Dillinger - Jack Higgins [27]
'One day I shall kill that animal,' Rivera said, as Dillinger shifted gears and resumed speed.
'He didn't look like a man it would be too easy to kill,' Dillinger commented.
'Filthy Apache,' Rivera said.
'Name's Ortiz - Juan Ortiz,' Fallon said. 'His people call him Diablo. Ever come across Apaches before?'
Dillinger shook his head. 'Only in the movies.'
As Dillinger drove, Fallon filled him in.
'I guess you don't know too much about Apaches. Even their name means enemy. In the old days what they really lived for was war, against other tribes, against the settlers, against anybody. The ones in the States have been pretty much tamed. Lot of them shipped off to Florida somewhere. But the ones who came back down here ... you don't want to tangle with them. Ortiz was what they call a Broncho Apache, the kind that stick to the old ways. When he broke his back in a riding accident, he ended up in the mission hospital at Nacozari. The Jesuits started educating him.'
'Madness,' Rivera interjected.
'Now he's a kind of lay brother or something,' Fallon went on. 'Works with the priest in Hermosa, Father Tomas. I think the old man would like the Indian to take his place when he's gone.'
'Over my dead body,' Rivera shouted. 'Ortiz is a Chiricahua Apache, cruellest savages that ever set foot on God's earth.'
'Geronimo was a Chiricahua,' Fallon said. 'It's only forty-five years since the American cavalry chased him right into these mountains and forced him to surrender.'
'They should have been exterminated,' Rivera said. 'Every last one of them.'
'He's doing a pretty good job of that right now up at the mine,' Fallon whispered.
Rivera glared at them. 'What are you whispering?'
'Don't get paranoid,' Dillinger said. 'Just two Yankees shooting the breeze.' To Fallon he said, 'The Indians at the mine are Apaches?'
Fallon nodded. 'Mainly Chiricahua with a sprinkling of Mimbrenos.'
'Where'd you learn all this?'
'From Chavasse. He's only a kid, mid-twenties, I'd guess, but he knows more about Apaches than any man I know. Came here from Paris to write a book about them and ended up being manager of Rose's place.'
'Ah, Rose's place,' Dillinger said.
A moment later they topped a rise and saw Hermosa in the valley below. There was a single street of twenty or thirty flat-roofed adobe houses, with a small whitewashed church with a bell tower at one end. The hotel, clearly visible, was the only two-storeyed building in the place.
Ragged, barefooted children ran after the Chevrolet, hands outstretched for coins. Rivera tossed some loose change to scatter them as the Chevvy pulled up outside the hotel. On the crumbling facade, eroded by the heat of the desert, was a weathered board sign: SHANGHAI ROSE.
They climbed down and Rivera said, 'I've had enough of this damned heat. I'll go out to the hacienda in the cool of the evening.' He preceded them inside.
Fallon said to Dillinger, 'I hope he doesn't run into Rose first thing. They hate each other's guts.'
'Come on,' Dillinger said, 'I need to wet my whistle.'
Inside there was no sign of Rivera. Fallon led the way into a large stone-flagged room. There were tables and chairs and a zinc-topped bar in one corner, bottles ranged behind it on wooden shelves. A young man poured beer into two glasses.
'Lord God Almighty's just been in to tell me you were here. He's gone up to his room,' he said in English with a pronounced French accent.
Fallon picked up one of the glasses and emptied it in one long swallow. He sighed with pleasure and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. 'Another like that and I'll begin to feel human again. Andre Chavasse, meet Harry Jordan.'
They shook hands and the young Frenchman put two more bottles on the counter and grinned. 'We heard you were coming, courtesy of Rivera's telegraph. All the comforts of civilization, you see.'
He was perhaps twenty-five, tall and straight with good shoulders, long black hair growing into foxtails