Kill Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #6) by Frederick H. Christian Page B

know,’ Angel replied.
    ‘ Oh,
Jesus,’ Gates said.

Chapter
Sixteen
    ‘ They’re waiting for us,’ Gates announced. The first full
strength of the sun was yellowing the sky where they could see it
up beyond the towering walls of the canyon. They had remained in
its safety all night, doing the best they could with Vaughan’s
wound, binding it tightly with strips torn from their shirts and
undershirts, making Chris as comfortable as possible. He had gotten
fevers, tossing and moaning in his sleep, sweat starting from him
like running water. Sometimes he had moaned, a long low cry of
pain. Gates had sat with him all night, not sleeping. At dawn, he
had nodded to Angel, and slid away into the twilight, prowling
along the edges of the canyon towards the place where the rocky
walls fell away, and the canyon opened out on to the falling shale
slope that ran east towards Santa Elizabeta and north into the
malpais. He could see the lights of the town twinkling faintly in
the clear desert air. For all his size, Gates could move like an
Indian when he had to, and he watched immobile in the rocks until
he saw movement, heard the rusty cough of a man who had lain in the
open all night. He saw that man, then spotted another and another.
He projected a line in his head and swung his eyes along it,
grunting each time he spotted something alien that meant the
presence of a man, one behind a boulder, another prone in a gully,
a third hidden under a yucca. There were men bayed all around the
exit of the canyon, waiting for them to come out. There was no
other exit. Behind them, the canyon was blocked. In front, a
murderous ambush awaited. He eased his way out of there and back
along the shadowed walls of the canyon.
    ‘ How
many?’ Angel said.
    ‘ Hard
to tell,’ Gates reported. ‘Ten, a dozen, maybe.’
    Angel nodded.
    With Vaughan wounded there was
no way they could make a run for it, or even make a fight of it.
They were boxed in. Trying to get through the waiting line of men
could only mean death for all of them. He looked at Yancey
Blantine. The old man looked shrunken, very old. The bushy eyebrows
were lowered over the lambent eyes, and the burly shoulders
slumped. The death of his sons had taken all the fire out of the
old man. Burke, the dashing, handsome Burke, had been his favorite. He did not
know who else was dead: none of them did. But Angel had told him
about the death of Burke and Olan Crumm.
    He stood up, his decision made.
    ‘ Pearly, rig up a ten-minute fuse on the rest of those cans
of blasting powder,’ he said. ‘Then tie them to Blantine’s
horse.’
    Gates looked a question, but set
about doing what Angel had told him. There were three cans. He
rigged a looped truss for them, and dallied it around the cantle of
the saddle behind where the old man would sit. From the saddle-bags
he took a length of fuse, measured it roughly, frowning as he
worked out the measurement, and fixed it inside one of the closely
bound tins. Then he let it drop and turned towards
Angel.
    ‘ No
smoking,’ he said.
    While he had been busy with his
task. Angel had been examining Chris Vaughan. In the growing light,
Vaughan ’s
face looked pinched and very pale. He was terribly weak, but he
opened his eyes and grinned.
    ‘ Well,’
he said. ‘So I’m still here?’
    ‘ How
you feeling, Chris?’ Gates asked.
    ‘ Very
fragile,’ Vaughan replied. ‘An’ extremely stupid.’
    ‘ We got
them all,’ Angel told him. Vaughan nodded.
    ‘ Naturally,’ he said.
    ‘ Chris,
I never said thank you,’ Angel said. ‘If that’s the right words.
They sure don’t seem like enough.’
    ‘ You
could give me a kiss,’ Vaughan grinned, then cursed as a stab of
pain twisted his body. ‘Damn an’ blast!’ He touched the pad of
bandage on his side tentatively. ‘Can I ride?’
    ‘ You
shouldn’t,’ Angel replied. ‘But you’ve got to. We’re moving
out.’
    ‘ There’s more o’ them waitin’ for us,’ Gates
added.
    ‘ We