Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) (14 page)

Angel cut Willy
Mill
’s trail
as the dawn broke brightly across the desert. Mill was traveling
faster, as if he had decided he was clear and there was no need of
concealment. One horse, one mule. So Mill probably still had the
girl with him. Angel did not dare let his thoughts dwell upon her
treatment at the hands of the raiders: every time the idea touched
the edge of his mind a white anger welled in him. He knew he had to
keep it under control. He wanted Mill alive.

Another thought struck him as
he moved on at a steady
pace along the faint trace his quarry had left.
Mill’s interest in the girl had puzzled him. He was not the type.
Mill would have killed her out of hand when the others were done
with her. The man was totally devoid of normality and now the
thought came to Angel that Mill would probably look upon her as a
possession, something he could use to trade. In Tucson there was a
market for women, particularly Anglo women, especially blonde Anglo
women. Shipped across the border at Nogales, they were the symbols
of wealth and status to the Mexican bandits who bought them for
their pleasure, used them until they tired of them, and then put
them into brothels for the miners and the gun runners and the
black-hearted breed who infested the border. The thought made it
harder for Angel to keep the horse at a steady pace, but he knew
that if he pressed the animal now, it would founder. He had already
mistreated it badly, but the dun was a sturdy beast Too much more,
and he would be afoot in the desert. He had to plan his strategy.
He could not ride boldly into Tucson looking for Mill. There were
too many places in a town a man could hole up, and he had no way of
knowing what allies the man had there. Angel was a man not afraid
of long odds, but he liked to know what they were. There was a
proverb: a cautious man is one to cross bridges with. But the rage
still seethed below his calm exterior. He still wanted a chance to
kill Willy Mill. Very slowly, he told himself. He reached the
outskirts of Tucson late in the afternoon. The old walled town
still looked pretty much the way it had been when the Spaniards had
first passed this way. From a distance, they would hardly know it
had changed, he thought. But along River Road the place was a
straggle of honkytonks, cheap saloons, one or two lace-curtained,
dark-windowed sporting houses with gingerbread woodwork on the
verandas. Angel scanned the street He saw no face he knew. He led
the horse up to a barn-like building with a sign swinging over the
door that said
livery stable
with no capital letters. It had bullet holes all
around and over and under the letter V. Inside, he found a lanky
man sitting on a barrel, a bottle of beer in his hand.

‘
Like
to bed the horse down for the night,’ Angel said. ‘He’s been hard
used.’ The man cast an experienced eye over the animal and
nodded.

‘
Ahuh,’ the man said.

‘
Like
to get him rubbed down, watered and grain fed,’ Angel said. ‘Can
you handle that?’

‘
Ain’t
too busy,’ the man said. ‘Got but two or three hosses in. An’ a
mule.’

Angel
’s head came up. Could he have been
that lucky?

‘
Been
here long?’ he asked idly.

This time the
man
’s eyes
came up to meet Angel’s. They were cunning and bright and a leer
edged its way towards the hostler’s thin lips.

‘
I
forget,’ he said, craftily. Angel nodded, and pulled a ten-dollar
gold piece from his watch pocket. He tossed it idly in the air. The
foxy eyes followed it like a rat watching a day-old
chick.

‘
How’s
your memory coming along?’ Angel asked.

‘
Improvin’ by the second,’ the man said. He caught the gold
coin deftly.

‘
Fat
feller,’ he said. ‘Had some trollop with him.’

‘
Go
on,’ Angel said.

‘
Damned if I ain’t gettin’ a forgetful ol’ fool,’ the
hostler said. The bright eyes were awash with greed.

‘
Damned if I don’t agree,’ said Angel. He reached forward
and pulled the man to his feet, bunching the thin cotton shirt in
his fist. He lifted the hostler until the man’s feet were almost
off the ground. The shifty eyes were a foot from his own, and the
man squirmed like an eel.

‘
Hey,’
he said, ‘hey, there.’

‘
Ten
bucks,’ Angel reminded him. ‘You want to have me take the small
change out of your face?’

‘
Let
go o’ me, mister,’ squealed the man. ‘Ain’t no call to git all
riled up.’

Angel let him down with a
thump.
‘Talk!’ he said. His eyes were that pale shade of grey and
the man looked into them and gulped, his prominent Adam’s apple
jumping in his scrawny throat.

‘
Fat
feller, like I said,’ he managed. He spoke backing away from Angel
until a safe distance separated them. ‘Figgered he was a flesh
peddler. With the girl an’ all. We get lots of ‘em,’ he said,
ingratiatingly. ‘You need a piece?’

‘
You
know a good place, I’m betting,’ Angel said, disgust rising in his
mouth.

‘
You’re damn right I do. Same place that feller went,’ the
hostler said anxiously. ‘I’ll show it to you if you
like.’

‘
Just
tell me,’ Angel said. ‘They see you, I mightn’t get in.’

The
hostler frowned and then decided
against letting his face reveal any reaction to the slur. This one
was not for fooling around with, he told himself.

‘
Angela’s, they call it,’ he said. ‘Account of it’s run by
this . .. lady.’

‘
She’s
Anglo,’ he added, as if that made a subtle difference. “Your friend
was headed there.’

‘
Skip
the testimonials,’ Angel said sharply. ‘Where is it?’

The man went to the doorway and pointed down
the street.

‘
See
thar where the road curves off to the right?’ he said. ‘It’s a big
ol’ place, looks like it’s some society lady owns it. Got red
shingles on the roof.’

‘
How
long ago did ... my friend leave?’

‘
Hell,
stranger, I don’t rightly recall... .’ He jumped as Angel turned
and held up a placating hand. ‘No, Jesus, mister, I was ... it’s
just a way o’ talkin’. Lemme see, he was here about, oh, an hour,
hour an’ a half ago. Not more.’

“
You
take real good care of that horse,’ Angel said. ‘Sate?’

‘
I’ll
treat him like he was my own brother,’ the man said
fervently.

‘
God
help him,’ Angel said, setting off down River Road. The bend was no
more than a hundred yards away. He came around it, crossing the
street to utilize the shelter of a lumbering team being cursed
through the hock deep sand towards the Tanque Verde road. On this
side of the street, he saw, there were stores, small, rundown,
catering only for the drifters who congregated in River Road’s
sleazy saloons. The big house opposite was incongruously well kept.
The windows were cleaned and bright, the shutters painted and their
hinges oiled. There was a fine brass knocker on the black oak door.
The house had three stories. Angel paced on down the street, and
found a barber shop. He went inside. He could see the entrance to
the house quite easily from the barber’s chair. He longed for a
bath, but it would have to wait. He told the barber to shave him.
On request, the barber sent out for a pitcher of beer and a hunk of
bread and cheese. Angel wolfed down the food. The cheese was old
but the bread was reasonably fresh. He sank half of the pitcher of
beer in a long and delicious series of swallows. It tasted like
cool, clear honey.

‘
Is
there a doctor around here?’ he asked the barber.

‘
Up on
Elm,’ the man said. ‘If you want the fancy sort o’
doctorin’.’

‘
If
not?’

‘
If it
ain’t something needs cuttin’ or stitchin’ I could prob’ly do her,’
the barber said. ‘Old barber-shop custom, you know. That’s why we
got them red an’ white poles: bandages an’ blood, they represent.
In the olden days, they

His voice faded away as Angel stripped off
the filthy shirt and revealed the sorry mess of bandages around his
middle.

‘
Let’s
take a look at that there,’ the barber said. He unwound the bandage
with surprisingly gentle fingers, whistling when he saw what lay
beneath.

‘
That
looks right nasty,’ he ventured. ‘But it just needs cleanin’ up, I
reckon. Ain’t gone gangrene, far as I can tell.’

‘
Well,
thanks a bundle,’ Angel said.

The barber swabbed the puckered
bullet wound with alcohol and painted iodine stripes all over the
gravel scratches on Angel
’s chest and forearms. Then he stood back to
admire his handiwork.

‘
I
ain’t about to ask you how all that happened,’ he said, ‘but you
ought to be takin’ it easy for a week or so.’

T don
’t have the time,’ Angel said. ‘Can
you put a bandage or something on good and tight? Makes it easier
to ride.’

‘
Ride?
You could open that thing up like the Grand Canyon, you start
ridin’, cowboy. What’s up? Don’t your outfit pay you if you don’t
work?’

‘
I
never asked. Get going with that bandaging, will you?’

The barber shook his head as he
set about his task.
‘Durn fool saddle tramps,’ he muttered. ‘Walkin’ around
full o’ holes, but will they do what the doc says, will they...
?’

He tucked in the end of the cotton bandage,
and patted it affectionately with the air of a proud craftsman.

‘
That
feels good,’ Angel told him. ‘Ought to hold fine.’

‘
Cripes, cowboy,’ the barber said, ‘that must be some rough
outfit you work for.’

Angel grinned.
‘It is at that,’ he
said. He invited the barber to share the rest of his beer, sending
the same small Mexican boy out for some more. Angel gave him the
money to buy a shirt and when he had drunk about another pint of
beer and put on the gaudy Mexican nightmare the boy brought back,
he felt refreshed and strong again.

Five minutes later, Willy Mill came out of
the door of the house across the way, his face flushed and flaccid,
his walk languid. He started east on River Road heading back
towards the livery stable.

Angel was right behind him.

Lieutenant Peter Ellis was
proud of his Army uniform. His family was an old one and his father
and his father
’s father had been soldiers. Unlike them, however,
Lieutenant Ellis was vain, headstrong, and ambitious, a combination
of personality defects which in another lieutenant named Bascom
had, some years earlier, plunged the entire Territory into bloody
war with Cochise’s Chiricahuas. In Ellis, the flaws in his
personality produced a different kind of weakness: he was a
compulsive gambler, and the worse for his plunging belief in his
own ‘luck.’ It was this predilection which had led him to associate
himself with the men who played poker regularly at the Reynolds and
Birch trading store just off the post. Ellis was deep in debt to
the store, and deep in debt to the saloons in Reynolds’ Addition,
the hellhole up in the hills. The deeper in debt he got the more he
gambled, and the more he gambled the deeper he got into debt. At
first, he had worried, but Reynolds had soothed him, hinting that
in return for some minor ‘favors’ he would write off part of the
debt. It was then that Ellis had learned that his Commanding
Officer was also in the clutches of the partnership, was also doing
‘favors’ for Birch and Reynolds. An alliance between Thompson and
Ellis had become a necessity, two weak men supporting each other’s
vanities, observing certain proprieties of conduct before the
enlisted men but each knowing the other as a tool of the Daranga
men and their mysterious master. It had never before been like
this, though, Ellis thought. The whole thing was a nightmare:
Thompson had left him in no doubt as to what was expected of them.
And in no doubt that he, Ellis, would have to execute this latest
‘favor’ on his own.

Ellis had agreed, but for his
own reasons. Thompson was no spring chicken: the man was going to
pieces. Birch and Reynolds had pull, through their connections in
Washington, and if a man had pull there, a command could easily be
arranged. There weren
’t too many career men keen to spend their
declining years in the sun-scoured discomfort of Fort Daranga.
There were even fewer young ones. Ellis saw visions of a situation
where he would control ‘extras’ as came the way of the Commanding
Officer at Fort Daranga. Then, when he had the power, he would make
Birch and Reynolds dance to a different tune. By God, they would
pay then. Meantime . . .

This and thoughts like it went
through his head as he did his rounds accompanied by Sergeant
Battle and two enlisted men. When they reached the guardhouse, he
motioned the sergeant to open the door of Larkin
’s cell. The old soldier’s
eyebrows rose a fraction, but he did as he was bid, pushing the
door open and going in ahead of Ellis.

‘
On
your feet, boy,’ he said. The gunman spat on the floor.

Moving with a speed surprising
in one so bulky, Battle crossed the cell and pulled Larkin off the
cot, jamming him against the rough wall, slamming the breath from
the man
’s
body.

‘
That’s a good boy,’ Battle said. He wasn’t even breathing
heavily. Larkin just looked at the sergeant with hooded eyes. Ellis
came in.

‘
At
ease, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to the
prisoner.’

Sergeant Battle stepped back.

‘
Alone,’ Ellis said meaningfully. Battle frowned and turned,
hesitating at the door. His eyes touched the holstered revolver at
the lieutenant’s belt. Ellis caught the glance and
smiled.

‘
You’re right, of course,’ he said, letting the words come
out as if they might rot his teeth. He unbuckled the belt and
handed it to the sergeant, who went out of the cell.

‘
What
the hell do you want?’ Larkin rasped.

‘
A
quiet talk, that’s all,’ Ellis said, sitting down on the hard cot.
‘Take it easy.’

‘
You
try takin’ it easy when you’ve been cooped up in this sweatbox as
long as me,’ snapped Larkin.

‘
Easy,’ Ellis told him sibilantly. He held up a warning hand
and rose, going to the Judas window in the cell door. Through it he
could see the sergeant talking to one of the two guards. He turned
and sat down again, his voice dropping conspiratorially.

‘
You
want out,’ he said, ‘so out you’re going. It’s on.’

Larkin
’s eyes lifted, comprehension dawning
in them.

‘
Jesus,’ he said. ‘He thinks of everything.’ He looked long
and hard at the young soldier. ‘So you’re on the payroll
too?’

‘
Never
mind that,’ Ellis said. There was irritation in his voice at the
thought that Larkin was classing him as an equal because they both
helped the same people. It was like a raw Irish recruit imagining
himself the equal of a general.

‘
Shut
your dirty mouth,’ he snapped, ‘and be thankful that you have
friends like Jacey Reynolds to look after you.’

‘
Dirty, is it,’ Larkin grinned. ‘A spade is a spade,
sonny.’

‘I
told you to shut up,’ ground out
Ellis. ‘If I had my way you’d rot in here till hell froze, you
cheap thug.’

Larkin
’s eyes narrowed, but he let the
insult pass. If he had to suffer a fool to get out of this, he had
to suffer and that was that. Larkin was not a man to try changing
the opinions of a pigheaded little ass-kisser like this
one.

‘
Get
on with it,’ he said. ‘How do we work it?’

‘
It’s
all as simple as this,’ Ellis said. He unbuttoned his shirt and
pulled out an Army Colt. Larkin grabbed it, checking the loads,
hefting the weapon. His eyes glowed with a pale light; he looked
like a different man with the gun in his hand.

‘
What’s the drill?’ he said, softly.

‘
There’s to be no shooting,’ Ellis told him. ‘That’s
imperative. There should be no need to use ... that. When the
guards bring in your grub, you make your move. Knock them out, tie
them up, anything you like. But no shooting - you understand? I
can’t help you if there’s any shooting. It would be heard all over
the Fort!’

‘
Damn
you for a fool, I can see that,’ Larkin said. ‘How do I get
away?’

‘
After
retreat, I’ll bring a horse round in back,’ Ellis said. ‘It will be
tethered behind the guardhouse in the yard. All you have to do is
get on it and disappear.’

Larkin nodded.
‘Better get me a
carbine,’ he said. ‘Leave it in the saddle holster.’

‘
I’ll
do what I can,’ Ellis said stiffly. ‘They don’t hang from the trees
waiting to be picked, you know.’

‘
Get
one,’ Larkin hissed. ‘Just get one.’

The venom in his voice made Ellis recoil, a
stirring of fear touching the nape of his neck. The man was an
animal, he told himself. He stilled the reaction; after all, Larkin
would be dead in a few hours. The thought of his part in that made
his hands tremble for a moment. He wiped the sweat off them on his
pants.

‘
Did
you . . . those men: Clare, and the old man. Were you sent.. .
?’

‘
Now
that’d be tellin’, wouldn’t it?’ grinned Larkin. His teeth shone
whitely in the shadowy cell.

Ellis
’s curiosity got the better of him.
‘Why are they doing all this? The attack on the high country
ranches ... what’s behind it all, Larkin?’

‘
If I
knew I wouldn’t tell you, sonny,’ Larkin said. ‘Just do what
the Man tells you
an’ don’t ask questions. You’ll live longer.’

The peculiar aptness of the remark made
Ellis start guiltily, but Larkin was not looking at him.

‘
I
don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Lieutenant,’ he said loudly.
‘Why don’t you go ‘way an’ leave me alone?’

Ellis followed the direction of
Larkin
’s
gaze and saw Sergeant Battle’s eyes peering through the Judas
window.

‘
Very
well,’ he said heavily, picking up the cue and rising from the
cot

“
You’ve had your chance, Larkin.’

‘
Ah,
go to hell,’ Larkin snapped. He slouched down on the vacated cot
and Ellis waved for the sergeant to open the door.

‘
Hopeless,’ he remarked. The sergeant said nothing. They
went into the outer room and the two guards there came to attention
and saluted as they left the guardhouse. Then when the officer was
gone they went back to their game of poker.

‘
Officers,’ said one.

‘
Shut
up and deal,’ said the other.