Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) (5 page)

Angel grinned to himself, the
grin pasted on him like a skull mask.
‘Wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t for
the pension,’ he told himself, repeating an old Civil Service joke.
He slept fitfully, thinking of his comfortable rooms in Washington.
He dreamed he was swimming in the Potomac, the water soft and balmy
on one of those hot, muggy days you sometimes got back home in
June. He woke before dawn, shivering still, moving around, flailing
his arms about to get warm. By daybreak he was already on the move
again.

The sun started its climb up the side of the
sky, and he looked ahead to the mountains, which seemed no nearer
now than they had been when he started. He knew he must find water
soon, and yet he lurched on through the wilderness, something
driving him forward. It was nearly noon when Kate Perry found him,
and by that time he was almost out of his head with thirst.

Kate Perry was twenty-four. She
was not beautiful by the standards of the East, which liked its
women to have
‘flawless’ white skin and a languid manner. Kate was a
healthy girl; her cheeks were smooth, and the sun’s caress had
tanned them to a golden brown. Nor did she have the hourglass
figure so beloved of the advertisements. Hers was a supple, natural
body; she neither pandered to fashion nor cared for artifice. Kate
Perry was a western girl born and bred, and no amount of schooling
in the East could ever knock it out of her. And thus it was that
when she saw the stumbling, sun-crazed figure lurching through the
broken landscape, Kate Perry did not faint or scream or run away.
She touched her heels to the pony’s sides and jogged towards Angel.
He saw her come and stood watching her with a wary look, the look
of a man at the end of his rope who cannot take the disappointment
of discovering that his last hope is some bitter joke played by
light and sun on the desert. But when she called out to him, Angel
knew that Kate Perry was no mirage, and then he let go, his body
slumping to the ground. She slid out of the saddle, her canteen in
her hand. Cradling Angel’s head, she let some of the water trickle
between his lips, snatching the bottle away when he tried to grab
weakly for it.

‘
No
you don’t,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll have to take it easy, my
friend. Who are you?’

He told her his name, his voice
cracked with fatigue and pain. Then she saw the stiffened blood at
his waist and the dark bruises on his blistered body. Laying his
head back
gently on the sand, Kate Perry went across to her horse and
pulled a Winchester carbine from the saddle holster. Levering the
action she fired the gun into the air once, twice, three times, in
quick succession, sounding the prairie SOS which she knew would
soon bring riders from the Perry ranch to her side. It was a system
they had practiced many times, for she had come across dead men in
this country before. The enmity between the valley ranchers and
those on the high chaparral was perhaps dormant, but her father had
drilled into her the necessity of always being within gunshot sound
of help. She sat on her heels, gently bathing Angel’s lips and
head, until the riders from the home ranch reached her.

‘
I
guess I owe you my life,’ Angel said, trying to sit up in the bed.
The feel of cool cotton sheets on his skin was like
balm.

His blistered body had been treated with a
soft salve that had taken away the agony. His wound had been
dressed and bandaged. His horse had been found and tended to. And
they had told him where he was: on the Perry ranch, about thirty
miles due west of Fort Daranga.

‘
You
don’t owe us nothin’,’ George Perry told him. He was not a young
man, and the years he had spent in this hostile land had left their
marks on his face, which was lined deeply and saddle brown beneath
a crown of crisp white hair cut short as any West
Pointer’s.

‘
Any
man runs afoul of them varmints is lucky to come out alive,” he
added. ‘Folks say them two have been behind quite a few killin's in
these parts.’

‘
Not
to their faces, they don’t,’ said Kate Perry. ‘The
cowards.’

‘
Now,
honey, it ain’t cowardice to face the fact that a man’d as soon gut
shoot you as take a drink,’ Perry said mildly. ‘Meetin’ that Mill
on a dark night’d like to turn any man’s stomach. Say. honey, did
you tell Mr. Angel he warn’t the first man you’d found out on the
desert?’

Kate Perry shuddered, and the old man
grinned a little.

‘
Don’t
like to talk about it much, she don’t,’ he said. ‘She run across a
feller out there a few months back. Someone done a real job on
him.’

‘
It
was awful,’ the girl said. ‘Whoever did it must have been
insane.’

‘
Freeman, his name was,’ Perry said, undaunted. ‘First we
thought mebbe some young buck’d been full o’ rotgut an’ taken it
out on this feller. But he turned out to be some kind o’ Gov’ment
man. Surveyor or somethin’. Deader’n a doornail,
anyway.’

Angel let nothing show on his
face. Kate Perry bustled about, smoothing down the rumpled
bed-clothes. Her patient was showing signs of
restlessness, and she chided
him with a wagging linger.

‘
No
you don’t, Mr. Angel,’ she said. ‘You are going to stay put for
another twenty-four hours at least.’

‘
Aw,
ma’am, I feel fine,’ Angel argued. ‘Besides, this much bed is about
as much as I can take, meaning no offense. You’ve been mighty kind,
but I got to get up and about.’

‘
You
never did say what brung you into these parts, boy,’ Perry said.
‘Not that I’m pryin’,’ he added, conscious of the fact that it was
sometimes best not to ask too many questions of drifters who might
have the law on their back trail and prefer not to talk about
it.

‘
No,
I’m not on the run,’ Angel grinned. ‘But I figure I’d like to do a
little rising from the dead in Daranga just to see what those two
do when I walk in.’

‘
I
wouldn’t advise it, boy,’ Perry said softly. ‘They’re meaner’n
pizen an’ twice as fast. You take it easy a couple more days. Get
the strength back into you. Besides, Walt Clare is comin’ over here
tonight Sparkin’ young Missy there,’ he said, bringing a flush of
color to Kate Perry’s cheeks.’ ’Spect we’ll have to feed that big
ox again. He can eat more’n a starvin’ wildcat. Love that does it,
I reckon.’ He stumped out of the room, grinning, and Angel found
the scenery engrossing for long enough to give Kate a chance to
compose her features.

After a moment he asked a question.

‘
Walt
is our neighbor,’ she explained. ‘He runs a spread south of where I
found you - the Lazy C. He and I are ... sort of... engaged.’ The
blush was back, mantling her cheeks.

‘
He’s
a lucky man,’ Angel said - and meant it. Kate Perry was a pretty
girl.

‘
Oh,
fiddlesticks,’ she said. ‘You’re just sweet talkin’ me so I’ll let
you get up out of that bed.’

‘
It
did cross my mind,’ Angel admitted.

‘
You
can get up at suppertime,’ she said with mock severity. ‘Not a
minute before.’

‘
Then
stay awhile,’ he said. You can tell me a few things.’

‘
I
doubt that,’ she said with a mischievous grin. “You get some sleep.
Tonight you and Walt and Daddy can talk your fool heads off. Do you
like steak?’

‘
If
there’s nothing else,’ Angel said and ducked as she threw a pillow
at him. She went out of the bedroom and he lay back, hands clasped
behind his head. The Perrys seemed like decent folk, the salt of
the earth. Men like George Perry had tamed as much of this land as
was tamable, scraping a living from the hostile earth, defending
themselves against the ever recurring Apache outbreaks. They would
have been embarrassed if he had called them pioneers to their
faces; but that was what they were. When the history of this
country was written, their names and the names of thousands like
them would never appear. Yet they were making this history - they
and people with the same firm belief that one day this would be a
fine country for people to live in. But it was the wild bunch, men
like Boot and Mill and the men who supported their killing ways,
who would be remembered. History had a funny way of enshrining the
badmen. Go to Missouri and they’d tell you what a fine man Charley
Quantrill had really been. The ordinary men and women he had
slaughtered at Lawrence would not get into the history books, but
Quantrill was sure of his place.

He dozed lightly, his mind
still working on the factional problems he had already
enc
ountered
in the Rio Blanco country.

When Walt Clare came into the
ranch-house, it was as if someone had let in a big friendly bear.
He gave Kate Perry a hug, whirling her off her feet as if she
weighed no more than a child. He pumped George
Perry
’s
hand, slapped the old man on the back, told them he’d left half of
a deer he’d killed and skinned out on the porch. He weighed Angel
up carefully when Perry introduced them; wary of strangers, Angel
thought, and probably rightly so. He made no attempt to ingratiate
himself, concluding correctly as it turned out later that any such
attempt would have deepened Clare’s suspicions.

They sat down to a fine meal cooked by Kate,
and afterwards, while she hummed gaily to herself over the dishes,
the three men lit cigars and sat on the porch. Angel knew Clare had
been waiting for this moment, and grinned to himself in the
darkness when the question came.

‘
Where
you hail from, Frank?’ Clare asked.

‘
I was
born in Savannah, Georgia,’ Angel told him. ‘Been kicking around
most of my life. Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas. Looking for
that greener grass. Never have found it, but I keep on
hunting.’

‘
You
know cows?’

‘
Some,’ Angel said. ‘But I’m not looking for a job, if
that’s what you mean.’

‘You
don’t talk much like a cowman,’ Clare
persisted.

‘
I’m
not, though I’ve worked some spreads,’ Angel said. ‘I work for the
Government.’

‘
Territorial?’ Perry asked.

Angel nodded. It
wasn
’t
strictly true, but it would do. He wasn’t ready to reveal his real
purpose here yet.

‘
Mebbe
you can tell me what the hell they’re up to back there in Tucson,
then,’ Perry growled, ejecting a finely aimed wad of chewed tobacco
in the general direction of town. ‘They shore as hell got me
beat.’

‘
How
do you mean?’

‘
Lookit, son,’ Perry said, leaning forward. ‘We been losin’
cattle on and off this past three or four years. Nothin’ much -just
ten head here, twenty there. Same for Walt, right?’

Clare nodded.
‘They pick ’em off
neat as flies,’ he said. ‘We let ’em. Take an army to chase a
couple of men didn’t want to get caught in this
country.’

‘
Easier to let ‘em steal, yeah,’ Perry added bitterly.
‘Exceptin’ that them steers is financin’ Al Birch an’ Jacey
Reynolds and that miracle herd o’ theirs over t’other side o’ the
mountains.’

‘
Savin’ it’s one thing, George,’ Clare said. ‘Provin’ it is
some-thin’ else.’

‘
Exactly what I’m sayin’ to Frank here,’ Perry burst out ‘We
complained to the law in Tucson - tried to get the US marshal to
send a man out here. N’ary a sign did we see he even got our
letter.’

‘
We
sent a petition to the State senator, askin’ him to look into
things up here. Same result,’ Clare added.

‘
Damn,
we even wrote to Washin’ton,’ Perry said angrily.

‘
Not
as you’d expect them fat-assed clerks to know the hind end of a
steer from a Gila monster.’

‘
I
heard some about Birch and Reynolds at the Fort,’ Angel told them.
‘They have the contract to supply the Army with beef, I
hear.’

‘
That
they do,’ Perry nodded. ‘An’ the contract for the reservation
Injuns. An’ they got a monopoly on tradin’ with the Army through
that store o’ theirs up at the Fort. Top of that, they got
the
dinero
to hire a tough crew so we can’t make ‘em no
trouble.’

‘
Some
of our men have been threatened,’ Clare said. ‘Nothin’ heavy,
you
sabe.
Just a general kind of warnin’ - might be healthier if you
was to take a look at some other part o’ the country. You know what
I mean, Angel.’

‘
Any
of them leave?’

‘
A
few, dammit,’ Perry said. ‘Nothin’ spectac’lar. But we’re gettin’ a
mite shorthanded with roundup time comin’ along.’

‘
Where
do you sell your beef?’ Angel asked.

‘
Got
to drive it clear the hellangone across to Seven Rivers in New
Mexico,’ ground out Perry. ‘Sell to old Uncle John Chisum up there,
an’ he’s too mean to buy a pisspot. Allus claims times are hard,
prices down. A man’s lucky to break even after a year’s
work.’

‘
Supposin’ Reynolds and Birch are trying to sort of ease you
out,’ Angel asked. ‘Why would they? What’s in it for
them?’

‘
Dammit, boy, that’s what we can’t figger,’ Perry exploded.
‘Takes a man all his time to make a livin’ off this land. Ain’t no
use for farmin’. They got all the land they need to run cattle
-more’n enough, God knows, between ‘em. You got to figger it’s just
plain cussedness. They want it all just because it’s
there.’

‘
Still
doesn’t seem like a good reason to go in for extortion and murder,
cattle rustling, all that stuff,’ Angel offered.

‘
Hah!’
said the old man. ‘Then you explain it to me, boy, because shore as
God made little green apples, that’s what they’re
doin’.’

Clare stood up,
stretching.
‘George, we’ve chawed this over a hundred times before,’ he
said. ‘Never gets us nowheres. We just got to dig in our heels an’
not be shifted. One o’ these days them two’ll give up on us and let
us be.’

‘
When
I grow horns,’ Perry told him sarcastically. ‘G’wan, go talk to
your gal an’ leave the real talkin’ to the grownups.’

Clare made an impolite gesture
and went back into the house, and Angel turned to the old
man.
‘Seems
like a decent man,’ he said.

‘
Fine
boy,’ Perry agreed, ‘I’m tickled he hit it off with my Katy.
Ain’t no life for a
pretty girl, takin’ care of an ol’ grouch like me.’

‘
I
didn’t hear her complainin’.’

‘
No,
nor you never would,’ Perry smiled. ‘But I’d like to see her
settled. I ain’t gonna last forever, son. One day this place an’
Walt’s will be one big ranch. He’ll have the muscle to give Jacey
Reynolds and his sidekick Birch a run for their money, God
willin’.’

They fell into a companionable silence, the
cigars wreathing them in the good tobacco smell. After a while,
Walt Clare come out on to the porch with his arm around Kate Perry.
Angel stood up, and the old rancher peered at the two young people
with a mischievous grin.

You two done with your
kissin
’?’ he
growled. ‘Took you long enough.’

‘
Oh,
Daddy,’ Kate smiled. ‘Walt is just leaving.’

‘
Shore
you won’t stay over, boy?’ Perry asked. ‘You’re more than
welcome.’

‘
I
know it, George,’ Clare said. ‘But I got some stuff to do early
tomorrow. I better get back. Mr. Angel, glad to meet you. If you
stay around these parts, come on over an’ visit my place. Be glad
to have you.’

‘
I
might just do that,’ Angel said. ‘Thanks.’

Clare nodded, and went down the steps to the
corral, with Kate tagging along.

‘
He
likes you,’ Perry observed. ‘Don’t often take to strangers. Mebbe
thinks they’ll give him some competition for Katy.’ He chuckled to
himself at the thought and went into the house. After a moment,
Kate Perry came back into the pool of light, turning to where they
could hear the sound of Clare’s horse moving off across the packed
earth of the yard. Kate waved at the darkness and they heard Clare
call something which the wind snatched away.

‘
He’s
got a long way to ride,’ Angel said.

‘
He
likes to ride at night,’ Kate told him. ‘Says he feels closer to
the stars.’ Then she shook her head impatiently. ‘That sounds
silly, I guess.’

Angel shook his head.
‘I don’t think so.
Neither do you, I’d imagine.’

Her smile was radiant.
‘I’m glad you liked
him. He said you seemed like a decent man. Worth saving, his words
were.’

He was about to reply when they
heard the boom of a rifle somewhere in the darkness. The flatter
reply of a
six-gun sounded. Then the rifle boomed again with a
terrible finality that was followed by an immense silence. The
cicadas had stopped their ceaseless racket and Kate Perry’s face
was chalk white in the lamplight spilling from the open door.
George Perry stumbled out of the house, his hair
tousled.

‘
What
in the name of Christ was that?’ he barked.

Then he saw his
daughter
’s
face and without another word he ran across the yard towards the
corral. Shouting for his men to follow him, he was in the saddle
and galloping off into the darkness before the tears that had been
brimming behind Kate Perry’s eyes finally spilled down her
face.