Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) Read online

‘Could be, hoss,’ Angel said. ‘Could be.’

  The animal moved more quickly, almost as if it could scent salvation. Lurching now and then, but moving more quickly, the man and the animal were conscious now that there might be water ahead. Even if the river were dry, Angel knew there would be enough water below the ground to keep him and the horse alive.

  Almost an hour later, he headed the horse down a shelving bank into the arroyo which in the brief rainy season would carry the Ruidoso River. He almost fell from the saddle, scrabbling at the sand with his bare hands, cursing the stuff as it sifted through his fingers back into the shallow hole he was digging. The horse snorted once as he dug, but Angel ignored it, his whole mind focused on the task of getting down to where the water might be. He was so involved in his task that he did not hear them until the slight crack of a twig breaking behind him brought him up on his knees, whirling to face their attack, but in that moment they were on him and something slammed against his head and he went down, face forward on the sand. He was not unconscious, and he half rose to his knees again, his mind whirling with unformed thoughts, reaching for the blurred figure he could see before his face. Something smashed down on his forearm and he cried out in anguish as the arm went completely numb. Once again, something crashed against his head above the ear and he went hurtling down into an endless pit, spiraling, whirling, fluttering down like a leaf from some very tall tree, never reaching bottom where the ultimate blackness lay, some freak stubbornness keeping his mind still clawing for consciousness. There was no pain when he felt the boot grind his other arm, although he knew somewhere in his mind that he was being hurt. Although he did not know it, his body obeyed the frantic signals of his brain and he tried to get up, although he was out on his feet, and he heard, as from some far place, a rasping voice he seemed to recognize say: ‘Kill the bastard.’ Death was very near; he could feel the fluttering of huge wings around his heart, and yet his brain refused to accept it and his hand moved again towards the sound. ‘Kill him!’ someone shouted in the black-red mist of pain and he heard the boom of the shot like a faraway explosion. Something unbelievable happened in his stomach and chest and then he saw himself in a mental mirror as clearly as if shaving, his face a pure skull of agony. The image receded and he went down and down to the end of the black darkness. He groaned once and then was still.

  ‘Tough bastard,’ Johnny Boot said, dispassionately. ‘Shore took a lot of killin’.’

  ‘Hold on, Johnny,’ Mill said. They stood looking at the prone form in the long-shadowed after-noon. Angel’s mouth opened; he groaned.

  Mill’s tongue ran nervously along his lips. He smoothed his pants legs with wet hands, then took a long pull from a bottle he was holding. ‘I owe you somethin’, friend,’ he whispered.

  ‘Let it be, Willy,’ Boot said. ‘Come on, he’s finished.’

  ‘No,’ Mill said. ‘Not quite.’ And with savage and quiet precision he began to kick Angel’s body, picking the tenderest and most vulnerable points, aiming carefully, poising his thick body and striking with all his power. The first couple of times Angel grunted from the depths of his unconsciousness. Once he opened his mouth as if to groan, but a trickle of blood was all that emerged. After that, there was only the ugly thudding sound of Mill’s kicks. Boot stood to one side, a sickly expression on his face. It was a long time before the fat man stopped.

  Chapter Seven

  There are deep recesses in the human mind into which the spirit can retreat. Sometimes, if it retreats too far, the return journey is impossible, and the shell which the spirit still inhabits is taken somewhere and what it contains is pronounced insane. Sometimes, in terrible illness, the pain will cause a similar retreat, for the darkness is safe and coming back means facing the agony that awaits. In such cases, a man will often will himself over the black borderline into death; or the physicians attending him will write on the charts they keep to show that it is not their fault: do not resuscitate. The endless capabilities of the human body are not measurable. There is a blackness beyond the darkness of pain and close to death, and men have been there and returned. Angel was in such a place.

  Somewhere in that darkness he felt something. He knew instinctively what it was and he knew that he must move back towards the light. In whatever part of his brain the decision was made, a battery of warnings was flashed by other parts of his consciousness which warned him to stay where he was in the safe blackness, quiet and undisturbed. The warnings spoke of the awaiting pain and yet the faint spark that was life insisted that he try. He knew that he must try and he came back in terrible fear for then he knew that he must face the pain.

  Even as he came up from where he was he felt the pain start, but he kept on coming and the pain came more strongly as he did but now his brain had identified the sensation he had felt and he opened his eyes to see it, even as his broken nostrils registered the rank carrion smell of the buzzard sitting on the ground near his head, beady eyes alert, beak poised for the first stabbing peck at his eyes. He drew a deep and ragged breath and the waiting pains came together in a crescendo that made him scream in agony and spiral back down into the blackness. It was enough; his trailing scream startled the huge black bird, which soared upwards in a tight circle, cackling in panic, swooping to join a screeching trio of its brothers on the whitened branches of a dead iron-wood tree.

  He felt as if he had been in the blackness for a long time, but it was only a few minutes before he opened his eyes again. Once more, the pain came; but this time he was ready for it, knew it for the enemy it was. A sound emerged from his mouth that might have been a curse or a prayer. He was lying face down on the rock-strewn sand, and the sun was brightening the arroyo. It was not hot. He thought about it for a long time and then spoke. The word was without meaning, but what he said was ‘morning.’ Then hearing came, and he heard the myriad buzz of flies around the patch of sticky, half-dried blood beneath his body. He heard the steady screech of the buzzards in the ironwood tree.

  Morning. He had lain there all night. That coyotes had not ripped his body open he could only attribute to the possibility that even during his deep unconsciousness he had stirred, or groaned. Any movement at all would have been enough to keep the cowardly predators away. But they would not have gone far. He pictured them sitting at a safe distance, tongues lolling, waiting. The buzzards screeched monotonously. ‘Yes,’ he said to himself.

  Getting his body turned over and levering himself into a half-sitting position took him the best part of half an hour, a half hour of the most excruciating agony. Head reeling, no strength in his arms, he lay gasping on the ground as the sun climbed up into the molten sky and seared his skin. Slowly he let the signals come to his brain, noting them as dispassionately as a surgeon.

  His right arm was numb, the wrist a puffy, swollen mass of purple and black bruises. Flexing his fingers carefully, he awaited the screeching pain of broken bone. None came. He nodded. Good. The effort had exhausted him. He lay down again. Time passed, time without meaning. He hitched his body around until he lay half curled on the ground and could see his own body. With the stronger fingers of his left hand he tore away the blood-soaked shirt and forced himself to look at the wound in his middle. He was afraid and he knew it. To be gunshot meant days of blinding agony even if a man were near help. Out here ... he shut his mind to that. It would have been easy then to lie back and let the whole world slide away, let death rise in him like water at a dam, slowly, lapping him in cold oblivion. All he had to do was let go. Then the memory of the voice that he had heard come back to him and he knew he remembered it. Johnny Boot! He thought carefully of the man’s face, fixing it in his mind, sorting out the features the way a drunken man will go through a bunch of keys. He saw Boot’s face clearly; visualized him pulling the trigger, saying ‘Tough bastard.’ Then he let the hatred seep slowly into him, growing, tunneling along his veins, building to a force that made him move deliberately for the first time. And then he knew that he wanted to live. He would
live to kill Boot He nodded idiotically as if someone had spoken the words to him, and the feral smile of a wolf touched his broken mouth. Yes, he told himself. He would live. Then he started to work out what he had to do.

  He lay quietly for another five or ten minutes, although he had no real conception of time. He closed his eyes and ears to everything else. Then he sat up again, moving very slowly and carefully, testing himself against the pains, moving only against the ones he knew he could control. He took a longer look at the wound in his middle, forcing himself to accept whatever he found. The bullet wound was low on the right side, just below the ribcage and about three inches in. It had torn through his body. He reached behind himself with the good left hand, fingers finding the mush of the ragged exit hole. He traced its outlines; about the size of a spur rowel, slick with blood but as far as he could tell not pumping blood steadily. A clean wound. He was weak from loss of blood, but the bullet had gone through him. He nodded, and looked around. Something moved in the clumped ocotillo, and he went cold with fear. But then he saw the grey black pelt and knew it was a coyote. The buzzards still watched. He shook his head. ‘Not me, you don’t,’ the movement said. His horse was gone. They had stripped him of his gunbelt and empty gun, and taken his boots. They? Two of them ? What did he remember? Something. There must have been two of them. And that meant Mill was the other one. Boot and Mill. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Blackstone had called them. Yes.

  He swung his legs around and nearly blacked out again from the surge of pain that racked his frame. Ribs, he thought. He moved both shoulders up and down, very easily. Nothing grated, although the pain was intense. Maybe nothing’s busted. He sure as hell hoped not. The thought of a broken rib end spearing into his lung . . . no, he would not think about that, either. His glance moved all around him. They had left nothing. He was barefoot, a long way from anywhere, weaponless, without water, busted up. He had not drunk anything for almost two days. He knew there was little hope of surviving another. Only his iron constitution had brought him through as far as this. Then he remembered where he was. The arroyo! He turned on his left side and began to scoop at the sand with his good hand. The pain raced through him like liquid fire, but he ignored it, scooping away with bleeding fingers at the gritty desert sand, widening the hole, the earth beneath gradually becoming firmer, then after a while a shade darker. He kept on with the intense determination of the totally insane.

  After more than an hour of this, every drop of moisture in his body had been leeched out, and he felt the soft dribble of blood from the wound in his side. But in that moment, he felt the trickle of water on his fingers, and into the hole he had dug a brown liquid seeped, about an inch deep, settling, even as he looked, back into the sand. He scrabbled at the wet sand, pawing it up and away from him and the water seeped slowly back. Ripping off his shirt he pushed it into the hole and clamped the wet rags to his broken lips. The relief it brought was almost sexual. He swabbed at his side with the wet shirt, wiping away the blood, cleaning the entrance wound and the larger exit hole. Then he padded the shirt and wedged it in his belt so that the damp part was against the wound at the back. His whole body and mind alert and refreshed by the few drops of liquid, he resumed his digging. In another half hour, he had a respectable-sized pool of brackish water. He drank sparingly. Too much water now could kill him. He washed himself all over, soaking as much of his clothing as he could with water, trying in the most elementary way to replace the body fluids he had yielded to the merciless sun. By late afternoon he was sitting up without trouble, eased of the terrifying dryness which had made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, swollen and immovable.

  ‘Now,’ he said to himself. You’re a big, tough man, Angel. Whip your weight in wildcats. Strong men grow pale when you walk into the room. OK, let’s see you stand up.’

  When he was on his feet the world reeled for a few moments and then his vision cleared. He had felt something like a slick internal ball bearing moving, and knew his wound had opened up again, and a moment later the soft trickle of blood tickled his skin. He shrugged fatalistically. The bleeding wasn’t heavy: he could stand it. How much blood had he lost altogether? No way of knowing. What difference anyway? He might die if he started traveling. He was dead for sure if he didn’t.

  He tottered a few weak steps. God, he could hardly walk! The sharp stones cut his feet through the socks. The heat was terrible. The throbbing, continuous pain was as bad as it had ever been. He found he was on his knees with no recollection of having fallen. The buzzards sat in the ironwood tree and waited and watched. They had all the time in the world.

  Angel had a few things going for him that Mill and Boot had not known. His years as the Justice Department’s special investigator had taught him a thing or two about being left weaponless. After his first few assignments he had visited the Armorer in the echoing basement on the Tenth Street side of the Justice building and explained his needs. It had taken a while to get what he wanted made up, but the Armorer had been enthused with the whole idea and had come up with one or two refinements of his own. Inside Angel’s belt he had made a channel, and into that channel threaded a yard of piano wire with two ordinary flat wooden pegs at each end. Angel unthreaded the wire now, dangling it from his good left arm. He then unclipped the belt buckle, which split into two halves; between them was a wafer-thin metal square with two razor sharp edges, made of Solingen steel. He found a fallen branch about three feet long beneath the ironwood tree which was more or less straight. Slitting it with the square of steel and then putting the square into the slit, one corner pointing outwards, he bound the wire around the neck of what was now his makeshift spear. If he had had his boots, he would also have had the pair of fine flat throwing knives which were stitched into the sides. He felt better with some kind of weapon, even one as primitive as the makeshift spear.

  Using the spearhead he sliced strips from his leather vest and made rough pads for his feet, tying them tightly across the instep. He had no way to carry water. He scooped down to the wetness in his waterhole and drank as much as he could without feeling sick. It would have to do. He took a sighting on the sun and struck out towards the south, following the course of the Ruidoso.

  Every step was painful. He disregarded the pain. If it came so strong that it became a warning which he could not disregard, then he would stop. Until then he would forget it, forget everything like a wounded wolf which will kill itself to get back to its lair. He knew something about the capability of the human body: he had learned that in training with the Department. It could go on a lot longer than the brain would admit. The brain would suggest, persuade, seduce the body into believing it had nothing more to give, but there was always more. Angel was traveling on that now.

  He went well for a while. But the sun was still his enemy. It seared his skin, blistering his unprotected shoulders and back. It leeched the water he had drunk out of his system. The terrain conspired with the sun to tax him. His feet dragged in the sandy dirt. Across the empty wilderness Angel staggered on, repeating to himself in a maddened mumble the name that kept him going, left foot and then right, left and right, left right, Johnny Boot, Johnny Boot. The sun swung over and started to slide down towards the mountains and still he went on at his wounded snail’s pace. The leather which had protected his feet was ribboned by the glass-edged sand, and his feet were torn and bleeding. He needed food, water. He would have to stop soon. Sundown, he told himself. Stop at sundown.

  The shadow he cast grew steadily longer and he knew it was time to start hunting. He left the open desert and moved down into the dry arroyo of the Ruidoso, seeking a certain kind of rock formation. His swollen eyes soon found what he was seeking: a weather-scored, many-creviced pile of rock on the far bank, with a flat and sandy patch around it. He waited there, slumped and motionless, until the sun began to sink. Soon, as he had expected, a sidewinder edged out from one of the cracks and moved onto the sandy patch, setting out from the coolness of its lair to hunt for it
s supper. It was about four feet long and as thick as his wrist around the body. He let it get out into the open and then moved between the snake and its rocky home. The snake saw him and kept moving towards a clump of mesquite and thin sagebrush, heading for shelter as he came after it He jabbed the makeshift spear at it and missed; the sidewinder ignored the weapon, moving steadily for the bushes. He lurched after it; if it reached the bush it would coil and he would not be able to get in close enough. He struck again and the razor-edged buckle sheared off the snake’s head. When it had stopped slashing about and lay still he skinned the body, using the buckle. He knew how to make a fire Indian fashion. It took him ten or fifteen minutes, but he soon had the dried leaves smoldering and a puff brought the flame to life. He piled more dried sage and ocotillo on the flame: it burned strongly, making no smoke. The snake he speared on a sharpened stick and cooked it, eating as much as his water-starved mouth could manage. It was hard to salivate. The snake tasted a little bit like tough chicken. It was food. He had eaten it before. A man could always survive in the desert if he knew how. The Apaches lived there. They had lived there long before the Spaniards came with guns, horses, and the means to make fire. A man could learn if he was willing to. Angel blessed the old Chiricahua scout who had taught him these things. The food gave him strength. He went to the river bed and tried again for water. He dug for a long time without luck. Too many trees, he thought. He would try further downstream in the morning. The fatigue rose in him like a black curtain and he found a notch high up in the rocks where no snakes could climb, and slept there. The night came, and with it the desert chill. He shivered, teeth chattering like castanets, as the soft desert wind scoured his unprotected skin. The sickness of his body came on him in waves. His feet throbbed, the raw cuts shrieking for relief as much as his blistered back and shoulders.