Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) (15 page)

‘
Good,’
he wigwagged. ‘We are coming.’

Once again Koh-eet-senko nodded, as
though he had known all along that no other response was possible.
He kicked his painted pony into a walk and the warriors fell into
line behind him.

‘
Hey,
boss,’ Des Elliott whispered urgently as Nix followed suit. ‘Where
we headin’?’

‘
We’re
going to a party,’ Nix said sourly. ‘So look as if you like the
idea. Tell the men to keep their guns handy and stay close
together. And that means until we ride out of that camp, got
it?’

‘
You bet
I got it,’ Elliott said. ‘You know what?’

‘
What?’

‘
I
ain’t sure I wouldn’t have rather stayed in the swamp with
Angel.’

~*~

Angel was long gone from the swampy
lakeside.

The late afternoon sun was hot,
and welcome after the steamy-dank atmosphere of the jungly
undergrowth. It took away the persistent chill sourness from
Angel
’s body
as he made his way south along the river, but he wasn’t in good
shape and he knew it. His wounded arm throbbed, and his head was
light. He felt sometimes as if he was having to reach his feet down
to touch the ground, a strange, floaty feeling that came and went.
Once he found himself lying face down in the dirt with no clear
recollection of how he had gotten there. He didn’t see the
dust-cloud raised by the returning
Hoh’ees
tribe, nor the smaller one raised by Nix
and his men as they arrowed across to intercept Koh-eet-senko’s
warriors. Frank Angel was too intent on just making the next bend
in the river, using cover and watching for pursuit. Most of all he
was intent on just plain keeping going: it was a long way to
the
hacienda
and his troubles would be far from over when he got there.
Nightfall found him about halfway to his destination, and he
stopped to rest because he had to. He decided he would risk a tiny
belly-fire, the kind hunting Apaches build when they are on the
killing trail, a tiny fire burning in a deep-scooped hole over
which the warrior arches his body, concealing the faint glow and
receiving body warmth to keep out the deep chill of the desert
night.

He took out the flat silver
flask that had been included in his survival kit, and splashed some
of the brandy on his ragged arm wound. It stung like liquid fire as
he mopped the wound clean with strips torn from his shirt. He took
a healthy swig of the spirit, feeling it course through his body, a
moving glow that settled in his empty belly. With a regretful shrug
he poured the rest out on the ground. He needed the flask more than
the liquor, and with great care he filled the flask with water from
the shallowest edge of the river. Then he put it on the glowing
coals of his tiny fire and when it was boiled, used it to clean and
disinfect the arm wound. It was stiffened and swollen, but the firm
dressing of shirt-cloth and the cleansing effect of the water and
the brandy eased the pain. His arm pulsed now as if alive, but he
was at least reasonably confident that there was no infection in
the wound. When that was done, he fed some more of the tiny dry
sticks into his fire hole, then wormed into the undergrowth and
sat, as unmoving as a stone idol, while the night strengthened its
hold over the
star strewn sky, and the creatures of the night grew bold
and left their lairs.

The big old jackrabbit never had a
chance.

He
lollopped into Angel’s range, nostrils
twitching, ready to hitch-kick his way out of danger at the
slightest movement. But he was downwind of the stone-still man who
sat with the slim Solingen steel throwing knife laid against his
right shoulder. The jack hopped nearer, foraging, and then erupted
into movement as it saw the whip-down movement of Angel’s hand, but
fast as it was, the knife was faster.

‘
Supper
in the pot,’ Angel said, and started skinning the rabbit. He gutted
and cleaned it where it had fallen. Owls and other night predators
would clean up after him, and leave no waste. Nature’s food cycle
was beautifully worked out. He carried the carcass back to his
little fire, and now cut a long thin stick from which he stripped
the bark. Then two Y-shaped branches were jammed into the ground,
the rabbit spitted with the longer one.

When he had finished eating,
Angel made a brush mattress and lay back to rest for a
little while. He
knew he would get no sleep this night, and he would need to muster
as much strength as he could beforehand. He lay completely relaxed,
letting his toes slacken, then his ankles, then the calves, the
knees, all the way up his body He put all thought out of his head
and concentrated upon the figure one. He held the image of it in
the front of his mind, and when any other thought intruded he
shoved it back away, returning to the figure one. After a little
while his breathing slowed, his heartbeat deepened. He remained
like this for perhaps half an hour, or a little longer. Then he got
himself ready to move on.

It was full dark now, and the
stars were sprinkled all over the sky. Someone had once told him
that on a night like this you could see up to two thousand five
hundred of them. There seemed to be more, somehow, and close enough
to reach up and touch. A soft breeze had sprung up from the south,
and the soft purr of the river made a gentle background to his
thoughts. He might have been alone in the world, moving
undiscovered through some garden wilderness. He smiled at his
thoughts. This valley might be many things, but it was not a
garden. Now he saw the lights of the
hacienda
ahead of him in the darkness, and he moved
more cautiously, wary as any fox. He had one vital task to perform
before he went inside the stockade, and he moved up the riverside
to the place where it must be done. Then he stood erect and drew in
a deep, deep breath. It was time. Now, somehow, he had to go in
there and kill the deadly Oriental, Yat Sen. Or get killed
trying.

He waited until the hours
before dawn.

He was conscious of wasted time, but
it was time he had to waste. He needed all the advantage he could
get, and even one as small as this. Yat Sen was not an ordinary
man, but man he was, and like all men, his reflexes and his
resistance would be at their lowest in the cold hours before the
false dawn. With the handicap of his wounded arm, Angel needed all
the advantage he could manage, and on this basis he picked his
time. He knew, as all doctors know, as all tyrants and secret
police have always known, that it is in the deathwatch hours that
fear grows to the size of a monster. The doctors know they will
lose their weak ones, the ones already near death, in these empty,
unfriendly hours. The tyrants know that it is the time to come and
hammer on the door and shout your name. The secret police know it
is in the hours before dawn that you will finally break. The
stockade was silent when he went over the wall, dark and deserted.
There were no guards. Angel worked his way around the deep-shadowed
wall, getting his bearings again, seeing some things he had not
seen the first time.

In the northeastern corner of
the stockade was a long earthen ramp and squatting at its flattened
crest, muzzle poking out and aimed more or less at the site of
the
Comanche
encampment, was a well-kept Army cannon, a twelve-pounder by the
look of it. There was a pyramid of shells at one side of it, a
powder bucket suspended from the center of the axle. Angel allowed
himself a thin smile: Nix had not been jesting when he said he used
the Comanches but did not trust them.

He flitted like a ghost across
the open space to the lower arm of the L-shaped
hacienda.
In this short extension to the
main house was housed the machinery that supported Hercules Nix’s
domain, the pumps and the switches and the controls that sent water
down the valley, filled the lake beside the Indian camp, kept the
swampy jungle and the muddy lake alive. He thought back to Welsh Al
Davies and the fetid fleabag hotel in Galveston. It seemed like
years ago.

Like an extension of one of the
shadows that sheltered him, Angel moved to the door of the machine
room. It was, like all the doors in the building, of solid oak
lined with steel. He bent close to examine the locks. Double-action
tumbler locks by the look of them. Far too good to be picked, even
by a trained man like himself, without tools. In books, people
opened doors with little lengths of metal, or a
lady
’s
hairpin. In real life it was a little harder. A man named Joseph
Bramah had once patented a lock that took an experienced locksmith
over fifty-one hours to pick. That was using all the right tools,
and more than ninety years ago. There was a man back East named
Linus Yale who had acted as instructor to the Justice Department.
He had shown them the secrets of every kind of lock, and designed
lock picks for them to open them with. Yet even he had admitted
that many locks would simply take too damned long to open, and that
the surest way to get into a building quickly was to blow the
damned door down. Well, he couldn’t do that. Not just yet,
anyway.

First, there was the matter of Yat
Sen.

In the cool-shadowed darkness,
he slowly stripped off his clothes, leaving only a makeshift
loincloth made from the remnants of his shirt. He padded softly
around the house to
the patio in front of the building, and stood there,
mustering himself. When his breathing was deep and controlled, he
knew he was as ready as he’d ever be.

‘
Yat
Sen!’ he shouted. ‘Yat Sen!’

He was about to shout again when a
light went on upstairs, then another. He waited, poised on the cold
stone floor, the chill breeze raising gooseflesh on his naked body.
Light glinted on the knife in his hand. He wanted Yat Sen to see
the knife. The curtains of one of the second-story rooms twitched,
and he thought he could see the slim shape of Victoria Nix, her
eyes dark smudges in the pale blur of her face.

Then Yat Sen loomed in the
doorway, his squat body silhouetted against the lighted interior.
There was no expression on his face. He looked at Angel and then at
the knife in Angel
’s hand and nodded.

‘
Boss
say you plob’ly pletty good. Him dead?’

‘
Not
yet, Yat Sen,’ Angel said. ‘He’s got to be broken before I kill
him.’

‘
Ah,’
Yat Sen said, nodding again. ‘Un’stan’ this.’

‘
I have
to help the woman, Yat Sen,’ Angel said, watching the Oriental like
a hawk for any sudden movement. ‘Are you going to try to stop
me?’

‘
Yes,’
Yat Sen said, as if he had been deliberating. ‘But un’stan’ this
also.’

‘
Well,’
Angel said, crouching slightly. ‘Get at it.’

Yat Sen came forward, hands
weaving, body crouched and tense, legs bent slightly, and the slit
eyes almost closed in concentration. He had on only a pair of
cotton drawers, and his solid, hard body gleamed like old oiled
brass. Then without warning his body arched into a running kick so
fast that Angel almost failed to respond. He recovered on the
instant and slashed the knife up and across in a whipping arc
designed to slit the tendon of one of Yat Sen
’s flying heels. Yet he missed,
for somehow the Oriental did something Angel had never seen any man
do. He modified his flying kick, turning his body and pulling back
one foot that rapped hard against the inside of Angel’s forearm,
jarring his slash off target. Then Yat Sen had landed in a crouch
and was moving again before he stopped turning, a hiss emerging
from his compressed mouth as his right hand flickered forward like
a striking snake. Angel struck down at it with the knife and as he
moved knew he had been fooled. Yat Sen’s feint left his right side
exposed, and he just managed to parry a scything blow that would
have broken his neck by blocking Yat Sen’s rock-hard forearm with
his own left arm. The brutal shock of the collision brought a yell
of pain from Angel, and he rolled back and away from Yat Sen before
the Oriental could strike again. Up on his feet in an instant, he
thought he saw a flare of realization in Yat Sen’s narrowed eyes
and cursed the luck. Now Yat Sen would know he was hurt, and he
would follow up, punishing him by striking repeatedly at the weak
spot. Yat Sen was fighting in the
Tai-Chi Chuan
fashion, but he had discarded that
discipline’s soft and graceful movements for a brutal, killing
style. Angel came up out of his crouch and tried again with the
knife, but fast as he was, Yat Sen was even faster. His foot
slammed into Angel’s wrist, numbing the hand, and simultaneously
the Oriental whipped his right hand upward and across, smashing it
against the upper part of Angel’s left arm. The knife looped
upward, catching a flicker of light from the windows, and
disappeared soundlessly into the bushes as Angel felt the warm gush
of blood under his wounded arm. He backed away, guard up, and Yat
Sen stalked after him, the wicked trace of a smile on his slash of
a mouth. He came in fast and struck, one-two, one, one-two, then
retreated as quickly. Although Angel struck the man very hard
several times with his good right hand, he might as well have been
hitting a plank for all the effect it seemed to have on Yat Sen.
Yat Sen grinned and came in again, and hit Angel beneath the
ribcage with a looping chop that completely defeated Angel’s
attempt to parry it. The blow whacked the breath out of the
American’s body, and he was stock still for a moment in which Yat
Sen hit him hard across the bony protuberance above the right ear.
Angel went down on the stone patio with bells ringing in his head
and a roaring blackness behind his eyes. Through the mist he saw
the squat figure coming at him, and he kicked out upward in sheer
desperation, catching Yat Sen’s kneecap and spilling him in a
rolling ball. Yat Sen was up and ready for the counter-attack that
Angel had been unable to launch, and grinned for real, now. Cat and
mouse, Angel thought, as the breath labored back into his lungs. He
realized Yat Sen was pulling his blows, playing with him to make
the combat take a little longer. The moon face was beaming with the
confident knowledge of being able to end the contest whenever Yat
Sen wished to do so, and Angel felt a faint, distant feather-touch
of fear. The man was impervious to hurt. He had hit him a dozen
times with blows that would have stopped any ordinary man in his
tracks, dead. They just glanced off the coppery hide.