Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) (16 page)

He edged to the front of the lean-to and saw
smoke coming from the tin chimney atop the cabin. Moving on silent
feet, he skirted the cabin and eased up on to the wooden porch at
the front. The thick snow muffled the slight scrape of his boots.
He put his weight on the door and went in all at once with the
sixgun in his hand, and a grin like a killing wolf on his face.

He caught Falco cold.

Falco was just lifting a blackened coffee
pot off the top of a potbellied stove that stood at the end of the
room opposite the door. As the door opened, Falco whirled around,
the brown coffee making a long, steaming arc from the lip of the
pot, splattering on the floor. His sixgun was in the holster on the
belt hanging on a peg to Angel’s right, next to his coat. His
carbine was propped up against the same wall. Between them and him
was the oilcloth-covered table. Angel saw him check off all the
possibilities and discard them in the space of two deep breaths,
and then Falco’s shoulders dropped just that inch.

Stone cold, the movement said, and Angel
nodded.

‘
That’s it, Falco,’ he said. ‘While
you’re up, pour me a cup.’

Falco looked at Angel and the thinnest hint
of a smile touched his mouth.

‘
You’re hard to kill, mister,’ he
said. ‘You ought to be dead.’

‘
I damned nearly am,’ Angel told him.
‘Sit down.’

He gestured to a chair on the far side of
the table from the wall on which Falco’s coat and guns were
hanging. Then he went around to the opposite side of the table and
pulled out the chair from beneath it. The stove was on his right,
and it was glowing with heat. The wood inside spat and crackled. He
watched Falco as the gray-haired man poured another tin mug full of
coffee and pushed it across to him. Not until Falco sat down and
picked up his own coffee cup did Angel drink any of his own. It
tasted like the nectar of the gods.

‘
You make good coffee,’ he said. ‘You
married?’

‘
What?’ Falco said.

‘
Nothing,’ Angel said. ‘What’s in the
pot there?’

There was a heavy iron pot standing on the
flat top of the stove. It gave off a slight bubbling sound.

‘
Just beans,’ Falco said. ‘All there
was.’

‘
I hope you got enough for four,’
Angel told him. Falco frowned.

‘
You got more people with
you?’

‘
Nope,’ Angel replied. ‘I plan to eat
enough for three.’

Falco shrugged. Angel was cocky enough now,
but that was now. There had to be a way to copper the bet, and he
started figuring, figuring, as he sipped his coffee. Angel had been
out in that blizzard, right? No food, nothing to drink. He’d be
worn down by just staying alive. He’d need rest. The warm cabin,
plenty of hot food would make him drowsy. Sooner or later he’d have
to sleep. And that would be that. It was just a question of keeping
cool, Falco thought. He made his tensed muscles relax.

‘
You don’t look too good, Angel,’ he
said.

Angel grinned his wolf grin. ‘I’ve been
healthier,’ he admitted.

‘
You hurt?’

‘
I don’t know,’ Angel admitted. ‘Your
boy Curtis put some kind of a hole in me, but it’s in my back, and
I can’t see it.’

‘
Turn around,’ Falco suggested with a
cold grin. ‘I’ll take a look at it.’

‘
Oh, sure,’ Angel said.

‘
Just trying to help.’

‘
I’ll bet.’

There was a silence.

‘
What makes you try so hard, Angel?’
Falco asked, finally. ‘Plenty of others would have just given up,
backed off, gone home.’

‘
You really want to know?’

‘
Yeah,’ Falco said. ‘Tell me, I really
want to know.’

‘
It’s simple enough,’ Angel said. ‘If
you were ordinary, everyday, common-garden variety killers, I might
have let you run, and just put out a handbill on you. But you made
it personal. You tried to kill me. And more than that: you killed a
friend of mine.’

‘
On the Special, you mean?’

‘
On the Special,’ Angel said. ‘His
name was Bob Little. He was a good man, Falco. He had a nice wife
and a little kid named Joey and someone has to go and tell them
that he isn’t coming home anymore.’

‘
You, Angel?’

‘
Me,’ Angel said grimly. ‘I’ll do it.
But when I do it, I want at least to be able to tell Barbara Little
that the men who killed her husband have been taken care
of.’

His last three words hung in the air, and
Falco swallowed noisily.

‘
What you planning to do with me,
Angel?’ he asked. ‘Kill me cold?’

‘
Oh, no,’ Angel said. ‘No, I’m taking
you in, Falco. They’re going to hang you. Higher than a
kite.’

He said it with such implacability that for
a moment, Falco saw a mental picture of himself with the hood over
his head, standing on a wooden scaffold in some rain-gray prison
yard. Then his self-confidence surged back. What was he afraid of?
Here was Angel exhausted, wounded, played out. He could take him
when ready. Easy as pie.

‘
Easier said than done, Angel,’ he
said. ‘I won’t hang so easy. You may have just gotten yourself a
tiger by the tail.’

He laughed harshly at his own humor, but
Angel’s contemptuous stare stilled the sound.

‘
You’re no tiger, Falco,’ Angel said.
‘A pussycat, maybe.’

A frown darkened Falco’s face.

‘
What’s that supposed to mean?’ he
glowered.

‘
Why, it means you’ve been
flimflammed, Falco,’ Angel said, mirthlessly. ‘You mean you didn’t
know it?’

‘
Flimflammed?’ Falco burst out. ‘How
do you mean, flimflammed?’

Angel shook his head, his expression saying
that he didn’t know there were still people on the earth this
dumb.

‘
Willowfield,’ he explained patiently.
‘He’s left you holding the bag. Haven’t you cottoned on
yet?’

Falco shook his head. He wasn’t falling for
this. No way. Angel was trying to push him off-balance, getting him
to commit something that he didn’t yet recognize. Well, he wasn’t
having any. None of your psychology games today, Angel. No getting
me on edge, no pushing me off-balance. I know what I’ve got to do.
Kill you, get the hell out of here. Kill the fat man, grab the
loot, and take off. Life is that simple and nothing you can say
will complicate it more.

‘
Falco,’ Angel was saying. ‘There’s
one thing I don’t know, and need to know. Which of you stole the
Declaration of Independence?’

Despite the vows he’d just made to himself,
Falco’s mouth fell agape at Angel’s unexpected words, and Frank
Angel nodded as though that in itself was all the answer he had
expected.

‘
Uh huh,’ he said. ‘It
figured.’

‘
What is this?’ bleated Falco. ‘You
telling me someone stole the—’

‘
Shut up,’ Angel told him. ‘And
listen. I’ll tell you what happened. You tell me afterward where I
got it wrong—if anywhere. Listen: Willowfield had someone on his
payroll at the marshal’s office in Denver, right?’

‘
Right,’ Falco agreed, warily. No harm
in Angel knowing that now. ‘Some jerk deputy. Steve Jackman, his
name was.’

‘
Who passed the word along to one of
you in Denver about the date of the escort’s arrival to take
Willowfield back east. Who was it, Curtis?’

‘
McLennon,’ Falco said.

‘
McLennon,’ Angel nodded. ‘So McLennon
brought the word down to Canon City that I was on the way, and that
Willowfield would leave Denver under escort on October thirteenth.
All you had to do was waste me, circle back to Denver, light out
after the escort, wipe them out and spring Willowfield. If I was
doing that, I’d probably do it around Two Mile Creek. How about
it?’

He didn’t need an answer; the look on
Falco’s face told him he was right on the button, and he pressed
relentlessly on.

‘
What then? Head for the cache, split
the loot, and punch a hole in the breeze, I’d say. Nice and neat
and tight. Except for one thing, Falco, except for one
thing.’

‘
What?’ Falco said, trying for a jeer.
‘What one thing, smartass?’

‘
Willowfield,’ Angel explained. ‘He
read you like a book, Falco. Anybody could. I can. You never had
any intention of springing the fat man, did you? You were going to
ice him and the escort at the same time, and if any of your
sidekicks had given you a hard time, you’d probably have blown them
up as well.’

‘
No,’ Falco said, as if hypnotized by
Angel’s voice. ‘No need of that. The boys knew what I was going to
do. Only we didn’t figure on you—’

‘
Being so hard to kill?’ Angel
grinned, without humor. ‘Boy, Falco, you really are a pussycat. I
wouldn’t put you in charge of an empty corral. Well,’ he sighed
theatrically. ‘You’ll take the rap for the whole show. And not a
dime to show for it.’

‘
Yeah?’ said Falco. He was really
having to reach for defiance now, and his unease was showing quite
plainly. ‘How do you figure that?’

Angel shook his head wearily, the movement
of a man exasperated with someone so dull that he cannot understand
why a wheel rolls. ‘Willowfield had a man in the marshal’s office,
right?’ he asked.

‘
Right.’

‘
Today is October thirteenth,’ Angel
reminded him.

‘
So.’

‘
So do you think the fat man is going
to be sitting waiting for that escort to come and take him back to
Leavenworth to hang?’

Now Falco got it and his eyes turned sick.
Although Angel was guessing the worst way, it got right to the
gray-haired man. On his face was the expression a man might wear as
he watched his home and everything he possessed being washed away
by a flood he was powerless to control.

‘
That bastard,’ he whispered. ‘That
fat old bastard!’

His mind was awhirl with anger and
frustration. If what Angel said was true—and it probably was, it
had the right ring about it—then Willowfield had set him up like a
patsy. All that work, all that hard graft for nothing. That fat old
obscenity would have the lot. He had used them all as casually and
contemptuously as a whiskey drummer using hotel notepaper. Anger
boiled up in him. He knew now he couldn’t wait. Hours, even minutes
had become vital. There were three horses in the lean-to outside.
If he killed two of them, he could be in Denver on the third by
late evening. A train to Cheyenne, another east to Julesburg. If
Willowfield had beaten him to the cache, Willowfield could only go
one way—east. He could not travel unnoticed, not Willowfield, so he
would be easy to find and a pleasure to kill. If the fat man hadn’t
reached the cache, then Falco would wait until he came and kill him
then.

But first he had to kill Angel.

‘
Listen,’ he said, not looking at his
captor lest his decision reveal itself on his face or in his eyes.
‘Why would he have taken that Declaration of Independence? What the
hell use would that be?’

‘
Probably for the reason he gave when
he told me you’d stolen it,’ Angel said, reflectively. ‘An ace in
the hole. A way to buy time, maybe, or make a deal with whoever
came after him.’

‘
And could he?’

‘
Make a deal? No way.’

‘
What about me?’

‘
No deals for you, either, Falco. You
go into Fairplay with me. You can sweat it out in the jail while I
go after Willowfield. He’ll be heading up for where you wrecked the
Special. I guess you hid the money somewhere up near
there.’

There was no harm in telling him, Falco
thought. He’d be dead in a few minutes, anyway. Give him something
to lull him a little, why not? ‘On the treeline,’ he said. ‘About a
mile west of the gully, just above the trail. There’s a blaze on
the tree it’s buried under. A letter “W”.’

He made a show of sniffing, and then lifted
his chin, pointing at the iron pot on top of the pot-bellied stove.
‘Them beans need eating,’ he said. ‘Before they burn.’

‘
Dish them up,’ Angel said. ‘We can
get finished and ride on into Fairplay while there’s still plenty
of light. And Falco … ’ He made a small gesture with the sixgun,
more to draw attention to it than anything else. ‘Don’t you go and
do anything that might prove fatal, now.’

Falco nodded, and got up out of the chair
slowly, keeping his hands where Angel could see them as he crossed
the room toward the stove.

Angel pulled his chair closer to the table,
and switched the sixgun from his left hand to his right, and, as he
did, Falco, who had lifted the heavy cast-iron pot from the top of
the stove with his left hand, swung it in a tight wicked arc from
the stove around toward Angel’s head. Angel did the only thing he
possibly could. He went backward in his chair, spilling over on to
the ground as the iron pot whammed through the space where his head
had been. Beans spattered all over the wall and the table in a
steaming sticky mess as Angel hit the floor with the gun cocked and
up. Although he’d been ready to crease Falco, the impact of his
wounded shoulder on the bare boards drove a shuddering smash of
pain through his entire left side, and the gun dropped unfired from
his nerveless fingers. In that same second Falco kicked the table
aside and dived with his hands outstretched for Angel’s throat.