Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) (12 page)

By late afternoon they were in
the malpais. The land no longer ran in long, sliding rises and
falls, but was creviced and torn by meandering arroyos and strewn
with boulders, scattered rocks, and sparse, stunted cactus. Ahead
of them it shimmered with heat that made the land turn to water,
distances disappearing into a haze that looked like a sea. Far off
to the north, grey-blue on the horizon, they could see mountains.
The trail they were following was hard to see now.
They halted
constantly, quartering across open spaces, picking up traces that
men had passed this way: a broken stick of dry cholla stepped on by
a horse, a pebble overturned and still slightly darker where the
sun had not yet dried the cooler underside, a thread of cotton
tagged to the spine of a yucca. The relentless sun reflected back
by the mica sand of the desert baked them, drying sweat as it
appeared on their bodies. They moved like tiny ants in some vast
amphitheater of sand and wilderness, inching ever northwards, and
always more west. By nightfall they were in the foothills of the
Rincons, and everywhere stood the majestic saguaro, marching in
irregular lines, looking like randomly erected candelabra, striking
and red-tinged in the late sun, with the massive rock faces of the
peaks soaring behind them. When night fell, they could go on no
longer. Blackness came with the sharp unexpectedness of the desert,
and they camped in a hollow at the base of one of the hills,
shielded on three sides from the rear, facing south out across the
tumbling jumble of country through which they had passed. They
built a fire, propping a blanket on poles to prevent its glow
rising against the blackness of the night, and huddled close to it
against the chill of the night. Angel had coffee and a small pot,
and they measured water sparingly into it, relishing the smell of
it and the good warm full taste on their parched lips. Two strips
of jerky made their meal. They fell into instant sleep, and it
seemed to Metter he had hardly closed his eyes when Angel was
shaking him.

‘
Up,’
he said.

It was still dark; even the tinge of grey
that heralds the dawn was not yet visible on the horizon. Metter
shivered in the cold, as Angel fanned the small fire to glowing
embers and reheated the last of the coffee. They had enough to take
away the morning thirst, no more. They would need to strike water
soon. Stretching stiffened arms and legs, Metter climbed
reluctantly into the saddle. The horses, too, were still tired.
They snorted in protest and bucked to show their disapproval.

Angel moved off down the slope,
Metter behind him, shaking his head. He almost felt pity for the
men they were trailing. He
’d as soon have Angel on his back trail as a pack
of timber wolves, he told himself. They moved out of the hills and
down the western slope of the Rincons, which they had quartered
across. The faint trail had led towards the west. Tucson? Metter
asked himself. About half an hour later they found the
camp.

The ashes of the fire were cold. Two whiskey
bottles lay glinting emptily in the sharp morning sunlight. Metter
dismounted, stooping close to the ground, reading the sign he could
see in the scuffled sand. Around the ashes of the fire the sand was
churned and piled: some kind of disturbance: a fight? He said as
much, and Angel hunkered down alongside him and nodded.

‘
Yes,’
he said. ‘Probably fighting over the Perry girl.’

Metter looked at him, sharply, but there was
no expression of anger or regret on Angel’s face: just that
unemphatic determination.

‘
They
were here night before last,’ Angel said. Metter nodded.

‘
Has
to be,’ he agreed. ‘They must have been travelin’ hard.’

‘
This
far,’ Angel nodded. ‘They’ll ease off some now. They won’t be
expectin’ to be caught up with.’

They moved out, down a long arroyo which led
to a plain that stretched to the western horizon, speckled with
yucca and prickly pear, the yellow scar of a wash visible about ten
miles ahead. Far out ahead of them, blue-red outcrops of sandstone
rose like the backs of whales. They strained their eyes but could
see no sign of dust or movement.

‘
How
far we come?’ Metter asked, as they pushed ahead towards the
distant hills. ‘Fifty mile?’

‘
About
that,’ Angel said. ‘We made good time this far.’

Metter pointed to the jumbled hills off to
the south-west.

‘
Beyond there lies Tucson,’ he said. ‘You think they’re
headin’ there?’

‘
Could
be,’ was the noncommittal reply.

‘
Reckon the troops’ll have taken care o’ things back in the
Ruidoso country,’ he offered.

‘
Uhuh,’ Angel answered.

‘
You
think they’ll be able to follow this trace an’ come on out here
after us?’ Metter asked. ‘We run into them boys, we may need a
little help.’

‘
Not
likely,’ grunted Angel.

‘
Chatter, chatter, chatter,’ complained Metter. ‘Trouble
with you, Angel, is you talk too much.’

For the first time since they had come upon
the carnage in the high chaparral, Angel smiled. It was a brief,
on-off smile, but at least a smile.

‘
Thanks, Sunny,’ he said. That was all. But Metter knew what
he meant and felt warmed by it.

That afternoon they found signs
of a second camp. It looked as if the raiders had stopped early in
the day yesterday, perhaps deciding to travel in the cool of the
night. They would be low on water, perhaps suffering from the extra
thirst of hangovers, for there were more
bottles scattered in the scrub. The
sign around the campsite was much fresher, not dulled by the
scouring, ever-present furnace-blast breeze across the desert
floor. They were closer to the raiders now, and they moved more
carefully. Towards sundown they came upon a long shelving slope of
softened sand, where the shifting winds had drifted the streaming
mica smooth across a stretch of flatbed rock, and saw the trail as
plain as if it had been printed stamped into the gleaming whiteness
of sand, curving away from the westward line it had been following,
curving north and northeast and pointing across towards the
northern quadrant of the Rincons and the tumbled peaks of New
Mexico. They reined in and Metter dismounted. The lines of
concentration between his black brows were deep.

‘I
don’t get it,’ he said, hunkered down
gazing along the swath of tracks.

‘
Making it easy for anyone following,’ Angel said. ‘Or don’t
they give a damn?’

Metter shook his head.
“You have to try to
leave tracks like that,’ he said.

‘
Mile
to one side or the other, you’d have trouble finding their
trail.’

‘
This
...’ he gestured, ‘this is like puttin’ up a signpost.’

‘
What
I thought,’ Angel said. ‘Take that side, I’ll take the
other.’

They ground hitched the horses and moved
into the scrub on foot, keen eyes questing right and left, looking
for any trace that horsemen or men on foot had passed. The ground
was baked and hard, and strewn with rocks. There was no sign. They
ranged further away from the horses, out of sight of each other,
crossing and criss-crossing a central line drawn in their own
minds, each line gradually diverging from the other.

Metter found it. They were now
about a quarter of a mile away from the horses, invisible to each
other in the gullied waste. Angel heard Metter shout. His eyes
shuttled across the open land, pin-pointing the source of the
sound. In a moment he picked out the shape that was the
saloonkeeper, who was waving his shirt around his head. He was
about five hundred yards away to Angel
’s right. Angel hurried towards his
companion, oblivious of the detaining claws of the cactus. Metter’s
face was wet with sweat, glowing with triumph.

‘
Crafty bastards,’ Metter said. ‘Look here.’

He pointed at the ground, and
Angel saw half a dozen pieces of
rough-cut rawhide, about six inches
square, scattered in the lee of a sloping rock. Metter held a short
length of piggin’ string in his hand. He shook his head with
reluctant admiration.

‘
They
tied pads on the horses’ feet,’ he said. ‘Led them half a mile,
then turned loose.’

‘
How
many?’ Angel asked tersely.

‘
Two
horses,’ Metter said. ‘One mule.’

‘
What
do you think?’

T reckon we
’re s’posed to follow the other
trail,’ Metter said, his teeth gleaming white as he
grinned.

‘
You
reckon they knew they’re bein’ trailed?’

Metter shook his head.
‘Prob’ly takin’ no
chances. If the so’jer boys was comin’ after them, they’d never
find this sign. They’d hare off after the obvious tracks, bugles
blowin’ and spurs ajinglin’.

Angel looked up, his eyes
following the line of the tracks.
‘What’s up ahead?’

‘
Nothin’,’ Metter replied. ‘More o’ this.’ He waved an arm
at the desert. ‘Then Tucson.’

‘
Right,’ Angel said. ‘Here’s where we split up.’ Metter just
looked at him.

‘I
mean it,’ Angel said. ‘From here on
in, I go alone.’

‘
Fat
chance,’ Metter said. ‘Fat chance.’

They glared at each other for a moment, then
Angel grinned.

‘
One
of us has got to follow that other trail,’ he pointed
out.

‘
Hell,
Frank, you know that’s a blind,’ Metter burst out. ‘Razzle-dazzle,
that’s all.’

‘
Yes.
And no,’ Angel said. ‘You dog that trail. My bet is it’ll wind up
in Grant Country, over the border. I’d bet that’s where the scum
that wiped out the Circle C and Perry’s place were recruited.
They’ll be wanting to spend their blood money. I need names, faces,
Sunny. I need them to make sure that no man who rode with that gang
will ever do it again.’

‘
An’
that means I’m elected,’ Metter said.

‘
You
see anyone else I can ask?’ Angel replied.

‘
I’ll
do it,’ Metter said. ‘I ain’t goin’ to tell you I don’t mind, but
I’ll do it’

‘
Fine,’ Angel said. ‘Get word to a man called Mike Dempsey
in Radlett, the County Seat. Tell him I sent you. Tell him the
names, an’ why he is being told. He can get help from the military
at Camp Grant. I want those men in jail, Sunny.’

‘
I
might just kill one or two of ‘em first an’ then tell this Dempsey
feller,’ Metter said. ‘That OK?’

‘
Do
what you have to do. Hand it over to Dempsey - don’t try to handle
it alone. Take this’ - he handed Metter the circular badge of the
Justice Department - ‘you’ll need to convince him who you are. Then
head back for Daranga. My hunch is that when this pot comes to the
boil, it’ll be there.’

‘
When
will you be back?’

‘
As
soon as I’ve done what I have to do,’ Angel said. He swung up into
the saddle.
‘Con Dios,’
he said.

Metter nodded.
‘’Con Dios,’
he
replied.

He stood watching as Angel moved off to the
west, steady and relentless on the faint trace they had discovered.
After a moment he reined his horse around and headed back towards
the sandy slope where the tracks of the raiders lay stark in the
sunlight. When he looked back again, he could not see Angel. Metter
moved on towards the mountains.

Night had fallen an hour ago,
and still Angel moved on through the desert. There was a full moon,
and when the cloud broke, its silver light bathed the cactus,
heightening their weirdness, casting shattered shadows on the
broken
ground. Ahead the land broke, cresting into a high rise
which fell on its western side sharply down into a shadowed arroyo.
Angel approached it on foot, his hand clamped on the horse’s
muzzle. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He knew, without
knowing how he knew, that one of the men he was seeking was down
there, perhaps both of them.

He took all the time he needed.

Belly down in the fine ground
sand he wormed forward on his elbows and knees to the edge of the
arroyo. Flints and broken cactus spiked his bare hands and tore his
shirt but he moved on like a hunting snake, oblivious to the pain.
He edged easily over the crest of the arroyo and slithered down. As
he came down the slow slope, he caught a flicker of light along the
canyon, hidden perhaps b
ehind a bend or a pile of rock.

With infinite care he moved
forward again, until he raised his head and saw the dull red embers
of a campfire glowing. A man was sitting cross-legged in front of
the dying fire. Behind him lay a spread bedroll and a saddle ready
to be used as a pillow. The man threw some twigs on the embers and
in the quick flicker of a flame Angel saw that the man was Johnny
Boot. The face looked strange, as if lopsided. After a moment,
Angel recognized that Boot
’s face was bruised, as if he had been
fighting.

He inched further forward. If
Boot was here, Mill could be nearby. He could now see the full flat
base of the arroyo, and Boot
’s horse idly cropping at some thin grass growing
precariously from the side of the wash. Boot was alone. He stood up
and stretched, the deep-set eyes like black holes in the high
cheekboned face, the thin frame taut and wary even in repose. Boot
unbuckled his gunbelt and laid it by the saddle, and then lay down
without removing any of his other clothes. He turned to the right,
and then the left, wallowing until he was covered by his blanket.
Angel lay still and waited. He watched the moon sail by overhead
and counted stars for a while. The Great Bear and the Little Bear,
the Pole Star. Those were the ones he knew. It would be nice to
study the stars, he thought.

Inside his head a clock was
ticking, counting the seconds as they coagulated into minutes and
the minutes as they crawled by. After what he
deemed an hour, Angel figured
Boot would be as asleep as he was ever likely to be. Johnny Boot
had been too long on the wolf trail to ever really sleep deeply. He
would wake up instantly if Angel made a sound. With careful,
measured movement, Angel drew his feet up and under himself. Very
slowly, he got to his feet and stood fully upright. He drew in a
slow deep breath and let it out as he moved forward. He was about
ten yards away from Boot when the desert wind shifted around behind
him and Boot’s horse lifted its head and snorted a
warning.