Hunt Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #5) by Frederick H. Christian

paled,
backing up.
    ‘ Howie,’ he said hastily. ‘You
beat up on me, ain’t nothin’ I can do with Sheridan over there
holdin’ a scattergun on me. But you’re off your cock if you think
anybody come in here!’
    ‘ Who seen this guy come in here,
anyway?’ demanded Danny Johnston.
    Howie just looked at him. Danny Johnston laughed in
his face.
    ‘ Sheet, Howie you really got the
DTs this time. Johnny, maybe you better give Howie here a stiff
drink afore he sees anythin’ else!’
    The jest was rough, but it was
enough to take the cork out of the bottled tension of the saloon.
The Flying H boys let loose. They laughed easy at first and then
louder and louder until they were all hooting, slapping their legs,
pointing at Howie.
    Sheridan stood there and watched
Howie taking it, watched him beginning to crumble. He looked as
though he was shrinking inside his tattered clothes as the Flying H
boys gave him the razzle-dazzle. And there wasn’t a single solitary
damned thing Dan Sheridan could do about it: Howie had to make the
play, if there was going to be one.
    The deputy stood there looking at
his tormentors, hearing the racket of their jeers like the scorn of
angels inside his head. He pleaded silently with Sheridan to step
in, stop them; and knew that Sheridan would not move until he gave
him a signal. Howie could not do that, he could not finally show
Sheridan that he had broken, and yet he knew that if they didn’t
stop jeering, if they didn’t stop, he’d have to, have to . . . his
eyes shuttled sideways and fixed on the amber glitter of the
bottles on the shelves behind Johnny Gardner. His shoulders
slumped: my God, what I’d give for a
drink, he thought.
    Danny Johnston saw it, and he grinned. He fished into
the watch pocket of his pants and slid out a silver dollar, which
he flipped up in the air and then caught. Howie Cade looked at
it.
    ‘ Here,’ Johnston said, tossing it
toward the deputy. ‘Have a drink, bum!’
    The dollar fell uncaught to the floor, spun on the
boards, lay still. Howie Cade looked at Danny Johnston, and hate
surged into his eyes and then died, stillborn. He looked at the
dollar on the floor. There were tears in his eyes, tears of pure
shame.
    Sheridan cursed silently, knowing he
would have to move now. He’d seen old fighting bulls pulled down by
wolves and knew they worked the same way the Flying H boys were
working now. The baying pack, confusing the bull, taunting him,
tiring him, confusing him, exposing his lack of speed. The false
attacks, the small snapping wounds. And then the moment when the
old bull realized that all he could do was die, and something went
out of him like a signal which the wily wolves knew, recognized,
sensed. Then they attacked in earnest.
    Howie still stood there in the
middle of the saloon with his head down, and his eyes fixed on the
floor. He looked up at Sheridan, and Dan Sheridan’s heart leaped.
Whatever was in Howie’s stance, it wasn’t in his eyes any more.
There was a fierce, exultant light in them.
    ‘ I don’t feel good,’ Howie
mumbled, shielding his face from the Flying H riders. ‘Maybe I will
take a drink.’
    He walked over to the bar, moving diagonally so that
he was out in the center opposite the big mirror behind Johnny
Gardner, who was reaching for the whiskey bottle when Howie
moved.
    So unexpected, so sudden was the
explosion of action that nobody had a chance to even move. Howie
had leaned forward on the bar, and then he whirled around, the
six-gun in his hand coming up and booming once, twice, three times,
almost faster than you could count. He was poised like an athlete
in a drawing, right knee slightly bent, right arm rigid with the
six-gun smoking in it, eyes fixed on the second door in the quartet
of them on the balcony above the saloon. There were two jagged
holes in the wood of the door where Howie’s slugs had blasted
through the flimsy wood, and the man who had been standing behind
the door holding it ajar