Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) (10 page)

‘
Look,’ Angel said, trying one more
time. ‘I’ll pay for the beer. Then I’ll be on my way. Nobody’s got
to get hurt. What do you say?’

‘
Crawlin’ already, little Angel?’
Wheatcroft sneered. ‘Makes no odds. You’re on your way all right.
It’s up to you whether you go vertical or horizontal.’

Angel shook his head sadly. There were men
like Andy Wheatcroft in every dirty little trail town in the West.
They were little men, and they lived on a steady diet of envy and
hate. Depending on the town, they were usually pimps, gamblers, or
hustlers. Often they were also sadistic back-shooters and far too
often they were lawmen. Once in awhile one of them got weeded out
by pushing his brand of justice too hard with the wrong man, but
more often they stayed in their own bright little pool of poison,
eating away at what they were sworn to uphold, every bite they took
poisoning not just their own little piece of the law, but every
man’s opinion of it. There was no cure for them: they had to be
stepped on like bugs.

Nobody saw his hand move.

One moment he was standing, his attitude
placating, back to the bar and leaning slightly away from the
glaring face of the deputy. The next, his hand stabbed forward, the
knuckles of the first three fingers held so that they formed a
terrible weapon. That right hand moved little more than eighteen
inches and struck the deputy just above the breastbone, its awful
force paralyzing the man. Wheatcroft’s eyes bulged out and his face
turned purple as his astonished system struggled to obey the
frantic commands of the brain to get oxygen pumped out by the heart
literally stunned by the vicious blow. Wheatcroft’s knees sagged,
and his mouth dropped open like a gutted shark. He made a horrid
gargling noise, and his right hand twitched as he tried to make it
pull the staghorn-butted sixgun from the holster.

‘
Tut, tut,’ Angel said, seeing the
movement.

That same deadly right hand flickered down
to the holstered gun at his side, and came up and out and around in
a movement that defeated sight. The barrel of the Colt hit
Wheatcroft just above the left ear and he went down in a jarring
crash of flailing limbs that made the bottles and glasses jingle on
the shelves behind the bar. Nobody moved.

There was a silence that could have been
sliced and sold. The terrible suddenness of Angel’s action, the
callous indifference of the man who had unleashed it was bizarre
and chilling and no one wanted to trigger such violence again. And
now Angel, knowing to the centimeter the effect of what he had
done, turned slowly to face the bartender.

Harry’s face had turned as gray as the
collar of his once-white shirt.

‘
Uh,’ he said. ‘Unh.’

‘
How was that, Harry?’ Angel said,
pleasantly. ‘What did you say?’

‘
Honest, mister,’ the man stuttered.
‘I was. Just. Just josh—kidding, mister. I wasn’t serious,
honest.’

‘
Sure, Harry,’ Angel said.

‘
No, listen, it’s true, they never
said nothin’ the whole time, except maybe have a drink, like that,’
Harry blurted. ‘It’s the truth, mister.’

‘
Oh, I believe you, Harry,’ Angel
said, every syllable declaring flatly that if Harry had told him
the date, he’d have checked it with a calendar.

Harry looked about him piteously for help
that he knew he had no right to hope for and that was damned well
not about to arrive. He racked his brain for something to tell this
smiling man, who had so casually crushed Andy Wheatcroft. Before he
could speak, Angel interrupted his thoughts.

‘
Who put you up to that twenty-five
dollars business, Harry?’ Angel asked, his voice as soft as
ever.

‘
Uh,’ Harry said, hesitating until
Angel leaned slightly forward on the bar. Then he made a fast
decision. Andy Wheatcroft might give him some stick later, but that
would be later. This soft-spoken stranger would give him hell now,
and he wasn’t about to take the chance. ‘He—Andy, there. He told me
to do it.’

‘
You know why?’

‘
No idea,’ Harry said, truthfully.
‘Looked to me like he just wanted some excuse to quarrel with
you.’

‘
Pretty pointless,’ Angel
mused.

‘
I think it was mebbe on account o’
them fellers you was askin’ about,’ Harry said. ‘Andy there, he
spent quite a lot o’ time with them.’

‘
Did he now?’ Angel said,
softly.

Harry the bartender looked pleased; as if he
personally had solved all Angel’s problems for him. In fact, Harry
didn’t give a hoot in hell who solved Angel’s problems for him,
just so long as Angel went out of the saloon pronto and never came
back into it again ever.

‘
Harry,’ Angel said. ‘Let me have a
jug of water, will you?’

Harry hastened to oblige, and watched
fascinated as Frank Angel poured the water, without haste, over the
head of the sprawled deputy, who was breathing stertorously, like a
man under water. Andy Wheatcroft spluttered, coughed, retched,
rolling his head to one side and then another to try to escape the
cascading water. His eyes came open, and as they did, Frank Angel
got hold of the deputy’s shirtfront and hauled him to his feet. He
pushed Wheatcroft backward into a bentwood chair at a vacant table
and lifted the man’s chin with his right hand so that Wheatcroft’s
eyes were level with his own.

‘
Andy,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you
about your friends.’

‘
Go crap in your hat!’ Wheatcroft spat
venomously.

His words brought another stillness in the
saloon. The onlookers held their breath as Angel shook his head
sadly, like a schoolteacher let down by a favorite pupil.

‘
Let me ask you again,’
he said. He was holding Wheatcroft’s shoulder, almost negligently,
and no one really saw the way his fingers moved on the deep nervous
center above the big
levator scapulae
muscles but Wheatcroft’s head went back,
and his eyes widened with the shocking pain. His face went a sick
gray but before he screeched his pain, Angel released the
pressure.

‘
Where did they go, Andy?’ he asked,
quite pleasantly.

‘
Fuck you!’ Wheatcroft
hissed.

‘
If I do this really hard, it’ll
probably paralyze your left arm for a couple of months, Andy,’
Angel said, reminding Wheatcroft of the pain by increasing the
pressure on the nervous system again.

‘
Aaaah,’ Wheatcroft said.

‘
Quite,’ Angel remarked. Relentlessly,
he increased the pressure. The bartender and the other men in the
room looked at the tableau with open mouths, unable to figure why
Wheatcroft was the color of a gaffed catfish.

‘
Up the river!’ Wheatcroft
said.

‘
Up the river? Which
river?’

‘
The Arkansas. They said it was a long
pull all the way up the Arkansas. That’s all. For God’s sake,
Angel, that’s all they said!’

Angel released his grip, thinking about what
Wheatcroft had just said. Up the Arkansas meant, in real terms,
that Falco and his men were turning north, heading back up into the
mountains. Durango lay to the south and west, which meant that
Durango had been a blind. But why north? North lay only the mining
camps, Buena Vista and Leadville and the Chalk Creek diggings.
Beyond them the high passes that lay ten thousand feet up at the
crest of the Continental Divide. Beyond that again, more camps, and
then the endless tumble of the mountains, the cordillera, the
central spine of the country. If they bore west, they faced five
hundred miles of nothing, ending in the City of the Saints, Salt
Lake. They wouldn’t be heading for the Mormon capital, no way.
Which left only one place they could be going—Denver.

‘
Of course,’ he said, softly,
beginning to see it all now.

Andy Wheatcroft stared up at him, the weak,
Cupid-bow mouth loose with the reaction to pain. If his eyes could
have killed, Angel would have dropped dead at the deputy’s
feet.

‘
Wheatcroft,’ Angel said,
ignoring the venom in then man’s gaze. ‘I’m serving you notice.
You’re not cut out for the law. My advice to you would be to hand
in your badge, as soon as you can. You keep the wrong kind of
company.
Sabe?’

Wheatcroft nodded, the hatred still burning
in back of his eyes.

‘
Do it right soon,’ Angel told him
softly. ‘Or I’ll come looking for you. You know what I
mean?’

Again Wheatcroft nodded, but the soft
whisper of death in Angel’s voice had driven all the fury from his
eyes, replacing it with naked fear.

Just then, Marshal Compton came in through
the batwing doors, and Harry the bartender let out a sigh of relief
they could probably hear in Colorado Springs. Compton took in the
whole scene in one swift glance: the silent room, the stock-still
spectators, the gray-faced figure of his deputy in the bentwood
chair, and Frank Angel standing over him. Harry’s sweaty face and
enormous gasp of relief completed the story, and he walked across
the silent saloon to where Angel stood.

‘
The horse is outside,’ he said,
levelly. ‘I’d like for you to be on it and on your way. Right
soon.’ He smiled at Angel’s nod of acquiescence and jerked a thumb
at Andy Wheatcroft. ‘What happened to him?’

‘
He bumped into something,’ Angel
said. ‘Hard.’

‘
Bound to happen, sooner or later,’
Compton said, unfeelingly. He looked at Angel and raised his
eyebrows, and Angel nodded. He led the way across the saloon and
out into the street. The horse was standing hipshot at the hitching
rail, a chunky bay gelding. Its legs were in good shape, mouth
firm, chest strong. About five years old, Angel judged from the
animal’s mouth, and not hard used. It would be as good a horse as
he had any right to hope for in a town like Canon City.

‘
Nice animal,’ he said, as he swung
into the saddle. ‘Thanks.’

‘
No thanks necessary,’ Compton said.
‘In fact, I oughta thank you.’

‘
For what?’

‘
Not killin’ Andy
Wheatcroft.’

Angel neck-reined the bay around, pointing
him up the street. Even though it was already dark, he wanted to
get as far away from Canon City as he could. It was the kind of
place whose smell stuck to your clothes.

‘
It wasn’t because he didn’t need
killing,’ he said, and put the horse into a trot. He didn’t look
back. There wasn’t a damned thing to look back for.

Chris Falco was in a bind.

The whole plan had been hung on their
killing Angel in Canon City. The place was way off the beaten
track, the marshal inadequate at best, and they had bought
themselves an ‘in’ with the deputy as easy as falling down. By the
time Angel’s death had been reported or discovered, they would have
been long gone. It was for this that Willowfield had so obligingly
offered himself as bait—to bring any pursuer out into the open
where he could be dealt with. Then Falco and the rest would double
back through the mountains to Denver, ambush the escort taking the
fat man back east, and release him so they could go dig up the
money. There was one additional facet to the plan, added by Falco,
that Willowfield didn’t know about yet: Falco intended to kill
him.

Now, however, he was in a bind: and he was
going to have to improvise. Angel had to be taken care of, somehow,
and not just to secure their back trail. The man’s reactions had
been incredible, unexpected. He had not only wasted Davy Livermoor,
but one of his bullets had torn a wicked hole through the thigh of
Hank Kuden. Falco looked over his shoulder. Kuden wasn’t riding
ramrod-straight like he usually did. His lips were clamped together
in a bloodless line against the pain he must be feeling. Falco knew
that with the hard mountain riding ahead of them, Kuden was going
to come off his horse sooner or later. And when it happened, the
German would never get back on again.

‘
Hold up,’ he called. ‘Hank, come up
here!’

The others reined in their horses. They were
already high up on the flanks of Mount Antero, and the chill was
insidious, despite their bundled clothing. Their breath steamed in
the night air as they bunched around their leader and watched as
Kuden walked his horse up alongside Falco’s. They saw the effort he
made to look good, pulling his back straight, lifting his chin.

‘
How is it?’ Falco asked, straight
out.

‘
All right,’ Kuden said. ‘Not good.
But I can manage.’ He said it ‘manitch.’

‘
Hank, you’re lying.’

‘
Yes. I am lying,’ Kuden flared. ‘You
vant truth? I tell it you. Is terrible. It stinks. It hurt like
hell. Does dot make you feel bedder?’

‘
In a way,’ Falco said, softly. ‘In a
way.’

Kuden just looked at him; he had the
expression of a soldier who knows he’s going to get an order he
cannot obey.

‘
I want you to lay back,’ Falco said.
‘Try and take Angel out. Then go back to Canon City, get the doc to
look at your leg.’

‘
No,’ Kuden said. ‘I go
forward.’

‘
Listen,’ Falco said urgently. ‘You’re
bogging us down, Hank. The speed we’re moving, that Fed will be up
with us tomorrow. You keep riding, we’re going to be even worse
off.’

‘
Why we not all wait for this man, and
kill him?’