Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5)

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘Do it,’ came a voice from the back of the room. Sheridan hadn’t moved, but his voice left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the barrels of the Greener were presently pointing at Johnny Evans. Evans shuffled toward Howie, the grin still hanging on his face.

  ‘Unbuckle your gunbelt, Johnny,’ Howie said.

  He let Johnny Evans think about it, and about Sheridan back there with the shotgun. Evans unbuckled the belt, and it thumped on the sawdusted boards.

  ‘Making a habit of this,’ Howie said, as if to himself. He didn’t look like he had a fast move in him, but the right hand flickered down and came up with the gun in it, and he hit Johnny Evans across the side of the head, just above the ear. Every man in the saloon winced at the solid clunk the gun barrel made. Johnny Evans went down on his knees as if in prayer before Howie, and Howie pushed him to one side. The Flying H man sprawled in the sawdust, and Howie kicked his boots.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, as if he’d been seeking something.

  He turned to face the monte table where Danny Johnston was sitting. ‘Danny,’ he said gravely. ‘Let me see you boys on your feet.’ He still had the gun in his hand; there was a fleck of blood on the barrel.

  Danny Johnston looked at the gun and then into Howie’s face. ‘Howie,’ he said. ‘Allus figgered you’d prob’ly go loco one day, an’ now you’ve finally gone and done ‘er. I’m proposin’ us boys chip in an’ buy you a vacation in one o’ them fancy rest-cure places they got back East in St Lou. Whatcha say, boys?’

  ‘Looks like he could use one,’ the man on his right said.

  ‘Funny, funny,’ Howie Cade said. The backhand slap of the pistol barrel across the bridge of the man’s nose was almost negligent, but everyone in the saloon heard the bones go as the man cartwheeled backward over the table and hit the wall with a crash that shook the building. He slid down to the floor, his face a bright mask of blood, and Danny Johnston stared at Howie as if he’d just grown horns and a forked tail.

  ‘You wouldn’t, of course, have heard that someone tried to bushwhack Sheridan down by the depot,’ he said conversationally to Johnston. ‘An’ killed poor old Nathan Ridlow in the doing of it? Would you?’

  ‘Uh. . . .’ Johnston said. The man on his left looked indignant.

  ‘What the hell is this, anyway, Howie?’ he growled.

  ‘We want to talk to the man who came in here after Ridlow got it,’ Howie said. ‘He’s probably got a hole in his hide someplace, too.’

  ‘Well, sheet, Howie,’ Danny Johnston said, placatingly, the color back in his face now. ‘Ain’t nobody come in here a good half-hour before you an’ the marshal bust in here.’

  ‘That’s the truth,’ his sidekick said. He was a tall, burly rider whom Howie recognized vaguely, having seen him around town a few times.

  ‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass, Harvey,’ he said conversationally. He moved maybe three inches nearer the Flying H rider, and the man paled, backing up.

  ‘Howie,’ he said hastily. ‘You beat up on me, ain’t nothin’ I can do with Sheridan over there holdin’ a scattergun on me. But you’re off your cock if you think anybody come in here!’

  ‘Who seen this guy come in here, anyway?’ demanded Danny Johnston.

  Howie just looked at him. Danny Johnston laughed in his face.

  ‘Sheet, Howie you really got the DTs this time. Johnny, maybe you better give Howie here a stiff drink afore he sees anythin’ else!’

  The jest was rough, but it was enough to take the cork out of the bottled tension of the saloon. The Flying H boys let loose. They laughed easy at first and then louder and louder until they were all hooting, slapping their legs, pointing at Howie.

  Sheridan stood there and watched Howie taking it, watched him beginning to crumble. He looked as though he was shrinking inside his tattered clothes as the Flying H boys gave him the razzle-dazzle. And there wasn’t a single solitary damned thing Dan Sheridan could do about it: Howie had to make the play, if there was going to be one.

  The deputy stood there looking at his tormentors, hearing the racket of their jeers like the scorn of angels inside his head. He pleaded silently with Sheridan to step in, stop them; and knew that Sheridan would not move until he gave him a signal. Howie could not do that, he could not finally show Sheridan that he had broken, and yet he knew that if they didn’t stop jeering, if they didn’t stop, he’d have to, have to . . . his eyes shuttled sideways and fixed on the amber glitter of the bottles on the shelves behind Johnny Gardner. His shoulders slumped: my God, what I’d give for a drink, he thought.

  Danny Johnston saw it, and he grinned. He fished into the watch pocket of his pants and slid out a silver dollar, which he flipped up in the air and then caught. Howie Cade looked at it.

  ‘Here,’ Johnston said, tossing it toward the deputy. ‘Have a drink, bum!’

  The dollar fell uncaught to the floor, spun on the boards, lay still. Howie Cade looked at Danny Johnston, and hate surged into his eyes and then died, stillborn. He looked at the dollar on the floor. There were tears in his eyes, tears of pure shame.

  Sheridan cursed silently, knowing he would have to move now. He’d seen old fighting bulls pulled down by wolves and knew they worked the same way the Flying H boys were working now. The baying pack, confusing the bull, taunting him, tiring him, confusing him, exposing his lack of speed. The false attacks, the small snapping wounds. And then the moment when the old bull realized that all he could do was die, and something went out of him like a signal which the wily wolves knew, recognized, sensed. Then they attacked in earnest.

  Howie still stood there in the middle of the saloon with his head down, and his eyes fixed on the floor. He looked up at Sheridan, and Dan Sheridan’s heart leaped. Whatever was in Howie’s stance, it wasn’t in his eyes any more. There was a fierce, exultant light in them.

  ‘I don’t feel good,’ Howie mumbled, shielding his face from the Flying H riders. ‘Maybe I will take a drink.’

  He walked over to the bar, moving diagonally so that he was out in the center opposite the big mirror behind Johnny Gardner, who was reaching for the whiskey bottle when Howie moved.

  So unexpected, so sudden was the explosion of action that nobody had a chance to even move. Howie had leaned forward on the bar, and then he whirled around, the six-gun in his hand coming up and booming once, twice, three times, almost faster than you could count. He was poised like an athlete in a drawing, right knee slightly bent, right arm rigid with the six-gun smoking in it, eyes fixed on the second door in the quartet of them on the balcony above the saloon. There were two jagged holes in the wood of the door where Howie’s slugs had blasted through the flimsy wood, and the man who had been standing behind the door holding it ajar came out almost as if someone had shoved him from behind, bent forward as though he was going to butt some invisible foe in the belly, head on into the balustrade and over it in a splintering crash to land on one of the tables below. The table collapsed in a huge noise, men scrambling aside, away from the spread-eagled body lying in the middle of the wreckage.

  Very slowly, as though afraid to let out his breath too fast, Howie Cade straightened up. He looked at Dan Sheridan and Sheridan nodded. Howie went over and turned the dead man’s face up. He had never seen the man before. There were two bullet holes in the center of the man’s chest, one low on the right, the other higher on the left. There was also a raggedy bandage around the man’s upper arm. It was soaked with fresh blood. There was straw clinging to the rough woolen shirt and caked horse manure on the man’s boots.

  ‘Anybody know this man’s name?’ Howie said. His voice was harsh.

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘Looks like Hugess is importing cheap gunslingers by the dozen,’ Howie said.

  He went back across the saloon to where Danny Johnston and the tall rider called Harvey were still standing, eyes wide. While they watched him, he punched the empty shells out of his six-gun and reloaded it, then deliberately, almost showily, put the
gun back in the holster.

  ‘Saw nobody come in, right?’ he said musingly to Harvey.

  Harvey said nothing, but his eyes moved right, left, right, looking for help which wasn’t going to arrive.

  Howie slapped the man’s face. Not hard. Lightly, cuffing him almost affectionately.

  ‘My, but you’re a cheeky one,’ he said dreamily. Then his voice changed.

  ‘You cross my path again in this town, Harvey, and I’ll cut you down,’ he snapped. ‘Sabe!’

  The man nodded sullenly. Danny Johnston said nothing. Howie turned his attention toward the Flying H foreman. He picked up the whiskey that Johnston had been drinking.

  ‘Now let me buy you a drink,’ he said, and tossed the contents of the glass into Johnston’s face. Johnston snorted and pawed at his face as the fiery liquid burned his eyes, cursing and spluttering as Howie Cade stepped back and let his fingers curl above the butt of the six-gun he had so showily holstered a few moments ago.

  The message was plain, and every man in the saloon held his breath. Danny Johnston pawed his eyes dry and looked at Howie. He looked at everyone else and then he shook his head.

  ‘Un-hunh,’ he said. ‘Not me, Mary Ann.’

  ‘Like I figgered,’ Howie said, turning away with a sneer. ‘Gutless.’ He turned his back completely on the Flying H man and looked over at Sheridan.

  ‘Anything else?’ he said, his head high, proud.

  ‘Guns,’ Sheridan reminded him.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Howie said. He looked at Johnny Gardner. ‘Every Flying H man in the place, Johnny,’ he told the saloonkeeper. ‘Get his guns and bring them over to the jail.’

  ‘Listen,’ Gardner said. ‘This ain’t no fight of mine. I—’

  ‘Get started,’ Howie said, and there was a cold flatness in his voice that made Gardner jump. He came around the bar in a hurry and started lifting six-guns from the holsters of the Flying H boys.

  ‘You know you’re wastin’ your time, Sheridan,’ Danny Johnston said. ‘We can get more guns.’

  Johnny Gardner had an armful of handguns. He looked at Sheridan.

  ‘Over to the jail, Johnny,’ Sheridan said. ‘Leave them there.’

  Howie Cade was eyeing Danny Johnston thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we ought to make him put his hand on the bar,’ he said, worlds of meaning in his voice. ‘What do you say, Dan?’

  Sheridan pursed his lips, as though thinking it over. Danny Johnston’s eyes got that nervous edgy look back in them. Small beads of cold sweat started out on his upper lip.

  ‘It’s a thought,’ Sheridan said, letting Johnston sweat for a while. Then he shook his head. ‘No. Not worth the effort.’ He jerked the shotgun toward the doors. ‘Get the hell out of town, Danny. Tell Hugess his plan backfired. Tell him next time not to send boys on a man’s work.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Danny Johnston snapped, angrily. ‘Don’t you fret none.’

  ‘Haul your freight!’ Sheridan snapped back, patience running thin. He jerked the Greener again, and Danny Johnston paled and backed off. That damned gun would blow a man clear into the next county. He headed out of the saloon with the Flying H boys trailing behind him, and Sheridan and Howie Cade went to the door and watched them rocket off down Front Street, raising a cloud of sifting dust that fell slowly back and down as the riders thundered across the railroad tracks.

  ‘Damnfool grandstand play,’ Sheridan muttered. He turned toward Howie Cade, who was grinning at him. ‘What the hell’s so funny?’

  ‘I was just going to say I’d buy you a drink,’ Howie said.

  Sheridan smiled. ‘I reckon I’d enjoy one. Beer, Johnny!’

  Johnny Gardner was just coming back from his errand to the jailhouse. He scuttled behind the bar, sweating from the exertion of carrying all that iron across the street on the double.

  ‘Two beers comin’ up!’ he echoed automatically.

  Sheridan and his deputy clinked glasses and drank deeply, enjoying the cold chill of the liquid. Then the marshal put his glass down and turned to face his deputy.

  ‘Tell me just one thing,’ he said. ‘How the hell did you know that fellow was up there?’

  ‘Hell,’ Howie grinned. ‘When I looked down at that dollar on the floor, I seen a blob o’ blood big as a dime, and another a few feet away and others that made a line goin’ straight for the stairs. There was only the one door open up there. He had to be behind it, watching everything.’

  ‘You sure as hell took a long chance on that,’ Sheridan said.

  ‘Suppose so,’ Howie admitted. ‘Never occurred to me anyone else’d be up there.’

  Sheridan shook his head in resignation. He didn’t want to bring Howie down off his high; the deputy hadn’t felt this good in a couple of years, and it would be a poor friend who drew his attention to the odds against his having been right when he blasted away at that open door.

  ‘You want another beer, Howie?’ he asked.

  Johnny Gardner bustled over as he heard Sheridan’s words, anxious to be of service, rubbing his hands dry and reaching for the glasses. Howie Cade waved him away with a lordly gesture.

  ‘Beer?’ he said, scornfully. ‘Beer? You think I want to spoil this feeling with beer? You got any champagne, Johnny?’

  ‘He has,’ Sheridan said, taking Howie’s elbow and steering him toward the door. ‘But you can’t afford it on your pay!’

  ‘Shucks, Dan,’ Howie was saying as he got bum-rushed through the batwings by the marshal. ‘I thought you were buyin’.’

  Johnny Gardner watched them go with his mouth hanging open. They acted like men who didn’t have a damned care in the world.

  ‘Goddamned fools,’ he snarled to the empty bar.

  Chapter Seven

  It was only a small sound.

  Most men wouldn’t have heard it, certainly men as deep in sleep as Angel had been before the sound was made. But Frank Angel wasn’t most men. Long ago, when they’d first put him through all the punishing training courses of the Department in Washington, one of the things he’d been taught was to sleep with one ear cocked. They had a very simple way of teaching it, and once learned, the lesson was never forgotten. They worked him like a plow horse all day and then when he collapsed, out like a light, in the barrack-like dormitory, they let him sleep. Somewhere between lights out and the gray death-light of pre-dawn, someone would eel into the room on soundless feet, and then, with a scream to wake the dead of an earlier century, empty a bucket of icy water on the naked belly of the sleeping man. After three or four times, a man started to listen, without knowing he was doing it, listening in his sleep for the soft slither of a foot on board, the slow creak of a quietly opened door, the faint rustle of clothing when an arm is raised. He started to react fast, to come awake without the involuntary start with which most people awaken, without the need for the long seconds of focusing the eyes, alert and poised with one hand already on the six-gun beneath the pillow.

  ‘Anyone’s in your room while you’re asleep sure as hell ain’t there to gaze on yore fair white body,’ the instructor had told him. ‘By the time you find out why he is there, likely as not he’ll have put a foot of steel in your belly. So when you know someone’s there and where he’s at –move!’

  He came up off the bed in a very fast, rolling movement, on his feet and crouched with the six-gun cocked and ready, whirling to face the figure by the door. She grinned.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘And good morning to you!’

  She was tall for a women, Angel saw, five eight or nine at least and strongly, if slenderly built. Her hair was a deep, burnished copper color, and her eyes were as green as spring grass. She wore a dark blue work shirt tucked into corduroy Levis, embroidered Indian moccasins on her feet. Her body was good. In fact, he realized, she was quite beautiful.

  ‘Uh,’ he said, lowering the gun, suddenly aware that he was bone naked.

  If it bothered the woman she didn’t show it.

  ‘I’ll get you some hot water to shave
with,’ she said tactfully and went out of the room before he could reply. He threw the six-gun on the bed and snatched for his pants, cursing softly under his breath. By the time she knocked on the door he was dressed. She came in and put the earthenware jug and bowl on the washstand. It had blue forget-me-nots on it. Steam spiraled upward from the jug.

  ‘I’m Sherry Hardin,’ she said. Her voice was low-pitched, warm-toned. ‘I own the hotel.’

  ‘Glad to know you,’ Angel said.’ Mind if I ask you a question? What—?’

  ‘—was I doing in your room?’ She smiled. ‘Making sure you had a razor and stuff. Dan Sheridan said he wasn’t sure whether you needed one and sent one of his over.’

  ‘You weren’t—’

  ‘Here last night when Dan brought you in? I know,’ she said. ‘I was with Janet Mahoney - her husband owns the general store. One of her kids has whooping cough. I didn’t get back until quite late. Is everything all right - the room, I mean?’

  ‘Fine,’ Angel said. ‘By the way, where can I—’

  ‘Get breakfast? Right downstairs. We’ve cooked you up something special. Heard how you helped out Dan Sheridan.’

  ‘One other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You ever let anyone finish a sentence?’

  She smiled. ‘Not if I can help it. Dan’s always telling me about that.’

  ‘You think he’s pretty special, don’t you?’

  She blushed slightly at his direct question but her eyes didn’t shift away from his. She pushed back a straying lock of the copper hair from her forehead and smiled almost challengingly.

  ‘I’m very fond of Dan,’ she said. ‘He’s like a brother to me.’

  He didn’t answer that one. When a woman tells a man that another man’s like a brother to her, she’s also telling him lots of other things.

  ‘I’m going to get me a shave,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his bristled jaw ruefully. ‘Sure as hell need one.’ She didn’t take the hint.

  ‘I’ll watch,’ she said, unabashed. ‘I like to watch a man shaving. Gives me goose-bumps.’

  He thought he’d better not reply to that one either. Sherry Hardin wasn’t only a very beautiful woman, she also clearly didn’t give a hoot in hell for what was commonly called convention. He unrolled the soft leather kit he always carried with him, containing a razor, shaving brush and soap, steel mirror, leather strop, stiff nail brush, soap, scissors, needles, thread, spare buttons, small ball of twine, all neatly packed away in pockets and loops on the flat leather square. For once, unexpectedly, he found himself feeling like a pernickety old maid and he asked her a question, working on the shaving soap with the brush to get a good lather.