Dillinger (1983)

by Jack Higgins

Rivera said, 'I am not going to destroy the source of gold to save a few Indians. You can try to reach them with pick and shovel. On no account will you use dynamite.'

  'We'll see about that,' Dillinger said.

  As Dillinger turned to go, he heard Fallon's 'Watch out!' Rivera had levelled the revolver in his hand at the back of Dillinger's skull.

  'One false move and you're dead,' Rivera said. Then called out, 'Are you there, Rojas?'

  'Yes, patron.' Rojas had three Mestizos beside him now, all armed.

  'Excellent. Now this is what I want. You, Fallon, get back into the mine and keep the men digging around the big slab. No dynamite!'

  'Yes, senor,' Fallon said like a beaten man.

  'As for you,' Rivera said to Dillinger, 'your friend Rojas will sit alongside you as you drive your pretty white car back to Hermosa where you will be turned over to the authorities, who will advise their American counterparts that they have captured the man in the white convertible. Understood? You are finished here.'

  Dillinger looked around at what 'here' represented. A crowd of rescue workers and their women. Rose, watching him from less than fifty feet away helplessly. Next to her, in black, Father Tomas. And far behind them, standing on an outcrop of rock, Ortiz and two of his warriors.

  Dillinger knew instinctively how men like Rivera control a community by their harshness in public. He would not hesitate to shoot 'as an example to others'. The easiest one to shoot and get away with was the big-shot gringo who was an escapee from the law in his own country.

  To Dillinger's surprise, it was Father Tomas who came forward.

  Immediately Rivera waved his revolver in his direction. 'Do not come closer, Father.'

  Father Tomas did not miss a step until he was close enough to Rivera to touch him. He touched the left arm, the one without the gun, and said, 'Please, Senor Rivera, this man from America is right. We must try quickly to save the lives of those souls who are entombed in the mine. If the only way to work quickly is dynamite, let it be dynamite. If God wills, the men will be rescued alive.'

  'And if God doesn't will, the mine will collapse and not another ounce of gold ore will be gotten out of there. Let go of my arm, Father. Tend to God's business, not mine.'

  'Please, let the men be rescued,' Father Tomas said, 'and put that thing away.' He reached for Rivera's gun arm, and in that same instant, Rivera turned to face him and point blank shot Father Tomas in the forehead. The force of the bullet sent Father Tomas back into the dirt, as people gasped and cried out.

  'Rivera,' Dillinger said, 'you are a son of a bitch and a coward.'

  Rojas was about to strike Dillinger when a voice, louder than the crash of thunder, was heard. It was Ortiz, standing on the rock with his two warriors. 'Rivera,' he boomed, 'as God is my witness, you are a dead man!'

  Ortiz and his men clambered off the rock, mounted, and with a war cry as of old, galloped off.

  As Dillinger drove slowly back to Hermosa, trying for the second time in a month to hatch out an escape plan, he could see that Rojas, sitting in the passenger seat, would much rather find an excuse for drilling him than for turning him over to the authorities as Rivera had ordered.

  Suddenly there was the sound of hoofbeats and catching up with the car were Ortiz and his warriors on their ponies. Ortiz's rifle was in his saddle, but he knew it was useless to draw. The hated Rojas would kill the American before Ortiz's bullet would reach Rojas.

  'American,' Ortiz yelled. 'Rivera should let you use dynamite. The men in the mine are my people,' the Apache said. He dug his heels into his pony and went over the ridge toward the village in full gallop.

  'Catch up with him,' Rojas ordered.

  'I don't dare,' Dillinger said. 'The radiator's boiling. Can't you see the steam. We have to add water.'

  'You have a water can in the trunk?'

  'Only gasoline.'

  'Don't get nervous,' Dillinger said to Rojas. And then he did a trick that he'd learned when he was sixteen years old, what they used to do in Indiana if an old car boiled over far from a gas station. He unscrewed the radiator cap, stood on the hood, unbuttoned his trousers, and in full view of Rojas, urinated a stream three feet straight into the steaming radiator.

  As they entered the town, Dillinger and Rojas could see a huge milling crowd around Ortiz in the main square.

  'He's getting them roused up,' Rojas said. 'Why are you stopping?'

  'Too many people.'

  'Keep going!' Rojas barked.

  'I'll hit somebody,' Dillinger said, the car now going at a snail's pace.

  'Faster,' Rojas said. 'Run the vermin down!'

  As Dillinger applied his brakes, the crowd turned as if it were one person, and everyone, women, children, some men all came toward the car. These were not a beaten people, but an aroused mob.

  Dillinger could hear Ortiz yelling, 'There in the car is Rivera's man Rojas, the murderer's murderer, who will not use dynamite to free our trapped people.'

  Rojas knew how to read faces.

  'Back this out of here,' Rojas ordered.

  'You drive it,' Dillinger said, putting on the hand brake and getting out of the car.

  'I don't know how to drive, you idiot!' Rojas yelled. 'Get back in here.'

  'Put the gun down in the driver's seat. Gently.'

  Rojas was livid, but when he turned to face the mob, he knew that however many he might shoot, before he could reload they would be at him like ants, choking him, stomping on him, then stringing him up. Carefully, he put the gun down in the driver's seat. Dillinger picked up the gun as he slid behind the wheel and slowly backed the car away from the mob, then turned, and sped out of town, holding the wheel with his left hand, the gun aimed at Rojas in his right, and at the top of his voice singing the song that was on the Hit Parade when he left home, 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'

  Ortiz rode hard for almost half an hour before reaching an encampment of five wickiups grouped beside a small pool of water in a horseshoe of rock that sheltered them from the wind.

  The carcass of a small deer roasted over a fire on an improvised spit and three young Indians squatted beside it smoking cigarettes.

  He dismounted and tethered his pony and gazed at them impassively for a moment, then went into his wickiup, lay on his face and closed his eyes.

  In the darkness there was only a deep satisfaction and a hate that burned like a white-hot flame, so pure that it was an ecstasy, a mystical reality as great as any the fathers at Nacozari had told him about.

  Ortiz decided what he must do. He left the peace of the wickiup and assembled his warriors.

  He said, 'I have worn a priest's cassock in the hope that I would one day be received as a man of God. Today, I saw Father Tomas, a man of God, shot in the head by that butcher Rivera. Before everything, I am an Apache,' he said, and with one rent of his powerful hands ripped the cassock from his body and flung it aside. Underneath he was wearing the breech-clout and on his head he now put the headband of an Apache warrior.

  He continued, 'This is what we must do. Chato and Cochin, go for those of our brothers who would join us in this thing. Ride to the north pasture, break down the fences and slaughter some of the cattle. You will not harm the herdsman. He must be spared to carry the news to Rivera.'

  He turned to the third man. 'You, Kata, get as many rifles as we have hidden and come back here to me.'

  They moved to do his bidding and within a few minutes he was alone listening to the sound of them vanishing into the dusk.

  He stood for a while, thinking, then picked up a handful of dust and tossed it into the fire. In his veins, he felt the fire of vengeance.

  10

  As he drove, Dillinger was lecturing Rojas. 'When I was a kid,' he said, 'I learned that some people have big fists and small brains. Other guys have lots of brains but their fists are useless. And some have brains and fists and know how to use them both. I've been trying to pigeonhole you, Rojas, and I figure you for the first kind, big fists,
small brains.'

  'Gringo, I will get you to the Federalistas, sooner or later, just as Senor Rivera wants.'

  Dillinger applied his right foot to the brakes so hard Rojas went flying into the windshield, hurting his nose and forehead. 'Sorry,' Dillinger said. 'I thought I saw a snake in the road.'

  'You drive this car like a crazy madman.'

  'Then I guess you'd better just get out,' Dillinger said, waving Rojas's gun at him. 'Out!'

  'You can't make me get out here. Take me to the hacienda.'

  'I can take you back to town, how about that?'

  'No.'

  'Well, that's where I'm going, Rojas. Out!'

  'Suppose no one comes by?' Rojas, said, getting out of the convertible.

  'Somone'll come by. If it ain't people, it'll be your own kind, vultures, coyotes, somebody,' Dillinger said, laughing, as he swung the car around, sending up a cloud of dust to envelop Rojas.

  A couple of miles towards town Dillinger spotted some desert wild flowers growing out of an outcropping of rock not too far from the road. He stopped the Chevvy and picked an even dozen of the flowers, put them carefully on the back seat.

  The town seemed deserted.

  Inside the hotel saloon, Chavasse greeted him with a wave.

  'Rose upstairs?'

  Chavasse nodded. Dillinger didn't see any reaction of jealousy in Chavasse's face. Wouldn't he have been if ...?

  Upstairs, he knocked on her door, keeping the bunch of wild flowers behind his back.

  'Who is it?' her voice said. Amazing how just her voice could get him going.

  'Your favourite outlaw,' he said, touching his moustache with his free hand.

  She opened the door, wearing a dark green kimono with silver and gold bands around the sleeves. With one hand she clasped the front of the kimono closed, but the top of one breast showed just a smidgin. It was enough. He remembered when the girl before Billie Frechette would sometimes greet him at the door with nothing on top. This woman was different. His feeling was different.

  'I thought you were being turned over to the authorities?' she said.

  'You sound like an authority to me. Can I come in?' he whipped the flowers around, startling her.

  'Oh, they're beautiful,' she said, turning to find something to put them in. She used a pitcher as a vase. 'Your face looks better from your fight with Rojas,' she said.

  'Your face looks better to me all the time, too,' he said.

  And then he puts his arms around her. 'You'd better close the door,' he said. 'It's all right. I'm on good behaviour.' But his heart was beating like a tight drum.

  Fallon, waking, gave a long, shuddering sigh, rubbed his knuckles into his bloodshot eyes and pushed himself up. After a while he swung his legs to the floor and padded across to the window. In the grey light of dawn the mountains seemed forbidding, and in the village great balls of tumbleweed crawled along unpaved road, pushed by the wind.

  He shivered, aware of the coldness, of the bad taste in his mouth. He was getting old, that was the trouble. If you had to hide out in a place like this, at least it could be for doing something worthwhile, like Johnny, instead of the petty junk he'd gotten into trouble for.

  They'd stopped work at the mine last night just before midnight because no one had the strength to continue. They should have used dynamite the way Dillinger had said. It would have long been over, one way or t'other. Rivera had sentenced them to death to save his damn gold.

  Now the Indians in the mine knew something he didn't know. That was always the case when they whispered among each other.

  Fallon pulled on his hat and coat, opened the door and went outside onto the porch. It was still and cold, the only sound the wind whistling through the scrub, and a strange air of desolation hung over everything. It was as if he had stumbled upon some ancient workings long since abandoned. He frowned and went up the slope.

  The ore shed was empty. Usually by this time it was filled with Indians crouched together against the wall, waiting for the first shift to start. The steam engine was cold, something that was never supposed to happen. One of the watchman's regular duties was to keep it stoked during the night.

  He returned to the cabin, led his horse from the shed at the rear and saddled it quickly. The first thing he noticed as he went down into the village was the absolute stillness. No smoke lifted into the sky from early-morning cooking fires and there was a complete absence of life. Not so much as a dog crossed the street as he rode up to the well and dismounted.

  He opened the nearest door and peered inside. The room was bare, even the cooking pots had gone and when he touched the hearth it was cold.

  He tried the next house and the next, with the same result, and returned to the well slowly. As he stood there beside his horse, a dog howled somewhere out in the desert, the sound of it echoing back from the mountains. Was it a dog? Or was it one of those Indian signals? In that first moment of irrational fear, he scrambled into the saddle and galloped out of the village.

  Whatever was wrong had succeeded in frightening every man, woman and child in the place. He pushed his mount hard and half an hour later reached the head of the valley and rode down to the hacienda.

  As he went across the courtyard, the door opened and Dona Clara appeared. Her hair was plaited like an Indian woman's. She seemed considerably distressed.

  'Senor Fallon, thank God you are here.'

  Fallon looked down at her without dismounting. 'Isn't Don Jose here?'

  She shook her head. 'I'm quite alone except for Maria, my maid. My husband went up to the north pastures with Rojas while it was still dark. His herdsman brought the news that some of the cattle had been slaughtered.'

  'What about the servants?'

  'Usually the cook brings me coffee in bed at six. When she didn't come I decided to look for her.' She shook her head in bewilderment. 'The kitchen is cold, there is no one there. It is like a house of the dead.'

  'It may be something to do with what happened yesterday at the mine,' Fallon told her. 'I'll ride down to the servants' quarters. There must be somebody who can tell us what's going on.'

  He galloped round to the rear of the house and down the slope towards the cluster of adobe huts beside the stream. When he kicked open the first door and went inside it was the same story. The servants had taken their belongings with them.

  As he scrambled into the saddle again, someone screamed up at the hacienda and he dug his heels into the horse's flanks and urged it up the slope. When he entered the courtyard a buckboard was standing at the front door. Dona Clara leaned with her face to the wall, and Felipe, Rivera's vaquero, stood on the steps, hat in hands.

  Fallon dismounted. 'What is it?'

  Felipe came down the steps slowly, his face very pale. 'See for yourself, senor.'

  In the back of the buckboard behind the rear seat lay something covered with a brightly coloured Indian blanket. Fallon moved forward and drew in his breath sharply. Father Tomas gazed up at the sky, his faded blue eyes retracted only slightly. The mortal head wound had turned his face into a grotesque mask.

  Fallon covered it with the blanket. 'Where did you find him?'

  'No more than a hundred yards from my hut, senor. The strange thing was that the horses had been hobbled.'

  'They didn't bury him. They sent the body here as a message.'

  Dona Clara turned from the wall. Her face was drawn and very white, but she had obviously regained control of herself. 'Senor Fallon, tell me the truth. What does this mean?'

  'What has Don Jose told you?'

  'He tells me nothing. Please, I must know what is going on.'

  'There was a dispute at the mine. Twenty or so men were trapped by a cave-in. The new American suggested dynamite to move a huge rock that was blocking our rescue work. Don Jose refused and ordered the American turned over to the authorities. Father Tomas pleaded with Don Jose. So - I am sorry, Dona Clara - Don Jose shot Father Tomas as an example.'

  'I don't believe y
ou!' she cried.

  'There were many witnesses.'

  'Is that why the cattle have been slaughtered?'

  Fallon shrugged.

  'Is that why the people have run off?'

  Fallon didn't answer her.

  'Senor Fallon,' she said, 'I would like you to escort us into Hermosa.'

  'Don't you think we should wait for your husband to return?'

  She shook her head. 'No, we'll be safer in town. We can go in the buckboard and take Father Tomas's body with us. Felipe can drive.'

  She turned without giving him time to reply and went into the house.

  Fallon looked up at the mountains as the early-morning sun slanted across them and shook his head.

  'Have you got a gun, Felipe?'

  The vaquero shook his head. 'The patron keeps all firearms locked in the armoury in the cellar. He alone has the key, senor. We would need sledgehammers to break down the door.'

  Dona Clara emerged from the house, a shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders. Behind her the maid carried little Juanita. The women sat on the rear seat with the child. Fallon climbed back on his horse. They turned through the gate and went up through the trail towards the head of the valley.

  The sun moved over the top of the mountains, chasing the blue shadows from the desert, and Felipe cracked the whip over the horses' backs, urging them on.

  Already the heat lifted from the land like a heavy mist and Fallon wiped sweat from his face with a sleeve.

  They dropped down through a dry arroyo and moved toward the place where the trail from the mine joined the one to Hermosa. Beyond this point it wound its way between great, tapering needles of rock and entered a canyon so deep that the bottom was shaded from the sun and unexpectedly cool.

  Through the silence a jay called three times and Fallon glanced up sharply. Or was it a jay? Usually they stayed close to water and there was none here. At that moment there was a spine-chilling cry from behind that re-echoed within the narrow walls of the canyon and two Apaches galloped in from the desert, blocking their retreat.