Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page B

little green things on the walls, and he would
have sold the veritable body of Christ for the price of a drink.
Nevertheless, he was terrified of telling Angel the answers to his
questions. He laid a trembling hand on Angel ’s forearm and begged him to keep
secret the source of his information, begged him never to reveal
how he had learned any of the secrets of Hercules Nix. Angel had
gravely given his promise, knowing it wasn’t worth a tinker’s
curse. As soon as Welsh Al got his belly full of tonsil-paint
again, he himself would be telling anyone who’d listen. Angel was
not inclined to believe that Hercules Nix had any spies in
Galveston, although it mattered less than nothing if he had. He had
never used his own name. All Nix would ever learn, if anyone asked,
was that someone was poking about, someone talked to Welsh Al.
There was no way for Angel to know that within two hours of his
leaving Galveston, Welsh Al was found in an alley off Skid Row with
his throat cut, or that Hercules Nix knew full well who it was that
was asking questions about his hidden valley.
    So Angel stood now on the crest
of the mountain and gazed with reflective eyes at Hercules
Nix ’s
kingdom. He knew all about the hacienda with its fort-like stockade, its interior
defenses. He knew about the chromium steel bars on the windows,
made of the same metal that James Eads had specified in the
building of the bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis. He knew
about the two-inch-thick doors of solid oak lined with the same
metal, and the reinforced concrete walls—faced with soft local
stone to mask their harshness—built to the specifications of the
German, Wayss. He knew the rough general topography of the valley
in which the hacienda lay. He would have been appalled if he had known how little
he actually knew but even so, it was a damned sight more than Jaime
Lorenz had known. Had Lorenz found the place, or had they taken him
and brought him in here? He might find that out soon.
    The land below looked dry,
burned, barren. He could see no trails. He headed downhill, picking
up speed as the heat went out of the sun and the slope ahead of him
steepened. Another hour found him on the valley floor, moving
northward along the wall of the San Miguels, heading for a long
jutting spur of rock that pointed westward toward the sheltering
trees he could see on the horizon. He planned to make a base among
them, foraying outward to explore the valley, familiarize himself
with Nix ’s
domain. From a distance he looked like some small creature, antlike
on the massive scale of the mesas.
    In the lookout platform on the
northeastern corner of the stockade, Hercules Nix lowered the
powerful telescope through which he had been watching
Angel ’s
progress.
    ‘ Looks
like he’s heading for the forest,’ Elliott remarked.
    ‘ Yes,’
Nix mused. ‘Are any of The People there?’
    ‘ Mostly
women an’ kids,’ Elliott replied. ‘The men are off raidin’. As
usual.’
    ‘ Good,’
Nix smiled. ‘We don’t want anything—untoward—happening to our
Angel. Not just yet, anyway.’
    ‘ How
long you aimin’ to let him run round out thar, anyways?’ Elliott
asked. He was puzzled by Nix’s curiously untypical reaction to the
appearance of this intruder who had not only found a new way into
the valley, but was being given its freedom. Normally, no matter
where or how the perimeter had been breached, the appearance of any
white or Mexican in the valley was the signal for Elliott and his
men to be ordered out. They were not permitted to return to the
stockade until the interloper had been run down and
captured.
    ‘ As long
as he wishes,’ Nix purred.
    ‘ I don’t get it.’
    ‘ The
fact that you don’t “get it”, as you so elegantly put it, is a
matter of supreme unimportance,’ Nix told his lieutenant. ‘The only
important thing is that our little fly eventually finds his way
into the spider’s parlor.’
    ‘ You
goin’ to sit back, an’ let