Kill Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #6) (13 page)

‘
No
smoking,’ he said.

While he had been busy with his
task. Angel had been examining Chris Vaughan. In the growing light,
Vaughan
’s
face looked pinched and very pale. He was terribly weak, but he
opened his eyes and grinned.

‘
Well,’
he said. ‘So I’m still here?’

‘
How
you feeling, Chris?’ Gates asked.

‘
Very
fragile,’ Vaughan replied. ‘An’ extremely stupid.’

‘
We got
them all,’ Angel told him. Vaughan nodded.

‘
Naturally,’ he said.

‘
Chris,
I never said thank you,’ Angel said. ‘If that’s the right words.
They sure don’t seem like enough.’

‘
You
could give me a kiss,’ Vaughan grinned, then cursed as a stab of
pain twisted his body. ‘Damn an’ blast!’ He touched the pad of
bandage on his side tentatively. ‘Can I ride?’

‘
You
shouldn’t,’ Angel replied. ‘But you’ve got to. We’re moving
out.’

‘
There’s more o’ them waitin’ for us,’ Gates
added.

‘
We —
sure do — have jolly times together,’ Vaughan said, sitting up and
trying to get to his feet. His face was wet with sweat and he
reeled and would have fallen had Gates not grabbed him. Vaughan
leaned heavily on his companion.

‘
Whew!’
he said. ‘My belly feels like it’s full of boiling oil.’

‘
Bullet
went right through,’ Angel said. ‘But it tore you up
some.’

‘
Damned
well feels like it,’ Vaughan gritted through his teeth. ‘All right.
Let go of me, you big slab o’ beef.’

Gates stepped away, and Vaughan
reeled
again,
but kept his feet. He looked at Angel and nodded.

‘
I can
manage,’ he said. His jaw muscles were knotted and the sweat had
drenched his shirt, dark stains of moisture plastering the garment
to him.

‘
How do
we play it, Frank?’ Gates asked.

‘
You
ride double with Chris,’ Angel said. ‘Lead his horse. We’ll have to
let the pack mule go.’

‘
And
then?’

‘
Stay
as close to me as you can!’ Angel ordered. ‘It’s going to be touch
and go anyway.’

He turned to Yancey Blantine,
and yanked the old man to his feet. Blantine snarled his annoyance,
but Angel ignored the hatred in the old man
’s eyes.

‘
Listen
to me!’ he snapped. ‘Because your life depends on it!’

‘
Go to
hell!’ Blantine snarled.

Angel slapped Yancey Blantine across the
face. He hit the man contemptuously once, and then again with the
back of his hand.

‘
Listen!’ he snapped. Blantine relapsed into sullen
silence.

‘
You
see those canisters on your saddle?’ Angel demanded.

Blantine nodded.
‘I see
them.’

‘
There’s enough blasting powder in them to blow you to
Kingdom Come,’ Angel informed him. ‘And a ten-minute fuse: you see
it?’

Again Blantine nodded.

‘
We’re
going to ride out there now to where your friends are waiting,’
Angel said. ‘And you’re going to call them off.’

‘
Sure,’
sneered Blantine. ‘Like Hell!’

‘
You’ll
do it,’ Angel assured him. ‘Because you’ll only have those ten
minutes. Ten minutes, Blantine! You hear me? I’m going to light
that fuse and ride out there with you. We all are. You call off
your dogs or I ground hitch you on the pony and let the fuse burn.
You’ll sit there and watch it burn right up to the powder, and then
you’ll be spread all over these mountains. So you better do some
convincing talking!’

The old man looked at the blasting powder
canisters strapped to his saddle and then back at Angel.

‘
Yo’re
bluffin’!’ he snapped. ‘You want me alive, you said so
yourself.’

‘
I want
me alive more,’ Angel said. ‘Get up!’

‘
I
ain’t — ‘ Blantine began, but again Angel slapped him, again his
contemptuous hand rocking the man’s head from side to side. Blood
trickled from Yancey Blantine’s broken lips. He spat.

‘
Get
up!’ Angel told him, and with a curse, the old renegade swung
awkwardly up into the saddle. With a few deft loops, Angel bound
his hands to the pommel of the saddle. Then he tied the reins of
Blantine’s horse to the pommel of his own saddle.

‘
Better
rehearse what you’re going to say, Blantine,’ he said. ‘You haven’t
got long.’

Blantine said nothing. He
watched with murderous eyes as Angel and Gates helped the wounded
Vaughan into
his saddle. Vaughan sat on his horse like a sack of
flour.

‘
Let’s
move,’ Angel said, and they kneed the horses into motion, moving on
down the canyon and towards the widening exit where the morning
sunlight painted the forbidding; walls a brightening shade of
reddish gold.

As they approached the open declivity at the
end of the canyon, he heard someone give a hoarse shout, and turned
to Blantine.

‘
Start
shouting, Blantine,’ he said coldly, and put a match to the fuse.
It spluttered for a moment and then started to hiss as the flame
caught. Angel held the fuse in his hand and kneed the horse forward
into the open. Gates came up close behind him, holding the reins of
Vaughan’s horse.

‘
Boys!’
screeched Yancey Blantine. ‘Don’t shoot, boys! Hold your
fire!’

They moved slowly forward, and
as they did they saw men rising from their hiding places, guns
ported and ready, the sunlight catching bright flashes of metal in
a long semi-circle in front of
the four riders coming out of the
canyon.

‘
Pa!’
someone yelled. ‘Pa!’

They saw a huge giant of a man
stumbling towards them up the hill,
six-gun in his hand. Behind him came a
portly, black clad man with the dead-white face of the professional
gambler.

‘
Tell
them to keep away!’ snapped Angel. ‘Talk, damn you!’

‘
Gregg!’ screamed Yancey Blantine. ‘Gregg, keep back. They
got a fuse burning here! I’m sittin’ on a bomb! Get back, get
back!’

‘
listen
to me, down there!’ Angel yelled. His words bounced back off the
canyon walls in the silence. The Blantine men ringed around them
stood ready, guns cocked, waiting.

‘
There’s a ten minute fuse burning in my hand!’ Angel
yelled. ‘And about four minutes of it have gone! We’re heading down
the hill past you, and we’re coming fast! Anyone tries to stop us,
I’ll whip Blantine’s horse up and let go of the fuse. You want to
see him blown to pieces in front of you?’

He kept the horses moving inexorably
forward, heading for the shelving slope that led downwards and away
from Santa Elizabeta. Off to the north he could see the flat
shimmer of the desert.

‘
Is he
bluffin’, Yancey?’ shouted the white faced man.

‘
Goddammit, Hurwitch, get your men out o’ here!’ screamed
Yancey Blantine. Angel was counting out loud, loud enough to be
heard only by Blantine, and he had said six. The old man could hear
the hiss of the fuse, and he was afraid to look and see how short
it was.

‘
We’re
movin’,’ Angel shouted. ‘Anyone tries anything, and I let the old
man go!’

‘
Pa!’
the giant shouted. ‘You all right, Pa?’

‘
Gregg,
boy!’Yancey Blantine sobbed. ‘For God’s sake get back away an’ let
them through. Let them through!’

Angel looked over his
shoulder at Gates
and nodded. Chris Vaughan set his lips, and pressed a hand to his
wounded side.

‘
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehah!’ Angel yelled, and gave his horse a
vicious cut across the withers with the double reins. The stinging
slap made the horse jump to a running gallop, dragging Yancey
Blantine’s horse along. The old man snatched at the pommel with his
bound hands, and all four riders rocketed down the shallow slope,
dust climbing up behind them, the astonished ambushers watching
helplessly as they headed on down the slope and then the tableau
broke.

‘
Hold
your fire!’ yelled Hurwitch. ‘Nobody fire at them! Don’t take no
chances on hitting the Old Man!’

The four riders were at the edge of the
steep declivity now that slanted down to the flat sandy arroyo
whose twisted course led off north towards the malpais.

The ambushers were not idle,
either. They
ran to their tethered horses, swinging into the saddle and
milling into a tightly bunched mass, the horses curveting and
snorting as their riders held them back from the
pursuit.

‘
What
are we waiting for?’ yelled one of the men.

‘
Shut
your stupid face!’ snapped Hurwitch. ‘We give them their ten
minutes, and ten minutes more if we got to. They can’t outrun
us!’

‘
None
o’ you is to take any chances with my Pa’s life!’ Gregg Blantine
told them ponderously. ‘You hear me?’

They looked at him and nodded,
or gave a muttered assent. Although every one of them knew Gregg
was a mite slow on the uptake, they had also seen him use those
terrible
ham
like fists on men. Gregg did not know what it was like to lose a
fight. None of them had ever seen the man who could stand up to
him, and none of them had any inclination to try to be the
first.

‘
There
they go!’ one of Hurwitch’s men shouted.

‘
Headin’ straight for the malpais,’ Pete Gilman added. He
gigged his horse up alongside Gregg Blantine’s. ‘We’ll get ‘em,
Gregg,’ he said.

Gregg Blantine nodded.

‘
I’ll
get them,’ he said. It was not a correction and Gilman did not take
it that way. He knew that what Gregg Blantine meant was that no
matter what happened, no matter what the cost, nor how long the
pursuit, Gregg Blantine had arrived at his own decision. Nothing
short of death would now alter it. Gilman looked at the giant and
shivered: he did not envy the man who fell into Gregg Blantine’s
hands at any time. The man who had hurt Gregg Blantine’s father
could scarcely hope to die in less than agony when the huge giant
finally caught up with him.

‘
What
you reckon happened to Burke an’ the others?’ Hurwitch asked
him.

‘
Hard
to tell,’ Gilman said. ‘Mebbe they lost them in the mountains. I
figgered they’d go on in after them at Apache Canyon. Could be they
decided to drive them out, or mebbe just sit at the other end to
make sure they didn’t double back.’

‘
Could
be,’ Hurwitch admitted. ‘All the better for my boys.’

‘
How
d’you mean?’ Gilman asked.

‘
Well
... ‘ Hurwitch grinned evilly, his face taking on the shape and
deathly malice of a skull, ‘one of us is goin’ to pick up the two
thousand dollars Burke promised to the man who brung in this Angel
feller.’

Gilman grinned.

‘
You
better shoot him good an’ dead, Dave,’ he said wickedly. ‘You take
him alive, an’ you’ll have to fight with Gregg for him.’ He
gestured towards the big man, who was leaning forward in his
saddle, watching the dots which were the fleeing quartet with
burning intensity.

‘
Thanks
a lot,’ Hurwitch grated, ‘but no thanks!’

He neck-reined the horse around and went up
to the front of the bunched riders.

‘
OK,’
he said. ‘Spread out when we get down to the arroyo. I want a
Comanche sickle half a mile across. Them bastards might just try to
double back.’

His riders nodded, and fidgeted with the
reins. They were eager to get started.

‘
Let’s
go!’ yelled Hurwitch.

The phalanx of riders moved off
down the shelving slope, sliding and sidling until they had
descended to the level, sandy floor of the riverbed below. Then
they moved away from each other. In a few moments they were spread
into a formation somewhat like a letter C on its side, the Comanche
sickle, the raiding formation of the warlike Indians which let
nothing pass through it, which drove its prey before it like a
scythe. Harness jingling, sunlight gleaming on the ported carbines
across their saddlebows, the hunters headed up towards the malpais,
the tracks of the fleeing men plain in the sandy ground. And at the
centre of the arc of riders was Gregg Blantine, hunched forward
still in the saddle, eyes
burning like deep-set coals in his expressionless
face, fixed on the burning land ahead.