figures of many men that he saw which startled Angel. For the place itself lay within yet another fenced area, sentries pacing along its length. As they approached, he saw that there was a gully running laterally across the northern face of the compound where the entrance gate stood flanked by two sentry platforms. Over it ran a footbridge, perhaps six feet wide, with low rails that would not have afforded shelter for a squirrel. As they crossed the bridge, he saw that the gully below was man-made, not natural, and that the smoothed ground bore no trace of a foot or hoof mark.
They rode into the compound, the sentries saluting as Denniston went by, and it was almost exactly like riding into an Army establishment.
Squads of men marched by, not drilling, but obviously under some form of disciplined activity.
Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) Page 5
