Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) (8 page)

Willowfield was more than willing to talk.
He explained how he had dreamed up the idea of ransoming the
Freedom Train, how he had worked out the ideal locale to stop the
train, how he had recruited the men to effect his dream. He’d found
Chris Falco bodyguarding a tinhorn whose dealing was no better than
it had to be. A killer, Falco was, but he’d gotten away with a
self-defense plea on the two occasions when the law had been
involved. Gil Curtis, whom Falco had found, was a wizard with any
kind of explosive. He’d learned his trade with the UP as it blasted
its way through the Rockies, but decided to put his knowledge to
more practical use. Curtis had blown safes in seven different parts
of the States, and nobody had ever so much as lost a finger. Hank
Kuden, whose real name was Hans Kudenheim, Willowfield had met back
East: a dissatisfied soldier with a genius for timetabling and
planning. Kuden could reduce any operation to a series of simple
instructions that even a rabble of Mongolian peasants could
understand and execute. Davy Livermoor had been recruited for two
reasons: first, he was a fine tracker, but second, and more
important, he still had ‘respectable’ bank accounts in Kansas City,
and in Sedalia, Missouri. So not only was Davy their expert guide
to every good and bad trail in the endless expanse between the
Missouri and the Rio Grande, he was also a means through which the
ransom money, if it was marked or recorded by serial number, could
be ‘laundered.’ All they would have to do to check it out was to
deposit some of the money in one of Davy’s accounts, wait long
enough for it to set off alarms, then send a mug in to withdraw
some money. If he was taken, they would know the money was ‘hot.’
If not, they were home free.

Angel had asked where McLennon fit in.

‘
Ah, sir,’ Willowfield had said, as if
with huge regret. ‘You choose to wound me with reminders of my own
folly. I cherished that boy. Looked after him as if he were my own
son. Gave him everything: the clothes on his back, the horse he
rode, money to spend. You see how I am repaid for my
generosity.’

He made a gesture that encompassed all the
treachery of mankind, and once again, Angel felt the small warning
of disbelief touch his mind. It was all just too damned cut and
dried, but he couldn’t find a flaw in it. He had checked
everything.

The messages started to come through from
Washington, and not one of them had good news in it.

ANGEL. CARE U.S. MARSHAL, DENVER, COLO.
SPECIAL CREW DISPATCHED SCENE WRECK. STOP. SEARCH OF FREEDOM TRAIN
REVEALS APPARENT THEFT DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE STOP IMPERATIVE
QUESTION WILLOWFIELD REGARDING THIS. SQUEEZE HIM UNTIL HE SQUAWKS
BUT GET ANSWERS URGENT STOP. NEED NOT TELL YOU DOCUMENT PRICELESS
AND MUST UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE BE PUT AT RISK REPEAT NO
CIRCUMSTANCE STOP TELEGRAPH REPORT EARLIEST STOP ATTORNEY
GENERAL

Back, two hours later, went the reply.

ATTORNEY GENERAL. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE.
WASHINGTON D.C. WILLOWFIELD DENIES ANY KNOWLEDGE THEFT OF DOCUMENT
OR ANYTHING ELSE FROM FREEDOM TRAIN STOP SAYS HIS ORDERS EXPLICITLY
FORBADE ANY THEFT HISTORICAL ARTIFACTS WHICH WERE QUOTE WORTHLESS
UNQUOTE STOP HE SUGGESTS AND I CONCUR THAT FALCO MIGHT HAVE DECIDED
TAKE SOMETHING AS QUOTE ACE IN THE HOLE UNQUOTE STOP HAVE YOU
ANYTHING IN OUR RECORDS ON FIVE MEN NAMED MY FIRST REPORT STOP
ANGEL

He waited in the express office for perhaps
an hour, drinking coffee he didn’t want, before the key began to
chatter again, stuttering out its coded message as if venting some
kind of mechanical spite. The telegrapher scrawled the words down
as fast as they came through and handed the transcript to Angel. It
looked like gobbledy-gook to the telegrapher, but Angel could read
it almost without effort. The Department of Justice used a very
simple one-letter-up code for telegraph transmissions. In it ‘a’
became ‘b’ and ‘b’ became ‘c’; thus, the word ‘cat’ for instance
was rendered ‘dbu.’ It prevented casual eyes from being privy to
Department secrets. Angel read the message quickly.

ANGEL. CARE U.S. MARSHAL, DENVER, COLO. NO
RECORD YOUR MEN HERE STOP ON BASIS YOUR REPORT MAKE URGENT PRIORITY
PURSUIT AND CAPTURE NOT KILLING REPEAT NOT KILLING OF ANY OR ALL OF
MEN INVOLVED IN ROBBERY STOP AGAIN REPEAT DO NOT UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES PUT DOCUMENT AT RISK STOP ESCORT ARRANGED ARRIVING
DENVER OCTOBER THIRTEENTH STOP NOTHING TO PREVENT YOUR IMMEDIATE
COMMENCEMENT PURSUIT STOP STRESS ONCE MORE PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE
RECOVERY DOCUMENT UNHARMED STOP GOOD LUCK STOP ATTORNEY GENERAL

‘
Well, thanks,’ Angel said. ‘Thanks a
lot.’

~*~

It was really pretty country but he had no
eyes for it. He pushed the horse hard, wanting only to get the last
stage of the journey out of the way. He’d ridden a special train
that Henderson had organized with the local manager of the D &
RG, and run through the inky mountain night to Colorado Springs,
where the engineer had slapped him on the back and wished him well
as he led the roan down the slanting walkway out of the freight car
and climbed into the saddle.

‘
Did they give you any hint of which
way they were planning to go?’ he’d asked Willowfield. The fat man
had looked him straight in the eye and said no.

‘
I wish to God I knew,’ he’d said
fervently. ‘I really do.’

‘
That’s bad,’ Angel said. ‘They could
be heading anywhere.’ He got up to leave. There wasn’t anything
left to talk to Willowfield about. He’d have to take the chance
that they’d headed south, and hope he could pick up a trace of them
along the road. It was a thin chance at best.

‘
Wait,’ the fat man said.

Angel stopped in the open doorway of the
cell. The deputy, whose name was Jackman, stood with the keys in
his hand, waiting to lock the door.

‘
I remember,’ Willowfield said. His
face puckered with the effort to recall the exact words he had
heard. ‘Falco,’ he said. ‘Mentioned getting fresh horses. At Canon
City. Is there somewhere called Canon City?’

There was—and Angel was heading for it now.
He figured he might have cut some time off their lead by
commandeering the special train to the Springs. If they were
planning to change horses in Canon City, they must be heading west
for Durango, crossing the Sangre de Cristos mountains at Poncha
Pass and dropping down the long valley to Alamosa, where they could
track the Rio Grande up into the San Juans, climb up to and over
Wolf Creek Pass, and head on to Durango. It was a long, tough ride
and they wouldn’t be moving fast. Not for the first time, he
wondered why they were making it.

So now he moved southward along the flanks
of the mountains, his eyes assailed from every direction by riotous
autumnal colors. The bright, bold green of cottonwood tress, the
paler gold of the aspens, the sharp lemon yellow of wild grape
vines heightened by the crimson spray of Virginia creeper and the
dark glossy green of laurel, all set against the shattered face of
the grim granite shoulders going up and up toward the invisible
summit of Pike’s Peak. Up there, fantastic jumbles of gargantuan
boulders were lined and splashed with every conceivable hue:
carmine, vermilion, brown, red, blue, gray, yellow, green ochre, a
spectrum which would have defied duplication from the brush of a
great artist—a dazzling chiaroscuro that awed the senses. As he
bore toward the southwest, the scenery changed slowly. He was still
climbing, imperceptibly, but gradually getting higher up to where
the scenery became grimmer. Now the heavy dark blue shadows of
pines lay upon the pale mountain grass, and the horse moved
silently over a centuries-deep carpet of pine needles. The
mountains soared in bare and lonely beauty away and away and beyond
away, a vista of such grandeur that it made the breath catch in
awe, reduced the puny mind and soul of man to insignificance. By
nightfall, Angel was on a curving crest that curled away toward the
west, with a long open plain sloping downward from it toward a
meandering creek. On the far side of the creek was an unlovely
huddle of buildings scattered along a single street. One or two
lights were already making squares of yellow against the darkness.
Far off in the blue twilight the huge black bulk of Pike’s Peak lay
like a sentient shadow against the night. Somewhere he could hear a
coyote yelping. It was already very cool.

‘
Canon City,’ he told the horse.
‘Garden spot of Colorado.’

He gigged the roan into a trot, and the
animal pricked up his ears, anticipating the warm stable, food, and
water. Splashing through the shallow creek, Angel came up the slope
from the ford to where the straggling street began, heading toward
the biggest building he could see. He just had time to make out the
words Eldorado Saloon on the lighted signboard above the porch
before a blasting hail of bullets smashed from the black maw of the
alley on his right.

He went over the side and hit the dirt.

Through the thunder of the shots he heard a
high shrieking screech that went on and on as he rolled over and
over through the roiling dust toward the partial shelter of a water
trough outside one of the buildings on the left hand side of the
street. The roan was on its back in the dust, arching its spine
upward, legs flailing as it died in agony. Angel was already coming
up on one knee with a gun in his hand. There was a numbness in his
left hip that he had no time to try to identify, for now three men
were coming out of the alley running, silhouetted briefly against
the yellow lights, their guns snapping at him.

He heard a hoarse shout from somewhere up
the street, the startled scream of a woman as he emptied his sixgun
at the darker knot of movement where he calculated the running men
would be, and he heard a sharp shout of sudden pain.

Desperately he thumbed shells through the
loading gate of the Colt, eyes wary as a cornered cat, listening to
the fading thump of running feet. There were no more shots and for
a long minute the silence was immense. He could hear the kicked-up
dust sifting sibilantly back to earth. The roan was already dead, a
bulky blackness in the dark street. He thought he could see a small
dark huddled shape beyond the horse, but he did not move, staying
hunched down, the sixgun tilted and cocked ready, watching and
watching.

There was commotion up the street and now he
could see a group of men coming forward into the street from the
well-lit porch of the saloon. One of them was a tall, heavily built
man wearing a dark business suit with the pants tucked into high
English-style riding boots. As the man strode down the street,
light from a window glinted on the star pinned to the lapel of his
coat. He holstered his sixgun and rose slowly from behind the water
trough and, as he did, the man with the star whirled to face him,
his hand coming up full of gun. Angel froze solid.

‘
Hold it right there, sonny,’ the
marshal snapped. There was a frayed edge of tension in his voice,
and Angel tried very hard not to move a muscle. This middle-aged
man with the drooping walrus mustache was strung up tighter than a
banjo. If someone coughed he might pull the trigger of that
enormous looking Navy Colt.

‘
Andy, you git that feller’s gun!’ the
marshal said. One of the men behind him sidled toward Angel. The
others fanned out in a half circle.

‘
Take it easy there, marshal,’ Angel
called. ‘I’m the one got bushwhacked!’

‘
As to that,’ the lawman retorted,
‘we’ll see. Andy, you hustle him over to my office. Two of you men
bring that other feller. Easy with him, now. He ain’t dead yet by
the look of him. Somebody send for the Doc.’

The one called Andy was a short, weedy man
with wispy blond hair and a weak mouth with cupid-bow lips that he
licked nervously as he came up behind Angel. He wore ordinary blue
denim pants and a dark shirt and he hefted the sawed-off shotgun he
was holding like a man who’d love to be given an excuse to use
it.

‘
All right,’ he said sibilantly.
‘Unbuckle the gun belt. Then step away from it.’

Angel did as he was bid. There was no
percentage in bucking a man with a riot gun. Without taking his
eyes off Angel, Andy scooped the belt and gun up off the ground,
and gestured with the shotgun.

‘
OK,’ he said. ‘Jest walk on up ahead
o’ me, nice an’ quiet-like.’

‘
Listen,’ Angel said.

‘
Walk, boy,’ Andy said, and prodded
him with the shotgun.

Angel shrugged and led the way up the
street. People were spilling out of the saloons and the
eating-houses. They lined the sidewalk, gawking at him as he went
by, then at the group of men headed by the marshal, whose two
helpers were carrying the wounded man on a makeshift stretcher.
‘Who got shot?’ they shouted.

‘
What the hell happened down there,
Ray?’ they called.

‘
Who’s the big feller, Andy?’ they
yelled.

The marshal ignored them. He walked up the
center of the littered street looking neither to the right nor to
the left, and turned into the frame shack that was his office. Andy
brought in Angel, and lifted his right buttock onto a corner of the
marshal’s desk, covering the prisoner with the shotgun in a
hostile, angry attitude. The marshal slid into his chair and
regarded the prisoner with disfavor.

‘
All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear your
story.’

‘
No story,’ Angel said.
‘Marshal—?’

‘
Name’s Compton, son,’ the marshal
said. He was not a young man, and he had the self-satisfied look of
a small businessman who has done rather well for himself in an
unspectacular way. Angel put his age at around fifty, and
understood now the marshal’s nervous tension out in the street.
Probably never expected to have to pull a gun in anger, he thought,
and it came as a shock to him when he had to.