Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7

by Frederick H. Christian

  ‘This man will need a doctor,’ Angel said.

  ‘So will you,’ Hogben told him grimly.

  ‘I don’t have time,’ Angel said.

  Then he went down.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘You’re out of your head,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Angel replied, struggling a little with the buttons on his shirt.

  His right hand was a little stiff, and his entire right side was a huge purpled mass of bruised, iodine-painted, tightly bandaged tissue. He felt a little uncomfortable, but all right. Not first class. All right. He buttoned his shirt and reached for his pants.

  ‘You ought to stay in bed for a week,’ the doctor persisted. ‘If those stitches burst …’ He shuddered theatrically at the thought.

  ‘I seem to be saying this a lot,’ Angel told him. ‘But I don’t have the time.’

  ‘All right, Mr. Angel,’ the doctor said, throwing up his hands. ‘You’ve convinced me. You’re made of whalebone and rawhide, spring steel and hickory. Bullets bounce off you, and strong men break their hands trying to hurt you. Knock you down and up you get, good as new. Like hell! You put any real strain on those stitches, and they’ll pop open like a clam in a kettle.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to come back for you to do it over personally and tell me you told me so,’ grinned Angel. ‘How’s Vargas, by the way?’

  ‘He’ll live,’ the gray-haired man told him. ‘He’s probably in better shape than you. They tell me you did all that with your hands. Is that right?’ When Angel didn’t reply, he shook his head. ‘He’ll be lucky if he ever uses that left hand properly again.’

  ‘He won’t need to where he’s going,’ Angel said, coldly. ‘Thanks for everything, Doc.’

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘They tell me you work for the Department of Justice,’ he said. ‘They must be quite an organization.’

  ‘I guess you could say they are,’ Angel grinned.

  ‘Take care, Angel,’ the older man said, resting a gentle hand on his arm. ‘Try not to put too much strain on your right side. You’ll probably forget what I’ve told you as soon as you walk out of here, but try not to. You might keel over at the worst possible moment – for you.’

  Angel nodded and went out. The doctor’s warmly furnished adobe was on Palace Avenue, right across the street from the Federal Building, where Sherman’s office was situated. Sheriff Hogben was waiting outside for him, a buckboard standing ready to take him back down to the depot.

  ‘If at first you don’t succeed,’ Hogben said, smiling.

  ‘Don’t be dumb, give up,’ Angel said wryly. ‘I’ve lost a lot of time, Mike.’

  ‘Not too much,’ Hogben said, pulling his fat watch from its nest in his waistcoat pocket ‘I make it just after one.’

  ‘Five hours,’ Angel said. ‘We could’ve been up around Springer by now.’

  ‘You should have heard old Bob Gray complainin’,’ Hogben chuckled. ‘After he done all that work, billy-be-damned if he didn’t have to do her all over. He like to bust a gut!’

  Despite himself, Angel grinned at the image. He climbed into the buckboard, and Hogben gigged the horses into a trot around the plaza. It was a bright autumn day, and the round adobes surrounding the square looked golden and brown, as if they were sugarcoated, their windows fat currants in the dumpy cakes of the houses. They passed the sprawling La Fonda and clopped across Water Street.

  ‘Y’ever see the Miraculous Staircase, Frank?’ Hogben asked.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Miraculous Staircase,’ Hogben explained. ‘It’s in a chapel down on the left there, along Water Street.’

  ‘Why miraculous?’

  ‘Aw, some old legend. They was buildin’ a chapel down there, see, an’ for some reason the workmen gave up on tryin’ to build a staircase from the ground up to the choir loft. Too difficult, they said, or some such thing. Stood for a long while, sort of half-done, then one day a feller comes along, says he’s a carpenter an’ he’ll finish the job. Built this beautiful circular staircase.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. I’ve seen it, Frank. Fitted together like that, you never saw work like it. And not a nail in the whole damn thing. It hangs together with nothin’ holdin’ it up as far as anyone can see. Mexicans reckon it was Saint Joseph built it.’

  ‘Saint Joseph?’

  ‘Yeah, the Good Lord’s old man. Whoever he was, the man who built it disappeared without a trace. Never asked for payment. Never seen again.’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ Angel said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hogben agreed, and he swung the team around in front of the railroad depot. John Sherman came forward, smiling.

  ‘I’ve telegraphed Washington on your behalf,’ he said. ‘And Cecil Smith up in Trinidad. They know you’ve been delayed a little, but not why.’

  ‘Good,’ Angel nodded. ‘I’m thanking you.’

  ‘De nada,’ Sherman said, as they shook hands. ‘Although,’ he added with a grin, ‘you might at least acknowledge the good work I did in keeping Bob Gray away from the depot. He was just bustin’ to tell you how much trouble you’d caused him.’

  ‘I bet,’ Angel grinned. ‘Take good care of Vargas.’

  ‘No sweat,’ the marshal said.

  Angel shook hands with Hogben, swung around, and moved quickly through the shaded depot building and out into the passenger bay. The engine which had been ready earlier in the day was at the platform now, hissing slightly as if impatient. The same engineer was leaning out of the same window with the same resigned expression on his face. It didn’t change as Angel stopped below him and told him his name.

  ‘Howdy,’ the engineer said. ‘Get yourself aboard.’

  Angel swung up onto the footplate, and the engineer took hold of the brake handle. It looked like the handle on some gigantic coffee grinder. The heat from the roaring furnace was like a physical blow as the stoker knocked it open with his shovel and slid another shovelful of coal on top of the glowing fires inside.

  ‘How long you figure it will take us to get to Trinidad?’ Angel shouted, as the engineer released the brake and the locomotive made a thundering metallic noise, shuddering like some huge animal and then easing gently and easily backward out of the depot.

  ‘Something over two hundred miles,’ the engineer said, giving a tug on a dangling cord that released a mighty whoosing whistle. He did it again, scratching his chin and watching the startled doves wheeling in a panicked half-circle above the roof of the depot.

  ‘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?’
r />   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.

  Chapter Fifteen

  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.