Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (21 page)

Sweddlin tensed slightly, staring at
Victoria as if she had committed an unutterable blasphemy. She saw
him think about using the shotgun still held at trail in his right
hand.

‘
No,’
she said. ‘Don’t do that. We don’t want to kill you.’

Sweddlin nodded and as if coming
to a much-considered decision, let go of the shotgun, and slowly
raised his hands. He wasn
’t the type to buck odds. Not life-or-death odds,
anyway. He’d stayed alive this long by knowing when not to fight,
and he wasn’t about to spoil a perfect track record now. Behind him
Sanson nodded and spat into the dirt. But he raised his hands as
well, turning slowly to face Angel.

It was the work of only moments
to disarm them, and of minutes to tell them what had happened in
the valley. Angel used short, explicit words and brief graphic
sentences. He told them how many men were dead for certain, and the
names of those he knew. He told them how those men had died and
why. He told them about the slaughter in the stockade, and what he
had done to destroy it. He told it very convincingly and they
believed him. Maybe they weren
’t convinced by the details of his outline. Maybe
what convinced them was that he was here, and that Victoria Nix was
with him. Sweddlin and Sanson both knew that Nix never allowed her
to leave the
hacienda
alone. Either Nix accompanied her personally, or she was
shadowed by the deadly Oriental, Yat Sen. When Angel capped his
story by showing them his belt-hidden badge, with its screaming
eagle encircled by the legend
Department of Justice,
any fight they might have had in them
drained out like bathwater. Sanson was foxier than his partner: he
tried for a bargain.

‘
Lissen,
Angel,’ he said. ‘We go along, tell you how to get out, what’s in
it for us?’

‘
I turn
you loose when we get clear,’ Angel said. ‘Forget I ever saw
you.’

‘
And if
we don’t?’

‘
I’d say
that would be … inadvisable,’ Angel said, almost reflectively.
‘Because what I’d do would be to herd you two in front of me all
the way through the breaks so that whatever happened, you’d be the
first ones it happened to.’

The two of them looked at him for a
long, long moment.

‘
You
could be bluffin’,’ Sanson said.

‘
That’s
right.’

‘
You’d
do that, what you said? Go through the breaks with us in front?’
Sweddlin asked, his voice tailing away weakly when he saw the look
on Angel’s face.

‘
Yes,
you would,’ he said. ‘Listen, Kit, tell him. Or I sure as hell
will.’

Sanson nodded, and began to
explain the system of switches that primed the mined road that ran
through the breaks. It was similar to the one back at the
hacienda,
powered by the same
huge, stinking battery.

‘
Then
there’s a system of signal flags,’ Sanson said. ‘Two flags, one
red, one black. Red means whoever is coming through is OK.
Black—’

‘
I
can guess,’ Angel said. ‘What happens then?’

‘
When he
sees the flag go up the pole, Chris Holmes—that’s the guy at the
other end—he hoists a red flag, too. That means he’s switched off
at his end. Otherwise, wouldn’t make no difference if we was
switched off or not, the mines would still be primed.’

‘
He’s
got a lookout platform up there,’ Sweddlin added. ‘He can check on
who’s comin’ through. He doesn’t like the look of ’em, he can get
back inside and throw the switch anyway, blow the road up in your
face.’

‘
It’s
damn near foolproof,’ Sanson said, and Angel nodded, moved in spite
of himself to admire the dark brain that had planned all this. He
listened as Sweddlin described the steel plate set beneath the dirt
of the road that depressed a bell, which told the man at the far
side to check on who was coming through. If he did not know them,
he challenged them, and if they gave the wrong reply, he simply
threw his switch. There was no way they could get to him before he
did so. As Sanson had said, it was almost foolproof, and he thanked
the instinct which had told him to take these guards
alive.

‘
All
right,’ he told Sweddlin. ‘Get the red flag hoisted. And make sure
you do it exactly right.’

‘
I’ll do
it right,’ Sweddlin said anxiously. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘
Don’t
you worry about me worrying,’ Angel said. ‘Get at it’

Sweddlin clambered up a ladder
into a sort of loft, and after a moment Angel heard the squeak of
rope pulleys. After a moment, Sweddlin appeared in the aperture and
beckoned him up. Angel handed a
six-gun to Victoria, and picked up
Sweddlin’s shotgun.

‘
Keep an
eye on him,’ he said, gesturing at Sanson. ‘If he blinks, shoot his
face off.’

Victoria nodded, trying for a smile
that slid off her face before it got a proper grip, but she took
the heavy weapon and cocked it. Sanson flinched visibly at the
sound.

In the loft Sweddlin handed a
spyglass to Angel and
pointed off to the north. Through the glass, Angel
could see the flutter of a bright square of scarlet from a pole
that thrust up above the ragged top of the thornbreaks.

‘
All
right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. And you boys listen to me—don’t do
anything that might prove fatal.’

‘
Don’t
worry, mister,’ Sweddlin said anxiously. ‘We don’t aim to
double-cross you.’

‘
I plan
to be sure of it,’ Angel said coldly as they climbed onto their
horses and moved into the shadowed breaks. The trail curved right
and then left, leading between the high stands of faceless
chokethorn and briar, eerily cool and dark and silent. Glancing at
the narrow strip of sky above his head, Angel estimated it would be
dark in maybe two hours. A quick scan of the horizon with
Sweddlin’s spyglass had revealed no sign of the pursuers, but he
knew they were coming and he knew that if the two mercenaries got
as much as an inkling that help was on the way they would turn to
treachery as naturally as they opened their eyes in the
morning.

They moved at a steady trot through
the shadowed trees. Once in a while, they startled some creature in
the dark depths of the breaks, and heard it crashing through the
tangle in panicked flight. Victoria Nix rode in back, close to
Angel, her shoulders hunched as though against a chill, her face
set and pale.

It took them fifteen minutes to
get to the place where a huge white blaze scarred a fallen log
beside the trail. Sweddlin reined in as he got level with it. The
trail stretched straight as an arrow ahead of them, and disappeared
up ahead around a bend. It was quite wide here, and Angel could see
the spidery outlines of a
lookout platform in the far high distance.
Sweddlin stood up in the stirrups and waved his Stetson around his
head three times to the right, and three times to the
left.

‘
OK,’ he
said, and gigged his horse into motion. Ten minutes later, they saw
the trail widen and as suddenly as the breaks had closed in on them
at the start, they ended. There was a clearing lit by the long rays
of the afternoon sun, and in it a barrack hut identical with the
one they had just left. As the quartet rode into the open space, a
man eased out of the doorway of the hut, a shotgun across his arm.
He looked edgy, a little tense, and Angel felt a cold moment of
unease.

‘
Lee,
Sanson,’ the man nodded, not coming nearer to them. ‘What brings
you over here? Howdy, Miz Nix, I didn’t see—’

‘
It’s
all right,’ Victoria said, but her voice cracked, and the man
sensed the tension in it. His eyes swung immediately to the only
stranger in the setup, and the shotgun followed the movement, twin
barrels coming up trained unwaveringly on Angel’s belly.

‘
Somebody better tell me
what the hell is goin’ on here,’ he growled, ‘or somebody is goin’
to get his brains blowed out.’

The air was still, electric with held
violence. It was Victioria Nix who dispersed with a casual sound of
irritated impatience. She hitched the head of her horse around so
that it was between Holmes and Angel and looked down imperiously at
Holmes.

‘
Holmes,’ she said, and there was a whip in her voice that
brooked no refusal. ‘Help me down.’

Holmes moved automatically to
obey. He was a paid gun and there were few things he would balk at
doing without so much as batting an eyelid, but he knew a damned
sight better than to disobey Hercules Nix
’s wife. She might be a hoity-toity
bitch who treated everyone like so much dirt, but an insult to her
was an insult to Nix and an insult to Nix meant death. He extended
his hand, and helped her down from the saddle and he was turning
around when Angel stuck the long barrel of his Peacemaker into
Holmes’s ear.

‘
Don’t
even sweat,’ Angel said softly.

‘
Aaaah,
shit!’ Holmes said, looking at Sweddlin and Sanson as though they
had just admitted to assassinating Lincoln. Angel grinned. It was
funny the way these empty-minded killers used betrayal and
treachery as their everyday coin, yet somehow felt tricked when
paid in their own money.

‘
Drop
the shotgun,’ Angel said. ‘Relax.’

‘
Relax,
he says,’ Holmes sneered, letting the weapon fall with a soft thud
to the ground. ‘What the hell is all this, anyway?’

‘
Tell
him,’ Angel said to the two Nix riders.

Sweddlin and Sanson nodded, and told
Holmes the same story that Angel had told them. If anything, they
made it more convincing and bloody than he had done, and when they
were through, Holmes looked at Angel in a new way. He shook his
head, as though finding it hard to believe.

‘
You did
all that?’ he asked Angel. ‘Alone?’

‘
Would I
lie to you?’ Angel said, with a sardonic grin.

‘
It’s a
possibility,’ Holmes said, just as derisive. ‘Who the hell are you,
anyway?’

‘
He’s
Federal Law, Chris,’ Sweddlin said. ‘Department of
Justice.’

‘
Oh,
beautiful,’ Holmes said, his tone that of a man whose best cards in
a high-stakes game are deuces. His face fell further when Angel
showed him the badge.

‘
Department of Justice,’ Holmes read, dispiritedly.
‘Terrific’

Angel said nothing, just letting
the worry build in Holmes
’s mind. He was smarter than his two comrades, and
knew the consequences of being taken by Federal Law. Holmes had no
illusions about what he was: a paid killer, worthless as a citizen,
beyond redemption as a human being. He stank of killing for money,
but like a buffalo hunter, he had gotten used to the stink. Angel
let the man sweat: the manner of Holmes’s eventual death was a
predictable as what he would do next. He was expecting Angel to
take them in, and he was thinking about years and years in the
slammer: ergo, he would try to make some kind of deal.

‘
Listen,’ he said. ‘Sanson an’ Sweddlin, they played along
with you. I’m doin’ the same. What’s—?’

‘
Forget
it!’ Angel said. ‘I’m going to turn you loose.’

Holmes
’s face brightened perceptibly, and
he looked at the other two. They nodded. ‘That’s what he told us,
Chris,’ Sweddlin said.

‘
One
thing,’ Angel said, the coldness of his voice taking the smile of
relief off of Holmes’s face. T want you long gone out of Texas.
Keep going until you get someplace where nobody ever heard of the
Department of Justice, because if I ever hear you boys are back in
circulation, I’m going to come after you and bring you in. And I’ll
throw away the key, savvy?’

The three men nodded. It was a better
deal than they had any right to hope for and they knew it. In their
world, losers got a bullet in the gut or the back of the head.
There were no nice guys. This cold-eyed bastard had destroyed
Hercules Nix single-handed. By definition he was not the kind of
man wanted on his back-trail.

‘
All
right,’ Holmes said. ‘Can we move out now?’

‘
Now’s a
good time,’ Angel said. ‘Get your pony.’

‘
How
about our guns?’

Angel just looked at him, and Holmes
got a stubborn look on his face.

‘
Lissen,
mister, you can’t send us out alone on these plains without a gun
of some kind!’ Holmes said. ‘There’s Comanch’ out there. An’ Kiowa!
They’d slit our throats soon as look if they saw we didn’t have
guns.’

‘
No
guns,’ Angel said.

‘
Well,
hell, then shoot us here and be done with it!’ Holmes spat
defiantly. ‘You’re killing us sure the other way, and me, I’d as
soon die right here on ground I know.’