Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (12 page)

He got some of the food out of
his backpack and sat in the darkness trying to make believe it was
a medium-rare steak with hashed brown potatoes and fried eggs with
a side dish of canned tomatoes. Maybe some sourdough-bread and
fresh butter. He thought of his landlady,
Mrs. Rissick, toiling up the stairs
in the house on F Street in Washington, her shopping bag bulging.
He thought of ripe Stilton cheese, a good bottle of claret, fresh
peaches. He remembered being in the mountains and taking trout from
the chattering river, cooking it in a stock of seven parts water,
one part vinegar.

He drank some water and stowed away
his gear, waiting for the false dawn.

He wondered when the raiding
Comanches were due
back in the encampment. Full moon was their favorite time
for raiding, and the full moon had waned some nights ago. The
Comanches did not like the quarter moon period, for they believed
it presaged rain, which made mud and held tracks by which a raiding
party could be followed.

Soon it was time, and he stretched his
limbs with infinite care. The sharp tang of wood smoke told him the
women were already up and about in the camp, and he saluted their
industry, for the soft sharp smell of their fires would mask his
own alien smell among the horses. Very carefully, he slipped
beneath the encircling rope of the corral and laid his hand on one
of the mustangs. The animal tensed, its hide bunching as Angel
walked his hand along it, softly uttering soothing sounds until he
was close to its head.

He laid a gentle hand on the
horse
’s
muzzle and put his own head close to that of the animal, blowing
gently into its nostrils the way he had once been taught by a
Cheyenne horse breaker named Charlie Steelass. The horse nodded,
pushing itself against him. Angel let it, knowing that its smell
would mask his own. He moved to its right-hand side. Comanches
mounted on the right, Spanish style. Everything they did on
horseback, they did Spanish style, for it was from the invading
Spanish and their descendants that they had learned how to handle
horses, watching and watching with those dark unreadable eyes.
Until they learned.

Grasping the
mustang
’s
mane, Angel vaulted on to its back. Keeping his hand bunched in its
mane, Angel sat immobile as the animal tensed, waiting for him to
command it. When he did not, it relaxed, and he let it make its own
way to the far side of the corral, milling with the other horses.
When it got where he wanted it to be, Angel leaned over and deftly
sliced the horsehair rope barring the opening that debauched on the
camp. As the strands parted, he rammed his heels into the mustang’s
ribs and let-loose the shrillest Rebel yell he could
manage.

The milling herd of horses
reacted as if someone had
fired a cannon in their midst. They exploded out
of the corral and thundered in a panicked tide down the ragged open
space that served as the camp’s street. In the center of the herd,
hanging down the flank of his horse by holding on with right leg
and left hand, Comanche style, Angel saw men stumbling out of the
teepees, waving and shouting and trying to stop the stampeding
herd. Their figures blurred behind the glinting cloud of dust the
unshod hoofs had raised, and Angel thought he heard a thin scream
as someone went down beneath the slashing feet.

Although he had no great opinion of
their intelligence, Angel had put his faith in the memory of the
ponies. Horses rarely forgot their training. He had once taken
Amabel Rowe riding in a carriage around Central Park in New York.
Halfway past the Sheep Meadow, they noticed that the driver was
asleep and awakened him, pointing out that nobody was watching the
road.

‘
Well,
now, and don’t be fright,’ said the cabman, whose name was Bernie
McGann. ‘Sure the horse knows the way.’

Even these half wild mustangs
knew the way in and out of the woods in which the encampment lay,
and Angel swung up to lie low along his mount
’s back as the herd crashed
through the thin, screening bushes bordering the well-trampled
pathway leading out to the open plain. They burst out into the open
like a tidal wave.

In the growing half-light, Angel
saw two riders off to his left racking their startled horses around
and kicking them into a run to head off the widening fan of
Comanche ponies. A glance to the right revealed two more riders,
but further away, probably too far for it to make any real
difference. He unshipped the short bow that he
’d looped over his right
shoulder. There were only two arrows left, a fact of life he
accepted without regret. He had not known what his needs would be:
six of the steel shafts had seemed enough to carry when he started
out. Every one of them had paid its dues so far.

Angel was no Comanche.

He could not, as they could, hit
running quail from horseback with bow and arrow; but he was better
than good. Between two strides of the galloping pony, he released
the first of his shafts, and using the same optimum moment for aim
and accuracy, released the last seconds later. Then he put his head
down and concentrated on urging the flying Comanche pony to even
greater speed, pointing its head north. When he looked back he saw
that one of the pursuing horses was trailing to a riderless halt
and the second was down in a thrashing pile, legs striking out in
spasms of agony. Looked like he had missed the second man and hit
his horse instead. Now he saw the man scrambling to his feet,
running away from the
gut shot horse toward where his comrade had
fallen, and Angel nodded in grim satisfaction. If one of the arrows
had hit the fallen man, it didn’t make any difference where: he was
out of it. The mustang herd was beginning to spread out now, the
leaders beginning to mill as they went over the crest of a long
bluff that led downward in a long flat slope toward the edge of the
scrubland and the beginnings of a stony, brushless stretch of land
presaging the desert beyond it. Using hands and heels and voice,
Angel urged his own pony on, risking one last look back over his
shoulder. The light was much better now, but there were pregnant
blue-black clouds low over the mountains and once he thought he saw
the flicker of lightning. There were four dark blobs on the
darkening land behind him, a couple of miles back. Knowing that Nix
had a fine thoroughbred horse, Angel hoped he had a long enough
start. Nix’s horse could probably outrun everything in Texas if he
put his spurs into it. He felt the soft plop of heavy raindrops on
his face, and threw back his head to welcome them. Not even Nix’s
stallion could run fast in a Texas rain- , storm. There was more
thunder in the sky, awaiting its cue from the lightning. Ahead of
him was the long dark line of—the swampy jungle around the muddy
lake. Once again Angel grinned his cold wolfs grin. Let them come
find him in there.

As he reached the edge of the
timberline, the
skies opened.

The rain came down in a vertical
curtain that blotted out light, killed the growing daylight,
flattening everything beneath it. It soaked through
Angel
’s
clothes in moments, and brought steam from the hot flanks of the
gallant little Comanche pony that stood with its head down where
Angel had dismounted.

Light-footed
as an Indian, Angel ran through
the dank screen of undergrowth, keeping always to the
lighter-colored patches of spongy ground he could see. There were
often stretches of what looked like firm, verdant ground beneath
the trees, but no bushes grew on them and he knew they were purest
treachery, swampy layers of grass floating on a base of thick and
glutinous mud. Put your full weight on these patches and down you
would go, up to the hips or deeper in stinking filth, easy prey for
water moccasin or alligator. The tuftier, lighter-colored grass was
usually sprinkled about with small shrubs or shoots from seedlings
dropped by the trees above, sure sign that there was enough earth
to take a man’s running weight.

He reckoned he had about ten
minutes
’
start, not more. Four or five minutes for them to cover the
distance he’d been ahead, as many again to pile off and decide
their next move. They wouldn’t come in blind after him, but they
had to come in, and they had to come in from the south. If they
wanted to get around ahead of him, they would have had to ride all
the way back to the dry ford across the river, the only safe way to
cross it, then cover the same distance back on the far side to
reach the northern edge of the muddy lake. Nix would be too hot to
catch him now to split his force. With five men dead and nothing to
show for it, he would need some kind of success to show his men.
Maybe he would abandon a little of his caution trying to get
it.

The rain kept thrashing down
against the dense shield of the screening leaves, drowning sound,
sensation, everything. Angel changed direction now, moving back
toward the east, using every leaf for cover. After a while, he
heard the hoarse sound of someone shouting. The rain was easing
slightly, and over its steady driving rattle he could hear the
eruptive sounds of men slushing through the trees, whacking at the
undergrowth with machetes. Peering through the spattering mist of
water, Angel saw their dark shapes and the betraying movement of
the trees as they passed through. They were in a rough line
abreast, twenty or so yards apart, working their way through the
undergrowth with the short, wicked machetes in one hand and
six-guns in the
other. One man was covered in mud, his eyes startling white holes
in the running gray mask of filth. He eased backward, heading for
the farthest end of the ragged line. He could see no sign of
Hercules Nix yet, but in this bad light, in this driving rain, it
was hard to identify anyone.

The man at the end of the line
was tall and thin, with a hooked nose and a three-day stubble that
gave him a
wolf like appearance. He sloshed through a sucking trough
of seeping muddy water, and threw himself down on a hummock of
grass with a disgusted curse, pulling off his boots and draining
the gummy water out of them. He still had one of the boots in his
right hand when Angel came around the tree behind him.

The man opened his mouth to scream,
but he never made it.

Angel
’s sweet movement was too fast. The
man had time to drop his boot, register Angel’s presence, and see
that Angel had picked up the machete. Then the thick heavy blade
sliced his heart in two and pinned the man’s contorted body to the
heedless trunk of the tree behind him. The scream turned into a
choking gurgle and Angel caught the startled shout of the next man
up the line as he heard it. He was out of sight when the first of
them came at a lumpy run through the swampy muck, and watched as a
second man joined him, eyes bulging at the awful sight of their
comrade pinned like some strange insect against the hole of the
live oak.

‘
He’s
killed Levi,’ the first man said. Then he shouted the same words at
the top of his voice. A voice Angel recognized as Elliott’s bounced
back through the trees, flattened by the sound of the
rain.

‘
All
right!’ Elliott yelled. ‘Make a half-circle. But don’t bunch up,
he’s probably picking a spot to kill you! Make your half-circle,
don’t let him get between you!’

The two men looked at each other
in sudden panic, and floundered away in opposite directions, moving
back to where they could see the others. They were the touch points
in the plan, which was that when the quarry was located, the others
would swing out to form a wide half-circle. Somewhere inside it
would be Angel. Then they would close in on him. It was a good
idea, but Angel put a hole in it by removing one of the touch
points. Barnfield, the man who
’d discovered the dead Levi, was wishing to God
he’d stayed up at the Portal instead of rushing out to try and earn
Nix’s five hundred dollar bonus. His nerve was shot to hell from
the sight of seeing Levi nailed to that tree, and he was breathing
raggedly, hands dank with sweat even in this strange swampy rain.
He jumped every time the leaves in front of him moved. He was so
much on edge that when Angel stepped out in front of him, Barnfield
stopped dead in his tracks, paralyzed with fear.

He stood like that for perhaps
two seconds, but that was
enough. Angel was quite ready, his body perfectly
set for what he had to do, and even as the croak of alarm was born
in Barnfield’s suddenly dry throat, Angel’s right arm was moving in
a horizontal arc that brought the toughened outer edge of his right
hand across at a speed that defied sight. It struck Barnfield just
below his right ear, and the lanky man went down on his knees in
the mud, coordination shot to hell, the six-gun dropping from his
nerveless fingers with a muddy plop to sink into the mire. Before
the mud had even begun to close over the gun, Angel’s body was
moving back the way it had turned, his left hand striking Barnfield
directly beneath his gathered eyebrows. The force of the blow
smashed in the fragile frontal bones of the skull, and Barnfield
catapulted back into the bushes, contorted in agony, legs thrashing
as a strangulated caw of terror and pain broke from his stunned
throat. He thrashed around in the muddy slop like some strange
animal with its spine broken, and Angel heard someone shout, then
shout again.