Angel started to argue with the old man but he was adamant.
‘I’ll have Oliver with me,’ he said, ‘an’ a couple o’ the boys.’
Austin turned again to Angel, wary politeness in every nuance of his voice when he spoke. ‘You been wounded?’ he said, as if it were only of the slightest interest to him. ‘Uhuh,’ Angel said. ‘Own fault. Nothin’ serious.’
Austin nodded, reassured. ‘I still never got your name,’ he persisted.
‘That’s right,’ Angel said, turning away. He caught the old man’s eye and Perry nodded. Each man had his own way of skinning a cat Besides, he liked the young stranger.
Oliver came back in. ‘We’re about ready, George,’ he said.
Perry nodded. ‘Tell Katy I’ll be back afore sundown,’ he told Angel. ‘Try’n ... well, you know.’
‘Sure,’ Angel said, ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Thanks, son,’ Perry said. He touched Angel’s shoulder as he passed. Angel felt a twinge of pity when he saw the defeat in the old man’s eyes. The sheriff glowered again at the uncommunicative stranger and followed the rancher out into the open yard where the riders were waiting with the horses. Angel stood on the porch and watched them as they rode off, until they finally disappeared behind one of the folds in the land to the south. Then he went down to the corral, where one of Clare’s men had saddled the dun. The clouds were piling high above the Baranquillas. There was a feel of oppression in the air as the thunderclouds grew pregnant over the mountains. The chaparral was silent; no birds moved in the desert air. Angel rode slowly west towards the Perry ranch, trying to ignore the premonition that shadowed him, jeering.
George Perry rode down Fort Street and pulled his horse up to the hitching rail of the general store. Daranga was so familiar to him that he did not really look at it, and in truth, there was not that much to see. Fort Street was the upright of the Injunction on which the town had been built. Front Street was the trail that ran to Lordsburg in the east and Tucson in the west. On the right hand corner of the junction stood Birch’s Alhambra Saloon, a gaudy place built as a direct copy of the Alhambra in Tombstone, which Oliver and his two riders had already gone into. Directly opposite it stood the boarding house, and next to that was the store into which Perry now stamped, slapping the trail dust off his clothes. Martin, who clerked in the store, and kept the books for Birch and Reynolds, came around the counter.
‘Howdy, Keith,’ the old man said. ‘Like to get a few things.’
‘Yessir, Mr. Perry,’ Martin replied. ‘You want to let me have your list?’
‘No need of a list, son,’ Perry told him. ‘I on’y need some fixin’s. Bag o’ flour. Couple o’ cans of Arbuckles. Mebbe I’ll take a few pounds o’ bacon, oh, an’ some o’ that chawin’ tobacco. I run right out.’
‘Sure thing, Mr. Perry,’ Martin said. He wrote down something on a piece of paper, gnawing his pencil and frowning, muttering to himself. Then he looked up and said brightly, ‘That’ll be sixteen-eighty, Mr. Perry.’
Perry nodded absently. ‘Fine,’ he said.
Martin looked at him and kept on looking, and after a moment the old man looked up. ‘What in hell you starin’ at, Keith?’
‘Uh . . . well. ..’ Martin managed.
‘Spit ’er out, boy,’ Perry smiled. ‘I forget somethin’?’
‘Well ... uh . . . yes, Mr. Perry. The . .. money, sir,’ Martin said.
‘Why damn, Keith, you know I ain’t sold no beef this summer,’ Perry said in mildly exasperated tones. ‘Put it on my account like usual.’
‘I ... uh ... I can’t do that, Mr. Perry, sir,’ Martin stammered. ‘Mr. Birch, he done told me.’
‘Told you? Told you what?’ Storm signal fluttered in Perry’s eyes.
‘About credit, Mr. Perry. It’s nothin’ against you personal, sir,’ Martin’s voice was greasy with embarrassment. ‘I ain’t to sell nothing to nobody on credit. Mr. Birch said.’
‘He say nobody, or me in partickler?’ burst out Perry, anger coming strongly into his voice.
‘Oh, no, sir, Mr. Perry, he meant ever’body, I’m right sure he did. No credit, an’ no exceptions, he said.’
‘Damnation in the mornin’!’ swore Perry. ‘He knows I’m good for the money!’
‘Yessir, I know it, Mr. Perry,’ Martin said. ‘Honest, Mr. Perry, it’s nothin’ to do with me. I got to do what Mr. Birch tells me. You know that.’
‘Now, son,’ said Perry, controlling himself and adopting a reasonable tone, ‘you ain’t goin’ to make me ride all the way out to the ranch again for a measly sixteen dollars an’ eighty cents, are you? I’ll pay you next time I come to town.’
Martin wrung his hands, shaking his head simultaneously.
‘You . . . you better talk to Mr. Birch, Mr. Perry,’ he said. ‘I got my orders.’
Perry’s face darkened again. ‘Damned if I don’t do just that,’ he snapped and turned on his heel, pushing his way past the other customers out into the street. He stood for a moment shaking his head in incomprehension at this latest evidence that the world was going mad, and crossed the dusty street on foot towards the Alhambra. He hardly saw the man sprawled in the bentwood chair on the porch, his feet out straight in front of him. As Perry walked towards the swinging doors of the saloon, the man, hat tipped forward on his face as if dozing, moved his feet as though by accident, and Perry stumbled across the man’s legs. He put out a hand to save himself from falling and turned, with the puzzled anger from his encounter across the street brimming over.
‘What the hell...” he began.
‘You’re a mite on the clumsy side, old timer,’ said the man.
His colorless eyes beneath the shaded hat brim bored into Perry’s. The old man grinned, his good temper reasserting itself.
‘Which I’m beggin’ your pardon,’ he said. ‘Damned if I seen you.’ He half turned to go when the man in the chair spoke again, his voice low pitched.
‘You scuffed my boots,’ the man said, mildly, ‘An’ I just had ‘em shined.’
‘Well, like I said, stranger, I’m plumb sorry,’ Perry said, a trace of irritation coming back into his voice. What was wrong with the fool? ‘Pure accident, no more.’ He turned again to go and again the man’s voice nailed him to the spot.
‘Pure stupidity, you mean,’ the man said. Perry wheeled, eyes glinting.
‘Now look, mister,’ he ground out, ‘I done told you I’m sorry, which I am whether it was my fault or not, an’ I’d say there was some doubt as to that, the way you’re sprawled out like a daid frog.’
‘You farmers is all the same,’ the man said in that same mild, quiet voice. ‘Born with two left feet.’
Perry shook his head like a taunted bull. This was incredible!
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who you are or what your problem is, but I got no time to stand here jawin’ about your boots.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a dime, which he tossed at the man. ‘Go get ‘em shined again, if you ever had ‘em shined, which it shore don’t look like.’
‘You calling me a liar?’ Perry looked at the man aghast. Suddenly all trace of indolence had fallen away and the man was on his feet, lambent eyes fixed on Perry, hand brushing the six-gun at his hips. Perry noted clearly in that moment how the butt of the gun was dulled to kill reflection, and then came the chilling realization of what was happening. Fear touched him momentarily but then common sense flooded back. This was foolishness, not a killing matter. He half lifted a hand, as though to reason with the man facing him.
‘Now look here,’ he said, ‘there ain’t no call for this.’ He was surprised to hear his voice; it sounded dry and high pitched. ‘No call at all.’
‘You call me a liar and then say it’s nothing?’ The man smiled, lazily. ‘Well, I’ll listen to your apology.’
Perry drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had no doubt the man was a killer: those eyes told him that. He must not be pushed into making the man move tha
t right hand. The gun looked enormous. Perry’s hands were wet with sweat.
‘All right,’ he managed, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Fine,’ the man said, ‘now there’s the matter of my boots.’
‘Whaaat?’ Perry’s voice was strangled. He cast his eyes around. A few people had stopped on the street, watching the exchange curiously. They edged backwards. What was wrong with them? he thought. There wasn’t going to be any gunplay. Oliver and his boys were only ten yards away in the saloon, for God’s sake!
‘The boots,’ the man explained, patiently, as though to a child. ‘The boots.’
‘The boots,’ Perry said, dully.
‘Right. Good. You messed them up. Agreed?’
Perry nodded. He was speechless. There was nothing he could do. Where was that fat fool Austin? He had told him to meet him at the Alhambra. Where was the man? He thought of calling Oliver’s name. But there was no way he could do it.
‘Well, I’m a reasonable man,’ the gunman went on, ‘we can put it right in no time. All you got to do is lick ‘em clean.’
George Perry looked at his tormentor as if the man had suddenly gone insane. His mouth opened and closed but nothing came out. He was lost and he knew it; the angel of death was sitting on this stranger’s shoulder and waiting for the right moment to reach out and touch him. Perry swallowed the white ball of fear that clogged his throat. He was a brave man.
‘You can go plumb to hell,’ he said. He was astonished at his own calmness. The man smiled like a fiend incarnate.
‘You better be ready to back that up, old man,’ he said softly.
The moment stretched into an eternity. George Perry saw people in the street looking at him. Their faces were white blurs. His tormentor looked as relaxed as a cat in a patch of sunlight. I should shout for Oliver, Perry told himself.
‘Like I thought,’ said the man, ‘full o’ shit.’
Something turned in Perry’s brain and he blinked as he felt the weight of his gun in his palm, drawn without conscious movement before the enormity of what he had done hit him. He stopped in mid-draw, the barrel of the six-gun just clear of the holster. The man facing him had not moved, but the face had changed. The smile had gone, and had been replaced by a mask twisted ferociously with the lust to kill. The empty eyes burned into Perry. He fell back a step. The gun was in his hand. He had not lifted the barrel.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the man.
Perry’s hand twitched as though he would raise the gun and in that instant the man’s hand blurred into movement, harder to see than a kingfisher’s wings. Perry saw the muzzle of the man’s six-gun and he saw the flame. The heavy slug caught him right between the eyes and blasted away the top of his skull, smashing the old man backwards into the rail of the porch, which caught the small of his back. He went over in a tumble of arms and legs, dead long before his body hit the dirt of Front Street. Something viscous streaked the wooden wall of the Alhambra. He never even knew that it had been Larkin who killed him.
The gunman turned to the people in the street.
‘You seen that,’ he rasped, flatly. The empty look of death was still in his eyes. One or two of them nodded, dumbly. They averted their gaze from the wall of the saloon and did not look at the crumpled body.
‘Had his gun out afore I even moved,’ Larkin instructed them.
One man nodded. ‘That’s . . . that’s right, mister.’
‘Tell it that way if anyone asks,’ Larkin said and without another word he shouldered his way past them and crossed the street towards the boarding house, as Oliver came rushing out of the saloon.
Chapter Twelve
Larkin sat like a lizard in the sun.
The bentwood chair was tilted back against the wall of the Alhambra, and his hat was pushed forward until it rested on the tip of his nose. His long legs were crossed in front of him and braced against one of the posts supporting the porch roof. A casual observer would have passed him by, thinking him just another sleepy-minded townsman passing a pleasant morning sunning himself on the porch of the saloon, maybe easing himself into the day after a hard night’s drinking. But the people of Daranga walked a wide half circle around the place where Larkin lounged, for they had all heard now about the killing of George Perry, and they were wise enough in the ways of gunmen to know that the spot Larkin had picked was not accidentally chosen: it commanded a view up Fort Street and along Front Street, and they also knew well that Larkin was about as relaxed as a cat by a mouse hole.
Larkin grinned to himself. Sheep, he thought. They had clustered around the old man’s body like sheep, baa-ing to each other. He had watched through the window of the boarding house as the fat sheriff had panted up Fort Street and the tall thin man called Oliver had harangued him, waving his arms, pointing to the hotel. Austin had talked to some of the people standing around the body. They had nodded and shaken their heads and Larkin had sneered, knowing what they were saying. Sheep. Austin had come to see him, and their conversation had been brief. Self-defense, pure and simple. Everyone had seen it There had been killing grief in the eyes of the tall man, Oliver, but he was not the man to take on Larkin, and the shame of his own fear had made the man almost weep with impotence. So they had finally taken the old man out of the town in a wagon, gone back to the ranch with his body. Now they would be talking up there. They always talked, Larkin thought. He knew their conversation as well as if he had written it out for them to read like a play. It was always the same.
But we can’t let him get away with it, they would be saying.
Somethin’s gotta be done, they’d insist.
The sheriff would tell them there wasn’t anything he could do. Witnesses said it was self defense, he’d tell them. George drew his gun before the other feller even touched his. Half a dozen people saw it.
Well, damnation, someone would say, that ain’t good enough.
And finally, one of them, his friend, or his foreman, or one of them who felt closer to the old man than the others, or one of them who wanted to make himself look big with the daughter would say, well, I ain’t goin’ to leave it like that.
And they would say, tentatively at first, you ain’t going in after him, are you?
The man would say, half-defiantly, well, somebody’s got to.
They would half-heartedly try to talk him out of it. People wanted something done, generally. They just weren’t prepared to do it themselves. So there would also be an element of relief in it: that it wasn’t going to be them who had to go and do something about the death of their friend. So when they tried to talk him out of it, they would only be half-trying.
Then the one who had spoken bravely would waver. He didn’t really want to do it anyway. They had told him how fast the killer was with a gun. He would hope that his friends would talk him out of it.
Which they would now try to do. But not hard enough. So, having put himself on the line, he would not back down now. Nobody would say anything if he did, of course. But he would have compromised his own bravery and he would not be able to do that. He would feel he had to do it. He would even begin to believe he could do it after they told him how noble and brave he was.
And then they would say, maybe we ought to come with you.
He wouldn’t let them, of course. He would tell them there were some things a man had to do alone. And they would nod, sagely, as if this were some eternal verity, and stand silent as he saddled up and headed for town.
Morons, thought Larkin. Sheep. You panic them with a flap of the arm, a shout. They see one of their number run and they all run. When the wolf attacks they cluster together and bleat. Together they could kill him, but they have no leaders. Which is why they are sheep. So now, these fools in the high chaparral; they will send in the best man they have and I’ll kill him like a sheep and then they will have nothing left. And that will be that. There was no sense of anticipation in Larkin. He did not relish the killing. They were cogs in a piece of delicately ba
lanced machinery. The Man had told him what to do, and briefly, why. He wanted those ranchers out of the high chaparral, and that was fine with Larkin. The Man paid well for what he wanted, and Larkin’s job was to do it well. That way there would always be more jobs, and the money to spend time in places as far away. from this ass-end of the world as possible. He thought of KayCee and St. Louis, and that time in New Orleans with the Creole girl. She had swung her hips at him in a place on Bourbon Street and he had danced with her until her movements had felt as if they were scalding his groin. He smiled slowly in the soft sunlight and remembered afterwards with her. That was the kind of thing a man needed. And this was a way of getting it. What was that thing he’d read? If God hadn’t meant the wolves to eat the sheep he wouldn’t have made the sheep. Something like that. It was damned good: exactly right Larkin eased his back in the bentwood chair and let his breath out slowly. The sheep didn’t even have to be chased: they would come, haltingly perhaps, but they would come to the slaughter. He knew that as well as he knew it was morning. He tipped his hat forward again and the smile touched his lips. All he had to do was wait.
Chapter Thirteen
Angel eased the dun to a halt on a slight rise north of Daranga. Below him he saw the unlovely huddle of the town, torpid in the blasting heat of the summer sun. It looked like any of a hundred other frontier towns Angel had seen: buildings of adobe or wood or both, with low adobe walls or slatted fences between the lots on which they stood. Two rows of buildings down the straight line of Fort Street, ending in a crossing line on the south side of town.
‘Well, I see the dump,’ Angel said to himself, ‘but where’s the town?’
He pushed the horse forward into a walk, moving down the trail that became Fort Street at the edge of the town, one or two private houses with picket fences, scrub gardens, then larger buildings: a restaurant, with the word ‘Eats’ on a swinging board over the door. A livery stable; a small adobe with a hipped roof and the sign ‘Sheriff painted on a wooden board above the doorway. The store, and beyond it the hotel, nothing more than a six-room shack, somewhat more sturdily built than other buildings on the street. The Alhambra on the corner with its ornate balcony and curlicued woodwork. They’d told him it was a copy of the gaudy palace built over at Tombstone, full of polished wooden bars and plate glass mirrors. Angel let the horse move easily, his eyes checking off faces on the street, letting himself be seen. Strangers in a town like Daranga were soon noted. He wanted to let the word percolate through. He reined the horse in outside a building which had a high flat false front and a shaded porch roof along the street side. There were no windows on the street, just a dark shaded door standing wide open. He went in: this was the saloon they had told him about, although no sign outside advertised the fact. They called it ‘The Indian’s’ and he soon discovered why.
Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) Page 7
