Read Warn Angel! (A Frank Angel Western--Book 9) for Free Online Page B

wanted nor expected survivors. He found his eyes
were accustomed to the reddish glare, and looking around discovered
that he was in a space between the collapsed wall and the
upright-tilted floor of what had been the caboose. The wood was
starting to smolder, and he could feel the heat of the flames on
the other side of it. He went down on one knee, breathed deeply of
the cooler air near the ground, and wormed through the A-shaped
space. He came out into flickering red brightness, faced by the
monstrous twisted jumble of the wrecked ten-wheeler. It lay on its
back, one of the huge drive wheels still turning as it sought rest
through gravitational pull. The entire body was torn apart like the
throat of a lamb brought down by a pack of hunting wolves. Tongues
of flame licked across the spilled oil and on the wood that had
been trapped beneath the crushed tender. There was no sign of
either the engineer or the fireman, and Angel knew that their
chances of having survived both the explosion and the crash were
virtually nonexistent. And O’Connor? If the little Irishman had
come through the crash, he hoped O’Connor would have enough sense
to keep his head down. The sound of horses moving on the shaley
slope told him that any thought of going to look for the little man
was out of the question. Instead he moved on noiseless feet across
the bed of the gully, away from the smoking wreck of the train. He
splashed icy water on to his face, welcoming the sudden shock of
it, then moved silently up a shelving slope toward a stand of pine
thirty or forty feet away. The cool dampness of the ground was a
welcome relief to his fire-dried skin, and he stretched his hands
in the dew-damp grass. His shirt was full of small burned holes,
his pants torn and filthy. His coat, with his wallet and money in
it, had been hanging from a peg in the caboose, as had his gunbelt
and sixgun. He cursed his own helplessness and eased back into the
shadowed trees as he saw Willowfield lead his riders across the
little creek and up to where the ruined train had ended its
terrible downward plunge.
    ‘ Check around everywhere!’ he heard
one of the men shout. ‘Make sure nobody’s alive!’
    ‘ Find the safe first!’ someone else
shouted. Angel thought he detected the nasal twang of a British
accent in the shouted command. Willowfield, he wondered? He wormed
his way through the brambles and thicketed undergrowth until he
reached a flattened bluff from which he could see down into the
basin below without being seen.
    The sun was coming up over the top of the
mountains to the west now, sending long fingers of light that
shafted through the trees like searchlights, paling the flickering
flames that still licked stubbornly at the blackened wreckage,
touching the wreathing smoke with pink fingers. Down below in the
gully, Angel could see the men moving about. One of them sat on a
horse: a gross, ugly man who waved his arms as he shouted commands
to the others. Angel caught the timbre of the voice with its nasal
twang, and knew that this must be Willowfield. Alongside the fat
man was a tow-haired youngster on a fine piebald mare. He wore a
pale blue shirt that shone in the sunlight, like silk. His
close-fitting fawn pants were tight-tailored at crotch and rump.
Angel noted the girlish shoulders, the androgynous hips and the
full, pouting mouth almost clinically before turning his attention
to a third man who was up on the sloping side of the gully shouting
something.
    ‘ One off them alife up here!’ he
shouted.
    Cropped bullet head, Angel noted, and the
rigid upright stance of a soldier. He was standing over a hunched
figure that lay on the slope where a break in the grass cover
revealed the slate base beneath the thin mountain turf. As he
watched, Angel saw the boy sitting next to Willowfield lay a hand
on the fat man’s forearm and say something. There was a plea in the
way he looked at Willowfield, who nodded.
    ‘ Wait!’ Willowfield
shouted.
    The man on