Shoot Angel! Read Free

I’ve got fresh apple-pie with cream that was still in the
cow a few hours ago.’
    ‘ If
you could bring me a pot of coffee to start it’ll do just
fine.’
    The girl nodded and returned to
the kitchen. Angel sat back and gazed out through the window. There
weren ’t very
many people out on the street. Liberty seemed to have retired for
lunch. He wondered where Harry Culp was—if the man was still in
Liberty. Angel had lost a lot of time due to getting himself set
afoot back in Arizona. Then he’d gone and walked in on that
business with the Reece brothers and the Apache raiding-party at
that way station. Matters had become a little difficult for a time
and Culp had ceased to be Angel’s prime concern. But the
interruption was over now and Angel had taken up the chase
again.
    As the Attorney
General ’s
last telegraph message had suggested, he had picked up Culp’s cold
trail quickly, allowing nothing to distract him. The Old Man had a
knack of being able to convey his personal feelings even through
the mechanical and impersonal limitations of the telegraph’s
printed words. Angel had been in no doubt as to the Attorney
General’s annoyance. The Attorney General did not like his
investigators breaking off from an assignment, unless the
circumstances were very exceptional. Angel was left with the
distinct feeling that his reasons—a dead horse and the combination
of outlaw gang and warring Apaches—lacked what the Attorney General
considered to be a justifiable excuse.
    On his return to Yuma Angel had
rigged himself up with a fresh outfit and had then painstakingly
gone through the motions of tracking Culp. It had taken him three days to cut
the trail, winding its dusty way across the heat-seared Arizona
badlands, gradually slipping off towards the northeast beyond Lake
Havasu, across endless, empty miles. The three days had become
five, then six. Angel had managed to gain a little knowledge about
Culp at each place he stopped for food or water or somewhere to
sleep for the night. Each tiny, desolate town, each isolated ranch,
all furnished some information about the direction in which Culp
appeared to be heading. Angel couldn’t guess at Culp’s ultimate
destination, whether the man intended to meet anyone. Not that
those items really mattered. All Frank Angel wanted was Harry Culp
and the $75,000 he had with him. Culp was wanted for his part in a
complicated swindle involving government officials dealing in
Indian affairs, namely the sale of land belonging to tribes in the
southwest. The swindle had been broken up after long months of
painstaking undercover investigation by the Department of Justice.
Angel had only been put on the case during the final weeks, after
one of the department’s investigators had been shot down and killed
in Tucson. He had been able to assist in the capture of the men
involved—except for one. That had been Harry Culp. And Angel
intended to right that wrong as soon as he could.
    The town of Liberty, basking in
the shadow of the Colorado Plateau, a tiny spot of civilization in
the middle of nowhere, was yet another stopover in
Culp ’s
seemingly endless ride. Angel was sure the man had taken time to
rest here after the long journey up into the rocky escarpments of
the plateau. Beyond lay the dry miles of the Painted Desert and the
whole of the way ahead, curving west and east, became a maze of
rocky canyons and gorges, a rising landscape of mountainous
terrain, It was a wide, empty, savage country, and if Culp intended
crossing it he would need to stock up on his supplies …
    ‘ Coffee!’
    Angel was dragged out of his
reflections by the sound of the girl ’s voice. He nodded his thanks and watched
her cross the floor on her way back to the kitchen. The smell of
fresh coffee filled his nostrils and he eagerly filled the large
china mug she had provided. The coffee was delicious. Angel downed
half the pot over the next few minutes, slowly beginning to feel
partway human again.