Read Online Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2) by Frederick H. Christian - Free Book Online Page B

appearance,
dressed in a dark business suit. Only his wide brimmed Stetson and
range boots indicated his association with this country. His hair
was a dark reddish color and his eyes were the palest of pale
blues, almost colorless. He wore a white shirt and carried a small
carpetbag. Those watching had noticed he tipped his hat to the
ladies, and as he crossed the street towards the boarding house
they summed him up.
    ‘ Cattleman in town to buy stock?’
    ‘ Don’t
hardly figger. Them ain’t cowman’s hands.’
    One of the watchers,
sharper-eyed than his fellows, had noted the thin, pale hands with
their neatly trimmed fingernails. They were not the hands of a man who
spends his life among cattle or for that matter the hands of a man
used to hard physical labor.
    ‘ A
drummer, mebbe?’ opined another.
    ‘ No
sample bag,’ was the simple means of destroying that
theory.
    ‘ Some
business deal with Reynolds and Birch?’ guessed another.
    ‘ Could
be, could be.’ The man had gone into the boarding house and their
interest evaporated. Only one man at the plaza recognized the
newcomer. Jacey Reynolds had been idly leaning against the south
wall of the Alhambra, away from the knot of spectators watching the
arrival of the stagecoach, his hat tipped forward low over his
eyes. After a moment he hastened into the Alhambra.
    ‘ He’s
here,’ he announced sibilantly.
    ‘ Good,’ Birch said. ‘Where’d he go?’
    ‘ Over
to the hotel,’ Reynolds said.
    Birch nodded. ‘Just fine,’ he
said. ‘Set that dinner up.’

Chapter Ten
    Nobody saw Larkin leave town. He had been
told before he left Tucson that a horse would be left saddled
behind the livery stable, and he swung into the saddle and moved
the animal slowly away from Daranga, heading into the foothills of
the mountains north of town. He had changed his clothes, and was
now dressed in a dark brown shirt and pants, his scuffed boots
showing no reflection of the early morning sun. The butt of the
six-gun nestled in a cutaway holster at his side was matt black,
and the Henry rifle in the saddle scabbard had been treated so that
the nickel plating had no shine either. When Larkin moved against
the landscape, the unpretentious brown of his clothes blended with
the dun-dusty configurations of the land.
    He headed up across the Twin
Peaks and down the northern side of the hills, his destination
firmly fixed in his mind. He had no feelings about the job ahead of
him. The man who hired him had been succinct and specific. He had
described the man Larkin was to kill with care and detail, and
explained the man ’s work habits and patterns thoroughly. Together he and his
employer had gone over the details of the trails, the topography,
the pitfalls. He had never been in the Rio Blanco country but he
knew it like a book. Larkin was a professional: he never got into
anything without careful preparation. This one looked easy. Most of
them did. Most of them were. It was when a man started thinking he
didn’t have to take pains that the trouble started. Larkin wasn’t
looking for any trouble. A nice clean job, the Man had said. One
thousand now, another thousand when you come back and tell me it’s
done. Larkin grinned. A man could have a hell of a time in Nogales
with a couple of thousand American dollars.
    He found a stand of timber
which overlooked the trail he wanted, and he staked the horse some
way back where it could not be seen from either below or above. He
watched the house below. It was a fine, well-built ranch. It had that solid,
settled appearance of a place built to last by a man who intended
to stay, and he knew from his briefing that George Perry was that
kind of man, and could have built no other kind of house. He
stretched out on the ground and watched the trail through a small
pair of binoculars he had once won in a gambling joint from a 6th
Cavalry officer. They were good field glasses. He could see
everything he wanted to see. He watched Walt Clare ride