Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2)

by Frederick H. Christian

  Burnstine shook his head again, as though at the folly of mankind. His clothes were unobtrusive but obviously expensive, well cut. He wore them like a man who needs to give no thought to his appearance. His calf boots glowed with the sheen that only long and diligent polishing can impart to leather. The politician’s face was tanned, handsome. A real actor, thought Angel. Burnstine was a popular figure in Washington, his Georgetown house an oasis of good food, good wine, and the top-drawer of Washington society. His reputation as a bon-vivant was complemented by the healthy respect accorded him by his political enemies. Ludlow Burnstine was a powerful man and the revelation of his involvement in the affairs of Daranga was shocking in a way. The man certainly didn’t need money, Angel thought. The high-ceilinged hallway in which they stood was tiled with intricately patterned Moorish tiles. Plants flourished in the greenhouse atmosphere created by tinted windows let into the ceiling. Somewhere Angel could hear the soft sound of a fountain playing.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ Burnstine said, gesturing to the doorway on the left, every bit the gracious host with the unexpected caller. They went into a fine, masculine room, warm with oak paneling, the big desk topped with gold-tooled leather that looked Florentine. There were shelves packed with richly bound books on one side of the room. The floor was carpeted, heavy drapes shaded the windows. Angel whistled through his teeth.

  ‘You sure do have it nice, Senator,’ he observed. ‘What you’re doing doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Mr. Angel,’ Burnstine said. ‘Let us not argue before we know each other. William, a chair for Mr. Angel.’ Mill growled an oath, but Burnstine just looked at him, and the fat man grudgingly pushed a fat winged-arm chair an inch towards Angel.

  ‘Let me offer you a drink,’ Burnstine said, waving an arm towards a trolley on which was arrayed a glittering selection of cut glass decanters and glasses.

  ‘Whiskey, perhaps? Or bourbon? Name it, I’m sure we can take care of you.’ He smiled, docking his head at his own words. ‘That’s rather good, I must say.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Angel said. ‘Whiskey is fine.’

  Burnsdine nodded, the nod of a man approving the judgment of an inferior, and poured a healthy measure into one of the crystal glasses.

  ‘Eight years old,’ he said proudly, handing the glass over. ‘I have it freighted here from San Francisco. Twenty dollars a bottle and worth every cent of it’

  Angel sipped the drink. It was a pleasant change from Arizona rotgut and he said so. Burnstine flinched at this lapse of taste.

  ‘When you get to my time of life, you appreciate the finer things,’ he said.

  ‘None of us is getting any younger,’ he added, his smile as mellow as brandy.

  ‘I’m impressed, I’m impressed,’ Angel said. ‘Now, do you want to tell me what this’ - he jerked a thumb at the fat man slumped in his chair pouring the fine brandy he had poured for himself down his gullet- ‘is doing here?’

  ‘Let us not mince words with each other, Mr. Angel,’ Burnstine said. ‘Do not attempt to act the innocent with me. At least pay me the compliment of speaking truthfully.’

  Angel nodded, and took another sip of the whiskey.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘The murders at the high country ranches in Daranga were ordered by you, carried out by Boot and this one and a gang of mercenaries from — where, Grant County?’

  ‘Very good, very good,’ Burnsdine said, smiling like a fond parent with a clever child.

  ‘And Larkin?’

  Burnstine smiled. ‘Of course. Larkin, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It seemed better to present a mystery to the good people of Daranga. They could obviously not connect the killings to Boot and Mill, and so they would not by definition connect them to others ... others which had happened.’

  ‘Stupid,’ Angel said flatly.

  ‘Not stupid,’ Burnstine said softly. ‘I do not mind telling you, Mr. Angel, since I am sure you are aware that you will not live to repeat what I say. There was a time factor.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘All in good time. First you must tell me what your Department knows of events in Daranga.’

  ‘Everything,’ Angel said.

  ‘I think not, my dear fellow. I am not without my own sources of information on Capitol Hill.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘It perturbs me only slightly that the Justice people have seen fit to meddle in my affairs. In Washington, your friend the Attorney General may wield a certain limited power. No more, perhaps, than a dozen others including myself. Here in Arizona, however, I am the law, all-powerful, all-seeing. Shall I tell you how powerful I am?’

  ‘Could I stop you?’

  Burnstine ignored the jibe. ‘The barber who shaved you and shared your beer, the Mexican boy who ran your errands, the hostler whom you treated so cavalierly - all of them sent word, via various means, to me. I knew every step you took here in Tucson as I do every step that any man takes.’

  ‘What about your flesh-peddler?’

  Burnsdine’s lip curled with distaste.

  ‘That is none of your concern, although William and I may have words about it later,’ the old man said. Willy Mill shifted uneasily in the chair, reaching for the brandy again. ‘But in the ultimate analysis, I am satisfied that what happened to the girl was for the best.’

  ‘For you, or for her?’

  ‘You are impertinent, Mr. Angel, but you have a certain rough wit which I rather regret I shall not be able to cultivate. Let me remind you that you still live only because I permitted it.’

  ‘You may be a little tin God down here in Tucson, Senator,’ Angel said. ‘But whatever you’re up to, you won’t get away with it. There are too many weak links.’

  Burnstine reached behind him for a teak humidor, and offered Angel a cigar. When Angel shook his head, the old man shrugged and took a silver cigar cutter from his vest pocket, trimming the end of the cigar, making a ceremony of lighting it.

  ‘Pure Havana,’ he said, inhaling the blue smoke. ‘What weak links?’ The old eyes were shrewd in their pouched, wrinkled lashless sockets.

  ‘Larkin, for one,’ Angel said. ‘He’s under arrest in Fort Daranga. When he goes for trial, he’ll talk. He won’t do twenty years in Yuma for you, Senator.’

  ‘Larkin,’ smiled Burnstine softly, ‘Ah, yes.’ He took a watch from a fob pocket.

  ‘I would say Mr. Larkin is probably being buried at Fort Daranga right now.’

  ‘Buried?’

  ‘Ley del fuego, I imagine they’ll say,’ Burnstine smiled. ‘Killed while trying to escape.’

  ‘Then I was right about that, too,’ Angel said, his lips tight. ‘Thompson is—’

  ‘Of course,’ Burnstine waved a hand. A diamond winked in the sunlight.

  ‘Another weak link,’ Angel pointed out.

  ‘Bah,’ snorted the old man. ‘Thompson? The man’s a wreck. Cards, liquor, women - when word of his personal proclivities reaches the right ears he’ll be drummed out of the Army. Who’d believe the ravings of a court-martialed drunkard?’

  Angel stuck grimly to his guns. You’ve been pushed into the open, man,’ he said. ‘If I disappear, if any more killings happen in the Rio Blanco country, the Department will move in on you in force. You’ll be finished.’

  Burnstine leaned forward. He jabbed with the cigar to emphasize his points as he spoke. ‘Listen, Mr. Angel’ -jab -’there will be no more trouble in the Rio Blanco country.’ Jab. ‘The Circle C and the Perry ranch will be sold to pay the mortgages, and I’ -jab - ‘I will own them.’

  ‘I thought Birch and Reynolds owned all that land up there?’

  ‘Nominally they do,’ Burnstine said. ‘But they have no resources of their own. Everything of theirs is mortgaged to the hilt - to me. They are merely - what is the phrase - men of straw, front men for me. That land is mine.’

  ‘You ever going to tell me why it was worth killing so many people for?’

 
; ‘But of course, my dear fellow,’ Burnstine said, leaning back expansively.

  ‘It would be most unfair to ask that you face your death without at least the satisfaction of knowing why you are dying.’ He gestured again with the cigar, jabbing to emphasize his remarks. ‘In two months’ time, the Rio Blanco will be dammed at Twin Peaks. The high country will be partially flooded to make a huge irrigation reservoir, and the lower valley will become one of the most fertile pieces of land in the West. Imagine it! Orange trees, peach orchards! Huge tracts of farming land worth millions. The desert will bloom, Angel. Our bountiful Government is going to spend ten million dollars to make it bloom - for me!’ His eyes glowed with an almost religious light. ‘There are over two hundred thousand acres on the Reynolds place, nearly as much again on the Birch ranch. When the project is completed, land in the Rio Blanco valley will sell for fifty, a hundred dollars an acre. Think of it, man! Forty million dollars! Do you think I would let one man, ten men, a hundred stand in the way of that? I will be the richest man in the United States. In Washington, I will use that wealth to its greatest effect. I will sway the President, the Cabinet. This country will be mine to play with like a puppet!’ He paused, letting the lambent light dim slightly in his eyes, regaining his self-control. Sweat was beading his brow. He let his breath out slowly.

  ‘So, Mr. Angel. I have told you this to show you my power. I doubt that your civil servant’s mentality can grasp the immensity of what I have done, but you must now realize how futile your efforts to prevent my realizing my ambitions really were.’

  ‘You know, of course, that you are insane,’ Angel told him.

  Burnstine lurched to his feet, and with a swift movement came around the desk. He towered over the seated man, and drew back his hand. Angel awaited the blow impassively but it never came. Burnstine’s hand dropped, and a smile touched his spittle-flecked lips.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he said, softly. ‘No need of that at all.’

  He leaned back against the desk.

  ‘I have enjoyed our talk, Mr. Angel,’ he said. He picked up a golden bell and shook it. The door opened and a huge Negro came into the room.

  John,’ Burnstine said. ‘Mr. Angel is leaving us.’

  ‘Yessuh,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m coming along,’ Mill said, getting to his feet. ‘I want a part of this.’

  Burnstine frowned. Then he smiled. ‘Of course, William. You are entitled to your pleasures, too. Goodbye, Mr. Angel.’

  He turned around and went behind the desk, sitting down and taking another cigar from the teak humidor.

  ‘Take him out and kill him,’ he said and his voice rasped like a file on steel.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Metter had disobeyed Angel’s instructions; but heading back now with the patrol towards Fort Daranga he did not think his friend would mind. Riding like the wind, he had pushed back towards the Rincons. The horse was a good one: Metter had raised him from a foal, and it had saddened him to use on such a fine animal the Apache tricks he had finally needed to employ to make it continue until he found the patrol led by Lieutenant Blackstone. The Apaches could make a horse abandoned by a white man get up and run another fifty miles. What they did to make the horse run was unpleasant but highly effective: Metter winced as he remembered the experience, but it had been necessary and it had worked. He had intercepted the patrol well back of the place where the raiders had turned away from Boot and Mill. A trooper had been detailed to ride one of the pack mules and with a fresh mount between his knees, Metter had piloted the patrol at a flat gallop up through the central pass of the Rincons, taking them on a line which formed the string to the bow of the raiders’ trail. They had come down out of the hills as the raiders came around them, and in a running fight on the scrub-dotted malpais, the sixteen troopers had taken a savage and exultant revenge upon the men who had done the senseless killing in the high chaparral ranches. The mercenaries, outnumbered and with no stomach for a real fight, had tried to run for it, and the cavalrymen had cut them down without compassion. Of the dozen raiders, seven had been killed. One cavalryman was dead. The surviving raiders had been bound hand and foot, then a rope, noosed around each neck, had been linked between each of them and they were being led, none too gently, in single file back to face justice at Fort Daranga.

  They arrived at the Fort in mid-morning to find it in turmoil. The raiders were shoved unceremoniously into the guardhouse, the men dismissed. They hurried to the bunkhouses to hear the story that Metter and Lieutenant Blackstone were being told at the same time by a tall, slender major who had arrived at the Fort only an hour before them. Major Patrick Janson was a member of the personal staff of the General of the Army, and his mission was to deliver orders to Colonel Brian Thompson which required his presence as a principal participant in a General Court Martial at Fort Leavenworth on charges of gross misconduct. Thompson had been two hours gone, leading the patrol south in pursuit of the fugitive Larkin, when Janson had arrived. The major was ensconced in the Commanding Officer’s quarters, awaiting his return with some anticipation. There is nothing so universally detested by a professional soldier as the discovery that a brother officer and gentleman has abused the rank and privilege of his command. Major Janson had seen some of the evidence which was to be presented at the Court Martial, and it was damning. It consisted of documents showing payments of sums of money, IOUs, unpaid bills of substantial amounts for liquor, the scrawled affidavits of half a dozen men whose names were unknown to him. They had arrived by mail in a package postmarked from St Louis, Missouri, without any covering letter. Whoever the anonymous sender was, he had presented the United States Army with an open and shut case against Thompson. Janson was certain the man would be stripped of his rank, drummed out of the Service, discharged with complete ignominy. There had been another set of orders for Lieutenant Peter Burford Ellis. The discovery that Ellis had been killed the preceding night in an escape made by a prisoner from the guardhouse had to some extent been a relief to Janson. He took no pleasure from seeing the service in disrepute. Bury the man and the accusations, he thought: so much the better.

  Some of this he told the two men: the part which concerned them. He told them about Larkin’s break-out, the evidence of the guards that Larkin had a gun, the patrol of twenty-five men headed by Colonel Thompson which was pursuing the fleeing man. He told them who he was and where he was from. He did not tell them why he was in Fort Daranga, and was thankful that neither man asked.

  ‘You think that Larkin’s escape may have been an inside job?’ Metter asked.

  ‘It seems possible, at least,’ Janson said. ‘There is no doubt that he managed to get hold of a gun somehow.’

  ‘Who had he talked to?’

  ‘The guards say that Lieutenant Ellis spent some time in Larkin’s cell questioning him. But’ - he raised a hand - ‘Ellis left his gun with Sergeant Battle. So we must not jump to any conclusions, gentlemen.’

  ‘And Ellis is dead, so we can’t ask him,’ Blackstone mused. Janson nodded. ‘A little - ah, pat, perhaps,’ he said. ‘When Larkin is taken we shall find out.’

  ‘He’ll be hard to take,’ Metter said. ‘He rode south, you say?’

  Janson nodded.

  ‘Heading for Daranga, mebbe,’ Metter continued. He turned to Blackstone. ‘Can you let me have a hoss?’

  ‘I think we can do that,’ Blackstone said. ‘When I tell the Major your part in taking those raiders, I’m sure he won’t argue.’

  ‘Give Mr. Metter anything he needs,’ Janson said crisply. ‘Then perhaps you’d be kind enough to come back here, Lieutenant. I’d like to hear your version of the events of the last week - in detail.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Blackstone said, enthusiastically. He accompanied Metter outside and sent an orderly running to the stables to fetch a fresh mount. He smacked a fist into the palm of his hand.

  ‘God, Metter!’ he said, ‘I’d forgotten what real officers were like.’

  ‘I know what y
ou mean,’ Metter replied. ‘I’d say things are going to be right lively at Fort Daranga.’

  ‘And about time,’ Blackstone said, ‘about time!’

  Metter swung into the saddle. He patted the canteen of water lovingly. ‘I’ll drink that before I’ve gone a mile,’ he grinned.

  ‘Good luck, Metter,’ Blackstone said, his face going serious. ‘If you see Angel, tell him we evened the score, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Metter said, and touched the spurs to the horse’s side. Frisky from the stables, the bay moved off at a steady lope. Metter neck-reined it around to the south, and headed out towards Daranga.

  ‘This’ll do. Get down, Angel.’

  Mill’s voice was silky. They were perhaps three miles out of Tucson, but they might well have been a hundred. They were in a narrow defile, the weather-scoured rocks relieved only in a few places by scattered clumps of brush which clung precariously where an earth-filled crevice gave them root-hold, huge rocks and thickets the only breaks in the dun contours. The stillness of the place closed in on them, and the blazing sun hung in a vault of brazen white, its heat tangible. Nothing moved. No lizard scuttled, no jackrabbit loped between bushes. It was as if death lived in the place, enforcing on the natural life an unnatural stillness, the quiet of the grave.

  Mill’s command was almost a relief. Through the miles they had ridden, Angel had felt a crawling tension ever-present between his shoulder-blades. They could have shot him anywhere, at any time. All through the journey the Negro had not spoken once. Now he had dismounted and was unstrapping a folding shovel, such as the Army carried on field expeditions, from the saddle.

  ‘Get down, I said!’ Mill’s command was repeated and this time emphasized by a gesture from the gleaming carbine canted across his chunky thighs.

  Angel shrugged, lifting his leg over the saddle horn and sliding down to the ground effortlessly, in spite of his bound hands. The Negro dropped the shovel to the ground and came around both men in a wide half circle, taking no chances of getting between them. He produced a wicked-looking folding knife which sliced through the ropes binding Angel’s hands like butter. Angel stood rubbing his forearms to get the circulation moving again as the Negro stepped back, and unhurriedly as ever unhitched a sawn-off Greener shotgun from the pommel of his saddle, where it hung from a rawhide loop. He covered Angel as Mill dismounted.