by Jack Higgins
'And that is where Ortiz is going?' Rivera asked.
Nachita nodded, and Chavasse said, 'It makes sense. He's obviously made those who refused to follow him any longer take the tougher trail. Their tongues will be hanging out before they reach Agua Verde.'
Rivera nodded. 'This time he's played right into our hands.'
'It's too easy,' Dillinger said.
'You give Ortiz too much credit,' Rivera said.
Chavasse shook his head. 'I agree. It does sound too easy.' He turned to Nachita. 'Ortiz knows we're following. How can we hope to surprise him?'
The old Apache permitted himself one of his rare smiles. 'There are ways, but we must wait and see. First I shall scout the trail.' He mounted his pony and rode away.
Dillinger got the canteen from the back seat and offered it to Rose. She drank, then he did. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he noticed that she was looking at him in a different way.
'Johnny,' she said, 'your friend Fallon knew who you really are. Now the only one is Rivera. If your enemy knows, shouldn't a friend know.'
Dillinger looked at her eyes, the feature that had first attracted him to her. Would the truth blow everything up?
'Come on, Rose,' he said matter-of-factly, 'you know who I am.'
'I know you robbed banks up north. I know you are too familiar with guns. The Federalistas are looking for this car, but who are you?'
Women always find out, sooner or later. He knew that.
'If Johnny is the first part,' she said, 'is Dillinger the second?'
'You win the big prize.'
'If I had to fall in love with a thief, why not the best?'
'The best are the bankers. They steal from the people every day and get away with it. When I unload them once in a while, all it does is raise their insurance rates a bit. It doesn't stop them from stealing.'
'You are justifying breaking the law because others break the law, too?'
'That's the whole point, Rose, those bastards don't break the law, they steal legally. We break the law taking it away from them. Is your uncle any different from a bank robber?'
'Yes,' she said.
Was she challenging him? 'How?'
'He's worse. To him, killing is a normal part of business, of getting what he wants.'
'Yet you talk to him like there was nothing ever bad between you.'
'Only until Juanita is found.'
'And then?'
'I must see if I have caught a thief.'
It was perhaps half an hour later that he saw the old man galloping toward him and braked to a halt. Nachita pulled up alongside.
'I have found them,' Nachita said. 'Follow me slowly.'
There was a place in the distance where a narrow spine or rock ran out into the desert like a causeway. As they approached, the old man led the way to the shelter of a narrow ravine. Dillinger killed the engine.
Nachita dismounted from his horse and started up the steep slope. Dillinger and Rose followed. It was hard going and the old man pulled him down just before they reached the top.
'Careful, now.'
They stayed in the cover of some dead pines and Dillinger peered over. Several hundred yards away a ridge lifted out of the ground, dipping in toward the mountain.
Nachita said, 'The ruins and the well are on the other side in a hollow.'
'You're sure they are there?'
'There is a sentry posted in the hillside in a mesquite thicket below the first gully. An open attack would be useless.'
Rose said, 'Why attack anyway? Can't we just negotiate whatever it is Ortiz wants for the child?'
Nachita paused before answering. 'It is possible,' he said, 'that I can approach their camp openly. I can cry out to the sentry from cover, say I am Nachita come to pow-wow with Ortiz.'
'What would happen?' Dillinger asked.
'Ortiz would either kill me or pow-wow.'
'We can't take that chance,' Rose said.
'Even if we were to talk,' Nachita said, 'Ortiz is likely to ask for something we cannot give hin.'
'Like what?' Dillinger asked.
'Rivera's life.' Nachita sighed. 'We will wait for the others.'
Dillinger, sitting on the running board of the Chevvy next to Rose, could see them coming for quite some distance. For the moment there was only the heat and the desert. A small green lizard appeared from the bush a few feet away, life in a dead world. He watched it for a while. It disappeared with extraordinary rapidity as the others rode up.
Rivera stood in front of a boulder, his arms crossed.
The others squatted in a semicircle before Nachita and Dillinger, who explained the situation.
'It would seem that we haven't a hope in hell of surprising them,' Chavasse said.
Nachita nodded and rose to his feet. 'We must make them come to us. It is the only way.'
'And how do we do that?' Rivera demanded.
'I will show you.'
They followed him out into the desert toward a ridge with a narrow gully through its centre making a natural entrance. The spine of rock petered out perhaps a hundred yards farther on.
'Two riders must go out into the desert. Once beyond the point they will be seen.'
'And Ortiz will give chase?' Chavasse said.
The old man nodded. 'The rest of the party will be hidden behind the ridge. Once Ortiz and his men follow their quarry through that gully, the rest will be simple.'
'Why two riders?' Dillinger asked.
Nachita shrugged. 'One man alone might look suspicious, but two might indicate that we also have split our party.'
'And my daughter?' Rivera demanded.
'She will undoubtedly be left with a guard. I will work my way across the mountainside on foot and enter the camp from behind while you occupy them here.'
'It's a good plan,' Rivera said slowly.
'It only remains to decide who is to act as decoy,' Villa put in softly. 'An unenviable task.'
Dillinger sighed. 'I think the bait would look a whole lot stronger if I drove out there in the convertible with the top down as if I didn't have a care in the world.'
There was silence, then Nachita said, 'I agree, but there should still be someone with you. If you are alone, it would be suspicious.'
Rose said, 'He is not alone.'
Chavasse tried to object. 'I'll go, not Rose.'
'Wrong,' Rose said. 'If we've been observed before this ...'
'I'm certain we have,' Nachita said.
'Then we should seem the same. I will be the passenger.'
Nachita said, 'Good, it is settled. Give me fifteen minutes, then move out.'
He turned and ran lightly across the broken ground, disappearing into the jumbled mass of boulders that littered the hillside. The rest of the party started to make ready.
Dillinger took the magazine drum out of the Thompson, checked that everything was working then fitted it carefully back into place. Then he took the clip from the butt of the Colt, emptied it and reloaded again with care, as if his life might depend on it. He put the Thompson on the floor to the right of the accelerator, next to Rose's rifle.
Rose leaned over and kissed his cheek. 'For luck,' she said.
'I told you we'd come out of this thing, didn't I?' He grinned. 'Besides, I've been chased before.' He replaced the Colt in its shoulder holster and put the top of the convertible down. Getting behind the wheel, he said, 'Let's go.'
He turned on the ignition and drove away slowly, waving to Chavasse behind a boulder. Rivera and Villa had taken up positions directly opposite.
Far out in the desert the parched earth faded into the sky and the mesquite glowed with a strange incandescence as if at any moment it might burst into flame.
They rounded the point and moved across a wide plain. A high ridge swelled from the ground between them and the ruined rancheria. Dillinger glanced casually toward it but no sound disturbed the heavy stillness.
'Now you know what it is like to be a fox,' h
e told her.
'This could get on my nerves very easily,' Rose said.
At that moment they heard baying. Rose turned to see six of them sweep over the hill and plunge down toward them, in full cry.
Dillinger slammed on his brakes, throwing up a cloud of dust, momentarily concealing them, as he turned the Chevvy, backed up, and then turned back the way they had come, straight at the Apaches pursuing them.
As the bone-dry dust boiled beneath the hooves of the Apaches' horses, they suddenly saw their quarry in the white automobile disappear in a cloud of dust and a moment later emerge heading toward them. They reined in the frightened horses, but the car kept coming right at them, and as the Apaches turned their horses' heads to retreat, they were met by Villa and Chavasse and Rivera firing directly at them.
Dillinger stopped the car sideways across the road. Rose took the first shot at their attackers, hitting one of them, whose riderless horse kept wheeling around. Dillinger was afraid to use the Thompson at that distance, so he gunned up the Chevvy and, his foot all the way down on the gas, ran it straight at the nearest of the Apaches, who lost his balance trying to get his horse out of the way of the charging automobile and slid from the saddle, only to have Villa's bullets thud into him as he hit the ground.
It was all over. Miraculously, none of their group had been hurt. Rivera quickly checked out the dead Indians. None of them was Ortiz.
15
There was no sign of the child at the camp. Rivera was furious. Somehow Nachita had made a mistake. They had followed the wrong group.
Dillinger and Rose left the Chevvy at the side of the road down below and climbed up to the camp in the hollow beside the well. Nachita had lit a fire and squatted before it waiting for coffee to boil. He glanced up and Dillinger walked past him to the crumbling adobe walls.
It was strangely quiet, the heat blanketing all sound, and then a small wind moved across the face of the plain, rustling through the mesquite with a sibilant whispering that touched something inside him.
Was the kid dead? Was all of this useless? He remembered his own childhood, full of hope. When he'd enlisted in the navy, his heart was high, but he'd hated the regimentation. He didn't want to be ordered about by anyone. That's when he went AWOL, got sentenced to solitary for ten days, his first imprisonment. Was all life like that, the smashing of good hope? Or was he just too damned tired now to think sensibly?
Rose came toward him, the Cordoban hat dangling from her neck. Instinctively, she put an arm around him, a bandage around his pain. When she spoke there was a strange poignancy in her voice.
'There's nothing quite so sad as the ruins of a house.'
'Hopes and dreams,' Dillinger said. 'Gone.'
He turned, looking out over the desert again, and she moved beside him. Their shoulders touched. She started to tremble.
There were so many things he could have said as he held her close for a moment.
'Let's go and have a cup of coffee,' he said.
The others were sitting round the fire as they approached and Chavasse and Rivera had obviously been having words.
'What's wrong now?' Dillinger demanded.
'All at once, everything's Nachita's fault,' Chavasse said.
'He's supposed to be able to follow a trail, isn't he?' Rivera said.
Dillinger poured coffee into a cup, gave it to Rose and glanced across to Nachita. The old man smiled faintly. 'We followed the right pony, but the wrong man was riding him. A game Ortiz is playing. He knows that I am leading you. That eventually we must meet. He wishes it to be on his terms in a place of his own choosing. And now six of my brothers are dead.'
Dillinger said quietly to Rose, 'We think of our side, their side. I thought we just won. But for Nachita it means the opposite when Apaches die.'
Rose squeezed Dillinger's hand, but Rivera didn't want to hear any of this. He stood over the squatting Nachita, his voiced raised, saying, 'Where has Ortiz taken my daughter?'
Nachita shrugged. 'Perhaps he will cross the desert to the mountain we call the Spine of the Devil. Near its peak there are the ruins of an ancient city. Men lived there long before my people came from the cold country in the north. In the old days it was an Apache stronghold.'
Villa nodded. 'I have heard of this place. Pueblo - or Aztec. They call it the City of the Dead.'
'But to get there Ortiz must stay on the old pack trail across the Sierras,' Nachita said. 'The well at Agua Verde is the only water before the desert. If he camps on the trail tonight he should reach there by noon tomorrow.'
'Then what are we sitting here for?' Rivera demanded.
Chavasse helped himself to more coffee. 'It would take us two days to catch up with him now.'
'Not if we go over the mountains.' Nachita pointed to the great peak that towered above them. 'Agua Verde is on the other side. Perhaps twenty miles.'
Dillinger looked up, shading his eyes. 'Can it be done?'
'As a young man, I rode with Geronimo over the same trail to escape from the horse soldiers who chased us across the Rio Grande.'
'A long time ago.'
'It was a great ride.' Nachita turned and looked up at the mountain again. 'There is a place near the peak where we could spend the night. It is even possible that we could reach Agua Verde before Ortiz.'
Dillinger looked at Villa. 'What do you think?'
Villa nodded. 'The well at Agua Verde is inside the chapel. By the time Ortiz and his men arrive they will need water badly.'
'Perhaps even enough to bargain for my child,' Rivera said.
'If we are going we must go now,' Nachita said. 'We have perhaps four hours left until sunset.'
Dillinger nodded. 'There's no way I can get the Chevrolet over there.'
'I show you.' Nachita took a stick and drew in the sand. 'Ortiz comes from the west. We go straight over and cut across his path in front of him, if we are lucky. You, my friend, take your automobile out into the desert to the north, skirting the base of the mountain. The long way round. A hundred miles at least, but in the cool of the night.' He shrugged. 'And your automobile can travel faster than the wind, is it not so?'
'And what if it breaks down out there in the desert?'
Rose said. 'The sun in the heat of the day can fry a man's brains. Or a woman's.'
'A horse could break a leg going over the mountain,' Nachita said. 'Or a man. This way, we have two chances of reaching Agua Verde before Ortiz.'
'That settles it,' Dillinger said. 'Anyone want to chaperone Rose and me?'
'I will come, senor,' Villa said. 'I know this country, you don't.'
Dillinger said to the girl, 'Rose? You want to take Villa's horse and go with the others?'
She glanced at her uncle. 'I will come with you.'
'OK, let's get moving.'
He and Villa put the top up on the convertible. Dillinger got behind the wheel and pressed the starter as Villa scrambled into the rear seat. 'Lead my horse,' he shouted to Chavasse.
Dillinger waved. 'See you at Agua Verde,' he yelled and drove down into the vast desert.
Nachita led them up the slope of the mountain without hesitation, zigzagging between the mesquite and cacti. After an hour they went over a ridge and faced a shelving bank of shale and thin soil held together by a few shrubs.
Rivera, who had been bringing up the rear, now joined them, his face lined with fatigue, 'Why have we stopped?'
Nachita had ridden to a point where the ledge turned the corner of the bluff, and now he came back and dismounted. 'From here it will be necessary to blindfold the horses. Use strips from your blankets.'
Nachita went first and they followed at spaced intervals. When the ledge turned the corner Chavasse sucked in his breath. At this point the trail narrowed to a width of perhaps five or six feet. On his right hand there was nothing, only clear air to the valley floor below.
The ledge lifted steeply, following the curve of the wall, and he climbed after Nachita, holding his horse as close to the wal
l as possible.
And then the ledge narrowed until there hardly seemed room for man and animal together. He pushed forward frantically and came out on a small plateau. Beyond was a bank of shale and he led his mount up and over the edge of a gentle slope thinly scattered with pine trees to where Nachita waited.
Rivera came over the edge after them and the Frenchman leaned against his mount, wiping sweat from his face. 'Something to remember till my dying day.' He turned to Nachita. 'Can we rest here?'
The old man shook his head. 'From now on it is easy and we can ride. There is a good camp site in the forest on the far side of the summit.'
He mounted and they rode after him. The desert was purple and grey, turning black at the edges, and in the desolate light of evening the peaks were touched with fire.
It was cooler at this height, the air pleasant with the scent of pines, and the climb already seemed remote and impossible.
The ultimate ridge lifted to meet the dark arch of the sky where already a single star shone and they went over and a little way down the other side to a clearing in the pine trees. Nachita held up his hand and they dismounted.
Chavasse felt the weariness strike through him. It had been a long day. He carried the saddlebags across to where Nachita was already building a small fire of twigs and pine cones in a deep hollow between three boulders.
Everyone looked worn down to the bone. Rivera gazed into the fire vacantly, lines of fatigue etched into his face.
For the first few miles out into the desert, the going wasn't too bad, a flat, sun-baked plain over which the Chevrolet moved fast. At one stage Dillinger pushed the car up to sixty and Villa tapped his shoulder laughing like a kid.
'This is better than riding, amigo,' he shouted.
Dillinger had to slow down as they came to a flat brown plain that was fissured and broken.
It was like driving your way through a maze, turning from one ancient dried-out water course into another, travelling at no more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. They ran into one dead end after another, frequently having to turn back and try again, progress was painfully slow and darkness was falling before they finally emerged onto salt flats.
