Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) (7 page)

‘
That’s the truth,’ his sidekick
said. He was a tall, burly rider whom Howie recognized vaguely,
having seen him around town a few times.

‘
You wouldn’t know the truth if it
bit you in the ass, Harvey,’ he said conversationally. He moved
maybe three inches nearer the Flying H rider, and the man paled,
backing up.

‘
Howie,’ he said hastily. ‘You
beat up on me, ain’t nothin’ I can do with Sheridan over there
holdin’ a scattergun on me. But you’re off your cock if you think
anybody come in here!’

‘
Who seen this guy come in here,
anyway?’ demanded Danny Johnston.

Howie just looked at him. Danny Johnston laughed in
his face.

‘
Sheet, Howie you really got the
DTs this time. Johnny, maybe you better give Howie here a stiff
drink afore he sees anythin’ else!’

The jest was rough, but it was
enough to take the cork out of the bottled tension of the saloon.
The Flying H boys let loose. They laughed easy at first and then
louder and louder until they were all hooting, slapping their legs,
pointing at Howie.

Sheridan stood there and watched
Howie taking it, watched him beginning to crumble. He looked as
though he was shrinking inside his tattered clothes as the Flying H
boys gave him the razzle-dazzle. And there wasn’t a single solitary
damned thing Dan Sheridan could do about it: Howie had to make the
play, if there was going to be one.

The deputy stood there looking at
his tormentors, hearing the racket of their jeers like the scorn of
angels inside his head. He pleaded silently with Sheridan to step
in, stop them; and knew that Sheridan would not move until he gave
him a signal. Howie could not do that, he could not finally show
Sheridan that he had broken, and yet he knew that if they didn’t
stop jeering, if they didn’t stop, he’d have to, have to . . . his
eyes shuttled sideways and fixed on the amber glitter of the
bottles on the shelves behind Johnny Gardner. His shoulders
slumped:
my God, what I’d give for a
drink,
he thought.

Danny Johnston saw it, and he grinned. He fished into
the watch pocket of his pants and slid out a silver dollar, which
he flipped up in the air and then caught. Howie Cade looked at
it.

‘
Here,’ Johnston said, tossing it
toward the deputy. ‘Have a drink, bum!’

The dollar fell uncaught to the floor, spun on the
boards, lay still. Howie Cade looked at Danny Johnston, and hate
surged into his eyes and then died, stillborn. He looked at the
dollar on the floor. There were tears in his eyes, tears of pure
shame.

Sheridan cursed silently, knowing he
would have to move now. He’d seen old fighting bulls pulled down by
wolves and knew they worked the same way the Flying H boys were
working now. The baying pack, confusing the bull, taunting him,
tiring him, confusing him, exposing his lack of speed. The false
attacks, the small snapping wounds. And then the moment when the
old bull realized that all he could do was die, and something went
out of him like a signal which the wily wolves knew, recognized,
sensed. Then they attacked in earnest.

Howie still stood there in the
middle of the saloon with his head down, and his eyes fixed on the
floor. He looked up at Sheridan, and Dan Sheridan’s heart leaped.
Whatever was in Howie’s stance, it wasn’t in his eyes any more.
There was a fierce, exultant light in them.

‘
I don’t feel good,’ Howie
mumbled, shielding his face from the Flying H riders. ‘Maybe I will
take a drink.’

He walked over to the bar, moving diagonally so that
he was out in the center opposite the big mirror behind Johnny
Gardner, who was reaching for the whiskey bottle when Howie
moved.

So unexpected, so sudden was the
explosion of action that nobody had a chance to even move. Howie
had leaned forward on the bar, and then he whirled around, the
six-gun in his hand coming up and booming once, twice, three times,
almost faster than you could count. He was poised like an athlete
in a drawing, right knee slightly bent, right arm rigid with the
six-gun smoking in it, eyes fixed on the second door in the quartet
of them on the balcony above the saloon. There were two jagged
holes in the wood of the door where Howie’s slugs had blasted
through the flimsy wood, and the man who had been standing behind
the door holding it ajar came out almost as if someone had shoved
him from behind, bent forward as though he was going to butt some
invisible foe in the belly, head on into the balustrade and over it
in a splintering crash to land on one of the tables below. The
table collapsed in a huge noise, men scrambling aside, away from
the spread-eagled body lying in the middle of the
wreckage.

Very slowly, as though afraid to let
out his breath too fast, Howie Cade straightened up. He looked at
Dan Sheridan and Sheridan nodded. Howie went over and turned the
dead man’s face up. He had never seen the man before. There were
two bullet holes in the center of the man’s chest, one low on the
right, the other higher on the left. There was also a raggedy
bandage around the man’s upper arm. It was soaked with fresh blood.
There was straw clinging to the rough woolen shirt and caked horse
manure on the man’s boots.

‘
Anybody know this man’s name?’
Howie said. His voice was harsh.

Nobody spoke.

‘
Looks like Hugess is importing
cheap gunslingers by the dozen,’ Howie said.

He went back across the saloon to where Danny
Johnston and the tall rider called Harvey were still standing, eyes
wide. While they watched him, he punched the empty shells out of
his six-gun and reloaded it, then deliberately, almost showily, put
the gun back in the holster.

‘
Saw nobody come in, right?’ he
said musingly to Harvey.

Harvey said nothing, but his eyes
moved right, left, right, looking for help which wasn’t going to
arrive.

Howie slapped the man’s face. Not
hard. Lightly, cuffing him almost affectionately.

‘
My, but you’re a cheeky one,’ he
said dreamily. Then his voice changed.

‘
You cross my path again in this
town, Harvey, and I’ll cut you down,’ he snapped.
‘Sabe!’

The man nodded sullenly. Danny Johnston said nothing.
Howie turned his attention toward the Flying H foreman. He picked
up the whiskey that Johnston had been drinking.

‘
Now let me buy you a drink,’ he
said, and tossed the contents of the glass into Johnston’s face.
Johnston snorted and pawed at his face as the fiery liquid burned
his eyes, cursing and spluttering as Howie Cade stepped back and
let his fingers curl above the butt of the six-gun he had so
showily holstered a few moments ago.

The message was plain, and every man in the saloon
held his breath. Danny Johnston pawed his eyes dry and looked at
Howie. He looked at everyone else and then he shook his head.

‘
Un-hunh,’ he said. ‘Not me, Mary
Ann.’

‘
Like I figgered,’ Howie said,
turning away with a sneer. ‘Gutless.’ He turned his back completely
on the Flying H man and looked over at Sheridan.

‘
Anything else?’ he said, his head
high, proud.

‘
Guns,’ Sheridan reminded
him.

‘
Oh, yeah,’ Howie said. He looked
at Johnny Gardner. ‘Every Flying H man in the place, Johnny,’ he
told the saloonkeeper. ‘Get his guns and bring them over to the
jail.’

‘
Listen,’ Gardner said. ‘This
ain’t no fight of mine. I—’

‘
Get started,’ Howie said, and
there was a cold flatness in his voice that made Gardner jump. He
came around the bar in a hurry and started lifting six-guns from
the holsters of the Flying H boys.

‘
You know you’re wastin’ your
time, Sheridan,’ Danny Johnston said. ‘We can get more
guns.’

Johnny Gardner had an armful of handguns. He looked
at Sheridan.

‘
Over to the jail, Johnny,’
Sheridan said. ‘Leave them there.’

Howie Cade was eyeing Danny Johnston
thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we ought to make him put his hand on the bar,’
he said, worlds of meaning in his voice. ‘What do you say,
Dan?’

Sheridan pursed his lips, as though
thinking it over. Danny Johnston’s eyes got that nervous edgy look
back in them. Small beads of cold sweat started out on his upper
lip.

‘
It’s a thought,’ Sheridan said,
letting Johnston sweat for a while. Then he shook his head. ‘No.
Not worth the effort.’ He jerked the shotgun toward the doors. ‘Get
the hell out of town, Danny. Tell Hugess his plan backfired. Tell
him next time not to send boys on a man’s work.’

‘
I’ll tell him,’ Danny Johnston
snapped, angrily. ‘Don’t you fret none.’

‘
Haul your freight!’ Sheridan
snapped back, patience running thin. He jerked the Greener again,
and Danny Johnston paled and backed off. That damned gun would blow
a man clear into the next county. He headed out of the saloon with
the Flying H boys trailing behind him, and Sheridan and Howie Cade
went to the door and watched them rocket off down Front Street,
raising a cloud of sifting dust that fell slowly back and down as
the riders thundered across the railroad tracks.

‘
Damnfool grandstand play,’
Sheridan muttered. He turned toward Howie Cade, who was grinning at
him. ‘What the hell’s so funny?’

‘
I was just going to say I’d buy
you a drink,’ Howie said.

Sheridan smiled. ‘I reckon I’d enjoy
one. Beer, Johnny!’

Johnny Gardner was just coming back
from his errand to the jailhouse. He scuttled behind the bar,
sweating from the exertion of carrying all that iron across the
street on the double.

‘
Two beers comin’ up!’ he echoed
automatically.

Sheridan and his deputy clinked glasses and drank
deeply, enjoying the cold chill of the liquid. Then the marshal put
his glass down and turned to face his deputy.

‘
Tell me just one thing,’ he said.
‘How the hell did you know that fellow was up there?’

‘
Hell,’ Howie grinned. ‘When I
looked down at that dollar on the floor, I seen a blob o’ blood big
as a dime, and another a few feet away and others that made a line
goin’ straight for the stairs. There was only the one door open up
there. He had to be behind it, watching everything.’

‘
You sure as hell took a long
chance on that,’ Sheridan said.

‘
Suppose so,’ Howie admitted.
‘Never occurred to me anyone else’d be up there.’

Sheridan shook his head in
resignation. He didn’t want to bring Howie down off his high; the
deputy hadn’t felt this good in a couple of years, and it would be
a poor friend who drew his attention to the odds against his having
been right when he blasted away at that open door.

‘
You want another beer, Howie?’ he
asked.

Johnny Gardner bustled over as he
heard Sheridan’s words, anxious to be of service, rubbing his hands
dry and reaching for the glasses. Howie Cade waved him away with a
lordly gesture.

‘
Beer?’ he said, scornfully.
‘Beer? You think I want to spoil this feeling with
beer?
You got any
champagne, Johnny?’

‘
He has,’ Sheridan said, taking
Howie’s elbow and steering him toward the door. ‘But you can’t
afford it on your pay!’

‘
Shucks, Dan,’ Howie was saying as
he got bum-rushed through the batwings by the marshal. ‘I thought
you were buyin’.’

Johnny Gardner watched them go with
his mouth hanging open. They acted like men who didn’t have a
damned care in the world.

‘
Goddamned fools,’ he snarled to
the empty bar.

It was only a small sound.

Most men wouldn’t have heard it,
certainly men as deep in sleep as Angel had been before the sound
was made. But Frank Angel wasn’t most men. Long ago, when they’d
first put him through all the punishing training courses of the
Department in Washington, one of the things he’d been taught was to
sleep with one ear cocked. They had a very simple way of teaching
it, and once learned, the lesson was never forgotten. They worked
him like a plow horse all day and then when he collapsed, out like
a light, in the barrack-like dormitory, they let him sleep.
Somewhere between lights out and the gray death-light of pre-dawn,
someone would eel into the room on soundless feet, and then, with a
scream to wake the dead of an earlier century, empty a bucket of
icy water on the naked belly of the sleeping man. After three or
four times, a man started to listen, without knowing he was doing
it, listening in his sleep for the soft slither of a foot on board,
the slow creak of a quietly opened door, the faint rustle of
clothing when an arm is raised. He started to react fast, to come
awake without the involuntary start with which most people awaken,
without the need for the long seconds of focusing the eyes, alert
and poised with one hand already on the six-gun beneath the
pillow.

‘
Anyone’s in your room while
you’re asleep sure as hell ain’t there to gaze on yore fair white
body,’ the instructor had told him. ‘By the time you find out why
he is there, likely as not he’ll have put a foot of steel in your
belly. So when you know someone’s there and where he’s at
–
move!
’