Hang Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #4)

by Frederick H. Christian

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  Frank Angel had walked right into a whipsawing, in spite of all his Justice Department training. But he just couldn’t sit in the Silver King and watch while the town marshal cold-cocked a defenseless kid.

  So Angel shot the gun out of the marshal’s hand.

  And as a result, he had to face the wildest, hottest gun battle of his career … an exploding, firebombed jail … in a town that had been run too long by greed and ruled by terror … a town where law and order were ridiculed, and justice was just a rumor.

  HANG ANGEL!

  ANGEL 4

  First published by Sphere Books in 1975.

  Copyright © 1975, 2013 by Frederick H. Christian

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: August 2013

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2013 by Westworld Designs

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  A Few Words About Frank Angel …

  There really was a Frank Angel!

  His full name was Frank Warner Angel. He served for a number of years as Special Investigator for the Department of Justice, directly responsible to the Attorney General of the United States, Charles Devens. There is abundant documentary evidence about Angel’s career in the files of the State Department and the Department of Justice, now lodged in the National Archives in Washington, Record Group 60. Among Frank Angel’s more important investigations were the murder of John Henry Tunstall in Lincoln County on February 18, 1878—an act which sparked off the Lincoln County War and the legendary career of Tunstall’s employee, Billy the Kid—and the venal activities of Samuel B. Axtell, Governor of New Mexico, which resulted in the removal from office of that worthy in the same year. (Axtell was replaced by General Lew Wallace, author of Ben Hur, in September 1878.)

  Frederick H. Christian came across Angel’s name during his research for a documented history of the Lincoln County Wars, which was published under his real name, Frederick Nolan. As an authority of many years’ standing on the American West, he decided to create a series of Westerns which would, like his later fiction, have a solid and believable foundation in fact. This was the genesis of the series of which this book is part. Having traveled throughout every state in the West, the author knew his locales and his history intimately, and put that knowledge into the books.

  Also, Mr. Nolan was tired of reading Westerns in which superhuman heroes used guns in ways that anyone who knew anything about frontier firearms knew was impossible. So he set out to authenticate not only his hero’s weapons but those of all the other characters. If real-life characters appeared in the novels (and some do), he went to great pains to ensure that the descriptions were contemporary and accurate. The Abilene which Frank Angel visits is the Abilene that really existed, not the figment of someone’s imagination: Mr. Nolan has not created his Westerns by reading someone else’s. In his books the Barbary Coast lives again, and so do Virginia City and post-Civil War Washington and dusty Denver in the late 1870s.

  Here are exciting stories of high adventure, written early in his career by a writer now best known for his internationally acclaimed novels, The Mittenwald Syndicate and The Algonquin Project (filmed by MGM, and starring Sophia Loren, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Max von Sydow, Patrick McGoohan, and John Cassavetes). For all the fame and fortune accrued from bestsellerdom and major filming, Mr. Nolan is still quite proud of his work as a writer of Westerns, and will continue to produce them “for the legion of readers who—like Frederick H. Christian—thought no one would ever write them again. . . .”

  Chapter One

  Joe Fischer was a handsome sort of a fellow.

  This was his own opinion, of course. A disinterested spectator might have pointed out that though the boy’s features were good, skin tanned and smooth, body slim and wiry, hands supple and long-fingered, eyes clear and healthy, there was something weak about the set of the mouth, something shifty about the way the eyes returned your glance, something not quite square. Maybe it was just pride. Joe Fischer was as full of pride as a bull is full of wind at corn time.

  Right now he had it in mind to do a little courtin’, and he was duded up appropriately. He was wearing a new blue shirt and Levi pants which, if not new, were at least clean. With his boots shined and spurs jingling, Joe Fischer rode across the prairie tall in the saddle, admiring the shadow his passing figure threw on the ground, thinking how pleased Susie Webb would be to see him.

  He’d taken the mountain pass road that morning, the one that curved up into the lower foothills of the Arabelas to the east of the Fischer ranch and then made a wide loop south, crossing the Rio Abajo on its way to join the main Las Vegas road. The Webb ranch was in a shaded stand of timber alongside the river; he could see the place as he came down the long crest of the hill. One of these days he’d marry the Webb girl and take over running it. Kick her snot-nosed brother out for a start. It would open the whole range to Fischer stock, which would make Ed happy too. Joe Fischer grinned. That wasn’t the reason he fancied being married to Susie Webb.

  He stopped at the edge of a trickling creek that joined the Rio Abajo, slicking down his long black hair with water, blowing into a cupped hand to make sure his breath was sweet. Then he swung back aboard the paint, reining sharply back to bring the animal’s head up as he cantered up the slope towards the house, a long rising cloud of dust marking his passage.

  As he hitched the paint to the rail in front of the porch, the Mexican woman who acted as a housekeeper for the Webbs came around the side of the house, a wicker basket full of half-dried laundry beneath her arm. If she was pleased to see Joe Fischer, her face didn’t show it.

  “Howdy, there, Deluvina,” Fischer said, smiling ingratiatingly. “Miss Susie about the place?”

  Deluvina nodded, her dark eyes unfriendly and watchful.

  “She in the house?”

  Again the unfriendly movement of the head. Damn the bitch! Pumped full of that stiff-necked greaser haughtiness. Her son was the same: acted like he figured he was as good as a white man.

  “I’ll go say hello,” Fischer said. “You get on with what you’re doin’, no need to disturb you.”

  “Si, senor,” Deluvina said, bowing her head. She left on cat feet, and Joe Fischer cursed at the feeling she had managed to impart: of having permitted him to go inside. Permitted him, Joe Fischer, to do something!

  He pushed open the door and called Susie Webb’s name. She came to the doorway of the big room at the far end of the corridor, her fresh young face bright with an anticipation that faded to suspicion when she saw who her visitor was.

  “Oh, hello, Joe,” she said. “What do you want?”

  The way she said it made Joe Fischer angry. It wasn’t the kind of welcome he’d been imagining all the way across the mountains, nothing like. The fact that Susie Webb cordially disliked him had never occurred to Joe. He put her coolness down to woman’s wiles: just her way of leading him on, seeing if he had the fire to melt the iceberg. Well, he did, he assured himself.

  “Just thought I’d ride over to see you, Susie,” Joe said, pushing the door closed. “How’ve you been?”

  “Pretty well,” Susie said, “Joe, I was just getting ready to
go out.”

  “Aw, no need to dash off, is there. I was figgerin’ on settin’ and talkin’ awhile.”

  “No, I promised to meet Dick, bring his lunch up to the north past—”

  Something in Joe Fischer’s eyes made her pause just for a fleeting moment.

  No, she told herself. “Pasture,” she repeated.

  “He’s working that far out?” Joe asked artlessly.

  “Yes,” Susie said briskly, “so you see I’ve ...”

  She made to walk by him in the narrow corridor but he put his palm flat against the wall, his arm effectively barring her way.

  “Oh, Joe, stop that,” she said, pushing ineffectually at his arm. It was a harmless moment. But she was too close, and much too pretty. Her blue eyes sparked with impatience, and she turned, pushing against Joe’s chest with both hands. He caught her arms in his hands, pulling her against him. She smelled of soap. Like fresh cut grass, he thought, bending his head down to kiss her, pinioning the girl against him.

  “Joe,” she panted. “You stop this now. Get away from me.”

  “Aw,” he said, his head pursuing her dodging lips. “Just one li’l ol’ kiss, Susie. Come on, you ain’t foolin’ me none. You know you want it.”

  “Joe,” the girl said. Something in her voice stopped him for a second and he stared at her, surprised.

  “Joe,” she repeated. “Let go of me or I’ll scream.”

  “Now I know you’re givin’ me the runaround,” he grinned. “Ain’t nobody gonna come if you scream.” He pulled her tight, wrapping his arms around her, thrusting himself against her. And she screamed—screamed until Joe managed to get a hand across her mouth, stifling the shocking noise, his eyes bugging with astonishment at her treachery.

  “What you want to do that for?” he said. “What in the hell you want to do that for?”

  He took his hand away and the girl screamed again, and without even thinking Joe hit her with the flat of his hand. Susie Webb went back on her heels, tears of shock in her eyes. She banged against the wall, spinning, and sat down on the floor as the door burst open and Deluvina’s fifteen-year-old son Pedro ran in, a pistol in his hand.

  Joe Fischer still wasn’t thinking properly, but he saw the gun and he reacted instantaneously. His hand flickered down towards the holstered six-gun at his side, faster than the eye could follow. The heavy boom of the weapon in the confined space of the hallway was like the sound of a cannon, and the slug took the kid right below the sternum, blowing his heart apart, picking up the slight body as if it had been a rag doll and hurling it in a tattered heap ten yards outside the open door. Joe Fischer stood, his mouth open, the gun smoking in his hand, only just becoming aware of the enormity of what he had done. He didn’t even hear Susie Webb come up off the floor, pure blinded rage propelling her, landing like a demented hellcat on Joe Fischer’s back, her hands clawed like talons, raking his skin. As her nails dug into him, Fischer reacted with a bellowing roar, shaking Susie off his back as if she had been a small child. She sprawled to one side as he whirled on her; then she went for his face again, desperation in her eyes, the breath whistling through her lips. Her bright blonde hair had come unfastened from the ribbon which tied it back and it swung long and loose.

  “Stop it!” Fischer shouted, grabbing at her, keeping his face averted so that she could not reach him with her nails. He felt, rather than saw her knee coming up, and then the sharp pain of the wicked rising blow into the groin hit him with a numbing shock. The rage in his eyes now made the girl fall back in terror and Joe came after her, grabbing for her shoulder, nothing in his mind except the intention to punish, to hurt, to act. The flimsy cotton blouse tore as the girl pulled away, trying for the door of the bedroom behind her. It ripped from collar to waist and Susie instinctively clasped her hands over herself to cover her nakedness. Joe Fischer tore her hands away with a rough gesture, feasting his eyes on her lissome body. He pinned her against the wall with his left hand, pawing her with the other. The girl stood stock-still, her eyes wide and terrified as some forest creature trapped by a merciless predator.

  “Joe,” she managed. “No, Joe. Don’t do this. Don’t do this, Joe.”

  He started to fumble with his pants and she screamed again, bucking against him, making enough room to move, to try to get to the door. Now Joe Fischer growled with anger and hit the girl, his clenched fist catching her at the nape of the neck. She fell to the floor, on her knees, head hanging, long hair flowing like a golden waterfall to the rough boards. Sobbing, she tried to writhe away from the reaching hands, but Fischer dragged her to her feet. This time he ripped the rest of her blouse away and lurched against her. His hands tugged at her skirt, and then under it. She screamed, the last despairing sound of a drowning soul. Then Fischer hit her again, and her knees buckled. There was a roaring in her head, and her eyes would not focus. And then he was on her.

  Chapter Two

  He wasn’t much more than a kid, but he had a gun. That made him a man, for all that he looked no more than twenty. Fresh-faced, clear-eyed, dressed in faded denim pants and a blue work shirt, his boots scuffed and worn, there wasn’t anything about him to set him apart from any dozen kids you’d see in any dozen towns like this one except for the one thing: that huge Navy Colt held in his right hand.

  “Fischer!” he yelled. His voice was tight with held anger. He stood legs spraddled in the middle of the dusty single street of the Crossing, thumb curled over the spur of the pistol hammer, the seven-inch barrel pointing just upwards of the horizontal: the personification of a man spoiling for a fight. Which, agreed the few onlookers who’d seen him boil into town scattering panicked chickens and somnolent noonday dogs, was just about exactly what he was. So they had sought flimsy shelter behind the corners of buildings, inside windows around whose edges they now peered, of doorways from whose depths they squinted, careful not to expose any portion of their own bodies. Meanwhile the kid out in the flat yellow shadowless sunshine stood glaring at the doorway of the saloon as if it were a living thing so treacherous its every movement must be watched.

  “Fischer!” he yelled again. “Come out here and crawl, you sonofabitch!” Silence. You couldn’t hear the sharply indrawn breaths of every man in town who heard the challenge. No one had ever used that kind of talk with one of the Fischers.

  “Fischer!” the boy shouted. “Do I have to come in and drag you out?”

  Still not a sound. The watchers up and down the street waited breathlessly for the next development. If the kid was aware of the eyes riveted upon him, he gave no sign of it. He stood there in the street waiting, as if watching some clock that only he could see.

  Almost as if he’d counted ten to himself, he nodded. He stuck the Navy Colt into a dog-eared Army flap-holster cut away to expose the trigger-guard and hammer, and then stepped up on to the porch of Luskam’s Silver King and pushed through the batwings and went inside.

  Before the doors had quit swinging, the men who had been watching from the safety of nearby doorways scurried across the empty street to find a better vantage point by one of the windows of the Silver King, or near the doorposts of the batwings through which the kid had just entered the place. There wasn’t a man in the town who wasn’t anxious to see what the outcome of the kid’s reckless challenge would be. This was Big Ed Fischer’s town. It operated under Fischer’s rule, according to Fischer law. Anyone challenging that rule or those laws had better be ready to die for his beliefs.

  “Ain’t that young Dick Webb?” muttered one grizzled oldster, shoving and poking as he tried to get enough of a sight of the goings-on to have something to talk about afterwards.

  “Sure is, Dad,” said the man standing in front of him. “See for yourself.”

  The old-timer scuttled into the space the taller man had made, peering into the gloomy interior of the Silver King.

  “So ‘tis,” whispered the old man in surprise. “What in the hell’s bitin’ him?”

  “Search me, Dad,” said the
big man. “But whatever it is, he sure as hell looks about ready to bite it back!”

  He wasn’t exaggerating. Dick Webb was standing in the center of the long room, which had about a dozen men in it. He had eyes for only one: Joe Fischer.

  Fischer looked as if he’d have given a sack of money to be anyplace but where he was. His eyes wouldn’t meet those of the boy; instead they flickered restlessly from face to face, as if seeking assistance. But nobody moved. Nobody showed any kind of expression at all. The look on Dick Webb’s face wasn’t the kind that made a man think butting in on his scrap would make sense. Anyway, nobody was too averse to the possibility of seeing one of the high-and-mighty Fischers taken down a couple of notches. As long as they weren’t seen to be associated with whoever did it. So they stayed perfectly still in their seats, ready to hit the floor if and when the shooting started. Stray bullets killed a man just as dead as carefully aimed ones.

  “Webb,” Fischer said, raising his hands away from his sides. “I ain’t goin’ to fight with you.” His voice was careful, edged with fear, the voice of a man afraid to precipitate the wrath of the gods.

  “By God you are!” gritted Dick Webb. “Or as sure as God’s my judge I’m going to shoot little pieces off of you until you fall apart!” Fischer lifted his arms even further up; they were almost extended horizontally away from his body, a clear signal that he had no intention of using the gun in the holster at his side.

  “I’m not goin’ to draw,” he confirmed, his voice shaking. “You people are witnesses. I’m not drawin’, Dick!”

  “Pity,” the kid said. His voice was almost conversational, reasonable.

  For a moment Fischer was fooled by it and the tension went out of him like air from a balloon but even as it did he froze, hardly breathing. The kid had flipped the battered Navy Colt out of the cutaway holster and in one sweet smooth movement he lined up the hexagonal barrel, its bore gaping unwaveringly at a spot in the center of Fischer’s forehead. “Reckon I’ll just have to shoot you down like a mad dog,” Dick Webb said dispassionately. “Which about describes you, anyway.”