Read Online Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 by Frederick H. Christian - Free Book Online Page A

He?’
    ‘ The
feller in Santa Fe. The one come to us with the
proposition.’
    ‘ Oh,’
Angel said, feigning only mild interest. The name, the name; he willed Briggs to
say it.
    ‘ Got
talkin’ to him on the veranda outside La Fonda. You know it?’ Angel
nodded. Most of the business done among the Anglos – and not a few
of the Spanish-Americans – who lived in Santa Fe was done over a
drink after dinner on the porch of the rambling old hacienda which
had become the capital’s largest hotel. Most nights, you could go
there and meet a man with sheep, cattle, or land to sell, find a
man who wanted to buy any or all, and team up with someone who
wanted company on a trip north, south, east, or west. Just as the
Indian women sold their blankets and silver jewelry beneath the
cool arches of the Palace of the Governors, so did the businessmen
sell theirs on the lamp lit La Fonda veranda.
    ‘ We
adjourned somewhere more private. Some cantina down on the
Alameda,’ Briggs went on. ‘Said he was lookin’ for three or four
men to do a dangerous job. They had to know the Tularosa country
like the back of their own hands, he said. But if they did what he
told them, they could make twenty thousand dollars each, clear.
Shit, Angel,’ he added, ‘he might as well of said a million. Twenty
grand is big money.’
    ‘ Right,’
Angel said. The name, man, the name.
    ‘ Anyways, he sort of flamboozled around the subject for a
while, an’ then told us he’d like to ask around. Wanted to check on
us, I reckoned. Pete reckoned the same. So we figured we’d check on
him same time.’
    ‘ Pete?’
    ‘ Pete
Hainin – him an’ me an’ Jamesie Lawrence pulled the job,
remember?’
    ‘ You
never told me their second names,’ Angel said.
    ‘ Oh,’
Briggs said. ‘Thought I did. Well, anyhow …’ He took another
sizable gulp out of the almost-empty bottle, then held it up in the
firelight, squinting ruefully at the level of the
whiskey.
    ‘ Shit,
I’m plumb sorry,’ he said. ‘Here, you—’
    ‘ No,
finish it,’ Angel said.
    ‘ Right,’
Briggs said. He nodded wisely.
    ‘ You
figured you’d check on the dude,’ Angel reminded him,
    ‘ Oh.
Yeah. Well, we couldn’t find nothin’ out about him. We asked all
around town, only nobody’d ever heard of him.’
    ‘ What
was his name?’ Angel asked, idly.
    ‘ Never
found that out, neither,’ Briggs said. ‘Asked him, next night when
he looked us up in the cantina. Said we didn’t need to know that.’
    ‘ But you
knew he was from the East.’
    ‘ Hell,
yeah. You ever see a westerner wearin’ flat-heeled
boots?’
    He made it sound like a sexual
abnormality, and Angel grinned. Briggs ought to try tramping around
the concrete pavements of New York for a few hours in the
high-heeled riding boots he was wearing now. After an hour of it,
he ’d feel as
if his spine was about three inches shorter.
    ‘ What
was he, a big feller?’
    ‘ Big
enough,’ Briggs said. ‘We never see him in really good light, you
know? He allus sat in dark corners. In the cantina he allus had his
hat down over his face. Allus made us leave after he
did.’
    ‘ So he
told you about the shipment,’ Angel encouraged him.
    ‘ Right.
Knowed all about it. Where the money was, how many men on the
train. Told us exactly where we had to pull the job, how to do it.
Told us the route we had to take over the White Mountains and up to
Santa Fe. If we was chased, we was to split up. If we split up, we
had three days to get to old Fort Sumner, Beaver Smith’s saloon. If
it looked like any one of us had been taken, the other two was to
move on, nice an’ quiet. Stash the money away until it cooled, he
said.’
    ‘ He told
you the money was hot?’
    ‘ Right.
He said we’d have to hide it away for a couple of months. Then we’d
get our cut.’
    ‘ Where?’
    ‘ Said it
didn’t matter. He’d know where we were, and so he’d always be able
to find the money.’
    ‘ Wasn’t
he scared you’d