Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 (15 page)

‘
With
nothing to pull? That’s an interestin’ question, lad.’

He scratched his chin and watched the stoker
check the boiler.

‘
Not too
much now, Paddy,’ he warned. ‘You don’t want to blow us
up.’

The stoker grinned, showing gaping holes
where most of his teeth should have been. The engineer shook his
head.

‘
It’s
all them potatoes, you know,’ he whispered loudly. Paddy grinned
again.

‘
Now as
to your question. If we can somehow coax this old cow,’ he patted
the side of the engine fondly, ‘to run that long, we might do it in
six hours. Of course, we might coax her to do it faster, in which
case, I might say less. But then of course—’

‘
It
might take longer,’ Angel guessed.

‘
Now
that’s true,’ the engineer said. He rubbed his chin ruefully. ‘The
thing is, ye see. The thing is, it’s never been done, this. So
there’s no way of knowing. The ordinary train now, that would take
nine, ten hours or more, depending on conditions. But like this.
Just an engine, a tender. A clear line with nothing in the way.
Nobody knows, ye see.’

The depot was falling away
behind them. Angel thought he could see Sherman and Hogben standing
on the platform, but he couldn
’t be sure.

‘
I’ll
bet you fifty
dollars you can’t do it in six hours,’ Angel said to the
engineer.

‘
Now
that’s interestin’, that is,’ the engineer said. ‘Wouldn’t ye say,
Paddy?’

Paddy gave his gap-toothed grin and swung
another shovelful of coal into the furnace.

‘
Aye,’
the engineer said, with a thoughtful look on his face as he opened
up the throttle and headed the engine downhill toward
Lamy.

Angel lost his bet. They got
into Trinidad just eighteen minutes after eight
o
’clock in
the evening after the most astonishing journey Angel had ever
experienced. He had watched with awe as the engineer, Tim Wilton,
and his Irish stoker had spelled each other, working in smooth
unison that only comes from mutual respect, nursing every ounce of
power from the thundering engine. They took her slowly up the
grades into the Glorieta and then down out of the seven
thousand-foot pass toward the long northern curve at Bernal at
giddying, rocking, reckless speeds that threatened to hurl them
from the tracks. Angel watched the landmarks fly past, astonished
at how quickly they loomed on the horizon, drew level, and then
after what seemed like nothing more than minutes, fell astern of
the thundering machine. The incessant hammering rhythm and
clickatter-clickatter
of the wheels bore in upon the brain until the
brain became unconscious of them. Their eyes grew red-rimmed and
sore from flying cinders and rushing wind, their faces lightly
coated with grime from the boiler and soot from the streaming
banner of smoke which marked their hurtling passage. They roared
over the Gallinas and through Las Vegas, startling horses hitched
near the depot buildings. Across the Mora, the Turkey Mountains
looming on their left – he was reminded of the scattered sprawl of
Fort Union and the men he knew there – then into the beginning of
the gradient that would lead them up and up and up again to the
almost eight thousand foot height of the Raton Pass. Wilton eased
the throttle back a little now, causing the pistons to slow just
enough so that someone who had been listening to them for several
hours could tell the difference. Springer sprawled like scattered
boxes on the rolling brown plain off to the right as they rocked
across the wooden trestle bridges spanning the Cimarron. Way off to
the northwest Angel could see the towering peaks of the Sangre de
Cristos, the pink snow mantling the jagged horns of the range that
had given them their name – the mountains of the blood of Christ.
Thirty miles to the east he could see Laughlin Peak, Tinaja lying
lower and to the north. Behind those tumbling heights lay Kiowa and
the Palo Blanco, where the ruined fortress of an insane man lay
forgotten in the wilderness.

The darkness was coming down
now, and the long searching beam of the
locomotive
’s
single eye cut a long tunnel of light up and along the right-of-way
ahead. The thickening pines cast ghostly shades as the train
thundered by, and above the glowing funnel a cloud of sparks
flickered and swirled, dying in the night like falling fireflies.
The sound of their passage was a dull, throbbing, ceaseless thunder
in their ears as they rushed through deeply scoured cuttings in
solid rock, hurtling between stands of indifferent mountain aspen
and larch.

Raton lay ahead, and in a moment
they passed its gleaming lights in the depot and the men on the
platform
watching their passage, their faces outlined strangely by
the lights. Then they were in darkness again and moving
faster.

‘
Twenty
miles,’ Tim Wilton said, wiping his face with a rag that left a
two-inch wide smear of oil across it. ‘An’ all of it
downhill!’

He smiled triumphantly at Angel
and produced a turnip watch the size of a child
’s hand. ‘Seven-farty-five,’
Wilton said, grinning. ‘What d’ye make of that, Paddy?’

Paddy looked up with his broken grin, and he
was still grinning when they pulled into Trinidad thirty-three
minutes later.

He was on the depot platform
when the train came in. She rolled downhill into the station, her
brightly-lit cars rolling slowly past, the engine wheezing and
clanking to a stop. The big man watched each window,
checking
each
face from the shadowed recess where he stood with his left hand
lightly touching the concealed butt of the short-barreled Colt’s
pocket pistol. He had checked methodically but quietly; the clerk
at the depot ticket window had assured him no ‘specials’ had come
in from Sante Fe that day, nor right up to this moment. So if Angel
was not on this train, then Angel was dead.

There were swirls of movement as people
called to each other. Women ran with arms outspread toward husbands
or lovers. Men clapped other men on the shoulder, their voices
loudly cheerful and self-conscious.

The big man held himself carefully in check,
not moving; watching, watching.

In fifteen minutes the train
would pull out, but this time in two halves. The forward three
carriages, linked to a new engine, would climb north through Pueblo
and Colorado Springs to Denver and then on to Cheyenne. The rear
ones would turn eastward, running
all the way downhill to La Junta and
across the endless drab flatness of the Kansas plains through Dodge
and Wichita and onward to journey’s end in Kansas City. Still he
did not move. The people who had gotten off the train were
dispersing now, the porters either following them laden with
luggage or stacking trunks on iron-wheeled trolleys. There were a
few new faces standing around – men saying goodbye to business
acquaintances and a woman with two children being helped up the
steps by a drummer carrying a sample case.

No Angel.

The train jerked as the couplings were
parted, and he could hear the second engine chuntering across from
the siding farther down the track.

Five minutes to go, perhaps. Not much
more.

And no Angel.

Then Angel was dead. There was no question
about it. If Angel had been alive, he would have been here by
now.

If he had baited any trap, he would have
sprung it. He felt some regret. It was hard to think of Angel dead.
He emerged from his shadowed corner and went into the depot,
walking confidently to the baggage counter. The man behind the
counter was young and fresh, and he looked at the big man
incuriously.

‘
It’s a
leather suitcase,’ he was told, as the big man pushed a yellow
ticket across the counter toward him. The ticket had been torn, and
was patched with adhesive tape. ‘Hurry, please, I have to catch
that train.’

‘
Yessir,’ the clerk said.

He went back among the shelves and came out
carrying a fat suitcase with a worn leather handle.

‘
This
the one, sir?’ he asked.

‘
Let me
see,’ the big man said. He checked the ticket pasted on the side of
the bag: the number matched the one he had memorized through hours
of staring waiting. ‘Yes, this is it.’

‘
Two
dollars to pay, sir,’ the clerk said. Everything was normal. The
air held no threat.

The big man took a wallet from the breast
pocket of his black Prince Albert frock coat and paid over the two
dollars. He picked up the bag and hurried out of the baggage room.
He was still cautious, checking left and right along the platform
as he came out of the doorway. No one even looked at him. Most of
the passengers were already aboard, and one or two people were
hanging out of windows, waiting for the train to pull out. He
hurried along the platform to the front carriage, swinging up onto
the train and entering the warm, brightly lit compartment. The
engine in front gave a shuddering snort as he settled into a vacant
seat by the left-hand window. He took out his watch. They were late
leaving.

And then a familiar voice shattered his
composure.

‘
Hello,
Angus,’ Angel said.

Angus Wells smiled.
‘I should have
known,’ he said softly. There was no defeat in his voice, just a
faint hint at amusement with himself, of self-chastisement, the
voice of a man mildly annoyed with himself for a repeated
folly.

‘
What
made you think you could get away with it, Angus?’ Angel
asked.

‘
What
makes you think I haven’t?’

‘
Look in
the suitcase,’ Angel suggested. He saw the effect of his words, the
brief flaring in Wells’ confident eyes quickly masked. Wells sat
there and shook his head, concentrating on keeping the sour taste
of failure from turning into vomit.

‘
You’re
bluffing,’ he whispered.

‘
That’s
right,’ Angel said. ‘Open the suitcase and see.’

‘
No,’
Wells said. He put the suitcase down on the seat beside him,
looking at the man opposite him. He remembered the kid in the
hospital at Fort Bowie shouting “
You
can, Angus!”
Just yesterday? He listened to the sound of his
blood surging in his veins, a rising, throbbing pulse of growing
anger which increased steadily, rapidly, constantly, measuredly,
and ever more tangibly inside his head until he could feel the big
vein on the side of his throat swelling, feel his brain flood with
the rage at his own failure, the failure of it all.

‘
Well,’
he said, levelly, controlling himself. ‘Have you got me – or have I
got you?’

‘
I’ll
have to take you back, Angus,’ Angel said, as though the question
was simple. It’s serious, Frank, Wells thought.

‘
I could
have killed you half a dozen times,’ he said. ‘Half a dozen
times.’

‘
You
should have,’ Angel told him.

‘
The
Mexicans?’

‘
Two
dead, one alive. He’ll talk.’

‘
Ah,’
Wells said. ‘That, too.’ He did not want to kill Frank Angel. Maybe
he wouldn’t have to. But he would. One part of him wanted to kill
him right now. Not because of the money: that part of it was over,
done. But because it was him. Because it was Angel.

‘
You’ll
want my gun,’ he said. Frank Angel nodded, his eyes
wary.

‘
Easy,’
he said.

‘
Yes,’
Wells replied. He touched the butt of the gun in his special
holster and it sprung into his hand. For a millisecond he was
tempted by the reassuring feeling in his palm, but when he looked
at Angel’s hand, he saw a gun in it. He hadn’t seen Frank Angel
move; but there was the six-gun, solid and deadly, leveled at his
belly. He shrugged and tried to manage a smile, which slid off one
side of his face as he handed over the pocket pistol.

‘
Frank,’
he said. ‘I’m going to stand up.’

‘
Do it
slowly,’ Angel advised. A woman in the opposite seat had seen the
gun and was staring at it.

‘
Listen
to me,’ Wells said. ‘I’m going to stand up and walk off this
train.’

‘
No,’
Angel said. ‘No you’re not.’

‘
You’ve
got my gun, Frank,’ Wells said. His smile was tentative, but it
stayed on this time, grew bolder.

‘
Don’t,’
Angel pleaded with him. ‘Please, Angus.’

‘
It’ll
have to be in the back, Frank,’ Wells said. He got up very, very
slowly, and Frank Angel watched him. ‘If you can do it.’

‘
Don’t
make me,’ the younger man said. His voice was urgent
now.

‘
If you
do it, do it right,’ Wells said. He turned around quickly and for a
long, long moment he waited for the sound of the hammer of the
six-gun. Then he stepped forward and walked, without haste, down
the length of the carriage.