Dillinger - Jack Higgins [30]
'That's putting it mildly. How do you and he get on? Your uncle would like to see you go?'
'My presence is a continual irritation. He's offered to buy the hotel many times.'
'But you don't want to leave?'
She shook her head. 'When I was twelve my father sent me to convent school in Mexico City. I was there for five years. The day I returned, it was as if I had never been away.'
'Why should that be?'
'This countryside,' she said, 'it's special. I don't like cities. Do you?'
'Not too much,' he said.
'You are lying to please me.'
He wanted to tell her that out in the countryside the banks were far apart and didn't have all that much money lying around. You had to go to the towns and cities for the big loot.
'In Mexico the people make heroes of their bandits. In the States, they make heroes of gangsters.'
Was she guessing? Did she know something?
'Your uncle,' Dillinger said, 'is a bigger bandit than Villa.'
'Yes,' she said, laughing, and took his hand, but just for a moment. He felt desire again, and hoped it didn't make him crazy in the head the way it used to, the longing he couldn't stand.
'In the countryside here,' she said, 'have you noticed that the rocks shimmer, the mountains dance, and everything is touched with a blue haze? I think the countryside is like the face of God. Sometime we are not meant to see too clearly.'
Her hand was on his arm, an unmistakable tenderness in her voice. He looked down at her and she flushed and for a moment her self-assurance seemed to desert her. She smiled shyly, the evening light slanting across her face, and he knew that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
There was something close to virginal fear in her eyes and this time he squeezed her hand. Her smile deepened and she no longer looked afraid, but completely sure of herself.
Without speaking, they turned and moved on towards the encampment. There were three wickiups, skin tents stretched tightly over a frame of sticks, grouped round a blazing fire. Three or four men crouched beside it singing, one of them beating a drum, while the women prepared the evening meal.
Several children rushed forward when they saw Rose, but stopped shyly. She laughed. 'They are unsure with strangers.'
She moved towards them and the children crowded round, wreathed in smiles. She spoke to them in Apache, then beckoned to Dillinger. 'There is someone I want you to meet.'
She led the way to the largest wickiup. As they approached, the skin slap was thrown back. The man who emerged looked incredibly frail. He wore buckskin leggings, breech-clout and blue flannel shirt, a band of the same material binding the long grey hair.
The face was his most outstanding feature. Straight-nosed, thin-lipped, with a skin the colour of parchment, there was nothing weak here, only strength, intelligence and understanding. It could have been the face of a saint or a great scholar. By any standards he looked like a remarkable man.
Rose bowed her head formally, then kissed him on each cheek. She turned to Dillinger. 'This is my good friend, Nachita - last chief of the Chiricahuas.'
Dillinger put out his hands in formal greeting and felt them gripped in bands of steel. The old man spoke in surprisingly good English, the sound like a dark wind in the forest at evening.
'You are Jordan, Rivera's new man.'
'That's right,' Dillinger said.
Nachita kept hold of his hands and something moved in his eyes like a shadow across the sky. The old man released his grip and Dillinger turned away, looking out across the camp.
'This is quite a place.'
Behind him, Nachita picked up a dead stick and snapped it sharply, simulating the distinctive click of a gun being cocked. Dillinger reached for the gun under his arm, turned crouching, the Colt in his hand as if by magic.
Nachita smiled, turned and went back into his wickiup. His lesson was for Rose. Here was a man who handled guns as if they were his hands.
Dillinger found Rose watching him, her face serious, the firelight