Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) (11 page)

‘
Hank,’ Falco said, with one of those
‘surely you know better’ looks. ‘We got a deadline, remember? We’ve
got to get to Fort Morgan before the colonel. And we’re already
behind schedule.’

‘
Ach, yes,’ Kuden said. ‘I forget
that.’

‘
You’ll do it?’

‘
If I do it, how I get my share of the
money?’ Kuden asked.

‘
Shit, that’s easy, Hank,’ Falco said,
putting a false warmth into his voice. ‘Rent a buggy in Canon City,
drive over to Colorado Springs. Take the train up to Cheyenne. Be
there on the fifteenth, an’ I’ll meet you. Bring you your share.
How’s that?’

‘
Good,’ Kuden nodded. ‘Logical. You
will do this?’

‘
Hank!’ Falco said, injecting an
injured tone into his voice. ‘You know you can rely on me. Don’t
you?’

‘
Ja,’
Kuden said, slowly. ‘I guess so. I guess I can.’

‘
All right, then,’ Falco said. ‘You’ll
do it?’

Kuden looked at them all. The
lack of interest on their faces was total. They didn’t give a damn
whether he lived or died. If he took Angel, then that would be
fine, a benefit. If not,
es spielt keine Rolle,
one less to share the money with. He
cursed his own bad luck, the chance shot that had crippled him. He
had a good reason to kill Frank Angel, anyway. He might as well do
it. If he tried to keep up with them, he’d probably pass out soon.
And then they’d either kill him themselves, or leave him to freeze
or starve to death in the mountains. At least this way, he could
come out of it alive. And get to Cheyenne to meet Falco. Yes, he
told himself. It was as good a way as any.

‘
I do it,’ he said.

‘
Fine,’ Falco said, enthusiastically.
‘You got plenty of ammo?’

Kuden tapped the ammunition pouch on the
cantle of the saddle.

‘
Hank,’ Gil Curtis said. ‘You’re in no
shape to get close in. Use the rifle.’

‘
Good, good idea,’ Kuden nodded. ‘I do
it.’

‘
OK, then,’ Falco said, pulling his
horse around. ‘Let’s move out. We got a long way to go. Hank—we’ll
see you in Cheyenne!’ In a pig’s eye, he added,
mentally.

Kuden raised his hand in farewell salute as
Falco kicked his horse into a canter to catch up with the others,
who were already moving fast up the trail. Don’t you worry, Falco,
I’ll be there. If I got to crawl every inch of the way. And if you
double-cross me I’ll stay on your back trail for as long as it
takes to find you and cut your throat, Kuden thought. He cocked
back his head and looked at the sky. Off over the black hulk of the
mountains he thought he could detect a faint thinning of the
blackness. He checked his pocket watch. Four o’clock. He had a
couple of hours to get ready before it was light. He started
looking for a good place from which to kill Angel.

~*~

By dawn, Angel was saddled up and on the
move.

He had camped overnight in the lee of a huge
rock overhang crowned with small, closely set pine and thin silver
birch. Beneath the overhang, the blown fall leaves were still dry
and he made a comfortable mattress out of them. He picketed the
horse where it could be seen and built a fire. The night chill was
biting, and he knew that the dampness he could feel in the air
would soon be translated into snow on the high peaks. Soon, it
would be snowing even at this height, and when it snowed up here,
it snowed in earnest: five feet overnight was normal. Ten, fifteen,
twenty feet wasn’t remarkable. He didn’t want to be caught in the
open, hostile wilderness if the weather broke. So far October had
been mild, its winds soft even this high. He knew he’d have to buy
some heavier clothing when he got to Buena Vista. He figured it was
about ten miles north.

Off to his left now was a sheer-sided
canyon, its north side the lower reaches of Mount Princeton, its
southern Mount Antero. The mountains soared away up above the white
chalk cliffs that bordered a creek that chattered beneath the
deeply shadowed cliffs on its way to merge with the Arkansas, close
to whose banks he was riding now. The trail was wide, and led
through stands of aspen and pine that broke up in grassy clearings
that sloped down to the purling river. Off to his right, the
foothills of the mountains of South Park began, and the towering
peaks made his progress seem painfully slow.

A flicker of movement caught
his eye up on the crags. He saw it was an eagle, which spread its
wings and soared into the cloudless sky. It flew in a long straight
line from his right, coming lower as it crossed his path toward the
canyon on the left. Then, as he watched, it made a sharp, veering
turn away, the movement of the wide, strong wings accelerating in
steady beats. Angel watched it go, the frown of concentration
deepening between his brows. Easing back against the can tie of the
saddle, he braced his legs against the stirrups and let his eyes
move carefully across the barren rocks frowning down upon the
trail. Nothing moved. He looked for nothing, letting his own fine
eyesight do the work. He knew that anything that moved would catch
his eyes as long as they weren’t focused on anything in particular.
He saw nothing, and knew he was going to have to rely on the horse.
He got himself ready to move and gigged the horse forward, poised
but not tense. When the horse pricked up his ears, he went over the
far side, hearing the angry
zzzzizzz
of the slug a fraction of a second before the hard
flat clap of a Winchester echoed off the faceless rocks. Up to the
left, he thought as he rolled in the dew-wet grass. The horse had
shied at his sudden movement and the sound of the shot, but he had
thrown the reins forward, and the animal came to a stop, the reins
trailing, settling to placidly crop the thin grass. Angel lay where
he had fallen, face down, legs akimbo, doing his best to look dead.
He knew it would be a long wait now, the killer would take no
chances, might not even come down to make sure. He had heard no
sound of a horse moving away, but that didn’t mean one hadn’t. He
had to stay down and wait. There was no way he could get to a man
with a rifle hidden behind rocks. He had to try to make the man
come to him and he withdrew into himself, the way that the Korean,
Kee Lai, had taught him during the training sessions in the echoing
gymnasium that the Justice Department shared: ‘The mind and the
body are one. Both produce life-energies. Both can be controlled as
one. Control the mind first. Then control the body. And at last you
will control both as one. Only then can you summon all of yourself,
all of your strength and mind and energy, into one place, one
instant, and use it as one. You can be, you will be, more than
other men if you can learn this. Learn, learn, learn … ’

In his mind’s eye, he could see his own
sprawled body and the geography of the place in which he had fallen
as clearly as if he were the eagle whose avoiding action had saved
his life. He lay on sloping grass-covered ground that fell away
from the side of the trail toward the swirling river. There were
trees perhaps twenty feet away from his head, more eighty or ninety
feet downstream. He lay with his leg slightly bent, right knee
higher. Left hand palm down near his head, arm bent; right arm
almost straight, palm up, not far from the right knee. He
disciplined his breathing so that it became shallow, shallower,
almost imperceptible. And then he waited. He attempted no
assessment of time, concentrating upon absolutely nothing, every
sense acutely tuned. He heard the birds moving overhead, or singing
in the darkness of the woods. He heard the softness of the river
moving over sliding pebbles, the soughing of the faint breeze that
shifted the branches of the trees, the slow inevitable turning of
the earth.

A twig snapped.

It wasn’t the horse; the horse
was downstream of him, contentedly cropping at the grass. So it had
to be the hunter who was his prey. He concentrated upon keeping
death-still. If the ambusher saw even the movement of Angel’s
breathing, he might come no closer, but render the
coup de
grace
from
six feet away. He tracked the man’s movements, following his
approach from the slight sounds. He could see the dark figure
clearly through the windows of his mind, moving down the long slope
away from which the eagle had veered, down through the fringing
timber and across the trail—soft slither of leather on stone—then
to the edge of the clearing in which Angel lay—soft underfoot
crackling of pine needles, tiny squelch of wet leaves. There the
man stopped. Angel could hear his heavy, ragged breathing. The man
was in poor condition or in pain, he couldn’t tell which. He heard
the tentative soft swish of movement through the dew-wet grass. It
stopped again. Was the man dragging one foot? Almost as if the
ambusher was giving off tangible warmth, a field of energy, Angel
could sense his very closeness. He knew the man was near enough to
touch him now, and steeled himself. The metallic sound of a hammer
going back on rifle or pistol would mean that Angel had no time, no
chance at all. He heard the man exhale as he bent over the prone
body. Kuden put a hand under Angel’s shoulder in order to turn him
over and in that moment Angel summoned all of himself into one
movement. His right hand took the hand grasping his left shoulder
and he came up off the ground with the left hand pushing, turning
his left shoulder down as his body came up fast and strong, acting
as a fulcrum. Kuden went up across Angel’s shoulders and then down
with a heavy wet thud on the grass. The Winchester cartwheeled out
of his hand and he yelled with pain, yet still he rolled like a
thrown cat. He was already on his feet and lunging at Angel by the
time Angel wheeled upright to face him, giving Angel no chance to
get set. Kuden smashed into Angel head down, bowling Angel over
backward, pounding his fists into Angel’s face. Locked together
they thrashed across the grassy clearing, each seeking purchase,
breath coming harsh and hard as they fought with strengths almost
evenly matched. Finally, Angel got one hand momentarily free and
using the edge of his hand like the blade of an ax, chopped
backward and upward at Kuden’s throat. The German coughed and
retched, his eyes bugging as he rose upright as if trying to escape
the gagging paralysis of his Adam’s apple, and as he did, Angel
turned and kicked the man’s right leg out from beneath
him.

Kuden went down with a screech of agony that
sent birds chattering in scolding panic through the silent trees.
He lay face down in the flattened grass, his whole body humping
over with the pain, and now for the first time, Angel saw the dark
wet spread of blood on the man’s thigh. Kuden rolled over on his
back, his face distorted in a rictus of pain as he tried to get up
off the floor. Angel made his decision, and when Kuden was on his
knees, Angel clenched the knuckles of his right hand and hit the
man with considered strength, just above the point at the back of
his neck were there was a V-shaped joint above the second cervical
vertebra. Kuden went down face forward in the grass, out like a
doused candle. With deft movements, Angel searched and disarmed the
unconscious man.

Then he set about seeing what he could do to
patch him up. Capture, not kill, the Old Man had said.

~*~

‘
Leek mein
Arsch!’
Kuden snarled.

‘
Not just now,’ Angel said, gently.
‘Let’s try again. Which route are they taking?’

This time the German just spat and Angel
shrugged. Kuden wasn’t his top priority, and by and large, his
information was likely to be only confirmation of Angel’s already
formulated estimate. He wondered whether the attorney general
realized what he’d required with that ‘capture, not kill’ edict.
After he’d cleaned up the ragged hole in Kuden’s thigh as best he
could with boiled river water and some iodine, Angel had bound the
German’s leg firmly with bandage strips made from a spare shirt he
found in the man’s bedroll. Then he had cut two stout sticks and
fashioned a clumsy splint—two reasons for that. One, it was the
right thing to do, medically; two, it would prevent Kuden doing
anything sudden. Later, Angel had made a travois, rounded up
Kuden’s horse, strapped the trailing A-shaped litter to its saddle,
and led the way up the trail looking for all the world like some
Ute moving house. After a couple of hours, he had found what he was
looking for: a sheltered cave on the flank of the mountain, not too
high for Kuden to get up there. He’d ignored the man’s puzzled face
on the way up, and ignored him as he built a fire and cooked some
food. The cave smelled like a cat’s litter: puma had been here, he
guessed. Their acrid tang soon dispersed in the smell of the wood
smoke. He gave Kuden something to eat and then told him the bad
news. Kuden’s answer had been, to say the least of it,
uncooperative.

‘
Kuden,’ he said, sadly. ‘I’ll give
you one more chance.’

Kuden said nothing. He turned his head away
ostentatiously, staring at the patch of sky above the mountains
that could be seen from the entrance to the cave.

Angel sighed. If information kept on being
this hard to come by, he was going to end up being some kind of
Marquis de Sade. He tried once more. ‘Let me put it another way,’
he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. Then you tell me whether I’m
right or wrong. OK?’

He allowed himself a grin at Kuden’s
expression; it would be worth talking it out, just to hear what it
sounded like. There was always the chance Kuden would react. Not
much of a chance, perhaps. But a chance.