Read Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) for Free Online

in the shadow of the
squat adobe building until he came to the corner. Then he was
around it and going at a fast lope down the dusty alley, heading
south towards the Alameda.
    He had some yellow papers in
his hand.

     

Chapter Six
    Kiowa was no great shapes as
a town.
    It straggled along the Palo
Blanco canyon, houses and larger buildings scattered at each side
of a road that turned S-shaped like a snake between the beetling
hills that rolled back to even higher hills rising to the
eight-thousand-foot peak of Laughlin.
    Angel rode in across the
wooden bridge that spanned the noisy river rushing on down towards
its confluence with Ute Creek and then onwards to the Canadian, his
eyes alert but his body slouched in the saddle like a man who has
come a long, hard way. As indeed, he had. It seemed like years
since he had reported to the Attorney-General in the big office
overlooking the muddy bustle of Pennsylvania Avenue.
    News of the attack on the
military wagons had reached Washington almost simultaneously with
Wells’ messages from Santa Fe. The scale of the latest raid had
startled even the Justice Department: not only well over a hundred
brand-new Winchesters plus ammunition, but this time a disassembled
Gatling gun which had been on its way to Fort Marcy.
    The Justice Department could
move very fast when it had to, and it moved fast now. Within two
days Angel had read every report, every file, and every dossier
that could be assembled on the people involved: the young
Lieutenant that Wells was even now interviewing in Fort Union; on
Colonel Rob Denniston, late US Army, cashiered for cowardice in the
aftermath of the battle of Chickamauga; on Johnnie Atterbow, ex-US
Army sergeant, who had deserted shortly after Denniston’s
court-martial and now ran the fenced-off enclave in the Palo Blanco
mountains, and who kept Denniston’s hard case crew in
line.
    He had only had time to
spend a few hours with the Armorer, but no trouble had been spared
to get him what he needed. And now he was sifting down the
straggling street of Kiowa, and he looked every inch of what he was
posing as: a saddle tramp, looking for any kind of work that paid
well. Unshaven, dust-coated, his clothes stained with sweat and
grime, he moved down the street, noting the long looks he got from
men on the sidewalks, the absence of any sign of children in the
place, the packrats playing in the refuse between the tarpaper
shacks. There was only one big building, a saloon with a false
front and a long sign painted in red and gold that read ‘Levy’s —
The Traveler’s Rest’. There was a tacky-looking store with pans and
mining equipment hanging on strings from the porch roof, and at the
end of the street he found a livery stable of sorts. It looked as
if nobody really worked at keeping it more than nominally clean,
but he turned the horse into the dark cool interior. A man of about
forty with shifting eyes which never met Angel’s limped
forward.
    ‘Howdy,’ Angel said,
swinging down. ‘Like to leave the horse here. Overnight, mebbe.
Feed him and rub him down, will you?’
    ‘Anything you say, mister —
?’
    Angel ignored the implicit
question. ‘Where could I get a room?’ he asked.
    ‘Levy’s is the only place in
town. How long you figgerin’ on stayin’?’
    ‘Levy’s, you say? That’s the
big place back up the street a ways?’
    The hostler nodded his eyes
venomous. ‘Two dollars in advance for the horse,’ he
spat.
    Angel fished in his jeans
and gave the man two silver dollars. He lifted the Winchester out
of the saddle scabbard and unfastened his war-bag from the cantle,
walking out of the stable into the sunlight.
    The hostler limped after
him. ‘Hey, mister,’ he whined. ‘You never told me your
name.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Angel said
pleasantly and walked away, feeling the man’s eyes on his back the
whole way up the street. Nobody seemed to be taking a direct
interest in him, and yet he had the inescapable feeling that