Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2)

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘I ain’t about to ask you how all that happened,’ he said, ‘but you ought to be takin’ it easy for a week or so.’

  T don’t have the time,’ Angel said. ‘Can you put a bandage or something on good and tight? Makes it easier to ride.’

  ‘Ride? You could open that thing up like the Grand Canyon, you start ridin’, cowboy. What’s up? Don’t your outfit pay you if you don’t work?’

  ‘I never asked. Get going with that bandaging, will you?’

  The barber shook his head as he set about his task. ‘Durn fool saddle tramps,’ he muttered. ‘Walkin’ around full o’ holes, but will they do what the doc says, will they... ?’

  He tucked in the end of the cotton bandage, and patted it affectionately with the air of a proud craftsman.

  ‘That feels good,’ Angel told him. ‘Ought to hold fine.’

  ‘Cripes, cowboy,’ the barber said, ‘that must be some rough outfit you work for.’

  Angel grinned. ‘It is at that,’ he said. He invited the barber to share the rest of his beer, sending the same small Mexican boy out for some more. Angel gave him the money to buy a shirt and when he had drunk about another pint of beer and put on the gaudy Mexican nightmare the boy brought back, he felt refreshed and strong again.

  Five minutes later, Willy Mill came out of the door of the house across the way, his face flushed and flaccid, his walk languid. He started east on River Road heading back towards the livery stable.

  Angel was right behind him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lieutenant Peter Ellis was proud of his Army uniform. His family was an old one and his father and his father’s father had been soldiers. Unlike them, however, Lieutenant Ellis was vain, headstrong, and ambitious, a combination of personality defects which in another lieutenant named Bascom had, some years earlier, plunged the entire Territory into bloody war with Cochise’s Chiricahuas. In Ellis, the flaws in his personality produced a different kind of weakness: he was a compulsive gambler, and the worse for his plunging belief in his own ‘luck.’ It was this predilection which had led him to associate himself with the men who played poker regularly at the Reynolds and Birch trading store just off the post. Ellis was deep in debt to the store, and deep in debt to the saloons in Reynolds’ Addition, the hellhole up in the hills. The deeper in debt he got the more he gambled, and the more he gambled the deeper he got into debt. At first, he had worried, but Reynolds had soothed him, hinting that in return for some minor ‘favors’ he would write off part of the debt. It was then that Ellis had learned that his Commanding Officer was also in the clutches of the partnership, was also doing ‘favors’ for Birch and Reynolds. An alliance between Thompson and Ellis had become a necessity, two weak men supporting each other’s vanities, observing certain proprieties of conduct before the enlisted men but each knowing the other as a tool of the Daranga men and their mysterious master. It had never before been like this, though, Ellis thought. The whole thing was a nightmare: Thompson had left him in no doubt as to what was expected of them. And in no doubt that he, Ellis, would have to execute this latest ‘favor’ on his own.

  Ellis had agreed, but for his own reasons. Thompson was no spring chicken: the man was going to pieces. Birch and Reynolds had pull, through their connections in Washington, and if a man had pull there, a command could easily be arranged. There weren’t too many career men keen to spend their declining years in the sun-scoured discomfort of Fort Daranga. There were even fewer young ones. Ellis saw visions of a situation where he would control ‘extras’ as came the way of the Commanding Officer at Fort Daranga. Then, when he had the power, he would make Birch and Reynolds dance to a different tune. By God, they would pay then. Meantime . . .

  This and thoughts like it went through his head as he did his rounds accompanied by Sergeant Battle and two enlisted men. When they reached the guardhouse, he motioned the sergeant to open the door of Larkin’s cell. The old soldier’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but he did as he was bid, pushing the door open and going in ahead of Ellis.

  ‘On your feet, boy,’ he said. The gunman spat on the floor.

  Moving with a speed surprising in one so bulky, Battle crossed the cell and pulled Larkin off the cot, jamming him against the rough wall, slamming the breath from the man’s body.

  ‘That’s a good boy,’ Battle said. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. Larkin just looked at the sergeant with hooded eyes. Ellis came in.

  ‘At ease, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to the prisoner.’

  Sergeant Battle stepped back.

  ‘Alone,’ Ellis said meaningfully. Battle frowned and turned, hesitating at the door. His eyes touched the holstered revolver at the lieutenant’s belt. Ellis caught the glance and smiled.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, letting the words come out as if they might rot his teeth. He unbuckled the belt and handed it to the sergeant, who went out of the cell.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ Larkin rasped.

  ‘A quiet talk, that’s all,’ Ellis said, sitting down on the hard cot. ‘Take it easy.’

  ‘You try takin’ it easy when you’ve been cooped up in this sweatbox as long as me,’ snapped Larkin.

  ‘Easy,’ Ellis told him sibilantly. He held up a warning hand and rose, going to the Judas window in the cell door. Through it he could see the sergeant talking to one of the two guards. He turned and sat down again, his voice dropping conspiratorially.

  ‘You want out,’ he said, ‘so out you’re going. It’s on.’

  Larkin’s eyes lifted, comprehension dawning in them.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘He thinks of everything.’ He looked long and hard at the young soldier. ‘So you’re on the payroll too?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Ellis said. There was irritation in his voice at the thought that Larkin was classing him as an equal because they both helped the same people. It was like a raw Irish recruit imagining himself the equal of a general.

  ‘Shut your dirty mouth,’ he snapped, ‘and be thankful that you have friends like Jacey Reynolds to look after you.’

  ‘Dirty, is it,’ Larkin grinned. ‘A spade is a spade, sonny.’

  ‘I told you to shut up,’ ground out Ellis. ‘If I had my way you’d rot in here till hell froze, you cheap thug.’

  Larkin’s eyes narrowed, but he let the insult pass. If he had to suffer a fool to get out of this, he had to suffer and that was that. Larkin was not a man to try changing the opinions of a pigheaded little ass-kisser like this one.

  ‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘How do we work it?’

  ‘It’s all as simple as this,’ Ellis said. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out an Army Colt. Larkin grabbed it, checking the loads, hefting the weapon. His eyes glowed with a pale light; he looked like a different man with the gun in his hand.

  ‘What’s the drill?’ he said, softly.

  ‘There’s to be no shooting,’ Ellis told him. ‘That’s imperative. There should be no need to use ... that. When the guards bring in your grub, you make your move. Knock them out, tie them up, anything you like. But no shooting - you understand? I can’t help you if there’s any shooting. It would be heard all over the Fort!’

  ‘Damn you for a fool, I can see that,’ Larkin said. ‘How do I get away?’

  ‘After retreat, I’ll bring a horse round in back,’ Ellis said. ‘It will be tethered behind the guardhouse in the yard. All you have to do is get on it and disappear.’

  Larkin nodded. ‘Better get me a carbine,’ he said. ‘Leave it in the saddle holster.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Ellis said stiffly. ‘They don’t hang from the trees waiting to be picked, you know.’

  ‘Get one,’ Larkin hissed. ‘Just get one.’

  The venom in his voice made Ellis recoil, a stirring of fear touching the nape of his neck. The man was an animal, he told himself. He stilled the reaction; after all, Larkin would be dead in a few hours. The thought of his part in that made his hands tremble for a momen
t. He wiped the sweat off them on his pants.

  ‘Did you . . . those men: Clare, and the old man. Were you sent.. . ?’

  ‘Now that’d be tellin’, wouldn’t it?’ grinned Larkin. His teeth shone whitely in the shadowy cell.

  Ellis’s curiosity got the better of him. ‘Why are they doing all this? The attack on the high country ranches ... what’s behind it all, Larkin?’

  ‘If I knew I wouldn’t tell you, sonny,’ Larkin said. ‘Just do what the Man tells you an’ don’t ask questions. You’ll live longer.’

  The peculiar aptness of the remark made Ellis start guiltily, but Larkin was not looking at him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Lieutenant,’ he said loudly. ‘Why don’t you go ‘way an’ leave me alone?’

  Ellis followed the direction of Larkin’s gaze and saw Sergeant Battle’s eyes peering through the Judas window.

  ‘Very well,’ he said heavily, picking up the cue and rising from the cot

  “You’ve had your chance, Larkin.’

  ‘Ah, go to hell,’ Larkin snapped. He slouched down on the vacated cot and Ellis waved for the sergeant to open the door.

  ‘Hopeless,’ he remarked. The sergeant said nothing. They went into the outer room and the two guards there came to attention and saluted as they left the guardhouse. Then when the officer was gone they went back to their game of poker.

  ‘Officers,’ said one.

  ‘Shut up and deal,’ said the other.

  The last muted sounds of the bugle blowing retreat had faded, and the flag had been furled and put in its canvas sack. Lights were coming on here and there in the buildings around the Fort. The sky was streaked with purple and black. In the bunk-houses the men who had been at the raided ranches told ever-gorier anecdotes of what they had found and what they had seen to their open-mouthed comrades who had remained on the post.

  In the guardhouse, the two soldiers on duty brought Larkin his food. One of them unlocked the padlock and stood back, rifle canted casually while the other came into the cell with the tray of food for the prisoner. At the beginning they had done this warily, watching Larkin like hawks, but he had totally ignored them, sitting slouched on his cot as he was doing now, his head turned away. Neither man was expecting tonight to be any different; they were thinking of the game they had broken off to bring Larkin his grub.

  Larkin came off the cot like a tiger, his long arm wrapping around the neck of the guard bending to put down the tray, cutting off his wind and preventing any outcry. He bent the man backwards like a bow, even as the other guard opened his mouth, the rifle coming level, unsure whether to shout out or to fire the rifle and in his moment of hesitation, Larkin let the guard see the gun.

  ‘Freeze!’ he hissed. The soldier froze. ‘Drop the rifle ... easy!’ The Spencer clattered to the floor and as it did, Larkin released the guard he had been throttling, letting the man slump to his knees. Larkin smashed him to the floor with a sweeping blow from the gun barrel. The man went down flat without a whimper. Larkin stepped over the guard’s body and jammed the gun into the belly of the gaping boy in the corridor.

  ‘Move,’ he snapped, herding the guard into the outer room, picking up the Spencer as he did. Through the window Larkin could see the parade ground: it lay silent and empty. He told the young guard to turn around and the boy half turned away, his fear evident, trying to see Larkin out of the corner of his eye, trying to summon the courage to shout. Larkin hit him very hard just above the ear with the barrel of the gun, and again as the boy fell to his knees. The soldier measured his length on the packed dirt floor, his legs kicking slightly. Blood dribbled from the open mouth. Then Larkin went to the door, opening it a few inches, a foot wide. Nothing. He grabbed a handful of shells for the Spencer from an ammunition pouch hanging on a wall peg, and stuffed them in his pocket. His mouth was drawn wide in a snarling grin as he eased through the open door, hugging the wall of the guardhouse like a shadow, sliding along its face and into the dark of the alley between the guardhouse and a long low building which stood opposite.

  The alley was as black as the cellars of hell and Larkin moved carefully, testing the ground with each foot before putting his weight on it. Behind the guardhouse was an open yard, with a low adobe wall about ten yards away. Beyond it was the open plain.

  Larkin rounded the corner of the building and stood stock still in the shadow. There was no sign of a horse behind the guardhouse. He swore silently. That puffed-up idiot of a boy lieutenant! He slid around the corner, in case the horse was at the far side. Nothing. A touch of coolness, something in the air, a feeling coming from the far side of nowhere touched the nape of his neck, insidious and chilling. As the thought formed in his mind he saw a figure rise behind the adobe wall, pistol in hand.

  ‘Corporal of the Guard!’ the man yelled. ‘Corporal of the Guard - prisoner escaping!’ Ellis! Larkin threw himself backwards into the sand as the lieutenant fired a shot which whacked a hunk of adobe out of the wall of the guardhouse. Larkin swarmed to his feet, finding the wall on the far side of the alley, hearing Ellis fire the gun again, probably into the air, no bullet came, Larkin swift-footing behind the long building, crouched down so that his body did not show black against the white frames of the windows set at shoulder height in the wall. He heard hoarse shouts as men turned out in response to the shouts and the firing, running feet crunching on the gravel of the parade ground.

  He saw figures coming into the open from the darkness of the alley he had just vacated and went down on one knee, aiming the Spencer, letting the flat hard sound of the rifle drive them diving for cover like prairie dogs touched by the shadow of a hawk, and levered another shell into the breech, looking for a target, looking for escape simultaneously, running, crouched, another twenty yards, out away from the building as someone by the guardhouse turned loose with a six-gun. Hoarse commands, and the firing stopped. He heard someone shout

  ‘Can you see him, sir?’ It was the big sergeant.

  Larkin pulled the Army Colt from his belt and fired three shots at the windows of the long building - a bunkhouse, enlisted men’s quarters? The shattering glass brought oaths and the sound of running feet, and he could vaguely see bulky shapes on the ground crawling rapidly towards the spot at which he had fired. He was already running, but this time across the path of his pursuers like a banderillero quartering across the path of the bull, heading for the wall behind the guardhouse. More men were pouring into the yard now and he saw Ellis running long-legged across the guardhouse yard and he smiled. If he died for it. . . . The six-gun, laid across Larkin’s forearm for steadiness, spoke abruptly and Ellis faltered in mid-stride, as if he had tripped on something. He went on running but he was going sideways and down and he reeled into the dirt face first, legs kicking high in agony.

  Larkin scuttled to the far end of the wall, and heard Sergeant Battle shout an order which brought all the men to their feet, running hard at the wall where he had been, and as they moved, Larkin moved in the opposite direction, close to the ground, shielded by the purple night, back to the wall of the guardhouse and out into the open without thought when he saw a soldier come flailing up the alley on horseback, bearing down on the knotted men ahead. Larkin fired the Spencer from the hip as the soldier came into the yard and the man cart wheeled out of the saddle, and then Larkin was in the saddle. He threw the rifle at a man who reached up for him, rode another man down. He fired the rest of the bullets in the Army Colt into the stricken faces ahead and then he was past them and around the end of the adobe wall, hearing the shouts behind him and the flat boom of rifles. Slugs zipped angrily in the air, lost in the rushing wind as Larkin rode flat out into the darkness, fading into the night, four dead and two wounded on the ground in the yard of the guard-house.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mill got his horse from the livery stable and rode out of town. A mile or two along the old Spanish Trail he stopped at a hacienda. It was a rambling, colonial style of house, with a pi
llared portico and one of those iron jockeys with a ring in his hand next to a mounting stone such as were popular back east in the big Virginia mansions. From the shelter of a stand of scrub oak, Angel watched the man tie his horse to the iron ring and after a moment, go in. Angel tethered the dun to one of the trees and using such cover as he could find, worked his way close to the house. There was a white board fence, warped a little by the sun, and grass had been planted in front of the house. He eased over the fence, taking up a position behind a big cottonwood which shaded the house.

  The man who came behind him must have been specially trained, for he was a big man. The grass muffled his approach, and Angel was much too late to act when he heard the last movement. The sound of a hammer being eased back froze him, and he held his hands away from the gun at his side. ‘That’s good, suh,’ the voice said. Angel turned to see a huge black man standing in the sunlight, a brand new Winchester carbine leveled at him. The man jerked the barrel of the gun, indicating that Angel should walk towards the house. When he reached the porch the Negro stayed at the foot of the steps. Another much older Negro opened the door, and inside Angel saw Willy Mill smiling at him flatly. Standing next to Mill was a well-built man with a shock of white hair crowning a leonine head. His smile of welcome was warm and friendly, the keen blue eyes bright in a maze of laughter wrinkles. The shock of recognition must have showed on Angel’s face, for the man laughed out loud.

  ‘I see you know me, Mr. Angel,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in.’

  ‘Senator,’ Angel acknowledged.

  The man shook his head. ‘You are a foolish man, Mr. Angel,’ he said, a trace of sadness in his voice. ‘I had hoped this would not happen.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Angel said drily. ‘Senator Ludlow Burnstine of Arizona: employing a psychopathic killer isn’t quite the image you’ve been trying to give people in Washington.’