Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) by Frederick H. Christian Page B

chopped
backward and upward at Kuden’s throat. The German coughed and
retched, his eyes bugging as he rose upright as if trying to escape
the gagging paralysis of his Adam’s apple, and as he did, Angel
turned and kicked the man’s right leg out from beneath
him.
    Kuden went down with a screech of agony that
sent birds chattering in scolding panic through the silent trees.
He lay face down in the flattened grass, his whole body humping
over with the pain, and now for the first time, Angel saw the dark
wet spread of blood on the man’s thigh. Kuden rolled over on his
back, his face distorted in a rictus of pain as he tried to get up
off the floor. Angel made his decision, and when Kuden was on his
knees, Angel clenched the knuckles of his right hand and hit the
man with considered strength, just above the point at the back of
his neck were there was a V-shaped joint above the second cervical
vertebra. Kuden went down face forward in the grass, out like a
doused candle. With deft movements, Angel searched and disarmed the
unconscious man.
    Then he set about seeing what he could do to
patch him up. Capture, not kill, the Old Man had said.
    ~*~
    ‘ Leek mein
Arsch!’ Kuden snarled.
    ‘ Not just now,’ Angel said, gently.
‘Let’s try again. Which route are they taking?’
    This time the German just spat and Angel
shrugged. Kuden wasn’t his top priority, and by and large, his
information was likely to be only confirmation of Angel’s already
formulated estimate. He wondered whether the attorney general
realized what he’d required with that ‘capture, not kill’ edict.
After he’d cleaned up the ragged hole in Kuden’s thigh as best he
could with boiled river water and some iodine, Angel had bound the
German’s leg firmly with bandage strips made from a spare shirt he
found in the man’s bedroll. Then he had cut two stout sticks and
fashioned a clumsy splint—two reasons for that. One, it was the
right thing to do, medically; two, it would prevent Kuden doing
anything sudden. Later, Angel had made a travois, rounded up
Kuden’s horse, strapped the trailing A-shaped litter to its saddle,
and led the way up the trail looking for all the world like some
Ute moving house. After a couple of hours, he had found what he was
looking for: a sheltered cave on the flank of the mountain, not too
high for Kuden to get up there. He’d ignored the man’s puzzled face
on the way up, and ignored him as he built a fire and cooked some
food. The cave smelled like a cat’s litter: puma had been here, he
guessed. Their acrid tang soon dispersed in the smell of the wood
smoke. He gave Kuden something to eat and then told him the bad
news. Kuden’s answer had been, to say the least of it,
uncooperative.
    ‘ Kuden,’ he said, sadly. ‘I’ll give
you one more chance.’
    Kuden said nothing. He turned his head away
ostentatiously, staring at the patch of sky above the mountains
that could be seen from the entrance to the cave.
    Angel sighed. If information kept on being
this hard to come by, he was going to end up being some kind of
Marquis de Sade. He tried once more. ‘Let me put it another way,’
he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. Then you tell me whether I’m
right or wrong. OK?’
    He allowed himself a grin at Kuden’s
expression; it would be worth talking it out, just to hear what it
sounded like. There was always the chance Kuden would react. Not
much of a chance, perhaps. But a chance.
    ‘ Here’s how it happened, Kuden,’ Angel
said. ‘Near as I can figure. Your boss Willowfield knew nobody
could derail a train, rip off a quarter of a million dollars, kill
Federal agents, and not have the law on his back trail before you
could say “holdup.” Maybe he was surprised I turned up so
quick—there wasn’t any way he could have known I’d survived the
train wreck—but it made no difference to the plan. He told Falco
and the rest of you to hole up and wait for the word. As soon as
the law turned up,