Kill Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #6) (16 page)

Angel relaxed gradually, for no one seemed
to be paying them the slightest attention. He led the way down the
street until he saw a sign swinging on a whitewashed pole by the
entrance of an alley alongside a black tarpaper shack with a
corrugated iron roof.

‘
There’s a corral,’ he said. ‘They’ll have
horses.’

They swung down in the open space before the
lean-to that housed the rough stalls for horses. The dust was ankle
deep from the passage of many thousands of horses over the years.
The animals plunged their muzzles into the trough of water outside
the building standing opposite the stalls. From it came the smell
of manure and urine, wet straw and the warm stink of horses.

Yancey Blantine pushed the head of his horse
aside and plunged his arms into the water, then his face, sluicing
the dust and grime of the desert away.

He spluttered with the pleasure of the
cooling liquid, standing erect with water pouring off him, his
grizzly hair plastered down on his skull.

A man riding past the alleyway
looked at the three men standing in the open space, his eyes
flicking to Yancey Blantine
’s face and then the bound wrists. No expression
crossed the swarthy features. The man rode on unhurriedly up the
street as an old Mexican came out of the stable.

‘
Senores,’ he smiled, showing a bright gold tooth.
‘Quieren
Ustedes
alguna cosa.’

Angel nodded.
‘We want three
horses,’ he said in Spanish.

The old man nodded. His eyes
flicked quickly towards Gates
’ face and then Blantine’s. They widened slightly
when they touched the bound hands, but that was all. It was not of
his concern. His concern was the sale of horses, the care of
horses. Nothing more. A man could find enough trouble of his own
without sharing anyone else’s.

‘
The
senor has come to the right establishment,’ the old man said. ‘At
the stable of Juan Solteron only the finest of horses are sold,
only the most noble and handsome animals. But of course as
the
senor
will appreciate, such animals are of a price befitting the
steeds of men like the senor and his
caballero
companions.’

‘
How
much?’ Angel said abruptly.

The old man frowned. The
Norteamericanos had
no sense of occasion, no finer feeling for the niceties of
bargaining. A man could pass a pleasant hour, two maybe, bargaining
over the sale of three horses. A civilized man, of course. A glass
of wine, perhaps, from Jerez de la Frontera. A seat in the cool
shade of the ramada. And an eloquent discussion of the merits of
each individual animal. Such a thing could take up a very pleasant
couple of hours. But no, these Americans wanted only to know the
price, the price in their all-powerful dollars. He
sighed.

‘
Perhaps when the senor has seen the animals,’ he ventured,
‘and has had time to realize what a sacrifice it would be for me to
part with them, who I have raised from tiny colts to their truly
magnificent present state. In the normal way,
senores,
I would not sell these my very
precious animals, but I have had many expenses. A sick
child,
senores,
and a wife who needs special foods, and many visits from
the medico. Ah, the times are very bad,
senores,’
he, sighed, spreading his hands in
that gesture universal among merchants of every race. ‘I must
sacrifice my beautiful horses in the face of the need of my family.
I will sell them to you for two hundred dollars American for each
horse.’

Angel smiled, and held up a hand as Gates
made to step forward, an angry expression on his face.

‘
Your
generosity is truly overwhelming, Don Juan,’ he said, using the
respectful title and bringing a beaming smile to the old man’s
face, ‘as I am certain that your horses are fine. Alas, my
companions and myself must hasten on our journey to the north,
where the mother of the old one there is dying of a slow illness.
So stricken by grief has he been that we have had to tie his hands
so that he will not do himself an injury. It has been our duty, of
course, to send much of our money ahead of us to pay for the bills
of the doctor, and we can therefore offer something less than you
have asked.’

‘
I
understand it well,
senor,
Solteron said. ‘You, too, see my difficulty as I see
yours.’

‘
Verdad,’
Angel said. ‘Which is why I say fifty dollars each horse,
not one centavo more.’

Gates ostentatiously touched the butt of his
gun and the old man did not miss the gesture. He nodded abruptly,
and led the way into the stable, where half a dozen horses stood in
stalls along the wall.

‘
My
God!’ Gates said. ‘He calls these
horses?’

They were in truth a sorry
bunch,
but
Angel knew that there would be nothing better anywhere else in
Nogales, and if there was they had no time to find them. He
unfastened the money belt under his shirt and paid the old man the
money for the horses, which they led out into the
sunlight.

‘
I’ll
get the horses saddled,’ he told Gates. ‘See if you can round up
some supplies. I feel as if I haven’t eaten for a week.’

‘
Why
don’t we go over to that cantina across the street?’ Gates said.
‘We could get a bite to eat, mebbe even cut the dust in my throat.
Be on our way in half an hour, Frank?’

Angel grinned. He, too, had
smelled the mouth-watering
odors of chili and beans and frijoles and
tortillas coming out of the unprepossessing adobe across the
street. Although the sense of urgency he felt inside urged him to
head on out of the town now, the look on Gates’ face was so comical
that he had to relent.

‘
You
like Mex food that much?’ he said.

‘
You
better believe it,’ Gates said. ‘Come on, Frank, we got to eat
anyway.’

Gates
’ final remark clinched it in Angel’s
mind. Whether they ate out on the open prairie or here in town,
they would still have to stop to do it. Eating in town they’d save
time in cleaning up, and there would be no campsite to steer any
pursuers on to their trail. He wondered again what had happened to
Gregg Blantine and the rest of Hurwitch’s men.

He told the old man that they
would be back soon, and then turned to Yancey Blantine. As he
turned, he thought he caught a light of dancing triumph in the old
man
’s eyes,
but it was gone even as the thought struck him.

‘
I’m
going to cut your hands loose, Blantine,’ he said. ‘If you make one
false move I’m goin’ to shoot your knee apart. You
understand?’

Blantine nodded. He hooded his eyes and
Angel could not see them.

‘
I get
you,’ the old man said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t try
nothing’.’

His voice trembled slightly as if with
excitement and Angel frowned.

‘
What’s
eating you, Blantine?’ he snapped. ‘You up to
something?’

Blantine shook his head.
‘No,’ he said
hoarsely. He kept his head down and did not meet Angel’s eyes.
‘Just — just so hungry, I guess. It’s been a hard trail we’ve
ridden.’

He chafed his rope-burned wrists, getting
the circulation moving, and Angel relaxed, if only to his normal
state of wariness.

‘
Keep
your eye on him, too, Pearly,’ he said. ‘All the time.’

‘
Sure,
sure,’ Gates said. ‘Where would he run to, anyway?’

He looked across at the cantina again and
licked his lips.

‘
Come
on, Frank,’ he said.

They started down the alley and then three
men stepped into view in the street, guns in their hands.

‘
Hold
it right there!’ one of them yelled.

They froze in their tracks.

Yancey Blantine let out a great roar of
delight.

‘
Davidson, is that you?’ he yelled.

‘
It’s
me, Yancey,’ replied the tall man in the middle of the trio. ‘Step
clear while I kill them sonsobitches!’

Angel
’s eyes quickly took in their
predicament. Directly ahead of them and to the right stood the
black tarpaper shack with the tin roof. A four foot fence of wooden
palings ran from its rear to the horse stalls behind them. The
stone horse trough, water trickling from the iron pipe above it,
lay in the rectangle formed by the fence and the two buildings. On
Gates’ left was a low adobe wall, perhaps three feet high. There
was no gate in it and it was completely bare and featureless. He
let his shoulders rise and then fall. Alone, he might have made a
dive for the trough, and then ... But Gates would be helpless,
alone in the middle of the alley with nowhere to run. They would
cut him down without mercy.

‘
Wait
on!’Yancey Blantine shouted. ‘I want to do this myself!’

He stepped backwards until he
was four or five feet behind the two men, and then came around
behind Gates. He stretched his hand forward to lift the
six-gun out of
Gates’ holster and as he did Gates moved. He had lifted his arms
away from his sides and he was looking down as Yancey Blantine
reached forward. His right hand moved like a striking snake and he
yanked the man forward, pulling Blantine off balance and whirling
him around into the centre of the alley, all arms and legs like a
runaway windmill, Yancey Blantine shouting in sudden panic as his
balance went. And in that same moment Gates was moving, his long
legs driving for the wall, vaulting over it even as Angel threw
himself down and rolled off to the right behind the stone trough,
his gun already in his hand, blasting the first man off his feet
down at the entrance to the alley, the other two throwing shots at
Gates, who was already over the wall and on its sheltered far side,
poking his gun over the top and firing at the two men in the
street. They had run behind a boxlike adobe that stood about ten or
fifteen feet down the street on the left of the entrance, and they
pounded around it, heading for the adobe wall which ran at right
angles to the one behind which Gates was sheltering. Angel got
quickly to his feet and ran across the alley. Yancey Blantine lay
rigid on the ground, his eyes wide with terror as the two behind
the adobe fired hasty shots at Gates. The big man came up and
vaulted over the wall and down on their side.

‘
You
move and I’ll kill you sure!’ rasped Angel to the old man. Blantine
nodded. He buried his head in his arms and lay still as Angel
scuttled over to
the wall. Shots whined off the top of the wall as the two
men in the open space between the adobe and the next building
pinned them down with seeking fire.

Gates, crouched low, ran along
the adobe wall and made it to the gate pulled back off the street,
thrusting fresh cartridges into his
six-gun as he knelt in the dust. Then he
pumped his arm up and down as a signal to Angel and ran straight
out into the wide dusty street at an angle, quartering across the
empty space like a banderillero running to meet and yet avoid the
charging bull. The two men in the yard of the adobe building were
crouched at the foot of the wall, and they felt rather than heard
or saw Gates out there. They whirled around, coming to their feet
with their guns blazing as Gates dropped one of them and rolled
forward in the dust, trying for the shelter of the angle made by
the next building. The tall one that Yancey Blantine had called
Davidson stood up, and held his six-gun in both
hands, sighting it carefully.
Angel shot him in the back of the head and the tall man went down
flat dead in the dirt with his face blown away. Angel got up and
turned around to see Yancey Blantine standing behind him with a
Winchester carbine in his hands, the hammer eared back.

‘
Tell
your friend Gates to throw his gun down an’ get over here!’ snarled
Blantine. ‘An’ let go o’ that six-gun while you’re at
it!’

Angel stood for a long second and looked at
Blantine, who made a nervous gesture with the carbine.

‘
Do
it!’ he said.

‘
Pearly!’ yelled Angel. ‘Blantine’s got the drop on
me!’

He watched as Gates got up from
the dusty street, slapping at his clothes with his hands. Gates
made an elaborate show of tossing his
six-gun away wide of where he was standing
and started to walk towards them and Angel cursed himself for his
own stupidity. He had let Blantine fool him beautifully with
that
act of
being terrified. Then while he and Gates had been occupied with the
gunmen in the street, Blantine had scuttled back up the alley to
the horses and lifted one of the carbines out of the saddle. That
easy. He shook his head in self-disgust.

Gates came up on the far side of the
wall.

‘
You
never give up, do you, Blantine?’ he said quietly.