Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2)

by Frederick H. Christian

  Mill kicked the shovel towards Angel.

  ‘Dig,’ he said.

  ‘You mind if I get my blood moving first?’ Angel asked.

  ‘Diggin’ll do it,’ Mill said. ‘Quit stallin’.’

  ‘If you’re planning to cut me down anyway, I’d just as soon not bother,’ Angel told him.

  ‘I don’t mind persuadin’ you some,’ Mill said. An evil light kindled his eyes, as the idea threaded into the sick part of his brain. He reached up on his saddle and uncoiled a braided rope. The Negro watched.

  ‘The Senator he din say nothin’ about whuppin’ him,’ he said mildly.

  ‘He didn’t say nothin’ about not whippin’ him, neither,’ Mill said. ‘Just keep that thing pointed at him. Move over to one side a bit, while I see if I can’t get him to co-operate.’ He let the reata whistle through the air as he swung it. He flicked it at Angel’s face, and Angel flinched backwards. The rope whistled back as Mill flicked it, and the rough braids whipped a welt on Angel’s cheek.

  ‘Purty,’ hissed Mill. He licked his thick lips, his breath coming heavily.

  Again he looped the rope, again flicking it out like the striking tongue of a snake. Angel stepped back, stumbling over a rock. Before he could regain his balance, Mill struck. The rope flayed across Angel’s back, ripping his shirt. Specks of blood tinged the cotton, spotting the gay Mexican colors.

  ‘Lovely,’ Mill muttered.

  Angel looked at the other man. ‘You going to let him do this?’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you see he’s sick? Look at him - he’s sick inside! He’s enjoying it, it’s giving him a thrill!’

  The big eyes flickered in the dark face, and then went studiously blank. He said nothing as Mill again twirled the rope.

  ‘Sick, am I?’ Mill grinned. His lips were wet and loose, and sweat patches darkened his shirt. ‘How’s that for sick, my purty boy?’ Again the whistle of the rope; this time Angel dodged it.

  ‘Stand still, damn you!’ screamed Mill. ‘Make him stand still, you stupid idiot!’

  There was a demented look in the piggy eyes. His fat thighs were shaking with some inner excitement. He caressed the rope as it passed through his chubby hands, crooning to it.

  ‘Lovely, lovely,’ he said. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘I reckon that’s enough, mister,’ the other man said. ‘Why don’t we-all jest kill him now?’

  ‘In a moment, in a moment,’ Mill hissed. He was coiling the rope again. Angel played his last card.

  ‘Did I tell you how Johnny died, Willy?’ he said. Mill looked up, something slipping behind his eyes, a strange wild unidentifiable flicker on the near side of total madness.

  ‘You,’ he screamed, his voice high-pitched, womanlike. ‘You! Killed! Johnny?’

  ‘I shot his damned head off,’ Angel said, hurling the words brutally at Mill like a challenge. Mill heard them and Angel could see the things behind his eyes working on the picture the words had formed, and then the light went out and Mill gave a shrill screech that went up and up and up and he launched himself at the man in front of him. The Negro jerked backwards, almost pulling the triggers of the Greener, but he stopped just in time to avoid blowing Mill apart and in that same second Angel was moving forward in hard and fast, flinging himself into the reaching fingers of the demented Mill, who reacted as Angel had hoped he would, clawing at Angel’s face like a woman, sobbing incomprehensible phrases, his body between Angel and the tall man.

  ‘Leggo, mister!’ shouted the Negro, dancing off to one side and then back, trying to get a clear shot at Angel. ‘Leggo of him!’

  He might as well have shouted the words to a tiger at the kill. Mill’s clawing fingers were trying to reach Angel’s throat, and he was kicking and spitting, his weight bearing the lighter man backwards.

  The Negro let one of the barrels of the shotgun go into the ground, the explosion penetrating Mill’s crazed mind. His grip loosened momentarily and in that moment Angel flicked the gun from the holster at Mill’s side, straight-arming the fat man away from him and bringing the sixgun into deadly unerring action in one blur of movement.

  The Negro was good, very good. He saw the movement, read it, was moving to the side even as Angel fired, but Angel had fired his three shots knowing that the man would move and the first slug hit the Negro high in the chest, on the right side, the second in the neck, tearing out the larynx and the soft muscles of the throat. The third hit him just below the nose. The combined force of the impact drove the man over backwards dead on his feet as Angel hit the ground and the Negro’s fingers tightened involuntarily on the triggers of the sawn-off Greener. The huge zzboooomjl as the gun went off shocked the silence of the badlands and the wicked, tearing, close-grouped shot hit Mill just above the base of his spine, all of them in a space that could have been covered by a man’s hand, bursting through him in a terrible red welter of spraying tissue, hurling the fat man sideways in a tattered heap. Mill lay screaming, his eyes wide open, the middle of his body a nightmare. He scrambled around on the ground, biting through his lips in agony, his eyes sightedness with pain. Angel picked himself up warily, the .45 cocked and ready in his hand, although he knew he would not need it. He went over to Mill. The screaming had stopped now, and Angel knew the man had bitten his tongue so badly that it had swollen to fill the whole mouth. Mill looked at Angel. The sickness was still there, far back, behind the agony. Angel shook his head.

  You can hear me, Willy,’ he said. A sound came from the thing on the ground. It might have been assent, or a plea for something else.

  ‘I wanted you alive, Willy,’ Angel said. ‘I wanted you to hang. Maybe this way is better. This way you pay the full price: for Freeman, and Maclntyre, Stevens, all those men you killed up in the high country. And for the girl, Willy. Especially for the girl.’

  He slung the shotgun on to the pommel of the saddle and tied the reins of the horses together, holding them as he mounted his own dun. He looped the reins around the pommel and moved the horse away from where the fat man lay, with eyes imploring, begging, and the throat working to make a sound, a plea. Angel moved the horse down the defile and headed for the open plain. He kept his mind resolutely closed to what would happen to the fat man back in the defile, and he did it with complete success until he was about a quarter of a mile away. Then he heard Mill scream. It was a wild and awful sound, totally insane, a sound that bounced off the canyon walls and echoed into the deepest recesses of Angel’s consciousness. The scream went on, a sound of purest animal terror and the scream was a word and the word, long, drawn-out, and terrible, was ‘No!’

  Angel shook the reins and the horse moved into a lope, heading west. Behind him the buzzards floated down gently on the rising hot air, easing down towards the grisly thing below. Angel did not look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Angel reached Tucson under cover of darkness. He made no attempt to conceal himself. Burnstine expected him to be dead - and buried, he thought grimly- and nobody here knew him by sight except Burnstine’s Negro servants. He kept a sharp eye for any black face along the busy sidewalks, but saw few black people. An old woman walking proudly upright beneath an enormous bundle of washing directed him to the office of the United States marshal on Elm Street. The marshal, John Allan, was a tall, slim, fair-haired man who listened with growing amazement to the story Angel told him.

  ‘By God!’ he would growl, every once in a while, ‘By God!’ And he would hit his knee with a clenched fist. When Angel finished his story, Allan wasted no more time. Within half an hour he had rounded up half a dozen men whom he told Angel were completely reliable, and within another fifteen minutes they were hammering on the door of Burnstine’s hacienda.

  After a few minutes a light came on in the hall and the same Negro who had opened it to Angel before swung the door wide. He fell back several steps as Angel stuck a six-gun under his nose, his eyes as wide as saucers with fear and surprise.

  ‘Quick, now,’ snapped Angel. ‘Is Burnstine here?�
�

  The Negro shook his head. His lips trembled and when he tried to speak his teeth chattered. Allan touched Angel’s arm, his eyes indicating that Angel should put away the gun. He spoke to the terrified servant in a gentle voice.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’ he said, ignoring the fact that the Negro was old enough to be his father, perhaps even his grandfather.

  ‘Gee, suh,’ the Negro managed, gulping. ‘Banner Gee.’

  ‘Well, Banner, we ain’t going to hurt you none,’ Allan said. ‘You know me?’

  ‘Yassuh,’ Gee said. ‘Yo’re the marshal.’

  ‘And you know I work for the Government, Banner,’ Allan continued softly. The Negro nodded. ‘So does this gentleman here, Banner,’ Allan went on. ‘He’s not goin’ to hurt you none.’

  ‘Yassuh.’ The Negro nodded, his eyes losing their startled whiteness.

  ‘The senator is in bad trouble, Banner,’ Allan said. His voice was easy, and friendly. Angel could see the servant warming to Allan’s soft Southern tone.

  ‘He is?’ Gee said.

  Allan nodded. ‘I’m afraid so, Banner. We’ve got to find him or some bad men may hurt him. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?’

  The servant shook his head vigorously. ‘No, suh, I sho’ wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, then... ?’

  ‘He’s gone to Daranga, see them gen’l’men there,’ the man said. It was as if he was relieved to tell them.

  ‘Birch and Reynolds?’

  ‘That’s right, suh.’

  ‘That’s fine, Banner,’ Allan said, gently. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: to make sure you are safe, I’m goin’ to leave a couple o’ my men here with you. Then if the bad men come here looking for the senator, they’ll be waiting.’

  The Negro servant nodded eagerly. Allan looked at one of the men, who nodded.

  They needed no words. Angel knew that the senator’s house would be thoroughly and carefully searched.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I have one more thing to do before I head for Daranga.’

  ‘You’re going back there?’ Allan said. ‘Maybe I’d better come with you.’

  ‘Let’s get down to River Road,.’ Angel said. ‘We can talk about that later.’

  On the way down to the red light district he told the Marshal what his plan was. Allan nodded. Angel warmed again to this capable peace officer. He needed no long-winded explanations, but acted quickly and decisively. When they reached the house with the red roof, Angel crossed the street alone and went over to the door, lifting the heavy brass knocker and letting it fall until a lookout door popped open and a white face peered through it at him.

  ‘Willy Mill sent me,’ he said urgently. ‘Open up.’

  ‘We ain’t - we’re not open yet,’ the woman said. ‘Come back later.’

  ‘I want to see Angela,’ Angel rasped. ‘And I want to see her now. Do I have to go and talk to the senator?’

  The pale eyes widened in the white face and Angel heard the woman fumbling with a bolt.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll go an’ see ...’

  She was a thin, slatternly woman of about thirty, the dirty history of her life etched in the lines about the deep shadowed eyes. She had on a thin dress which barely concealed her body. The woman went up the stairs after showing Angel into a kind of salon, a parlor full of overstuffed furniture and heavy, dark wallpaper. The smell of cigar smoke and liquor and cheap perfume hung in the air. After a wait of perhaps five minutes Angel heard the swish of material and turned to see a tall woman, her face high-cheekboned and almost beautiful, hair tied tightly back, fine green eyes regarding his disheveled appearance with disdain. The dress of watered green silk was in the latest Eastern fashion. All in all Angela, for it was she, was a handsome woman and knew it.

  ‘If Willy Mill sent you,’ she said haughtily, ‘he would also have told you that we do not ... entertain before ten o’clock.’

  ‘Lady,’ Angel said. ‘You have a girl here named Kate Perry. Go and get her.’

  The patrician eyebrows rose.

  ‘I am not accustomed to being spoken to like that,’ she said.

  ‘Get used to it,’ Angel snapped. ‘It’s polite compared to the way they talk in Yuma.’

  For a moment she puzzled over his allusion, and then her brow cleared.

  ‘Are you some kind of law officer?’ she asked.

  ‘You might say,’ Angel told her. ‘Get the girl.’

  ‘You are making a mistake, my friend,’ the woman said, ominously. ‘I have connections in this town.’

  ‘Not any more you haven’t,’ he said. ‘If you mean the senator.’

  She looked at him for a long, long moment, and then turned on her heel.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Angel told her. ‘Send someone for the girl. You stay here.’

  Her eyes were fiery, but she came back into the room and pulled a cord hanging in the corner.

  ‘You will regret this,’ she hissed.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. The slatternly woman came in and Angela told her to fetch Rate Perry. ‘The one in number eight,’ was how she put it.

  When they brought the girl in Angel felt his guts turn over in pure anger. She walked like a whipped animal, her head down, her long hair hanging over her face. Every inch of her seemed to cringe, as if her soul was buried in shame.

  ‘Kate,’ Angel said. She looked up at him and her eyes filled with huge tears. She gave a choking sob and hurled herself into his arms.

  ‘Ohmygod,’ she sobbed, ‘Ohmygod!’

  ‘It’s all right now, Kate,’ Angel said, clumsily. ‘It’s all right.’ He smoothed her hair awkwardly with his hand. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  The girl sobbed uncontrollably and Angel patted her shoulder, looking up into the hate-filled eyes of the madam. She had a little derringer in her hand. The bore looked as big as a cannon and it was pointed right at Angel’s head.

  ‘Stand still,’ Angela hissed. ‘Very, very still. I think the senator will want to know you are here.’

  ‘He’s gone, Angela,’ Angel said, pushing Kate Perry gently away from him. ‘He’s not at the hacienda.’ Kate stood watching the exchange, her eyes wide.

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ the madam said. ‘He’ll come.’

  ‘No chance,’ Angel told her. ‘Put up the gun, Angela. Don’t make things any worse than they are. You’re already mixed up in a conspiracy to kidnap charge, not to mention some other things a good prosecutor might dream up if he was pushed to it.’

  ‘You—’ she rasped. ‘Who else knows you’re here?’

  ‘I do,’ said Allan. He had come in behind her, soundlessly, having entered the house from the rear. He tapped her neatly behind the ear with the barrel of his sixgun. Angela folded like a fan and the silk dress spread out like a pool of water as she slumped to the ground.

  ‘Hate to do that to a woman,’ Allan said. There wasn’t an ounce of regret in his voice.

  Kate Perry started to cry. The tears simply trickled hugely from her eyes. She made no sound, no sob. Her eyes simply welled with water, which trickled down her face and fell with soft thumps upon the carpeted floor.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Perry,’ Allan told her. ‘It’s all over.’

  She shook her head, the tears raining down.

  ‘I’ll take her home with me,’ Allan told Angel. ‘My wife can get her some decent clothes. I’ll have the doctor look in. She’ll be all right, Angel.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Kate?’ The girl looked at him. Her eyes shone with the tears she was trying desperately to hold back.

  ‘Kate, I have to go now. I have to go to Daranga. You know why, don’t you?’

  The girl nodded again. The tears began once more.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Angel said. ‘Go with Marshal Allan. When it’s over I’ll come back and take you home.’

  ‘Yes,’ she managed. ‘Yes.’

  Angel turned to
wards the door.

  ‘Angel!’ Allan called after him. ‘You’ll need horses!’

  Angel grinned. ‘I know just where I can get them, too,’ he said. Then he was gone out into the night. Allan stood for a moment, his arm around the shoulders of the weeping girl.

  ‘That’s quite a man,’ he said, almost to himself.

  Kate Perry looked up at him and for the first time since he had seen her she smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Angel sprinted up the street to the livery stable he had visited before. The same man sat on the same keg. It might even have been the same bottle of beer. He looked at Angel, his mouth a surprised ‘O’.

  ‘Howdy,’ Angel nodded. ‘How many horses you got in?’ ‘Uh ... er ... I... six ... six - mebbe seven,’ the man stuttered. ‘Why’d you ask?’

  ‘Just wondering,’ Angel said. ‘Any really fine horses?’ ‘Couple,’ the man said, wonderingly. ‘Whuffor?’ ‘They’d be the senator’s, I guess,’ Angel went on. The man nodded.

  ‘Good stock they are,’ he said, proudly. ‘Palominos.’ ‘Incredible,’ Angel said, and his voice changed suddenly. ‘Saddle them.’

  ‘Saddle ‘em?’ squeaked the man, almost swallowing his Adam’s apple.

  ‘Quick,’ Angel said. The hostler looked down to see the sixgun jamming into his belly. He gulped another gigantic swallow, down and bobbed his head. ‘Uh .. . now . . . see here, mister . ..’ ‘Move!’

  Angel stood over the man as he saddled the two horses. They were superb animals: they had the fine deep chests and long muscles of racehorses and Angel felt a fleeting sadness at what he was going to have to do to them.

  ‘Mister,’ wheedled the hostler, ‘the senator’s goin’ to have my cojones on his watch-chain when he finds out what’s happened. I hate to think what he’s goin’ to do to you, but it’ll shore be unpleasant.’