‘Falco!’ he shouted again.
His voice bounced around the open space, but neither sound nor movement greeted it. He looked up at the sky. The gray dullness was softening, turning pearly. Visibility was decreasing rapidly. He gauged the distances: the rocks opposite were maybe a hundred and fifty yards away. The big rock up the trail, perhaps twice that. He gave himself a moment, knowing what he had to do now.
To use the time, he slid the knife out of Curtis’ body and methodically cleaned it, not thinking about what he was doing, emptying his mind of reaction or regret. His breathing rate slowed, softened, as he concentrated upon the very center of himself, the chi that Kee Lai had taught him. When he was quite ready, he stepped out into the open, crouched and wary, and moved across the whiteness toward the rocks opposite.
Buddy McLennon saw Angel come out from behind the rock on the far side of the trail and couldn’t believe his eyes. Angel looked like some strange bug against the changing whitenesses, and McLennon cuddled the stock of his carbine to his cheek, taking plenty of time to pick up the target squarely in the notched backsight. Slow, he told himself, easy, watching the little black bug that was Angel. Squeeze, squeeze. The Winchester bucked and the moaning wind whipped away the smoke in a flurry of fine snow. The little black bug was still moving, coming nearer. How the hell could he have missed? McLennon cursed. He lined up the carbine again, wondering why Falco didn’t take a poke at Angel from where he was up the trail, and pulled off another shot at the weaving, dodging figure. Again he missed, and he fired twice more in rapid succession as the icy fingers of panic touched his heart. Was the man unkillable? The flurry of shots had told the dodging Angel what he wanted to know. The one behind the rock was McLennon. Falco would have known after the first shot that the light, which was deteriorating at a very rapid rate, was making him miss. The fact that Falco had not pitched in with a try for the target Angel had made of himself showed that Falco knew only too well that this strange light would foreshorten distance to such an extent that accurate long-range shooting would be difficult for a cool-headed expert, and nearly hopeless for anyone who panicked as easily as the kid. Short range, however, was something else again. He kept moving, and prayed that McLennon didn’t know about that either.
He didn’t.
He just saw Frank Angel coming on through the deep snow and threw another shot at him. When that didn’t have any effect, Buddy McLennon jumped down off his rock and, levering the action of the carbine, stumbled forward through the snow toward Angel, shouting curses as he came.
Sitting duck, Angel thought without pity.
He knelt down in the snow and put three bullets through Buddy McLennon at sixty-five yards. There wasn’t a hand span between them and they tore the life out of the kid in a bursting bloody spray that turned the snow behind his whacked-down body pink within a radius of four feet. Angel wasted no time on the fallen McLennon, but ran as fast as he could through the drag of the snow, heading for the rocks from which the kid had emerged.
No horses. That meant Falco had the horses. It also meant that Angel was in deep trouble. Almost as if Falco had read his mind, Angel heard the soft, snow-muffled thump of hoofs moving on the soft snow and he caught movement up the trail. Falco was moving out, heading up the long valley of the pass toward the no longer visible slopes. They were now hidden behind the misting grayness that had come up from the lower valleys. The sky had turned the color of lead left outdoors, and the wind was making a sound not far from the whine of anguish. Snow, which had moments before touched his face like feathers, now had a cutting edge that whipped red rawness across Angel’s cheekbones. Beneath the heavy blanket coat he felt the soft pull of the drying blood sticking to his shirt. He stood by the huge rocks, the useless carbine in his hanging hand, eyes bleak and empty.
And then the blizzard was upon him.
One minute he was out in the open, the air chilling, the light leaden, the wind sharpening. The next minute there was a roar as if some mighty machine had started turning and the wind came up out of the valley like the exhalation of a dying giant, whipping the snow off the sharp crests of the drifts in a horizontal hail that battered and snatched, slashed and rocked him, taking his breath away with its sudden ferocity. Floundering, blinded, his sense of direction gone completely in the few seconds that it had taken for the blizzard to spring up, and fighting down the chill of panic, Angel cursed himself, cursed his stupidity in not reading the signs fast enough. The gray mist that had been creeping up the slopes like soapy water, the strange light, all had been warnings. He should have read them as clearly as those first dancing flurries of snow, the icy edge of the wind. Now its howling gale force cut through his layered clothing as if it were tissue paper. The long wound on his back ached raw as the icy fingers of the blizzard found it; his bloodstained coat was already frozen stiff. His leg went down to the crotch in deep snow and he could no longer even see the faint traces of the trail he had been standing on.
He dragged himself up out of the clutching snow, fighting off the soft insistent chill of it, laboring up an incline in what he hoped was the direction that Falco had taken. His mouth sagged open and the wind tore his breath out of it as it drove an incessant hail of minuscule ice splinters against his skin, scouring his face to raw pink and then flat white in minutes. It pushed and bullied his staggering body off-balance, and if he had not strapped down the brim of his Stetson with his neckerchief to protect his ears, and a wool scarf around his face, he would have been frostbitten in no time. The wind rattled and flurried and harassed him. The brim of his Stetson beat in a frenzied staccato against his cheeks, making red marks.
He labored on.
A hundred yards, perhaps. More? He was exhausted when the wind stopped as abruptly as it had begun and he saw that, miraculously, he was close to the big rock behind which Falco had hidden. He silently thanked whatever gods were guiding his footsteps in the right directions, and staggered through the silent snow past the big rock and up toward the long crest that sloped away beyond it. He did not bother to look for tracks: the snow and wind would have scoured them away almost as soon as they were made. He broke into a lumbering run, his breath ragged. Although he was already worn down, he knew he had to cover as much ground as he could before the blizzard broke loose again. This was nothing but a momentary respite. He found he was still clutching the Winchester and he threw it away without a second’s hesitation. It landed barrel-down in the snow like a spear, remaining upright, stuck in the empty whiteness as if it were marking a grave.
Angel had covered about a quarter of a mile—during which time he remembered he had not taken any food from the saddlebags on the dead horse—when the wind opened up again. There was nothing he could do but turn his back to it like any other animal, hunching down in misery away from the slashing, seeking, incessant attack of the blizzard, seeing nothing but empty whirling whiteness, hearing nothing but the roaring howl of the wind and the soft sibilant sound of the snow sliding across the icy surface. He stood stoically through endless minutes of mind-emptied waitfulness, not thinking, not hoping, not doing anything until, as if gathering its strength for a final assault, the wind eased, sagged, dropped away. A fitful, watery patch of sunlit blue sky showed for an instant through swirling cloud. By the time it had opened up slightly, Angel was already moving up the hill. He went at it with the desperate strength of a man without much in reserve. The slope faced north and the snow was deep and crisp. It covered the rocks and gullies with a deceptive layer of whipped-cream softness. If Angel put too much weight on his feet, he sank into it to the hip. He had to move fast, yet lightly on his feet, keeping his balance against the playful bluster of the wind. The slope seemed endless, endless. His breath came shallower now in the thin mountain air and his lips were as dry as if he were in some waterless desert. It wasn’t a long slope, perhaps not more than two hundred and fifty yards. He could see the crest, soft and rounded against the sky ahead. It wasn’t physically far away but it took him the best part of thirty minu
tes to get two-thirds of the way up it and by the time he got there he was almost weeping with fatigue. He looked back downhill at the painfully traced line of boot-holes he had left. They seemed so pathetically few that it was almost impossible to believe they had taken so much out of him. He put his head down and went on. To keep his feet moving he chanted an old work song under his breath. There was nobody to witness his heroism, nobody to cheer. And when he got to the top and saw that beyond this slope lay another, identical one, it almost broke his heart.
He stood on the crest, knee-deep in the sifting snow, his shoulders laboring like some cruelly treated animal. He shook his head. He could not go any further, nor could he retrace his steps. He wanted to sit down, to rest. The wound in his back was on fire, and one small part of his brain was trying to persuade him that it didn’t really matter, anyway, that it wasn’t worth the effort, that there was no place to hide, no place to find shelter. Beyond the next slope would be another and beyond that another. In this gleaming hostile wilderness, what difference did it make which pile of snow you died in?
He made himself get up and walk.
Right. Left. Right foot. Left foot. Keep going, he told himself, just a bit further. Right foot. Left foot. Just a bit further. Then he saw the deep wide trenches in the snow made by the horses and he felt a gush of relief. Not only was he on the right track, but Falco was in as much trouble as he was himself. The horses looked as if they were out of hand, if the tracks were anything to go by. Bucking snow was an art natural only to the native-born mustang. Domesticated animals seldom acquired the art, and were inclined always to lunge at the snow rather than work their way through it. Even the wiry cayuse would sometimes give out after working its way through snow up to its belly for a few hours. Falco’s horses wouldn’t last another hour if the tracks on the snow were anything to go by. Angel grinned grimly beneath the wool scarf and plodded on, moving easier now in the flattened snow of the horses’ passage. The edge of the wind whipped at the skin of his face that was exposed and he prayed for the blizzard to hold off. He got halfway up the long empty slope. It seemed as if he had been walking forever. He had no thought except the thought of putting one foot in front of the other foot, no sense of time, nothing except the single-minded aim to survive.
When he got to the crest of the long second slope he saw the cabin. It lay about a quarter of a mile away, on the flank of another long slope that stretched away downward from where Angel now stood. Falco’s tracks led directly toward it and he nodded as he saw them. The powder snow whipped off the edge of the crest in a knife-edge line that whitened the creases in the icy mush that had formed on his clothing, and Angel drove his wilting body down the slope, below the lee of the crest where he could shelter for a moment from the biting, growing rush of the wind, drawing upon his last reservoirs of strength. I can make it, he told himself. I can make it now. The wind moaned and then screamed and then opened its throat with a banshee wail as it clamped down the blizzard upon the mountains with an awful, intense finality. It blew Angel across the empty face of the slope as if he were a child’s rag doll, bowling him over face down. He straggled, spitting and kicking, out of the drift of snow into which he had been hurled, trying desperately to orient himself in the howling whiteness, not knowing that he was screaming at the wind as if it were some live thing attacking him.
‘Damn you!’ he shouted. ‘Damn you, damn you, goddamn you!’
He found that he was on his knees in the snow, and he had lost his gloves someplace. His hands looked dirty white against the purer whiteness of the snow. The roaring wind surrounded him, swallowed him. He was blinded, engulfed in the whirling surge of the powder snow laced with ice that was torn from the face of the mountain. Somehow he got to his feet and moved. Forward? He felt for the rise of the slope, but he could sense nothing. His feet were like wooden blocks, his face stiff and numb, his hands without feeling. He walked straight into a flat upright rock, caroming off it before he had even seen it properly, gashing his cheekbone against the jagged stone. Sobbing with relief, he worked his way around behind the big rock, into the sheltering lee where he was shielded from the searching wind. Up ahead of him he sensed, rather than truly saw, the hulking dark bulk of the cabin. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to have to walk that far again or go out into the murderous hail of snow and ice but he knew he must. If he stayed here now he would die.
The wind was a familiar enemy now, and seconds after he started moving in it he felt as if he had never stopped. Numb, dumb, weightless, without form, he was an animal hunting a place to cower away from the awesome fury of nature. He had no ambition now except to survive. That alone would be enough.
He remembered nothing more until he walked into the pile of logs behind the cabin. His numb body registered the impact, and he fell to his knees in the soft snow, groping his way around the log pile until he was in the space between it and the cabin. It was dark and warm, compared to the raging cold on the other side. He squirmed around, barking his knuckles on the frozen logs of the cabin wall. It didn’t matter if he made a noise. In this wind nobody would hear a sound. He sat up, chafing his hands, rubbing them hard against each other. Then he rubbed snow on his half-frozen face, punishing the skin. Slowly, very slowly, he felt the blood tingling into the deadened veins, felt the warm pulse of life spread from his belly, felt himself coming back. He just sat there, ice melting into water that mixed with the tears of fatigue from his eyes, dripping from his chin. He looked at his hands. They felt like two bunches of bananas, and something like a grin twisted his frozen features.
He was in great shape for a fight, he thought.
Chapter Thirteen
As suddenly as it had started, the blizzard stopped. Almost immediately, the sky began to clear, and the wind dropped away. In half an hour the sky was an astonishingly bright cerulean blue, the way it is only in the high mountains. The enormous presence of the serried peaks themselves now became visible. They reared up over the pass, dazzling the eye in the sunlight with their white covering of fresh snow. Now small animals moved tentatively in the sparse trees, and black birds sought food again. Their presence was strangely reassuring. The horses shifted restlessly in the lean-to behind the cabin, stamping and snorting, hoping for something to eat.
Angel had moved from behind the woodpile as soon as he was able and scuttled across to the lean-to that housed the horses. From it, he could see Falco moving about in the lighted cabin, but he stayed in the lean-to until the warmth of the animals revived him. In one of the saddlebags, he found some small strips of jerky and he had chewed it with famished enjoyment, milking the strength from the dried meat and feeling it warm him. It was still sparklingly, bitingly cold, too cold for him to take off his clothes and clean up his wounded back. It was stiff with clotted blood now, and most of his left shoulder felt numb to the touch, as though the skin had died. He could still move his arm, but it didn’t feel right.
The dark brown smell of coffee touched his nostrils and his mouth was instantly full of saliva. He remembered Pat O’Connor sitting in the train, saying, ‘I could kill for coffee!’
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.
Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) Page 11
