The Avenging Angels Read online

  He drew up within a few strides of Zeller’s table. Seward managed a wave and Davis gave a slow nod, but Woods and Zeller didn’t so much as twitch.

  “Hope you boys had a good time last night,” Kings said.

  Zeller’s reply was sluggish from beneath the brim. “How was yours?”

  “If y’all still plan on hittin’ the U.P., best get sobered up and pull out sometime this evenin’.”

  Zeller’s head tipped back, and Kings was surprised to see that his eyes weren’t bloodshot. “Sounds about right,” he drawled, without the slightest hint of venom. “We’ll meet you ’neath the livery dogtrot ’round about sundown. How’d you sleep?”

  Kings half-smiled. For the time being, it seemed as if his and Zeller’s horns had come unlocked. “Like the dead,” he replied.

  The others had started to get themselves together. Not far behind, Zeller groaned to his feet. When he’d satisfied himself that the world wasn’t tipping over, he started wading through the maze of tables. Just before he reached the threshold, a strident voice rapped out from across the room.

  “Hold up there, high-pockets!”

  All eyes turned to a man just emerging from a storeroom to the left of the bar. He slammed the door and stalked toward Zeller with indignant purpose, arms swinging and head thrust forward. Any regular would have recognized him instantly as Ned Spivey, proprietor, but Kings was no regular. Spivey had come from Fort Griffin to Refuge with a wagonload of prostitutes, dealers, and bartenders only last summer, and it was then that he and Zeller had had their first disagreement. They would be revisiting the same sore subject momentarily, and though the tall Indianan was well aware of the saloon man’s bullying ways and penchant for knifing, Spivey had yet to bear witness to the wrath Zeller himself was capable of.

  His face was leathery and unshaven, perpetually whiskered, with two permanent creases that began at the corners of his mouth and ran down to frame his chin. They deepened like two horrible scars whenever he frowned, giving him the look of a malevolent ventriloquist’s dummy.

  “Price for the night’s eleven dollars,” Spivey declared, appearing very much the dummy as he planted himself in Zeller’s shadow. He stuck his hand out. “Give it over.”

  Zeller’s eyes rolled back. “We been over this before, ya sawed-off bastard. Jeannie said she wouldn’t charge me a penny, and I don’t mean to pay.”

  “I don’t give a tinker’s damn what she said. She works for me, and I’m chargin’ you for the diddlin’. Now, you’re gonna pay me what’s owed, or I’m takin’ it outta her, by God.”

  “Mister, you so much as hurt her feelin’s, I’ll take that famous knife and make you eat it, you understand me?”

  Kings feared bloodshed was imminent, and, though it might have been understandable, it was not entirely necessary. He moved quickly, wedging himself between Zeller and Spivey, but facing Zeller. “Time to get some air, Dave,” he said, grabbing the man’s gun arm.

  “Matter of fact,” Spivey broke in, “I believe you owe me from your last visit!”

  “Oh, c’mon now, Kings, lemme settle my tab with this—”

  “Dammit, I said, get you some air.”

  Zeller backpedaled slowly, never breaking eye contact with Spivey until he made the threshold. Kings saw him through the batwings and lingered there until he was sure the Yankee wasn’t coming back.

  “Hey! Prince Albert!”

  Kings made a slow quarter-turn back into the semi-darkness. His countenance was like stone, and his voice was quiet but not confrontational. “You speakin’ to me?”

  Spivey came closer, assured of his own supremacy within the confines of his sordid little kingdom, until he was close enough for Kings to smell the pickled egg on his breath. “I don’t see nobody else standin’ there. Tell ya what, if you’re partners with that shit-bird, you got two options. One, you drag him back here and talk ’im into payin’ up, or two”—Spivey jabbed a finger into Kings’s chest for emphasis—“you pay his debt.”

  Kings glared down at him. “I’ll thank you to keep your hands off me.”

  After thirty years in the business, Ned Spivey knew how to get what he wanted from folks. He enjoyed making examples of so-called hard cases and meant to do so with this one. He reached out, index finger extended, and Kings slapped him with an open hand.

  The blow knocked Spivey off balance, sent him pinwheeling to the side before he managed to right himself. With blood running freely from a split lip, he started to draw the knife from his belt but stopped short when the unmistakable sound of gun hammers rang out behind him.

  Slowly, wisely, Spivey let his hand fall away and watched as Kings counted out eleven dollars from a sheaf of bills.

  “I guess you must not recognize me,” he was saying, “or you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try that again. My name’s Gabriel Kings, and I’m walkin’ outta here nice an’ easy. What you intend, I can’t say, but know that if you elect to keep at it, my associates are gonna have somethin’ to say about that. Now, here’s the eleven to cover last night, and I suggest you consider the account settled.”

  He let the money float to the floor between himself and Spivey, then folded the remaining bills in half and pocketed them. He backed toward the doors and waited until the others shuffled out before falling in at their rear.

  Spivey was suddenly aware of the many stares he had drawn. “The nerve of that sumbitch,” he growled, then added for all to hear and hopefully take for prophecy, “One o’ these days, he’s gonna get his.”

  He ignored the scattered bills for dignity’s sake and barked at the bartender, who was wiping imaginary dust from the shiny surface. “Tony, put that rag away and pour me a drink.”

  From across the hardwood, the barkeep saw the storm clouds gathering but poured anyway. He thought he might have to use his upcoming lunch break to see Liddell about what had just transpired. The barman knew that once Spivey filled himself up with enough of his own liquor, he was liable to go looking for Jeannie’s favorite boy.

  “Gabriel Kings, my ass,” Spivey said and signaled for another.

  The rest of the day was hot and humid, and the breeze that came sweeping down from the northern plains brought with it the dust of the buffalo range. The only relief to be had north of the Deadline was to hang a wet sheet over an open window or doorway, but to the south, one had only to step inside the dimly lit interior of a saloon, where whistles could be wet, or into the Pearl Palace, which had been outfitted only last year with four double-bladed ceiling fans, powered by running water.

  Kings was leaning over the railing of Delilah’s balcony, watching the street below like a sentry standing guard over some valued treasure. The muscles in his jawline rippled every so often as he rotated a long, slow-burning cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other.

  The northern breeze dried the lines of sweat running down his face, and he knew it was time to be heading in. Off to the west, the sun sank low, signaling the end of the work day and the start of another bawdy night.

  He dipped back into Delilah’s room, grabbing his hat from a nearby chair. Hearing movement, his hostess lifted herself from a mound of tasseled pillows and stretched like a cat.

  “Where you headin’ off to in such a hurry?” she asked, her voice husky as she ruffled her hair.

  “See my boys off.”

  She moved to the armoire to select an evening dress and, after some inventorying, chose a pale-green floor-sweeper with an eye-grabbing cut in the front and a white sash that would hang low on her hips. “When are you leavin’?” she asked, holding up the dress to inspect herself in the full-length mirror.

  As Kings strapped on his guns, his eyes went to the clutch of perfume bottles on the armoire, collected over the years from places as far north as Kansas City and as far east as Paris, France—or so the label said. He had smelled them all at one time or another, and he predicted there would be many a cowboy falling in love with Delilah Young tonight.

  “I thi
nk it’s time for me to be goin’, too.” He materialized behind her in the mirror’s reflection and placed a hand on either shoulder. “You’ll break a lot of hearts wearin’ that.”

  “That’s the ideal result, honey.”

  “You take care, Delilah.”

  She raised a hand behind her head to cup the side of his face, clenching her jaw to resist a swell of emotion. “Thanks for the dance.”

  “Thanks for lettin’ me lead.”

  Delilah looked down at the dress. “See ya, Kings,” she said. When she raised her eyes, she was alone again in the mirror.

  Gabriel Kings took his rifle from where it stood in the corner and hung his saddlebags over a shoulder. The door eased shut behind him but his footsteps were slower than normal as he went down the steps and out the door of Delilah’s Pearl Palace.

  For the last time.

  He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and the top of his head came up to about where a tall man’s arm met his shoulder. He was a farm kid hoping to become something he wasn’t, and nothing could make that fact any clearer than the worn corduroy overalls he tried to compensate for in the wearing of a twelve-dollar Peacemaker.

  He was born John Allen Blake, but he left that name behind, choking on the dust he’d stirred up since leaving the home of his minister father on the Colorado River in search of a vision. It was not a vision of angelic choirs or the Son of Man coming on the clouds with glory, but one of blazing guns and the intrigue of easy money, of midnight rides and daylight robberies, all inspired by the resonating words of a dozen dime-store novels.

  He figured it was by sheer luck alone that he happened to glance up from carving his name on a weathered hitch rail when he did. A man had emerged from a two-story parlor house and paused on the boardwalk out front with a rifle in his hand and saddlebags over his shoulder. Initial disbelief gave way to awe, which was in turn replaced by a purposeful determination. Johnny Blake could barely take his eyes off the man, even as he mounted his big roan horse—tenderly, given the early stages of saddle sores that had already started to form. Johnny edged his coat behind the twelve-dollar gun, clucked to his steed, and headed straight for the fellow who could only be Gabriel Kings.

  When he reined in at the bottom of the steps, however, the man’s gaze was enough to give Blake second thoughts. He’d thought to present himself bold and brash as the wanted man he hoped to become, offer to buy the outlaw king of Texas a drink, and plead his case. He’d come this far, and he knew Kings wasn’t in the habit of shooting folks at the drop of a hat. What did he have to lose?

  Heaving a deep breath to settle his nerves, Blake asked, “ ’Scuse me, sir, but are you Gabriel Kings?”

  Kings was a long time in answering. He stood straight and still as a chimney, leaking smoke, thumb hooked around the hammer of his rifle, in the hope that such a display might be intimidating enough to spook the boy out of whatever he had to say. When it became apparent there would be no spooking this one, Kings said around his cheroot, “Sometimes.”

  The kid grinned, but the smile appeared more a smirk. The nerves were still there. “Well, my name is Johnny Blake, and I think me and my guns’d serve you well if you was to let me join up with you and your outfit.”

  Kings did not reply, but the boy went on, “I can shoot and ride with any man, sir, and I’d be glad to prove it.”

  Still nothing.

  “You sign me on, Mr. Kings, you won’t regret it.”

  Soberly, Kings took in this over-eager youngster straddling a horse much too large for him. Farm boy, by the looks of him, somewhere between the hay and the grass, who’d ridden away from the daily toil of a sweaty, horse apple-smelling life. Had the hands of a man twice his age and that deep tan bestowed by a life of plowing and tilling fields. Kings knew the type, because he was once of that type. This Johnny Blake had more than a touch of the wanderlust, which wasn’t exactly illegal, but he possessed a woefully misguided idea of adventure and manhood that included riding the criminal’s road and raising holy hell. It was enough to make a man shake his head.

  The boy opened his mouth again, unaware that the more he talked, the more he showed his bright-green color. “And if you’ll excuse me for sayin’ so, it’d be a genuine honor for me in my old age to say that I was once in the comp’ny of a fella like you. Fightin’ the good fight an’ all.”

  All things considered, Kings had to admire this pup for the backbone it took to walk his horse on over and introduce himself. He removed the cheroot and turned his head to spit before delivering his curt reply.

  “Go home, Johnny Blake. Put that pistol away, find yourself a pretty little gal and spend your days chasin’ her ’round the barn. Texas needs more good, brave boys like you.”

  The young man raised a hand in protest, but before he could get a word out, the big red horse between his legs sidestepped sharply to the left, almost as if he’d understood Kings’s instruction and was keen to start for home.

  The outlaw decided to take advantage of Johnny Blake’s present distraction, but before starting down the boardwalk, he paused to advise him one thing more.

  “As to them dime novels you no doubt set such store by, the pages you don’t set fire to, stick ’em in the privy.” He stuck the cheroot back in his mouth. “You’ll get better use of ’em there.”

  John Allen Blake watched Kings go, walking five doors further and then looking one way before stepping onto the street. There, his tall, black-shrouded form met another of his band in the shadow of a saloon flying the Texas flag. The other man was carrying his shotgun over one shoulder, his pistols cinched in crossed holsters over his duster. He offered what Johnny correctly guessed to be a chunk of tobacco, which Kings refused. The man with the shotgun bit off a wedge and rolled his jaws until he’d tongue-packed the tobacco in place. After a brief exchange of words, both men headed for the livery.

  Blake’s gaze dipped against a sudden, warm breeze, and he found himself looking at his hands, gathered over the horn of his old saddle. They were big in comparison to his sinewy forearms and thin wrists, with palms rough to the touch—hands he was sure the Good Lord had not intended for the hoe or plow.

  He examined his gun hand. The little finger, broken by a ruckus at the milking bucket when he was ten, was curled permanently at the second joint like a brown caterpillar. The break was nearly identical to the one that angled the same finger on Kings’s right hand, only Blake was sure that injury had come from something a great deal more impressive than an agitated Jersey cow.

  Whatever the cause, Johnny took it for an omen that he would soon be riding the Hoot-Owl alongside the man who’d just turned him down.

  “Ain’t that right, Red?” he said to his horse, who replied by spreading his hind legs to release a spattering yellow torrent.

  It was reiterated that Zeller, Yeager, Woods, and Foss would intercept the westbound Union Pacific sometime around high noon the next day. Seward would ride with them. And while Yeager played hell trying to prevent Yankee Dave from pistol-whipping the daylights out of a mulish company man, Kings would lead Brownwell, Creasy, and Davis southwest. Their destination was their stronghold in the Big Bend—over a thousand square miles of long shadows and winding ravines in which an inexperienced rider could easily get lost.

  They rode double file onto the thoroughfare, Kings and Yeager leading each short column at a walk. Yankee Dave Zeller rode in the drag of Yeager’s column, staring trancelike between the ears of his dun mare. His mind’s eye was filled with fleeting images of bare flesh and unbound hair. It had been a long, dry spell for him on the trail, in the canyons, and he sure was going to miss Jeannie. The fact that she thought him the moon-hanger and never charged him a red cent was beside the point. Hell, he would have doled out as much as $200 if she was of a mind to charge that much. As a matter of fact, if he had been in any other business, he might have asked her to marry him as they lay in each other’s arms the night before.

  S
ome kind of outlaw, he chided himself, even as the nine-strong cavalry shifted from a walk to a soft Sunday jog as they closed on the town limits.

  Before his time on the other side of the law, Zeller spent three years in service to the Union. More than once, he’d had occasion to wonder whether he’d been blessed with a sort of sixth sense—a sense with which he could smell danger as easily as any pilgrim smelled rain. Whomever he had to thank for this knack—whether God above or the graybacks of Mason-Dixon below—Zeller was glad for it.

  Else he would have taken a load of double-ought buckshot, courtesy of a shotgun-wielding Ned Spivey, right in the back.

  “Time to pay the piper, boy!” was the cry that yanked Zeller back to the here and now. He wheeled the dun hard to the left, raising a high-pitched horse scream as Spivey’s sawed-off belched flame. The spot where the saloon man stood at the edge of an alley was too far to do any more damage than kick up dust, but Zeller felt confident he could make up the difference with one of his Colts. He was just bringing his muzzle to bear on his wide-legged target when his mare backed into one of the other horses. His shot went wild.

  Spivey edged further into the street and triggered the second barrel at Zeller—missed again! As a water trough across the street disintegrated, the saloon man swore and flung his spent weapon to the ground. He pulled a pistol from his waistband and drew a bead of his own. Zeller, locked in a battle with his own horse, had lost sight of Spivey.

  At the far end of the commotion, Kings reined his stallion around and slapped with his spurs. Spivey’s aim was spoiled for a third time when John Reb’s right shoulder slammed into him. The collision sent the man reeling, legs tangled, until he lost his balance and pitched to the ground.