Read Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) Online
Authors: Frederick H. Christian
Tags: #wild west, #old west, #western adventure, #piccadilly publishing, #frederick h christian, #frank angel, #western pulp fiction, #lawmen outlaws
Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) (10 page)
‘
Larry?’ he said.’ What you goin’
to do, Larry?’
Larry Hugess was shaken, but nothing showed on his
face even though his mind was racing. Damn the luck! To have a
Justice Department investigator happen into town at this moment was
nothing but the purest bad luck. However, Dan Sheridan was counting
his chickens a sight too early. Frank Angel had no means of
contacting his superiors. Ergo, they did not know exactly where he
was. So if he was alone. . . ?
‘
Angel, eh?’ he said. ‘You got
lucky. Sheridan.’
‘
You might say,’ Sheridan
smiled.
‘
Larry?’ Burt said desperately.
‘What you goin’ to do?’
Larry Hugess turned to face his
brother, spreading his hands in a theatrical shrug. He kept his
voice quite without inflection. ‘Can’t do a damned thing, kid,’ he
said. ‘You got Federal law watching over you, and I can’t buck
that. The marshal here will take you over to Winslow and - well,
you’ll just have to hold on, Burt. I’ll get you the best damned
lawyer in the territory, you know that—’
‘
Larry?’ Burt Hugess’s voice was
disbelieving. It was as if he had seen Dan Sheridan actually move a
mountain. ‘You gonna let them take me?’
‘
I don’t see what the hell else I
can do,’ Larry Hugess said. He looked at Sheridan and nodded at the
door. Sheridan unlocked it and bowed him through ironically. Burt
Hugess watched his brother go with his mouth hanging open. Larry
Hugess didn’t even look back.
‘
All right, Sheridan,’ he said. ‘I
see how things are.’
‘
Just one more thing,’ Sheridan
said.
Hugess stopped at the rail dividing the office.
‘
You make the mistake of trying to
take your brother away from us,’ Sheridan said levelly, ‘and he’s
liable to get accidentally dead. You read me?’
Larry Hugess nodded. It was worth swallowing the
insults, letting the marshal have his moment of triumph. He had
learned what he needed to know. Sheridan had now become a secondary
priority. He went out into the sunlit street. Howie Cade was
outside the door. He turned and looked at Hugess.
‘
Get what you came for?’ he
said.
Larry Hugess went past him and
across the street without speaking. There was no emotion in him
now, just cold determination. He had discovered what his course of
action must be, and he was now going to put the wheels in motion.
He neither knew now or cared whether the dust he’d thrown in
Sheridan’s eyes had been effective or not. Larry Hugess had not
become the most powerful man in this region by worrying about
trifles like that. He preferred to use legal methods where legal
method would work, and he referred not to stop outside the law
unless it was absolutely necessary. But he had amassed power so
that he could use it, the way another man will use a hoe or an axe.
When it was necessary, he would employ all of it. Like
now.
He walked into the Palace and his
men looked up expectantly. Johnny Gardner hurried along the bar
with a spotless glass and Larry Hugess’s favorite brand of bourbon
whiskey.
‘
Everything jake?’ Danny Johnston
asked.
‘
Let’s get a table,’ Hugess
replied, as Johnny Gardner hovered nearby. ‘Willie, you want to
join us?’
Willie Johns nodded and slouched
across to the table where Larry Hugess poured him a drink. Hugess
did not look at the gunslinger as he spoke. ‘There’s a man in town
called Angel,’ he said softly. ‘Frank Angel. He’s an investigator
for the Department of Justice.’
The—’
‘
Quiet, damn you!’ hissed Hugess
as Danny Johnston started to speak. That’s right, the Department of
Justice.’
‘
Federal law,’ mused Willie Johns.
That ups the ante a mite, don’t it?’
‘
How the hell did he happen
along?’Johnston wanted to know.
‘
It makes no damned difference
how,’ Hugess told him. ‘All that matters is that he’s here and he’s
going to back Sheridan. They plan to take Burt across to Winslow
for trial. I plan to see they don’t’
The two men looked at him. His florid face was set in
a heavy frown of determination, and they felt an almost tangible
aura coming from him, a sense of something black and evil set in
motion and out of control.
‘
Listen, Boss,’ Danny Johnston
said nervously. That’s heavy stuff.
‘
You think I’m going to let them
take my brother out and hang him?’ hissed Larry Hugess, controlling
his urge to shout, hands flexing on the table in front of him like
the huge paws of some carnivorous beast. ‘You think I’m going to
stand by while they drag my name through the dirt? Everything I’ve
built shot to hell by some sniveling snooper? Not by a long chalk!
By God, not by a long chalk!’
Danny Johnston looked at Willie Johns and Willie
Johns grinned.
‘
What you want done, Mr. Hugess?’
Willie Johns asked softly.
‘
Angel!’ Hugess ground out. This
Frank Angel. I want him found. I want him found fast. And then I
want him dead!’
‘
Quiet?’ Johns asked, his voice
still feather light and gentle. ‘Or noisy?’
‘
It doesn’t matter a damn!’ Hugess
said. ‘Quiet would be better, but I don’t care how you do it. Just
wait until I can get back to the Flying H, then get started. Hunt
Angel out, wherever he’s hiding. Then kill him!’
Nine
Larry Hugess rode out of Madison
soon after midday. By that time, Dan Sheridan and Howie Cade had
told Angel everything that had transpired in the jailhouse while
Hugess was there. The three of them sat there now, nursing tin cups
of coffee. Sheridan’s face was reflective, as was Angel’s. Only
Howie Cade was jubilant, high on the way they’d faced down Hugess
and his men.
‘
And now he’s headin’ back to the
Flyin’ H with his tail atween his legs,’ Howie grinned.
‘
I’m not so sure,’ Sheridan
said.
‘
Hell, I just seen him leave!’
Howie said.
‘
About his tail,’ Sheridan
explained. ‘He backed down a sight too easy for my liking. Not
Larry Hugess’s way at all.’
‘
Hellndamnation, Dan,’ Howie Cade
said. ‘You’re a gloomy bastard.’
‘
Yup!’ Sheridan said.
‘
What you figure his next move to
be?’ Angel asked him.
‘
He’ll wait for us to move,’
Sheridan said. ‘I think.’
‘
You don’t figure he’ll make a
frontal attack on the jail?’
‘
Can’t see it,’ Sheridan replied.
‘He knows two men could hold this place against a small army. It’s
built like a fort.’
Angel nodded, his own thoughts busy.
From what Sheridan had told him of Hugess’s reactions, he didn’t
think the rancher was going to wait for the marshal to make a move.
Hugess wasn’t that kind of man. He’d grab the bull by the horns and
throw it into the next field, but he wouldn’t sit around waiting to
see what the bull was going to do. Hugess was strong, cunning,
intelligent, and powerful. Angel had his own ideas about the Flying
H man’s possible course of action.
‘
A suggestion,’ he said. Sheridan
looked up, eyebrows raised politely. ‘You and Howie cover each
other the whole time from now on,’ Angel said. ‘One doesn’t go out
in the street without the other covering. Or I’ll cover both of
you.’
Sheridan looked at the Justice
Department man without saying anything. His eyes dropped to the gun
at Angel’s hip.
‘
When did you put that on?’ he
asked quickly.
‘
When you deputized me,’ Angel
smiled.
Sheridan nodded, and the silence grew.
‘
Hey, what the hell is this, a
secret society?’ Howie Cade crowed.
Angel didn’t answer him. Dan
Sheridan just looked up at Howie, and then the light dawned in the
deputy’s eyes and he sat down.
‘
Oh,’ he said. ‘I get it
now.’
It had taken them both a little
longer to put it together, but only a little. Given that Hugess
couldn’t take his brother out of the jail without a bad fight,
given that he couldn’t sit around waiting for them to take Burt
across to Winslow to be tried, there was only one other thing he
could do.
‘
He aims to take us out one by
one,’ Howie said.
‘
That’s right,’ Angel said. ‘And
my guess is the first one he’ll go after will be me.’
‘
Willie Johns,’ Howie
said.
‘
What about him?’ Sheridan
asked.
‘
When Hugess rode out of town, he
took Danny Johnston and the rest of his boys with him,’ Howie said.
‘Everybody except—’
‘
Willie Johns,’ Angel said
softly.
Both men looked at him. Willie Johns
was the fastest man with a gun either of them had ever seen. He was
sudden death and they knew it, and they knew Angel knew it. But Dan
Sheridan couldn’t suggest Angel back away from the man. Every
instinct told him he ought to tell Angel to get on his horse and
get the hell out of Madison, that this fight was none of his making
and there was no point in getting killed for a town he’d never
heard of before two days ago. But the words wouldn’t come, and so
he just hung his head, not looking at Angel as the Justice
Department man got up from the chair and put the tin cup down on
the scarred old desk.
‘
Jesus, Angel,’ Howie Cade said.
‘Listen, I’ll come with you.’
‘
We both will,’ Dan Sheridan said,
stating to get up, but Angel stopped both of them with an upraised
hand. Sheridan stopped halfway from the seat of the chair, eyebrows
knitting in puzzlement.
‘
Got an idea,’ Angel
said.
Howie Cade snorted. ‘You’ll need
better than that if you aim to go against Willie Johns, Angel. Here
take the Greener an’—’
Angel shook his head. ‘He sees me
with that thing, he’ll hunt cover and wait,’ he said. ‘Or Hugess
will have one of his boys try for me from ambush. Willie Johns will
try to pick a quarrel with me and make me use my gun. Then he’ll
have a perfect excuse for blowing me apart’
‘
So?’
‘
So maybe I’ll surprise him,’
Angel said, and he was out of the door before either of them could
speak again. Sheridan lunged to his feet, heading after the Justice
Department man; in the same instant Howie Cade did the same thing,
and they collided like two comics in a slapstick routine, cursing
at each other wordlessly as they pushed apart and went out after
Angel into the bright noon sunshine. He was already across the
street. They saw him push through the batwing doors of the Palace
like a man without a care in the world.
Willie Johns was into his fourth game of solitaire
when Angel came in through the door. Johnny Gardner was the only
other person in the place, and the sound he made when he managed to
swallow the ball of fright in his throat sounded like someone
pulling a boot out of a mud hole. His eyes rolled heavenward as if
praying for some sweet chariot to swing low and carry him home,
then skittered slantwise to watch Willie Johns, who was weighing
Angel with eyes as friendly as those of a hungry sidewinder.
‘Omigod,’ Gardner managed. The
sound of his voice hung in the still damp air like a fragile bird.
He watched Angel walk straight along the bar, his left hand
touching it lightly as if for balance, until he was close to Willie
Johns.
Willie watched him come. He had his
guns on, and he knew this had to be his man. Nobody else in town
but himself and Sheridan and, if you cared to count him, Howie
Cade, was wearing a gun. The stranger had on a gun: ergo, he was
Angel. He’d seen him before.
‘Well, well, well,’ Willie Johns
said. This was the cowboy who’d backed off at the bridge when
they’d closed up the town. The knowledge spread inside Willie like
warm honey. This was going to be a pushover. Angel was not more
than about twelve feet away now, and Willie moved his hands
slightly, drawing Angel’s attention to the guns in their curious
canted holsters at his sides. As if it had been a signal, Angel
stopped. Willie allowed himself a little smile.
‘I see you’re wearing your guns,
Willie,’ Angel said.
Willie nodded. He was curious to see how Angel would
play this.
‘It’s not allowed anymore,’ Angel
said mildly.
‘Don’t aim to take ‘em off,’
Willie said. ‘What you figger to do about it?’
Angel stood at the bar, head canted
very slightly to one side as though debating that very point in his
mind. What he was actually doing was very carefully assessing
Willie Johns’ position in the chair and the position of the chair
in relationship to the table. He was ready for Willie. He had been
ready ever since he had left the jail and crossed the street, using
that small piece of time to discipline his mind and body in the way
that the little Korean, Kee Lai, had taught him during his training
in the echoing gymnasium in Washington. The deep inner reserves of
self which the Chinese call
ch’i
can be summoned at will with training, to bring
all of the self, all of the power of the mind and the body together
into one place for one moment of time, a combination infinitely
stronger than the separated sum of the two. He was ready and he
moved.
Angel took three steps and Willie
Johns reacted as Angel had expected. He kicked his chair back away
from the table and went for the guns at his side, and as they both
moved Angel shouted
‘Sheridan!’
Willie Johns wore his guns in their peculiar hang
because, given that he could set himself into the almost-deformed
crouch that went with the fast-draw technique he had perfected, the
guns lay almost horizontal to the ground. All that he had to do was
slide them back seven inches and they were ready to fire, a method
infinitely faster than the long down-and-up-and-level-and-fire
technique most men used with the six-gun. Angel knew all about that
kind of technique, and he also knew its disadvantage: that you had
to be set just so, flat on your feet and able to swivel the body
perhaps forty-degrees through from right to left or left to right
to facilitate the pulling of the gun. Willie had been none of
these, and in addition, Angel had shouted the name of the marshal,
causing in Johns that millisecond of indecision, that instant of
fear that he had been whipsawed, which made him scrabble for his
guns instead of the clean fast, unbeatable draw that he would have
otherwise have made. Even so, Willie Johns was fast: incredibly
fast. He would still have killed nine men out of ten put up against
him. But not Frank Angel.
Frank Angel was fast, too, and his
six-gun thundered a fractional fatal fragment of a second ahead of
the gunman’s weapons. Both of Willie’s guns exploded wildly, the
triggers jerked by reflex action as Angel’s unerring bullet hit him
about an inch to the right of the median line of his forehead and
half that distance above the left eyebrow. It lifted Johns off his
feet and hurled him backward as if he had been swatted by some
enormous invisible giant wielding a bat, smashing Johns across the
room and against the wall of the saloon with a crash that set
bottles rattling on Johnny Gardner’s shelves. The saloonkeeper
watched, his mouth a wide ‘O’ as Willie Johns slid down the wall
like a broken doll, leaving a thick smear of something oozing in a
long half-circle on the painted surface before falling sideways
into the clotted sawdust.
‘Je-zuss,’ Gardner whispered. He’d
kept saloons in a lot of hard towns, seen plenty of tough men
fight. But never anything like this, never. He let out the breath
he hadn’t known he was holding in a long quavering ;sigh as Dan
Sheridan and Howie Cade burst in through the batwings, guns up.
They looked at Angel and they looked at what was left of Willie
Johns. There was a lot of blood now.
‘Frank!’ Sheridan said, coming
across the saloon. ‘You all right?’
Angel frowned slightly, and then the
light came back into his eyes. It was as if some part of his soul
had gone to a far place, and Sheridan recognized what it was and
waited, just putting his hand on Angel’s shoulder.
‘Fine,’ Angel said, pasting on a
smile that he didn’t think fitted too damned well. Howie Cade was
shooing people away from the batwings. They all wanted to come in
now and see what had happened.
‘A question,’ Angel said to
Sheridan.
‘Shoot.’
‘Who’s guarding Burt Hugess?’
Angel asked.
Howie Cade heard what he said, and
he spat out a disgusted curse. He shoved his way through the people
on the boardwalk outside and ran across the street, every line of
him showing his own self-disgust. Angel’s smile changed from a
forced to a genuine one. He looked at Sheridan, who nodded and then
turned with him toward the door.
‘Here,’ Johnny Gardner said,
coming to the end of the bar. ‘Here, what am I supposed to do
with
him?’
He
jerked his head at the sprawled body of Willie Johns. Angel nodded
and pursed his lip: question deeply. Then his face cleared and he
looked up.
‘Why don’t you have him stuffed?’
he said.