Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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and its drooping flags.
    ‘ You know the rules, Angel,’ the
Old Man would say. ‘Keep out of it.’
    ‘ But I need to move out,’ he would
argue. ‘After Magruder. Every day I lose gives him a longer head
start.’
    ‘ Can’t be helped,’ the attorney
general would reply. ‘Not as if it’s forever.’
    ‘ But—’
    ‘ This . . . problem,’ the attorney
general would go on, giving him no chance to argue. ‘Happens all
the time, right? Frontier towns are pretty much all the same, are
they not? Always someone struggling to be top dog, am I
correct?’
    And Angel would nod, because it was true, even if in
this case. . . .
    ‘ I know what you’re going to say,
now,’ the attorney general would say, reaching for one of the long
cigars he smoked. ‘This is different.’
    ‘ It is,’ Angel would say. ‘You
see—’
    ‘ No difference at all,’ would come
the interruption, sharp through the billowing folds of stinging
smoke from the cigar. Department wags said that there was a $5000
bounty for the man who could find the attorney general’s cigar
maker - and kill him before he made any more. ‘Tell me how this one
is different. Town marshal handling a local problem. No Federal
laws broken: always supposing we could make Federal law stick in
Indian Territory. Could be argued, I suppose, that a town marshal
hasn’t any true legal right to arrest anyway. Citizen’s arrest,
nothing more. And nothing to do with this department, Frank.’ Each
word emphasized by a jab from the cigar.
    ‘ Agreed?’
    And Angel would duck his head, agreeing.
    ‘ Then don’t get
involved.’
    He pulled his thoughts back to the here and now,
heard Sheridan saying that the only thing he could usefully do was
to sit tight and wait to see what Hugess planned.
    ‘ Wal,’ Ridlow said. ‘Damned if I’m
gonna sit around waitin’ on him. I’m gonna round up some able
bodies an—’
    ‘ Nathan!’ Sheridan said. His voice
was not loud but it stopped Ridlow’s chatter like a tap being
turned. ‘Just-plain-don’t. And that’s an order!’
    Old Ridlow looked at the marshal, and then at Howie
Cade, and then back at the marshal.
    ‘ Aw,’ he said. ‘Hell, Dan’l, if
that’s the way you feel.’
    ‘ That’s the way I feel,’ Sheridan
said. ‘And don’t you forget it.’
    ‘ Shoot,’ Ridlow said. ‘Then that’s
the way she’ll be. How about one more afore I get on about my
business? Just a leetle one. Haw!’
    Sheridan poured the beer into the
cups. He handled the job quite well, but it was plain to Angel that
the marshal wasn’t used to using his left hand and that he’d be
somewhere less than fast getting his gun into action if he had to.
As for using a rifle ... it was better not to think too much about
it. Don’t get involved, he told himself again. When they’d finished
the beer, he got up to leave with Ridlow, telling himself that what
he’d do was wait it out, see what happened. He could always pitch
in alongside Sheridan if they hit the jail. He decided to hold on
until nightfall before making a decision, but the way it turned out
he didn’t have to make any decision at all. It was made for him at
around seven-thirty that night when someone cut Nathan Ridlow down
from ambush in an alley halfway up Front Street.

Chapter
Five
    Ridlow hadn’t even been wearing a
gun. He’d spent most of the late afternoon and early evening going
from store to saloon to restaurant to livery stable to saloon,
haranguing the citizens of Madison to support their marshal,
completely ignoring the warning that Sheridan had served on him.
He’d been vituperative, scalding, merciless, calling Madison’s men
folk spineless, spavined, swaybacked, and possessed of less guts
than a cooked rainbow trout, but all to no avail. When he had
suggested a frontal attack on the Flying H riders, he had been
gently reminded of the presence of such trigger-happy gunslingers
as Danny Johnston and Willie Johns. When he had put up the