Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 Read Free Page A

the plague.
    ‘ South’d
be just as bad,’ he put in, and Leaven nodded.
    ‘ White
Sands down there,’ he muttered, referring to the forty-mile-long
stretch of dazzling white powdered gypsum and sand, where a horse
would founder in drifts of shifting sand that blew like snow,
scouring the skin off a man in a couple of hours if the wind came
up and caught him out in the open. Sure, they could skirt the White
Sands, climb the San Agustin, and drop down into Las Cruces, and
then the Mexican border. But what for? Nobody knew who they were.
The money they had stolen was untraceable. The way they had pulled
the job meant that they knew both of those things. So they would
not be trying to jump the border, and there was no reason for them
to make a man-killing run across some of the most hostile country
in the Southwest.
    ‘ Well
over hundred and fifty miles to Santa Fe,’ Ruzzin
commented.
    ‘ And
nothing to spend your money on when you get there,’ Leaven
replied.
    He knew Santa Fe. That was the
place the natives called the Americans burros – donkeys – and there wasn’t a girl over
ten that didn’t have some kind of pox. The streets were nothing
more than muddy alleys littered with the droppings of goats and
chickens, and the only drink a man could buy was tequila. And
between this point and Santa Fe – nothing. Literally, nothing. Oh,
you could say there were a few villages, if you wanted to count
huddled jacales like Belen as a village. You could say there were a few
saloons, if you wanted to count the kind of deadfalls you’d find in
Socorro. But that was all; everything else was empty, rolling land,
climbing mesas, falling canyons, dried-out runoffs, and bunch grass
that would just barely support the herds of goats the Mexicans kept
on it.
    Leaven pursed his lips again.
These are smart boys, he told himself. They knew enough to pick a
train carrying untraceable money – which might mean inside information.
They knew enough not to talk any more than they had to. They knew
enough to lay a false trail. Maybe they’d know enough to realize
that any Pink worth his pay would expect them to do that and plump
for the most likely route – which was north, ever north, keeping
Gallinas Peak on your right, north past El Cuervo and Lamy, then up
into Santa Fe. You could pick up Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe,
you could hitch up with a wagon train returning empty across the
Raton, you could head west to Arizona, north to Utah or Colorado,
east into Texas, all comfortable distances from the territorial
capital. Yes, Santa Fe was the obvious place for them to go, and
they were smart enough to know that he’d know that.
    ‘ I’m
betting they headed east,’ he said.
    ‘ I
don’t—’ Ruzzin began.
    ‘ Oh,
they’ll swing north for Santa Fe, all right,’ Leaven said. ‘But
they won’t go the way we expect. I’m goin’ to put my money on them
taking a run up into the Mescalero Reservation, across Lincoln
County to the Pecos, follow the Pecos all the way on up to Glorieta
if they like. It’s easy country once you get across the
mountains.’
    ‘ You
could be right,’ Ruzzin admitted. ‘You could be awful wrong,
too.’
    ‘ Hell,
we just lost a quarter of a million dollars, Ned!’ Leaven said. ‘We
sure as hell can’t be any wronger than that!’
    Ruzzin nodded ruefully.
    ‘ OK,
Morty,’ he said. ‘Play her as she lays.’
    ‘ We’ll
head down track,’ Leaven said. ‘See if we can pick up some horses
at Oscuro. Then head up into the mountains. Hey, you,
engineer!’
    Pat Seele came over, and Morty Leaven told
him about the conclusions he and his partner had reached and what
they were going to do.
    ‘ It’s
about ten miles, give or take, down to Oscuro,’ Leaven said. ‘Ought
to take us two, maybe three, hours. I’d say Carrizozo isn’t more
than half that far, so you ought to be there in half the time. When
you get there, find the sheriff. Tell him what we’ve done and why.
Tell him to get some men