Read Online Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) by Frederick H. Christian - Free Book Online Page A

you, sir?’ he said.
    ‘ I’d
like to get some coin for this,’ Angel said, handing the man the
buckskin bag of gold dust he had taken off Kamins. The manager
hefted it in his hand. His eyes flickered over Angel briefly as he
set up the scales.
    ‘ Stranger in these parts?’ he asked.
    ‘ Passing through,’ Angel replied. ‘Heading for
Mesilla.’
    ‘ So,’
the bank manager said. ‘I make this a shade over four hundred and
thirty dollars. You want coin or paper?’
    ‘ Paper will do,’ Angel said. The man nodded, and went through
into the open area behind the counter, opening a drawer and
counting out some notes. He locked the drawer and came back into
his office.
    ‘ You
may be able to help me,’ Angel said. ‘I’m looking for a place owned
by a man named Torelli. You know it?’
    The
manager looked at him differently. There was surprise in his eyes
and a curl of distaste on his full lips.
    ‘ You
know the Torellis? he asked.
    ‘ Never met them,’ Angel said. ‘Friend in Santa Fe told me I
should look them up.’
    ‘ Listen, Mister - ah?’ Angel supplied his name. ‘Mr. Angel, if
I may speak frankly, I’d recommend you leave your money with us
here at the bank if you’re going to the Torelli place.
    Angel
looked his question.
    ‘ It’s
a road ranch, Mr. Angel. One of those — ah, places, you know, they
have, ah — girls there, cheap liquor. It — they have a very
unsavory reputation, sir. I could not let you go there without at
least warning you. It isn’t the kind of place a gentleman would go
to. No, not at all. A thoroughly bad lot, the Torellis.’
    ‘ Tell
me about them,’ Angel suggested. The manager warmed to the task. He
obviously felt strongly about the bad influence people like the
Torellis had on the character of the town. He told Angel that there
had originally been three brothers, all of Italian origin, who had
come west from New York at the time of the mining boom.
    They
had enough money to buy a rundown old spread about six miles south
of town, and it had become a Mecca for the miners down from the
Magdalenas with dust in their pockets to spend, for teamsters and
outlaws coming in off the Jornado, dry as a bone and looking for
fun.
    ‘ They
haven’t quite the character to be badmen,’ the manager told him.
‘One of them, Bill Torelli, was hanged right here in town a few
years ago. He tried to bust up a poker game he was in and shot a
man in the hand. The miners strung him up from one of the beams in
the hotel and put a notice on him: “Hanged for being a damned
nuisance!” The other two brothers made noises about coming up here
and taking revenge on the town, but a bunch of men from the town
rode down there and sorted them out. Franco ran for it. He didn’t
even have the nerve to stay and face the posse. The third brother,
Steve — his real name is Stefano — came to a sort of agreement with
the townspeople. He would keep his girls and his friends out of
Socorro and Socorro would leave him alone. There were some of us, I
should tell you, who thought that was a mistake. We ought to have
burned the place down. At any rate, it’s still there, and a filthy
dirty dump it is. My advice, Mr. Angel, would be to steer clear of
it.’
    Angel
had listened carefully to the man’s gossip. If Socorro was like
other towns in the west, the road ranch would be tolerated because
it kept the hookers out of town itself, where they could offend the
local people.
    Better that than the way it was on Texas Street in Abilene,
where the whores jostled the decent women and spat at
them.
    ‘ This
Franco,’ he asked. ‘He never came back?’
    ‘ Not
that I’ve ever heard,’ the bank manager said. ‘I did hear once he
was working in the railway yards at Kansas City, but I don’t know
whether it was true or not. I never imagined any of them doing an
honest day’s work.’
    Angel
picked up his hat and rose.
    ‘ I’m
obliged for your help,’ he told the manager.
    ‘ Maybe I’ll steer