Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (14 page)

It was only a matter of time
before he made a mistake, and Angel didn
’t plan to wait until he made it.
Avoiding the slashing cuts and thrusts had brought him around near
a big rotting plantain tree, and he eased nearer to it. Many of the
tree’s arm-thick branches were dry and dead. Angel judged his
distances: he wouldn’t get two chances.

It was a macabre scene, the
mud-smeared, limping figure with the killer
’s fixed grin and the glinting
two-foot steel weapon pursuing the dodging, wearing quarry, never
giving Angel a moment to rest, to counterattack, trying constantly
to get him backed up against one of the trees for the stopping
stroke, somewhere The Major could cut him up a piece at a
time.

The rain had stopped now, and steam
rose from the panting bodies of the circling opponents. Their feet
made juicy, sucking sounds in the trampled mud.

Whook! Whook, whook, whook,
whook!
The
Major pursued his prey relentlessly, and still Angel managed to
keep out of reach of the bayonet. Then, in one smooth sweep, he
tore off one of the dead branches with his good right arm. The
Major paused for a moment and then grinned when he saw what Angel
seemed to be planning to use as a weapon. He slithered forward
again, confident as ever as Angel broke the branch against the
trunk of the tree, leaving himself with a three-foot length in his
hand. Holding it in the classic dueling position, he moved forward
at The Major, who gave a contemptuous laugh and smashed at the
branch with his bayonet. A chunk of the rotted wood flew away into
the undergrowth, and splinters of the dried core gleamed whitely on
the black mire for a moment before they were trampled underfoot.
Now the broken branch was less than two feet long, and Angel’s face
registered dismay. The Major hissed with pleasure and smashed at
the branch again, almost laughing at the expression of his opponent
as another big chunk sailed into the air.

‘
Stupid
bastard!’ he shouted, and lunged in. To his astonishment, Angel did
not dodge this time. Instead, he profiled his body, the way a
matador does as the bull charges, letting the long bayonet pass
him. As The Major was on the return step from his lunge, Angel
turned back, pivoting in a tight half-circle. His right hand
brought the short chunk of wood around his body and he jammed it
onto the point of the bayonet as hard as he could. The Major pulled
his weapon back, and then, with an almost impatient gesture, threw
his arm wide to free it, tossing the speared chunk of wood away and
turning back for the killing stroke, smiling like a weasel in a
skylark’s nest. It took one second, perhaps two, but it was enough
for Angel.

His right hand had flickered
down to the top of his mule-ear boot and it came up in a blur of
movement. The Major
’s reflexes were very, very good. He even started to parry,
as if knowing instinctively what was coming at him. However, reflex
action is very rarely enough. The eye has to see and transmit, the
brain receive and instruct, the arm hear and obey. It all happens
in immeasurable fractions of time, but still not fast enough to
cancel out time elapsed. The slim silver Solingen blade thudded
into The Major’s throat just below his chin, shearing through
windpipe, larynx, and gullet before neatly severing the spinal cord
between the third and fourth vertebrae.

The Major
’s eyes bulged with disbelief, and he
rose up on tiptoe, as though by doing so he could disengage the
biting thing that had destroyed him. Then he collapsed like a
dropped marionette, dead before he touched the earth.

Angel let out his breath in a long,
long sigh.

It seemed as if he had been
fighting for hours: every muscle in his body was alive with pain.
He went across the clearing and picked up the fallen
man
’s weapon.
It was the knife of a thug, a barbarian; it disgusted him. He
jammed the blade into a tree trunk and then put his full weight
against it. The steel made a noise like a bullet hitting a bucket
and then broke. He tossed the useless haft at The Major’s
deflated-looking body, realizing that he did not even know the name
of the man he had killed.

‘
Take
that to Hell with you!’ he said venomously.

Now he ripped off the tattered
sleeve of his shirt and looked at the ragged tear in his arm. The
muscle was already numbing. When he tried to bend his arm he found
he could not. He needed some time, a place where he could clean the
wound, bandage it. Otherwise, he was at high risk. Gangrene from
the filthy bayonet. Certain
disability, fever. He had fought the Nix gang to a
standstill, but The Major, although dead, had put a stop to that.
He was in no shape to do any more fighting this day.

This in turn meant he had to
move up the next part of his plan. There was nothing else open to
him. He had to double back and head for the
hacienda.
It was a long way, but he could
probably make it. Then a thought occurred to him that put a chill
into his blood. Even if he made it, he was in pretty poor shape to
take on the man he’d find there guarding Nix’s lair: the Oriental,
Yat Sen.

‘
Heads I
lose, tails I lose,’ he muttered. Then he got up and moved
out.

Hercules Nix could take
anything except defeat.

He had to confess, however,
unwillingly, that so far Angel had out-thought him and out-fought
his men every step of the way. He was no nearer taking the quarry
now than he had
been when they set out two days earlier from the
hacienda.
The stampede of the
Indian ponies was a further example of Angel’s resourcefulness, and
his ambusher’s war in the swamp had reduced the morale of Nix’s men
to nearly zero. They cared little or nothing for the death of their
fellows, but they did care mightily for the manner of their own,
and their guts were a-curdle from the sight of The Major’s torn
throat, the headless corpse of Bobbie Dirs, the transfixed skull of
Rick Cross. This was not their way of fighting.

Nix had actually been in the
Comanche encampment, negotiating for the labor of the Indian women
and children with Koh-eet-senko
’s father-in-law, when Angel had stampeded the
horses through the center of the village. Unlike the wily old
savage with whom he was bargaining, Nix knew right away what had
caused the breakout, and told Pah-hay-naka. ‘Patches,’ as the old
man was known, had already informed him that Koheet-senko and the
raiding warriors were due back within the next day, and now, as he
pulled back to the edge of the swamp, his strength reduced by more
than half, Hercules Nix smiled grimly in the dying light and vowed
an awful vengeance.

He had not lost sight of the
fact that it was he who was Angel
’s main target, he who Angel wished to
bring down. He was conscious of an unease, not fear; and next
morning, after a miserable night camped on the edge of the
mosquito-riddled swamp, he led his remaining men toward the
climbing dust cloud made by the returning war party.

They had come out of the north,
turning at the end of the Comanche sickle trail that had brought
them across the Rio Bravo and back to their own
querencia.
The dust of their passing
glinted in the watery morning sunlight like a smokescreen against
the yellow-dun hills, gullied and scarred like the faces of crones.
Grotesque in their tinsel finery, Koh-eet-senko’s raiding party
came across the desert. Silvered bits on their horses, beads,
scraps of colored cloth, glass or tin or fragments of mirror, gaudy
bangles or bracelets bought from some passing
Comanchero
or ripped from the arm of a
raped white woman, huge hooped earrings, their bodies painted for
war, broad black stripes across face and forehead, their long
straggling hair greased with bear fat or dressed with buffalo dung,
they were dust-covered and ugly. The palpable stink of their
presence was like the breath of the deepest pits of
Hades.

The raid had been successful. Behind
the war party trailed despondent Mexican women, some carrying
children. They had been badly abused already, and knew that the
worst was still to come. Many horses had been stolen, many guns,
much plunder. There would be fat bellies in the camp
tonight.

Hercules Nix did not ride
straight up to the Comanche column. He knew better than to come at
speed upon a raiding party. True, they knew him and knew that this
valley was his, but they were still savages, without intelligence
or understanding. A man could be killed just as dead by a
trigger-happy Comanche buck who
’d been sucking on a bottle of stolen liquor all
the way home as by a trained assassin. Comanch’ were like weather
and women: entirely unpredictable. So Nix led his men slowly toward
Koh-eet-senko’s war party, riding alongside until the Indians
recognized him. After a while, the Comanche leader made a lordly
gesture: join us, it said. Nix nodded and kicked his stallion into
a trot. The Comanches slowed down and made a big half-circle. They
did not look particularly interested or uninterested. They were
just there. They would see what was going to happen. Then, maybe,
they would react. A palpable air of menace hung over them:
cut-throats all, Nix thought. They looked indescribably evil. He
had no misconceptions about them, but he needed them right now. He
knew how to handle Koh-eet-senko. Subtlety, kindness, love, pity,
all these were lost on the brute. He had risen in the ranks of the
Comanch’ because he was tougher, harder, bloodier, and more vicious
than anyone else, a better thief, a better rider, a better hunter,
and a better killer. It was inadvisable to make the mistake of
forgetting these things when dealing with him.

Nix began his greeting with the
usual fulsome compliments, superlatives, and lies. Koh-eet-senko
nodded, accepting them as no more than his due, looking around to
make sure everyone else could hear what the white man was saying
about him. Nix conducted his peroration in sign language: he could
not speak the language of the Comanch
’ and he doubted anyone except another
Comanch’ could. It was like trying to wrap your tongue around a
wriggling porcupine.

He waved an arm to include all
his men, then with the index finger and middle finger of his right
hand, he made a zigzag pattern in front of his eyes, after which he
extended his hand forward.
‘We are hunting,’ these signs said. Then he made
the signs for a white man: the right index finger drawn across the
forehead to indicate a sombrero. ‘We are hunting a white
man.’

Koh-eet-senko nodded and swatted
at the flies buzzing around the bloody scalps on his
horse
’s mane.
He was impatient to get back to the camp, to his women. They had
been on the war trail a long time.

Nix now held his hand over his
head in the sign for a tall man, then rubbed the tips of the
fingers of his right hand on the back of the left, following these
signs with the sign for shelling corn.
‘A tall man,’ he was saying, ‘with
hair the color of corn.’ Nix placed his palms parallel, facing each
other, taking the right hand back a little and moving it up and
down. He turned his left palm up to the sky and placed his right
forefinger on it. Then, with his right palm facing upward, slightly
bent, he pushed his right hand forward. ‘Help us,’ he had said.
‘And I will give you—’ He waited, making sure that he had
Koh-eet-senko’s attention. He had. The Comanche had become alert at
the sign for ‘give’ and his eyes glowed with greed as Nix made the
sign for a rifle, left hand holding the imaginary barrel, right
forefinger cocked on the trigger, and added ‘many,
many.’

There was a murmur of interest
from the other Comanches. Guns was a subject that interested them
all. More guns
equaled more plunder. Koh-eet-senko turned his back on Nix
and spoke rapidly in Comanche to two other Indians as virulently
ugly as himself. They seemed to be arguing vehemently, but their
colloquy lasted only a few minutes. Then Koh-eet-senko folded his
arms, faced Nix, and nodded.

Nix pasted a smile on his face
and extended his hand. The Comanche looked at it for a moment as if
it
was a
snake, and then his brow cleared and with a gap-toothed smile, he
pumped away at Nix’s hand as if life itself depended on the
handshake. Then Koh-eet-senko extended his left hand, and with the
right forefinger, pulled aside the left forefinger and pointed at
the middle one: the sign for ‘tomorrow.’

Nix shook his head violently.
No, he
signaled, making another sign. He held his right index
finger in front of his face, pushed it forward quickly a couple of
inches, then brought it back. He repeated the signal. ‘Now,
now.’

Koh-eet-senko made an angry sound and
spat out a series of Gatlin-gun gutturals. Even without Comanche,
Nix knew damned well what they meant, and he held up his hand palm
out, in the peace sign.

‘
Very
well,’ he said, nodding, smiling, placating the Indian. ‘Tomorrow’
He made the sign for daybreak and Koh-eet-senko nodded curtly, not
knowing how Nix was cursing him: Jesus Christ alone knew what Angel
could get up to in a whole day. He realized Koh-eet-senko was
telling him something, crossing the index finger of both hands and
then making the hand-to-mouth signs for eating. These he followed
by placing his palms parallel opposite each other and moving them
up and down and away from each other and back. ‘Come camp eat
dance’ was what the signs said, but Nix knew what they meant.
Koh-eet-senko and his warriors were going to celebrate their
successful raid. They were going to eat themselves sick, drink
themselves stupid, then roll into the blankets with their verminous
squaws. They would be even more slow-witted and surly than usual at
daybreak, and many of them would refuse to join the band which
would accompany Nix in pursuit of the white man. That was their
privilege, and there wasn’t a damned thing Koh-eet-senko or anyone
else could do about it. Nix stifled his anger. There wasn’t a
damned thing he could do about Koheet-senko’s invitation, either.
To refuse his hospitality would be to court disaster; he was more
than aware of the difference in the strength of Koh-eet-senko’s
band and his own, and he knew the Indian was, too.