Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (10 page)

He let them get quite close.

Cameron
’s horse was cropping contentedly at
the sparse dry grass growing in the cool shadows of the rock
outcropping, reins trailing, when Hollis and Mike Hythe rode
up.

‘
Hume?’
Hollis called. He pulled his mount to a stop and piled off, kicking
up dust as he scuffed across the open space formed by the half
circle of rocks. ‘Where the hell are you, anyways?’

He looked at Hythe, who
shrugged.
‘Mebbe he’s takin’ a leak,’ Hythe said, but the words were
not properly out before the solid dead silence of the place
registered simultaneously on both of them and their faces changed,
drastically, as if someone had pulled a plug and their expressions
had drained out. Hollis turned toward his partner, lifting a hand
and opening his mouth to say something. As he did the first of
Frank Angel’s arrows drove like a striking cobra into his body,
making a wicked, heavy sound as it burst through him and out of his
back, smashing him down to the earth, legs kicking high and a thin
scream of shocked agony coming from him like a freed ghost. Hythe
started for his gun in the same moment that Hollis moved, but he
wasn’t anywhere near fast enough. You had to be damned fast to
outdraw a man who knew how to use a bow and arrow, and Hythe didn’t
even know where Angel was. A good man could nock and fire off his
deadly shafts at least as fast and sometimes even faster than
another could thumb back the hammer of a six-gun and fire
it.

Angel was a damned good man with every
weapon there was.

The Justice Department Armorer
had spent a lot of time on the bow and arrows Angel was using. He
had made the bow little more than three feet long, two sections
that slid into the handgrip, all of it made of laminated steel
shafts flattened and joined, strung with a fine-tensioned wire
covered with gutta percha. The arrows were of the same lightweight
steel tubing and the result was a weapon that could drive the steel
shafts through a three-inch block of hardwood at twenty yards. The
Armorer had frowned a little over the design Angel had specified
for the arrowheads with their wicked barbs, but
he
’d done it.
Mike Hythe looked down at the shaft in his chest as if surprised,
reeling back off his horse and going down into the dirt with a
flurry that raised dust. He was all the way to the edge of dead,
but somehow he floundered to his feet and yanked the
ridiculous-looking Barns boot pistol out of his boot, laying it
across his blood-soaked forearm. Angel’s third arrow was already in
the air, but Hythe yanked on the trigger even as the shaft tore out
his throat and spun him thrashing to the ground. The pistol made a
noise like a thunderclap, reverberating off the rocks above the
killing ground as the .50 caliber bullet whined away into
infinity.

‘
Damnation!’ Angel gritted silently.

The whole idea of his weapons
had been their silence: he had hoped for more advantage. Nix and
his riders would have certainly heard the boom of the Barns pistol,
and the sound of a shot would mean only one thing to them. Angel
ran down from his hiding place in the rocks, not looking at the
sprawled dead men. Moving quickly, he laced the reins of their
horses to the saddle pommels and slapped the animals on their
haunches. They moved off smartly, heading home. Angel
didn
’t think
there was much chance of Nix falling for such an ancient wheeze,
but even if one man was detached to check the dust, that was one
man less to fight now.

He cast a rapid glance at the edge of
the scrubland, and thought he could see a faint plume of dust near
the line of trees, heading in his direction. He swung into the
saddle and kicked the mustang into a run. He would be cutting it
damned fine, but there was still a decent chance that he could make
his destination. He leaned forward and talked to the horse, and
once again, it responded with more speed.

Then he saw the second cloud of
dust.

In the opening stages of the
chase, Hercules Nix always took the center line. His usual
practice
—which his men knew well—was to ride due north with Elliott
and Dirs until they reached the far side of the Comanche woods.
There, Elliott would swing west toward the river, Dirs to the east
and the desert’s edge. Nix would remain in the center.

Thus it was that when they heard
the shots, Dirs was the nearest to Angel
’s position, Elliott farthest away.
Only waiting to ensure that Nix was swinging his horse around, Dirs
thundered off southward, heading for the wide opening between the
spur of the San Miguels to his left, and the edge of the woods on
his right. He did not look back, knowing that Nix and Elliott would
be following his dust. He narrowed his eyes to peer into the rush
of the wind and saw a lone rider heading at an angle across his
path to the right. Some distance further to the right—southwest—he
saw two other riders heading at an angle to bisect the arc drawn
between the lone rider and himself. It had to be Angel! Dirs’s lips
stretched back off his teeth and he grinned like a Death’s head
into the wind. The quarry was heading into the thin scree at the
edge of the woods, and now Dirs saw that the other two riders
pursuing Angel were Ricky Cross and a man known only as The Major,
who was reputed to be on the run from the Army. He felt a surge of
triumph. They had Angel cold. If he turned north, he’d blunder
right into the Comanche camp, and they’d likely kill him on sight.
Even if they didn’t, they’d kick seven different kinds of shit out
of him before handing him over to Hercules Nix. If Angel turned
right around and ran south, he’d be out in the open. In the
unlikely event they didn’t run him down out there, he’d come up
finally against the impassable barrier of the southern mountains
with no place to hide. These thoughts made Bob Dirs grin like a
wolf spotting a lamb with a broken leg, and he larruped his horse
with the reins.

‘
Got
you, you sonofabitch!’ he shouted, thinking of five hundred
dollars.

Angel got into the trees maybe a
quarter of a mile before his pursuers, but it was enough. They
couldn
’t move
among the trees as fast as he, who knew nothing lay ahead of him.
They would have to come in slowly, carefully. It was cool and shady
under the trees. The horse moved soundlessly on the thick carpet of
leaf mold, through great swathes of shadow and between dusty
columns of slanting sunshine. Here and there lay great gray
moss-covered rocks that looked like sleeping dinosaurs. He moved as
fast as he dared, trying to be silent. He had only a little time,
and he had to make it pay. By the time Cross and The Major eased
through the trees into the clearing he had chosen, Angel was good
and ready.

Cross saw him first and gave a yell of
triumph.

‘
Hold it
right there!’ he shouted. ‘Hold it!’

He froze as he saw that Angel
had a Winchester leveled at him. The quarry was standing in the
center of a small glade, back to a big rock. He looked like he was
ready to fight it out, and Cross didn
’t want to shoot him down before Nix got
on the scene. He turned toward the Major. The Major winked. Cross
grinned, and nodded. They knew that Bobbie Dirs had worked around
behind the quarry. He’d make a move in a moment, and then the game
could begin. Nix didn’t mind what they did to the quarry as long as
they didn’t wound him so badly he was no more fun. Meanwhile, they
had him. There was no damned hurry at all.

The tableau was like something
painted, frozen. Angel there in the glade, back protected by the
rock, Winchester leveled at the two dismounted men. He could almost
hear the seconds ticking past, and willed the man behind him to
make his move.

Almost as if anxious to oblige
him, Dirs got himself firmly set in the saddle, and eased his
Winchester from the scabbard. He was about fifty feet away from the
glade, and when he was ready he gave the high sign to his two
comrades and dug his spurs in hard. The horse
buck jumped into full gallop,
and as he started moving, Dirs reversed the carbine so that the
barrel was in his hands, swinging the weapon like a polo stick. He
had a savage grin of exultation on his face and there ought to have
been no damned chance for Frank Angel in this world.

Then Dirs hit the wire.

It was practically invisible,
stretched tightly from tree to tree and forming a square around
Angel
’s
position, at approximately the height of the chest of a man on
horseback. It was top quality steel leader, bought at Angel’s
request from the New York sporting goods firm of Calhoun and
Witherspoon, on Third Avenue. It was normally used by that strange
breed who fish the ice-blue waters of the Gulf Stream for marlin,
and sailfish, and even shark; and it had a minimum breaking strain
of four hundred pounds. The way that Angel had rigged it, stretched
twang-tight like a guitar string, it formed a cutting edge as
effective as a cheese wire and Dirs’s neck hit the wire while he
was at full gallop.

What happened next paralyzed
Cross and The Major in horror. Dirs
’s Winchester exploded harmlessly at the
reflex pull of his dying finger and the slug whined away somewhere,
harmless. The two paid guns watched transfixed by the sight of the
specter rushing toward them, a headless thing that spurted blood as
it reeled out of the saddle while its severed head bounded across
the clearing like a rolled rock and disappeared from sight among
the trees.

Cross gave a formless shout and
yanked out his Starr Army pistols, falling sideways to the ground
as he did. The Major was already on the ground, body neatly
arranged in the lying-load position, legs askew and feet
flattened
inside down, firing useless shots at the place where Angel
had been.

‘
Behind
the rock!’ Cross hissed. ‘He must be behind the rock!’

The Major gave an enormous
shrug. He was not given to talking much. Besides, Nix and the
others would be here in a few minutes. Why take chances? Cross made
a furious gesture.
Go around that way,
it said.
Behind him.

The Major
’s lip curled and he made a signal of
his own, less military but none the less perfunctory. Cross scowled
across the yards that separated them, and then wormed off into the
undergrowth, his whole posture plain with his message: damn you,
I’ll do it myself.

The Major watched him go,
impassively. They had all the time in the world. What Cross hoped
to prove he could not imagine. Angel had killed Bobbie Dirs but
that wasn
’t
the end of the world. The others must be only a few minutes away at
most. He eased his left leg into a more comfortable position, and
relaxed.

Ricky Cross was anything but
relaxed. He was killing mad. Bobbie Dirs had been a pal of his, and
the way this bastard Angel had killed him was, well, butchery.
Cross felt even worse because, somehow, he
’d stood there and let Angel pull it.
He peered through the screening leaves. Nothing moved anywhere,
unless you counted the normal chatter of birds, the soft buzz of
insects. He eeled further forward. Pretty soon now he would be able
to see in back of the big rock behind which Angel had taken
shelter. He had one Starr in each hand, using his elbows for
forward leverage. Keeping his head low, he advanced silently, every
sense tuned, every nerve taut, ready for anything.

Anything except what
happened.

Cross lifted his head.

He was lying at the foot of a
long, gentle slope gullied by runoffs, shaded by wide-armed trees.
He could have been the last man alive in the world, so quiet was
it. He raised himself a little higher and as he did, the rolling
head of Bobbie Dirs bumped down the slope, hit a hummock, bounced
into his chest and fell at his feet. Dirs
’s still-surprised eyes glared
sightlessly at him. Without volition, Cross screamed.

The sound was exactly like the
sound that a pig makes when it is being slaughtered. The butcher
puts the long, narrow-bladed knife into the
animal
’s
throat almost before it knows it, and it is as the little mouth of
death opens in its flesh that the pig gives off its shriek. It is a
sound that cannot be forgotten by anyone who has ever heard it.
Cross was still making the awful sound as he scrambled to his feet,
mindless, blind-eyed, desperate only to get away from the horrible
thing that lay inches before his eyes.

He got six yards before Angel cut him
down.

Cross blundered like a
stampeding buffalo out of the clinging undergrowth and burst into
the open, his eyes glazed with terror, then stopped. His head
turned to the right and then the left, like a man unsure of his
route, and in the same moment, the realization came into his
expression that he was totally at risk. He was still digesting that
realization when the fourth of Angel
’s steel arrows drew a line of shimmering
silver across the shadowed clearing. It hit Cross in the temple and
he was flung like a rag doll against an angled birch that quivered
and shed leaves as the dead weight smashed into it. Cross kicked
twice in reflex, the staggered barbs of the arrowhead protruding
bloodily from his right eye socket, his brain split by the
irresistible force of the driven shaft.