Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) by Frederick H. Christian Read Free Book Online

the skyline nodded and shrugged,
watching dispassionately as the boy kneed the piebald into a trot
and headed across the foot of the gully until he was below where
the bullet-headed one was standing. Then the boy got off the horse
and went up the shale slide like a cat, eagerness in every line of
his body. As he came up to the crest he slid a thin-bladed knife
from a scabbard at his side, and Angel watched helplessly as the
boy used it on the defenseless O’Connor. The Irishman’s dying
scream bounced off the rock walls of the gully as Angel bit back
his own curse. The fat man had not moved; Angel thought he could
see a smile on Willowfield’s face as the boy ran down the slope and
vaulted into the handsomely tooled saddle. He brought the piebald
back alongside Willowfield and touched the fat man’s pudgy hand, as
if thanking him.
    Willowfield nodded, a Roman emperor
indulging his favorite.
    ‘ Colonel!’
    The shout came from high up and off to the
left of where the dead body of Pat O’Connor lay in the gullied
shale. Angel could see a tall, broad-shouldered man who wore his
holster low on the right and whose black hair was winged with gray
from ear to crown. The man waved an arm.
    ‘ Colonel, I found the
safe!’
    ‘ Get Gil over there, Chris!’
Willowfield shouted back. ‘Let him handle it!’
    The man called Chris waved acknowledgment
and yelled something. Another man came scrambling up the side of
the gully, a canvas tote bag in his left hand.
    Gil, Angel thought. He’d be the explosives
man, the one who’d blown up the train. Medium height, slim, long
black hair, and dark, deep-set eyes. The man wore greasy buckskin
pants and a leather jacket. Gun on the left. No knife visible, but
that didn’t mean anything. Angel watched Gil go over the crest and
out of sight with the one called Chris. As they did, two others
came into sight and moved down the hill to where Willowfield sat,
smiling slightly like some obscene Buddha, his horse shifting its
feet as if to redistribute his weight. One of the men was short and
thickset, running slightly toward overweight: thin black hair,
slicked back, and a flat crowned Stetson hanging down his back on a
leather loop around the neck. High heeled boots—a cattleman, Angel
thought—maybe a horsebreaker. The second man was the bullet-headed
one with the German accent. He watched the man swing aboard a big
bay tethered to a bush near where Willowfield sat. Scarred face, as
if the man had been involved in knife fights. An Army holster with
the top flap cut away, the Army model Colt held in with a looped
leather thong. No cartridges on the belt. A military man, Angel
thought: he’d have his cartridges in a pouch from years of habit.
The man’s boots shone from polishing, and his saddle was in good
shape, soaped and shined. Soldier, Angel dubbed him. He had given
them all working names, to remember them by. Willowfield, Chris,
the one with the gray hair. Gil the dynamiter. Texas, the one with
the high-heeled boots. And the kid. There was a name for him, too,
but Angel didn’t use it.
    The flat, damp sound of a small explosion
echoed off the rocks behind the crest where Chris and Gil had
disappeared, and a fat puff of black-gray smoke ballooned upward,
thinning as it rose, disappearing in the morning breeze. Then the
big man, Chris, came over the shaley crest swinging one of the gray
canvas satchels, which contained, as Angel knew only too well, half
of the $250,000 ransom. Behind Chris was Gil, lugging the second
satchel. They scrambled down the slope and across the littered
gully to where Willowfield sat waiting.
    ‘ Well done, boys,’ the fat man said, a
gloat in his voice. ‘Well done.’ He pulled one of the satchels
open, his eyes flaring at the sight of the money inside.
    ‘ We goin’ to share it out here,
Colonel?’ Chris asked.
    ‘ Oh, no,’ Willowfield said. ‘Not
here.’
    ‘ We oughta get clear o’ here pretty
sharp, Colonel,’ Texas said. ‘No tellin’