Trap Angel (Frank Angel Western #3) Read Online Free Page B

empty waiting in which the universe held its breath.
Then the rifles spoke in unison and they watched Lieutenant Evans
cartwheel over the head of his horse. The horse slewed sideways
into the rocks, a bullet through the head as Evans crashed to the
ground, his pistol flying in a long slow arc through the air
unfired, bright blood staining the boyish face.
    ‘Let’s get the hell out of
here!’ yelled Mackenzie. ‘On your feet!’
    The four soldiers scrambled
to their feet, Springfields to port, running flat out across the
broken rocky ground towards the wagons. They knew that if they
could get the solid cover of the heavy wagon beds between
themselves and their attackers they had a fighting chance of
holding them off, but their attackers knew that too and gave none
of them a chance. In the thirty yards between them and shelter they
were cut down like rabbits in an open field, mercilessly and
precisely. There was a long and empty silence after the sound of
shooting died. Nothing moved except the busy flies, which deserted
the sweating backs of the mules for the sweet smell of
blood.
    The raiders came out from
behind their rocks.
    Two, five, seven, ten men,
led down the slope by a tall, ramrod-straight man of perhaps fifty
years, his hair iron-gray and his eyes cold and without pity. As
they approached the wagons, the last teamster, who had hidden
beneath one of the wagons, rose to his feet, his eyes shifting from
man to man, his face bathed in sweat, the stink of fear rising from
him like a fog.
    ‘In the name of God,’ he
wheezed. ‘Don’t kill me, Jesus, don’t — ’
    He advanced towards them,
hands extended pleadingly, stumbling over the stony ground. The
gray-haired man made an impatient gesture and one of his men shot
the teamster through the chest. The man went down flat dead. Nobody
looked at him.
    They went over to the wagons
and quickly checked the loads beneath the tarpaulins. One of them
came across to where the gray-haired man was standing tapping his
beautifully shined riding boots with a leather crop. ‘All in order,
Colonel,’ he said.
    ‘Good,’ the Colonel replied.
‘Get them moving.’
    ‘Yessir,’ said the man. He
yelled an order and three of the men swung up into the driving
seats on the wagons. Within minutes they were tooling them down the
road. They swung them off on a trail that led west of the main
trail and up towards Tinaja Peak. And then they were gone. Behind
them nothing moved for a long, long time. A buzzard swept down from
the high hills and soared above the scene of the ambush. With
casual beauty, it soared on the air currents high above, circling
lower towards the bloody bodies on the ground. Presently another
buzzard came to join it, and then a third and more. They waited in
the wide sky and still nothing moved. Then one of them swooped down
and landed croaking on a rock near the body of Sergeant
Mackenzie.
    Suddenly it flapped away,
squawking in alarm as Lieutenant Philip Evans groaned aloud and
tried to get to his feet. There was caked blood all over his face
and for a moment he thought he was blind. He slumped back on the
ground, his head spinning with nausea. After a while he managed to
sit up. He saw first the body of his dead horse.
    ‘Canteen,’ he said. The
thought of water was the only one in his universe and it took him
the best part of ten minutes to crawl across to the horse and
unhitch the canteen from the saddle.
    When he had drunk the
canteen dry he stood up and looked around him. He saw where he was
and he saw what had happened and he fell back against the burning
rocks, his stomach tightening and he retched and retched
again.
    Then when he could stand,
when he could think again, he staggered down the rocky hillside to
where the men lay dead.

     

Chapter Five
    Angus Wells had learned
little in Fort Stanton and less in Fort McEwen. The Army reports
had told it all and there was little more anyone could add. In
addition, the military didn’t take all that