Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) (3 page)

Fat Mary came bustling in through
the curtained doorway and pasted a smile on her sweaty face when
she saw who it was. A quick signal Burt didn’t see sent the girls
out of the place. The guitarist backed quietly into the yard
outside.

‘
Hello, Burt, honey,’ Fat Mary
said, sliding a glass across the rough planking of her bar. Her
immense body wobbled as she reached back on a shelf for the
tequila
bottle and poured
him a drink.

Burt Hugess smiled at her to let her
know it was all right, he wasn’t going to make trouble.

‘
Have one yourself,’ he
said.

‘
Why, if you ain’t a darlin’
doll,’ she gurgled. Her smile was as false as a drummer’s expense
account. When she poured the drinks, she slopped
tequila
on the bar. If he
noticed her uneasiness, Burt ignored it.

‘
Another,’ he said.

She started to pour the drink, and
then she made a strange noise in her throat, and he looked at her
in puzzlement. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking past him
and Burt cursed, whirling around, his hand flickering toward the
holstered gun at his hip as Fat Mary dropped to the floor behind
the bar with a solid thud.

When Burt Hugess saw who was standing in the doorway
of the adobe, he jerked his hand away from the gun as if it had
suddenly grown red hot, lifting his arms, palms facing down to the
floor, almost to shoulder level.

‘
Sheridan!’ he growled.

Dan Sheridan was a tall man, maybe
an inch over six feet. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, but he
weighed a good hundred and ninety. His dark blond hair was cut on
the long side, although not the show-long of some of the blustering
fools who wore the star. He wore tan woolen pants tucked into
well-kept, brown mule-ear boots, a dark blue cotton shirt, a soft
leather belt and holster that looked as if it had been painted on
him. His eyes, gray as a hunting wolf’s, were cold and challenging,
and he held the double-barreled Greener with the nine-inch barrels
across his left forearm like a man who was itching to use it. The
twin bores trained on his belly transfixed Burt Hugess.

‘
Sheridan!’ he said
again.

He tried to will himself to act, to challenge the
lawman, but every nerve and sinew denied the commands of his brain.
He could see nothing except the imaginary picture of his body torn
to ribbons by the buckshot that would riddle him if Sheridan pulled
the triggers of the shotgun.

‘
All right,’ Sheridan said at
last. ‘Unbuckle your gunbelt and stand away from it. You know the
drill.’

Hugess didn’t move. Sheridan took
three steps forward and jammed the barrels of the gun into the big
man’s gut, pushing a noisy grunt from his slightly open mouth.
Close up, Burt Hugess could see the just-controlled rage beneath
the apparently calm exterior, and he realized Sheridan was
inch-close to killing him like a mad dog. He swallowed noisily,
eyes shuttling away from Sheridan’s glare.

‘
I’ll count three,’ Sheridan
said.

‘
Don’t bother,’ said a voice
behind him.

Sheridan’s eyes widened a fraction.
Hugess could see him think about it.

‘
I could still take Burt with me,’
Sheridan said almost conversationally to the man behind
him.

‘
You do that and Larry Hugess will
ride in here and burn this town down for your marker,’ Danny
Johnston said, reminding Sheridan of his own position with a jab of
the cocked six-gun. Burt Hugess saw the lawman’s shoulders droop
fractionally, and he knew the danger was over. He snatched the
shotgun out of Sheridan’s hands, breaking it open and kicking the
bright red shells out of sight.

‘
Lean on the bar, both hands!’ he
snapped.

Sheridan just looked at him, the way a man might look
at a reptile.

‘
Do it,’ Danny Johnston said
behind him.

Sheridan shrugged. He leaned forward, both arms
stretched out, hands on the front angle of the bar keeping him
upright. The other Flying H riders pushed into the adobe. They
wanted to see the fun.

Sheridan looked at them. Danny
Johnston, Johnny Evans, Ken Finstatt, two others. He knew them all,
made a mental note. While he was doing it, Burt Hugess moved like a
cat and whacked the barrels of the shotgun down like an axe across
the knuckles of Sheridan’s right hand. Sheridan shouted with the
pain and went down on his knees, writhing on the dirt floor, agony
contorting his features. Burt Hugess dragged his own six-gun out
and cocked it, pointing it at Sheridan’s head.

‘
No Burt!’

The shout made Hugess stop, whirling
around to face the doorway where the tatterdemalion figure of Howie
Cade stood with a six-gun in his hand. The Flying H riders had
turned too, and now Danny Johnston’s voice cut the silence,
contemptuous.

‘
Get out of here, you bum,’ he
snapped, turning away.

Burt Hugess was already turning back
to Sheridan, who was on the floor looking up at him now.

‘
All right,’ Burt said.

The sound of the shot was shockingly
loud in the small area, but it did not come from Burt’s six-gun.
Howie Cade let fly from the doorway, and his carefully placed
bullet took Burt Hugess high on the meaty part of his right
shoulder, slamming the big man’s brawny form against the bar and
capsizing it on top of the screeching woman hiding behind it. Burt
slid off the fallen bar with the bright blood breaking across his
upper body, eyes astonished. The Flying H riders looked from the
fallen man to Howie Cade, standing in the doorway with a smoking
Smith & Wesson steady as a rock in his hand.

‘
What in the name of hell. . . ?’
Danny Johnston asked.

He realized that he still had the six-gun in his
hand, and as he did so, Howie Cade spoke.

‘
I want that gun on the floor,
Danny,’ Howie said. ‘And I do mean now!’

‘
Shit, Howie,’ Danny Johnston
said. ‘You can’t take all of us.’ The gun in his hand didn’t move,
but Johnny Evans and the others, without moving became poised for
movement.

‘
I can shoot your balls off,’
Howie reminded Johnston. His voice cracked on the last
word.

‘
Misdoubt you could make it, boy,’
Johnny Evans said, silky soft.

It looked like he might be right.
Whatever impulse had driven Howie Cade to action, it was gone. The
resolution was dribbling out of him visibly like sand from a broken
egg timer. He suddenly looked old, gray, and very tired; the hand
holding the six-gun trembled visibly.

‘
You wanna kill him or shall I?’
Danny Johnston said to Johnny Evans.

Howie watched them, the gun moving in a small arc
between the two men, his eyes full of desperate apprehension.

‘
Don’t make me kill you, Danny!’
he said. His voice was smaller, too. The Flying H men could hear
the difference.

‘
Shit, Johnny, you kill him,’
Johnston said, as if disgusted.

They had forgotten Sheridan. He’d
been out of it, on the floor, his hand all shot to hell, done with
as far as they were concerned. It was a bad mistake, because
Sheridan had reached across his own body and had the Colt .44-40
with the four and a half inch barrel in his left hand. The sound it
made when he cocked it was like a thunderclap, and the five Flying
H men froze.

‘
As I was saying,’ Howie Cade
said, all the life coming back into his eyes, ‘I want that gun on
the floor, Danny.’

Johnston thought it over for a fast count of three
and then dropped the gun. It made a soft thud in the dirt.

‘
Now the rest of you boys,’ Howie
said softly. ‘Shuck your belts and step away from them.’

Johnny Green looked at Sheridan. The
marshal was on his feet now, and he looked as if he’d welcome an
excuse to use the gun in his hand.

‘
Do what he says,’ Sheridan
rasped.

Howie Cade watched the Flying H men unbuckle their
belts and step shamefacedly away from them. Nobody spoke. Outside
in the street they could hear the sound of wagons rumbling across
the wooden boards that bridged the railroad track.

‘
Now get the hell out of town,’
Sheridan said.

Danny Johnston shrugged and then stepped forward as
though to help Burt Hugess to his feet. Sheridan stopped him with a
gesture of the Colt.

‘
What. . . ?’ said Danny,
puzzled.

‘
He’s under arrest,’ Sheridan
said. ‘For murder.’

‘
Are you serious?’

‘
You want to try me?’

‘
You know what’ll happen,
Sheridan? You know what Larry Hugess will do to you? He’ll cut you
up for jerky!’

‘
That’ll be the day,’ Sheridan
said. ‘On your way, boys.’

‘
Listen, Sheridan, Burt needs a
doctor. He’s hurt,’ Evans put in.

‘
Can’t you see how I’m worrying
about him?’ Sheridan grinned, cold as charity.

He gestured with the six-gun, and
this time the Flying H boys moved, filing past Howie Cade without
meeting his eyes. They got on their horses and yanked them into
movement, cutting across the northern side of the railroad depot
and leaving only a softly sifting cloud of dust in their wake.
Howie Cade had followed them outside and watched them go. Now he
came back into Fat Mary’s.

‘
Jesus,’ he said. He was
trembling. ‘I need a drink.’

Sheridan was hauling Burt Hugess to
his feet. Burt looked ashen, shocked. His arm hung at his side like
a piece of string. His shirt was stiff with dried blood. He watched
with dull eyes as Howie went across to the shelves behind the bar
which Fat Mary had propped up again and lifted down a bottle
of
tequila.
Fat
Mary watched him with eyes like a snake, but she said not a word.
Neither did Sheridan.

Howie uncorked the bottle and poured
himself a stiff drink. He looked at it for a long moment, lifted
it, smelled it. Then he poured it on the floor. He looked at
Sheridan and tried for a grin which didn’t stick on too
well.

‘
We better go get Doc Franklin to
take a look at that hand of yours,’ he said.

‘
Yeah,’ Sheridan said. He looked
at his hand. It was swollen into a ball, bruised blue here and
there, with darkened patches of dried blood beneath the skin. He
couldn’t move any of the fingers at all. Great shape to take on the
full strength of the Flying H, he thought grimly. He looked at
Howie Cade.

Thanks,’ he said.

‘
Aw,’ Howie said. ‘Listen, let’s
get the hell outa here.’

He knew what Sheridan was thinking. He was thinking
it himself. A town marshal without a gun hand plus a deputy who
might get through the night without taking a drink was a poor
combination to put up against what Larry Hugess would start rolling
when Danny Johnston and his boys got back to the Flying H. He gave
Burt Hugess a prod with his six-gun.

‘
OK, tiger,’ he grinned. ‘Let’s
go.’

The three of them went out of there
and across the tracks, walking Burt Hugess up the street toward the
jail. They walked in the center of the street, letting the whole
town see them. Sheridan hoped he didn’t look as worried as he felt.
Howie’s nickname for Hugess wasn’t misplaced. He had a tiger by the
tail, all right. And only one good hand to hold on with.

Madison was no great shakes as a town.

There were a thousand like it, and
Frank Angel sometimes had the feeling he’d seen most of them.
Madison’s two streets, Front and Texas, joined each other in a
T-junction, Front being the horizontal. At the northern end of
Front was the railroad depot and the flat-roofed, gloomy-windowed
warehouse owned by the Hugess outfit. Along its slab adobe sides in
six-foot white capitals was painted the legend
L & B HUGESS TRADERS & MERCHANTS.
Upon a bluff above the depot and set back maybe a hundred
yards from the main street was a small white frame church with a
neat graveyard behind it. Almost directly opposite the pathway
leading to the church was another pathway that wound down behind
the breaks and across the tracks to the huddle of shacks and adobes
that housed such establishments as Fat Mary’s.

Front Street boasted the usual
livery stable, a two-story building that housed a restaurant and
also let rooms, and almost opposite Texas Street, Johnny Gardner’s
Palace Saloon. At the southern end of Front was a wooden bridge
across Cat Creek down to a mere trickle at this time of year. The
bridge was a duplicate of the one which crossed the same creek at
the eastern end of Texas Street, on which - if you cared, which
frankly Angel didn’t – you could find the general store and another
saloon, The Oriental, and opposite it on the junction of Front and
Texas, the marshal’s office and the jailhouse in their solidly
constructed adobe with its heavy iron-studded oak door and barred
windows.

There weren’t many people
about.

Angel rode the roan south on Front
toward the bridge across the creek, his mind on his destination and
his task there; he’d left Ridlow, after an evening of quiet drinks
together, with his wagons in the big corral in back of the general
store, where Ridlow had taken them last night. The town had been
abuzz with the news of the marshal’s arrest of Burt Hugess,
everyone pretty well agreeing that Sheridan was about to find out
what it was like to walk bare-assed through hell. The threat of the
Hugess outfit hung over the place like a black cloud, but Angel had
closed his mind to it: the department had a rule, and the rule
was:
don’t get involved.
If it didn’t directly bear upon the job you had in
hand, you rode around it, you ducked it, you walked away from it,
you got out of it any damned way you could, but you didn’t get
involved. The Justice Department had its own fish to fry, and they
didn’t include the problems of a town marshal in some godforsaken
wide spot in the road, no matter how pressing.