Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (7 page)

‘
So you
put the money back, of course.’

‘
Of
course—not! I realized there was a fortune waiting to be made, and
I went out and made it. I made direct contact with the customer,
cut out the middleman. I used my money to make the necessary
contacts, entertained royally. And all the while, I was making
plans to build this place.’

‘
Those
deals you made,’ Angel interposed. ‘Where did you go to make
them?’

‘
I’m not
sure, I recall several in New Orleans. A couple of times in
Shreveport. Why do you ask?’

‘
Abilene, Texas?’

‘
It
could be. Why?’

‘
Indulge
me,’ Angel said. ‘I’m just curious.’

Nix shrugged, and Angel grinned
to himself. At least he had support for those sightings that had
been reported to the department, which could be useful when he got
back to Washington. If he ever did. He was some way from doing it
right at the moment. He tuned in again to Nix
’s monologue.

‘
…
told Stacey I was thinking of setting up on my
own, and wanted to look around for a ranch. The old fool was
pleased. I told him I wanted to marry his daughter. He wasn’t too
keen on that, but I managed to persuade him. I pointed out the fact
of the missing bonds, and that all the transactions had been
countersigned by him as a director of the bank. I said I’d blow the
whistle on him if he didn’t do what I wanted. He was no trouble
after that.’

‘
And his
daughter?’

‘
I
wanted her,’ Nix said, without expression. ‘And so I took
her.’

There was a long, empty moment of
silence. Nix puffed expansively on his cigar and then waved a regal
arm.

‘
And
this is what I built. The Valley of Death, as they call
it.’

‘
Impressive,’ Angel said.

‘
Indeed
it is,’ his host smiled. ‘I wonder if you realize just how
impressive?’

‘
Tell
me,’ Angel suggested.

‘
I’ll
tell you,’ Nix smiled, his expression as cold as the belly of a
water moccasin. ‘I’ll tell you, for instance, that even if, in the
farthest reaches of your imagination, you were to think you might
escape the stockade, you would be blown to smithereens before you
had covered thirty feet outside.’

‘
How
come?’

‘
Simple
enough. The perimeter outside the stockade is mined.’

‘
But—’

‘
You
were going to point out that you walked through that perimeter and
were not blown up?’ Nix chided. ‘Come, Angel. Use your
intelligence.’

‘
You
knew I was coming, and so—’

‘
I
switched off the circuit.’

‘
You
switched … you just lost me again.’

‘
I
will explain,’ Nix said patiently. ‘The mines are buried
explosive devices. Each is linked to the other by a series of
copper-sheathed wires. Those wires can carry an electrical current,
which can be switched on or off.’

‘
Electricity? But how can you produce electricity out
here?’

‘
Batteries, Angel, batteries. Must I explain it in words of
one syllable? I was led to believe you were an educated man, not a
dolt. Electricity is not viable on any scale, everyone knows that.
No means has yet been found to produce it. Nevertheless, I have
followed carefully the experiments conducted by Gaston Plante in
1859 by which a means was manufactured to produce electrical
current. It is called a lead-acid battery. Clumsy, and very
expensive, but it works. I have the materials to make these
batteries here, and they provide power which can be switched on or
off at will. For special occasions, of course: I do not keep them
on all the time. It is hardly necessary, anyway.’

‘
Don’t
they discharge anyway, whether you use them or not?’

‘
Over a
period of time they do go flat, true. It is a laborious and
expensive business to replace the plates, but I have money, and I
use it to buy what I want. Whatever that may be.’

There was a momentary silence before
the big man spoke again.

‘
Have
you ever been in prison, Angel?’ he asked.

‘
Once,’
Angel replied. ‘But not for long.’

‘
Then
you have no real conception of the reality,’ Nix said. ‘No idea of
what it’s like. Have you?’

‘
No.’

‘
They
degrade you, Angel. They depersonalize you. They make you a number,
and then they throw you into the filth, the stink, to live and
sleep and eat with animals! Animals! Nobody gives a damn whether
you live or die. The guards bully and beat you, try to reduce you
to a groveling beast. It is hell, Angel. Unadulterated hell. It
cannot produce anything except a thirst for vengeance,
retribution!’

‘
Tell
that to the people you robbed,’ Angel said. ‘See how they feel
about it.’

‘
Pah!’
Nix snorted. ‘If God hadn’t wanted them to be sheared, he wouldn’t
have made them sheep!’

‘
Twelve
of those sheep finally put you into Huntsville, Nix,’ Angel said.
‘Never underestimate them!’

‘
No!’
Nix hissed. ‘You put me there, Angel. You! Because of you, I spent
a year in that hell on earth. And do you know, there wasn’t a day
that I didn’t think of you, curse your name, vow to kill you
because of what you’d done.’

‘
Very
dramatic,’ Angel said flatly. ‘And not a bit convincing. You’re
just trying to justify yourself, Nix!’

Again, Hercules Nix released his
breath in a long sigh, controlling his burning anger.
‘You may be partly
right at that,’ he admitted. ‘Nevertheless, I have prepared for my
revenge on you, and tomorrow, I will have it. Tomorrow, at
dawn.’

‘
Dawn?’
Angel said. ‘Listen, if I oversleep, you just start right in
without me.’

Nix smiled.
‘I admire bravery,’ he said,
‘but you are merely cocky. That will not help you much when you are
alone in the valley, naked and unarmed.’

‘
Naked
and unarmed, is it?’ Angel said. ‘I didn’t know about that. But it
figured you wouldn’t give a man half a chance if you could avoid
doing it.’

‘
You
will have your half-chance, Angel. It will be twenty-four hours
before we come after you. In that time you can prepare yourself any
way you wish, go in any direction, hide, run, stand and give
battle. Anything you like. Your man Lorenz had no weapons, but he
killed four men before he was taken.’

‘
Good,’
Angel said. ‘Pity he didn’t get you, Hecatt.’

His captor smiled an Olympian
smile.
‘Understand, Angel, I will not be angered, even by your
using my—other name. Tomorrow, you will provide a long-awaited
diversion, but that is all. You are not important in the ultimate
scheme of things. This valley is the important thing. It is already
fast becoming the biggest center in the area west of the
Mississippi for the sale of arms, and it will become bigger,
bigger. With that growth will come power. They will all come to
me—Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Lipan, all of them. And the others, the
renegades and the revolutionaries from below the
border!’

‘
You
don’t care that the guns you sell kill innocent women and children?
You don’t lose any sleep thinking of that?’

Nix laughed aloud, a short,
sharp bark of sound.
‘Are you mad?’ he snapped. ‘I care for nobody, nobody but
myself. I learned that in the sink of hell you sent me to, Angel. I
learned that only the strong survive, only the rich have power,
only the strong and powerful can do as they please. As I can, now.
In a few years I will own part of Texas. A few more and Senators,
Congressmen will seek my advice, do my bidding as they used to! I
will rule this land!’

There was a fanatic glow in
the
deepest
eyes, and Angel knew that in thought if not in person, his captor
was some other place, not here in the room with him. He sought to
pop the bubble of Nix’s vainglory.

‘
You’re
forgetting something,’ he said harshly.

‘
What?
What’s that?’

‘
The
Department of Justice,’ Angel said. ‘They know where I am. They
know about you. If I go missing, there’ll be another man, and
another, and another, and in the end they’ll get you and hang
you!’

‘
If it
pleases you to try to bluff me, Angel, go ahead,’ Nix smiled.
‘However, I happen to know that you made no report to Washington.
They do not know where you are. And even if they did, what could
they do? Let them send another man. Let them send fifty, a hundred,
and they will never enter my valley unless I wish it. My ally
Koh-eet-senko will see to that!’

‘
Koh-eet-senko? Is that the Comanche leader?’

‘
Correct. I notice that you do not make the common error of
using the word “chief” as so many people do.’

‘
I know
something about Indians,’ Angel said. ‘I know something about your
friend Koh-eet-senko, too. He’s a bloodthirsty butcher, him and all
his tribe. What do they call themselves—?’

‘
The
Timber People,’ Nix said. ‘You are right. It is they your
Department of Justice would face if they attempted to try to take
me here. I’d be extremely surprised if any of them survived to
repeat the experiment. My allies are, as you know, extremely
well-armed.’

‘
I
know it,’ Angel said. ‘How come you’re so friendly with
them?’

‘
It
was not a problem,’ Nix said. ‘I took the trouble to study
their history, their culture, their background. Koh-eet-senko was
extremely impressed to meet a white man who could talk with him on
almost equal terms about the history of his people.’

‘
I
imagine he was more impressed to meet a white man who would
sell them repeating rifles,’ Angel said drily.

‘
There
was that,’ Nix smiled. ‘But my study of these savages was
psychological as well as historical. I was able to predict their
reactions to certain sets of circumstances. They are basically very
simple, very child-like.’

‘
Sure,’
Angel said. ‘Tell it to Matilda Lockhart.’

‘
Who?’

‘
Matilda
Lockhart. Comanches carried her off in 1838. They took her to their
camp and gave her to the men. All the men in the tribe, Nix. When
the men were through with her, the women got started. They burned
her all over her body with blazing sticks, burned her nose right
off her face. They made her a slave. They punched her and kicked
her black and blue if she so much as whimpered. She was exactly
sixteen years of age.’

‘
Pah!’
Nix said, scornfully. ‘You can’t influence my thinking with these
horror stories, Angel. The Comanches believe women are just
chattel. They treat them accordingly. Anyway, I expect that story
was wildly exaggerated. You know how these frontier crones gussy up
atrocity stories. That’s how they get their jollies.’

‘
You
really don’t give a damn, do you?’ Angel said.

‘
No, I
don’t. I told you already, Angel. I only care about myself. Nothing
else matters. I live for the moment from day to day. Right now, you
are the top priority in my life. Tomorrow, or whenever we finish
our little—game—something else will take your place.’

‘
Like
your barbarian friends and the guns you sell them.’

‘
My
barbarian friends, as you call them, have a long and fascinating
history. Do you know anything about them?’

‘
Yes,’
Angel said. ‘I do.’

‘
Then tell me how they got
their name.’

‘
It was
misspelled by some Spaniard who was the first to see any of them.
The Comanch’ are really Rocky Mountain Shoshone. They were known to
the Utes as
Koh-mats,
meaning “those who are against us”, or “enemies”. It was
the Ute word that the Spaniards misspelled as
Komantcid,
and which the whites bastardized
to Comanche. They are really descendants of the
Nermernuh,
the Shoshone.’

‘
I
see you do know about them,’ Nix said. ‘You are an unusual
man, Angel.’

‘
I’ll
bet you tell all the boys that,’ Angel said. ‘You’re a phony,
Nix!’