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) (14 page)
‘Just the opposite,’ Hugess said.
‘Saddle my horse. Get the men ready. We’re going into
Madison!’
‘Madison?’ Finstatt said. ‘What we
goin’ to do?’
‘Do?’ Larry Hugess roared. ‘Do?
We’re going to fetch my brother home for dinner tonight, that’s
what we’re going to do!’
Ken Finstatt looked at Larry Hugess
for a long moment, the carefully judged look of a man weighing
another for any hint of bluff or braggadocio but not showing what
he is searching for. There was no question of Larry Hugess’s
confidence - it radiated from him like heat from a fire. ‘Well?’ he
growled. ‘What the hell are you waiting for?’ ‘Nothin’, boss,’
Finstatt said. ‘Not a damned thing!’ He hurried from the house to
do Larry Hugess’s bidding. Whatever it was Hugess aimed to do, it
sure looked like he didn’t expect it to backfire. Well, Finstatt
thought as he yelled orders to the men in the bunkhouse, it sure as
hell better not.
Thirteen
One more day,
Frank Angel told himself.
They were sitting in the jail with
nothing very much to do, taking their time about doing it. The sun
was already well up toward noon, and the town was as quiet as a
baby’s bedroom. Howie Cade was in fact half-asleep. He’d kind of
snuggled himself up in a blanket, propped his feet upon the desk,
and tilted his hat forward over his eyes. Dozing, he called it.
Once in a while the other two heard him make a noise like a fretful
sigh.
Sheridan had fashioned himself a
smoke. He was still clumsy but he could use his injured hand some
now. He kept practicing a draw, but he was nowhere near being ready
to do it in earnest. He looked across at Frank Angel, but didn’t
speak. Angel’s eyes were blank, looking inward,. He wondered what
Angel was thinking about.
Angel was thinking about Larry
Hugess. About everything Sherry Hardin had told him, everything
Sheridan had told him, everything old Nate Ridlow had told him and
they all added up to the same thing: a man who went after what he
wanted and never gave up until he got it. With twenty-four hours
between train times and now, Hugess had to move soon. He’d tried
every damned way there was to cut one or two of them down, leaving
the way clear to his brother in the cell. With failure jeering at
him, Hugess would react. He might even overreact, Angel thought. He
thought of Hugess mounting up all his riders and making a concerted
attack on the jail. Thirty men, maybe, against three: but three
with an ace-in-the-hole of great strength. Larry Hugess knew that
if push came to shove, Burt Hugess wouldn’t come out of the jail
alive, either. He tried to put himself in the rancher’s place. What
other methods could he try?
Hold up the train? It seemed highly
unlikely. A man with as much at stake as Hugess might risk
everything in the town he controlled, but he wouldn’t want to take
on the kind of investigation that follows a train hold-up. Delay
the train? Possible, but to what purpose? In the end, he was still
faced with the impasse: Burt in the jail and three men determined
to keep him there in with him.
Hugess might string his men all the
way along the street and across it up by the depot, dare them to
try to take Burt onto the train. That wouldn’t work, and he figured
Hugess knew it as well. All Sheridan had to do was lash himself to
Burt, cock the hammers on the Greener, and jam the barrels under
Burt’s chin, then walk up the street to the depot. One try at
stopping him and he could spread Burt Hugess over about half an
acre of the territory. Impasse again.
‘You think Hugess would want to
take us even if it meant killing Burt to do it?’ he asked Sheridan.
The marshal’s eyes widened at the unexpected question, and he
pursed his lips while he considered it.
‘I reckon not,’ he said
finally.
‘No way,’ Howie said from under
his hat. ‘Larry Hugess is a man too full o’ pride to defeat hisself
thataway.’
‘What I figured,’ Angel said,
lapsing into silence again.
‘I reckon he’ll rush us,’ Sheridan
said, as if reading Angel’s mind.
‘How come?’
‘Look at it from his point of
view,’ Sheridan said. ‘Time’s running out fast. He’s got to commit:
it’s a piss-or-git-off time. He’s probably wondering just how
genuine my promise was to shoot Burt if the going got too rough.
Maybe he’ll even look at it as a benefit: I shoot Burt, ain’t no
way he can be tried and disgrace the Hugess name.’
‘Hard to swallow,’ Howie said,
without moving. ‘But possible.’
‘It’s about all he’s got left to
shoot with,’ Sheridan said. ‘And the longer we got to wait, the
likelier it is that that’s what he’ll do.’
If he agreed with them, Angel didn’t
say so. He had withdrawn again, and his eyes were hooded. What
would Hugess do? Where would he make his play? When would it
happen?
He didn’t have to wait too long for
an answer.
Larry Hugess and his men holed up in the big
warehouse by the depot while Finstatt did what needed to be done.
It was easy as slicing pie. They went around in back of the hotel,
where they could hear the cheerful clatter of the pots and pans as
Chen went about getting the midday meal ready. Finstatt had two men
with him: Lee Shepard and Jim Landy. Landy rapped on the screen
door, and Shepard and Finstatt flattened themselves against the
wall on either side.
‘What you want?’ the Chinaman
asked Landy.
‘Can you spare me a minute,’ Landy
asked politely. ‘Just a minute?’
‘Hokay,’ Chen said cheerfully, and
stepped out. His knees folded as Finstatt smacked him behind the
ear with the barrel of his six-gun, and he fell into the arms of
the waiting men. In two minutes Landy had him tied securely, and
they rolled him out of the way, going into the kitchen on careful
feet, easing open the swing door that led into the dining
room.
‘Right,’ Finstatt
whispered.
The place was empty; Sherry Hardin was humming to
herself as she moved around the tables, setting cutlery in place
and putting salt and pepper cruets in the center of the tablecloth.
She turned without panic as she heard their footsteps, thinking it
was the Chinaman.
‘Chen,’ she said, ‘I think we—’
The words trailed into nothing as she saw the three men, and they
saw her chest rise as she drew in her breath.
‘That would be very silly, lady,’
Finstatt said, showing her the cocked six-gun.
‘Wh-what do you want?’ she said.
Then, angrily, ‘What have you done to Chen?’
‘That the Chinee?’ Landy grinned.
‘He’s takin’ a nap.’
‘If you’ve hurt him—’ Sherry
Hardin said fiercely, ‘I’ll—’
‘Lady, don’t try my patience,’ Ken
Finstatt said. ‘Just quit jabberin’ an’ come with us.’
‘Where? You’re Hugess’s men,
aren’t you? What’s this all about?’ she said.
‘Just move your ass, lady,’
Finstatt said. ‘Beggin’ your pardon. We ain’t got all day, an’ the
boss wants to see you.’
Her chin came up. ‘And if I refuse
to go?’
Finstatt shook his head, as if bored
with such folly. ‘Then I’ll bend this six-gun over your pretty
little head, lady,’ he told her. ‘An’ we’ll carry you over
there.’
‘I’ll walk,’ she said quickly.
‘Just don’t any of you touch me.’ There was a revulsion in her
voice and Finstatt caught the tone. He reacted sharply.
‘Not with a bargepole, lady,’ he
snapped. ‘We don’t want none of that government snooper’s
leavin’s!’
He caught the hand she swung at his
face and held it, effortlessly, as she cursed him. Then he shoved
her away with an impatient gesture.’ All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve
had your fun. Now walk!’
Sherry Hardin looked at him and then at the other
two. They returned her burning contempt with complete indifference,
and she shrugged.
‘Very well,’ she said.
‘That’s better,’ Ken Finstatt told
her. ‘It’s only up the street.’
‘
Marshal!’
Sheridan let his rocked-back chair come four-square
to the ground and used its impetus to propel him forward onto his
feet. The hammering on the door continued.
‘Who’s out there?’ Sheridan
called, keeping to one side of the door.
Angel was already on his feet, and Howie was poised
warily by the door that led to the cells, the Greener in his hands
and every trace of sleepiness gone from his stance.
‘It’s Gardner, Marshal,’ the voice
came. ‘Johnny Gardner!’
‘Speak your piece,’ Sheridan
said.
‘I brung you a message,’ Gardner
said through the wood. ‘From Larry Hugess. You better open up,
Marshal.’
Sheridan looked at Angel with raised
eyebrows, and Angel nodded. He gave Howie Cade the signal and Howie
propped his back against the wall, leveling the heavy sawn-off on
the doorway which Sheridan was now about to open. If anyone was
using Gardner to gain entrance to the jail, he wasn’t going to make
it more than about two paces inside. Angel, too, was ready with
cocked six-gun, and Sheridan was behind the door with another.
Gardner paled when he saw the arsenal staring at him.
‘Hey,’ he said weakly. ‘Hold on
there.’
He was alone, and Sheridan closed the door behind the
saloonkeeper.
‘Larry Hugess is in town?’
Sheridan asked.
‘That’s right, Marshal,’ Gardner
nodded. ‘An’ he sent me to give you his message. His
ultimatum.’
‘Let’s hear it,’ Angel
said.
‘Hugess said to tell you he wants
Burt delivered to him at the warehouse by two o’clock. Not a minute
later. You all got to walk up there unarmed. Hugess will be waiting
for you.’
‘It’s a good message,’ Howie Cade
said. ‘If you believe in fairy tales.’
‘Which Hugess doesn’t,’ Sheridan
reminded him grimly. ‘What’s the rest of it Johnny?’
‘Said to tell you he’s got Sherry
Hardin up there,’ Gardner said. ‘Said to tell you to do what he
says or he’s going to give her to his boys.’
‘He
what?’
Sheridan grabbed Gardner’s
shirt and pulled the man toward him. ‘He said
what?’
‘Listen, Marshal, this ain’t none
of my doin’!’ Gardner screeched. ‘They told me to bring you the
message, that’s all. I got nothing to do with it!’
Sheridan thrust the quaking
saloonkeeper to one side. He looked at Frank Angel, who had not
spoken. Angel’s eyes were dark, burning with a deep fire somewhere
a long way inside.
‘Jesus, Dan,’ Howie Cade said.
‘What we goin’ to do?’
‘What time is it?’ Sheridan asked,
absently, his thoughts furiously busy.
‘Twenty before two,’ Johnny
Gardner supplied, trying to be helpful, the gold hunter watch
picking up a faint glint of sunlight from a crack in one of the
shutters.
‘Twenty minutes,’ Sheridan
muttered. ‘That doesn’t give us any damned time at all.’
They looked at each other in
silence, and then Howie Cade broke it by addressing the
saloonkeeper. Johnny,’ he said, measureless contempt in his voice.
‘You done what was expected of you. Now get out o’
here!’
Gardner nodded, backing away toward
the door. ‘I’d help, you boys know that,’ he chattered. ‘I’d be
glad to do anything I could, except I’m no fighting man, you know
that, Sheridan, I never carry a gun, I—’
‘Get out of here, Johnny,’
Sheridan said offhandedly. There didn’t seem to be any threat in
the marshal’s voice at all, but Gardner must have seen something in
Sheridan’s eyes, because he gave a squeak of panic and scuttled out
of the jail like a rabbit. They heard his feet stumble on the
boardwalk outside the building, and then the silence came down like
a tangible thing. The room smelled of tension.
‘Get him out,’ Angel said,
harshly.
‘Listen,’ Sheridan
said.
‘Get him out,’ Angel repeated.
‘Howie: do it!’
Howie Cade looked at Angel and then at Sheridan.
‘Listen, Frank,’ Sheridan said.
‘He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it.’
Angel just looked at him; the deep
fire was still seething behind his eyes.
He looks as if he wants to kill someone,
Sheridan thought.
With his bare
hands.
‘You a betting man?’ Angel
asked.
Sheridan thought about that for a
moment. He knew what Angel was asking him: was he prepared to pay
up if he lost the bet? He thought about Larry Hugess, and what
Larry Hugess had done already to try to free his brother. He
thought about all the other things Larry Hugess had done in a
lifetime of being top man, getting what he wanted. And he knew he
wasn’t about to take that kind of chance with Sherry Hardin as the
stake. This game was sudden death: and you don’t back long shots in
it.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Get him out
here, Howie.’
Howie Cade nodded and lifted the ring of keys off the
hook. The other two stood silently, looking at but not seeing each
other as Howie opened the cell door and brought a grinning Burt
Hugess into the office.
‘Well,’ Burt said, arms akimbo and
a wide smile on his face. ‘Well, well.’
There was no way he couldn’t have
heard what Gardner had told them, no way he could have missed their
evaluation of the situation. He was sure Larry had them cold and he
was enjoying it hugely.
‘Haw,’ he exploded. The laughter,
the sheer delight in their predicament, welled up in him. ‘Haw,
haw, haw!’ Burt went. ‘Haw, haw,
hucccccchhh!’
He hadn’t seen Angel move, hadn’t
even sensed the coiled tension in the man, but Angel’s hand, the
fingers held in a certain way, had jabbed out horizontally at heart
level, moving no more than six inches but striking Burt Hugess’s
chest above the sternum with a force that momentarily stopped
Burt’s heart. He flailed backward against the edge of Sheridan’s
desk, eyes popping with panic as his astonished body tried to obey
the commands of the brain and get blood pumping from the shocked
muscles of his heart. He went down on one knee, head hanging,
laboring wheezes breaking from his throat. He sounded like a
gut-shot horse. Angel stood over the fallen man, his hand drawn
back. He was centimeters away from delivering the second blow that
would have snapped Burt Hugess’s neck like a dried cornhusk when
Dan Sheridan laid a very, very gentle hand on his forearm and spoke
his name. Then again, watching carefully, poised, as the killing
anger died in Angel’s eyes and he came back from wherever he’d
gone.
‘All right,’ Angel said. His
shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch. ‘All right.’
Burt Hugess was climbing to his feet, coughing,
wheezing, water dribbling from his nose, his eyes wide and
shocked.
‘You bas—’ he said. ‘You
fuckin’—’
‘—
Burt!’ Sheridan snapped. He
nodded to Howie who grabbed Hugess’s arms.
‘Turn me loose!’ Burt Hugess
screamed. ‘Let me at that f—!’
‘That’s all,’ Sheridan said, and
showed Burt the bore of the six-gun. The triple click of the hammer
going back stilled Burt’s outburst. Then his sneer pasted itself
back across his face. ‘You won’t use that, Sheridan,’ he said. ‘You
don’t dare use a gun on me.’
‘Not to kill you,’ Sheridan
admitted judiciously. ‘But I might just wound you some.’ He said it
with a cold grin that checked Burt Hugess for a moment. Then the
bluster came back.
‘Yeah,’ Burt said. ‘You got the
whip hand now, Sheridan. For the moment. You and this . . . this
pile of manure.’ He jerked his thumb at Angel, but from his
appearance it was difficult to know whether Angel had even heard
the words. ‘Well, just wait that’s all,’ Burt Hugess ranted on.
‘Just wait till we get up the street. Wait till I’m the one with
the gun. I’ll shoot your goddamned balls off, Sheridan. All of
you.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Sheridan
said, and tapped Hugess lightly alongside the ear with the barrel
of the gun. It wasn’t a hard enough blow to stun, but both of the
other men in the room heard the audible
clack
as Burt Hugess’s teeth jarred
together from the impact. His eyes crossed slightly, unfocusing,
and he reeled on his feet.
‘Mind your manners, now,’ Sheridan
told him. He turned toward Frank Angel. Angel was standing pretty
much in the same position that he had been when Sheridan had
stopped him from killing Hugess. ‘Frank?’ he said.
Angel looked up. There was nothing in his eyes at
all. They were empty and cold, as if the man was gone to prepare
some killing ground a long way away.
‘Frank,’ Sheridan said again.
‘It’s five before two. Time to move out.’
Howie Cade nodded and moved over to the door. He
threw it wide, as if contemptuous of what might be outside. The
sunlight flooded in, and Burt Hugess drew himself up, ready to walk
out proud and tall. Sheridan laid his shotgun on one of the desks,
unsheathed his handgun and laid it alongside the Greener. Howie
Cade followed suit. Both men stood on the threshold of the jail and
looked at Frank Angel. After what seemed like a very long time,
Angel lifted the six-gun from his holster and put it down on the
desk. Then he looked at the marshal.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The four of them stepped out into the naked
sunlight.