‘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, ma
ybe, 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.
Angel eeled desperately to one side as Falco’s thrusting fingers pawed his neck. Then Falco’s knees, with all his weight on them, slammed into Angel’s belly, doubling him up retching, the wind whacked out of him. Falco scrambled to his feet and kicked the writhing man hard in the left side and drew his foot back for another kick. Angel saw it coming and rolled first to the right and then the left, avoiding Falco’s stomping boots. The soft warmth of fresh-flowing blood spread beneath his clothes. His eyes were still not properly focused but he came up on to his knees and saw that Falco was diving for the nickel-plated Colt hanging holstered on the wall peg, snatching it out and whirling, his eyes as malevolent as those of a stoat loose in a rabbit hole. He was earing back the hammer and his mouth was twisted with the lust to kill. Angel’s knife was already in flight.
It flicked across the space between the two men just as Falco completed his turn. It sheared through the flexor capri radialis of his right arm as if that solid forearm muscle were butter, and pinned it to the log wall like some bizarre trophy. Falco screamed with undiluted pain, his sixgun dropping from a hand whose controlling tendons no longer worked. His eyes bugged as he looked at the pinned arm and then his head turned to face Angel, but in that moment Angel had moved across the room at Falco, his right arm drawn back, with the edge of his hand held level like a machete. He smashed it horizontally against Falco’s forehead, and the gray-winged head went back against the log wall with a sound like someone hitting a fence post with a wooden mallet. Falco’s eyes rolled up in his head and his knees wilted.
As the man started to fall, Angel plucked the knife clear of the wall and Falco slid off the blade and down to the blood-spattered floor. His right arm lay askew, like a broken wing.
Angel knelt quickly and checked Falco’s pulse: the throb of the carotid artery was strong. He rose to his full height, shaking his head.
‘This “capture not kill” game’ll be the death of me yet,’ he sighed, as he scouted around for material to use for bandaging Falco’s arm. When he had done this, he tore up a blanket from the bunk in the corner of the room and used it to bind Falco’s arm to his body, and then his good arm to the ruined one. Using the deadly ‘Chink’s knot’ which ensures strangulation if the one so bound struggles against them, he tied Falco’s feet to his arms to his neck.
‘So,’ he said, at last.
He put some water on to boil and then went across to where the iron pot that had contained the beans lay on its side. There was still enough in it for one man. He looked around at the rest, splattered on the table and the walls and the floor, and grinned as he spooned what was left on to a plate. After he had eaten, he would clean up his own wound as best he could, and then head for Fairplay with Falco. He didn’t think the man would give him any more trouble. Even if he tried, it would be easy enough to handle if Falco gave off as many signals as he had before he tried the one with the bean pot. Falco could go in the slammer at Fairplay until someone could come out and bring him to Leavenworth to be hung. He settled down to eat.
‘My compliments to the chef,’ he said to the unconscious Falco.
Chapter Fourteen
It had all been so childishly easy.
George Willowfield looked out of the window of the train and smiled at the featureless prairie rushing past. Beautiful, he thought. He turned his attention to the plush interior of the Pullman car in which he was riding, thinking what a fine railroad the Union Pacific was, how comfortable, and—so important—how reliable. These Pullman sleeping cars were said to cost $20,000 apiece, and it didn’t surprise him in the least. The fittings and hoods and lamps and rails all looked to be silver-plated, and the upholsteries and carpets were all first class. The very paneling looked to be walnut, b’God. Behind this carriage rolled an equally luxurious restaurant car in which, earlier, Willowfield had eaten a most ample and satisfying meal. Yes, this was the way to travel: first class all the way. He knew, as anyone who had ever traveled by rail knew, that the emigrant coaches would be full of noisy, dirty travelers with even noisier and dirtier brats whom they fed at all hours of the day or night with no regard to common decency, while great stinking Indians smoked foul tobacco or drank rum until they passed out.
No, he thought, never again. From here on, first class all the way for you, my dear George. He sighed with pleasure, his fingers softly stroking the velvet carpetbag on his lap, as if it were a living thing. He wondered what that attractive young man he’d taken a smile with in the depot at Ogallala would have thought had he known what was in the carpetbag, then chided himself upon such thoughts. There would be time enough for that when he reached his destination. He smiled again, the smile of the fox who knows the hounds will never catch him.
The conductor came through the car, calling, ‘Next stop Cheyenne. Cheyenne in twenty-eight minutes!’
Willowfield nodded. The Union Pacific Railroad was as reliable as ever. He looked out of the window at the mountains like clouds on the long horizon, remembering.
He had driven the stolen wagon to the junction of the trail south of old Fort Collins, then veered east to follow the road that led down alongside a rushing torrent whose name he did not know. At the point where it joined the north fork of the Platte, he forded the bigger river and worked his way northeasterly, using a compass he had bought in a ship’s chandler in St. Joseph, Missouri, long before all of this had started, even when he did not know the outcome for sure. Planning, he thought, smiling. Everything is planning, as any good cook will tell you. He rode well clear of settlements, stopping only at one gritty, flea-bitten wayside cluster of shacks to buy a canvas sack from a general store that looked as if it had just survived an earthquake.
By the late afternoon of the following day he was digging up the buried money in its oilskin packs, and then to Julesburg in time to buy a ticket for the eastbound train.
He had passed the place where the train carrying
the money had been wrecked, and heard the sound of steam engines and hammers, of men working down in the gully and he smiled. It might have been a million years ago. He wondered briefly who had killed whom, and whether Falco or any of them were left alive. It mattered not a damn. They would never find him, for he had one trick left in his bag, and he set it in motion at Julesburg.
It was a risk, he knew, but a calculated one. The U.S. marshal at Denver might have telegraphed the fact of his surprise escape to his colleagues in other states, even to the police in the big cities, certainly to the Justice Department in Washington. It was highly unlikely that anything had sifted down to the level of a station manager at a godforsaken hole like Julesburg, which was hardly more than a clutter of houses. Hyar, they said, was the California Crossing of the South Platte; over thar, the old Pony Express station house with its outbuildings and stables and blacksmith shop made of cedar logs; just a-down yonder Jack Slade killed Jules Beni. They seemed proud of the place, and Willowfield let them see the contempt of a gentleman for it, so that they would remember him. His insistence on clean crockery and cutlery when he drank a cup of the muddy coffee they served in the refreshment room, and his lordly announcement of his name when he bought his ticket, all would be remembered when questions were asked later—as he was sure they would. The train came—on time, he recalled with pleasure—and he stepped aboard, tipping the porter, who carried his case into the carriage, a dollar to prompt his memory when the time for remembering came. He tipped the man again when he alighted from the train in Council Bluffs, making no secret of the fact that his destination was New York. The porter wished him a safe journey, as did the engineer Willowfield congratulated on a punctual arrival.
The fat man then left the station and hurried in a horse cab to the largest men’s clothing emporium in the town, James & Laurence, on the corner of Front and River Streets, where he purchased a suitcase, large enough for several suits of clothing, and then outfitted himself in the manner of a man setting out on a long journey. Which, he reminded himself with a smile, he undoubtedly was.
Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) Page 12
