Dillinger - Jack Higgins [49]
He ran between the boulders, motioning his men to silence, and they crouched in their original positions. Several minutes later Rivera and Rojas rode into the bowl below.
They dismounted quickly and stood, gazing about them, horror on their faces. Suddenly Rivera caught sight of his wife and stumbled into the grave, pulling away the bodies that half covered her. He fell to his knees. Then, like a man demented, he looked everywhere for the body of his child, but could not find it.
Beside Ortiz Kata raised his rifle and turned inquiringly. Ortiz shook his head.
'He is the one we want,' Kata said. 'Then it is over.'
'He must suffer first,' Ortiz said, 'that is why we took the child.'
12
Rojas and a work party of Mestizos brought the bodies back to the hacienda in a large wagon.
For Rose the saddest sight was watching her uncle pulling himself up onto the wagon and looking at the corpses again.
'Has Juanita been found?' Rivera asked frantically.
'No, patron, she is not there,' Rojas replied.
Rivera looked past the bodies of Dona Clara, Maria and Felipe, and fixed on Cordonna as if it was in the troopers that his hopes had lain. But suddenly Rivera was crying, something Rose had never seen in her life, nor imagined he could do. And so, when Rivera jumped off the wagon, Rose, out of the kindness of her heart, put her arm around her uncle's heaving shoulders.
'I am not grieving for the dead,' he said. 'It is for my carissima, Juanita.'
'We will get her back,' Rose said.
'Who?' Rivera said. 'The troopers are dead. I can send someone to the next telegraph station and they will send twice as many Federalistas to avenge Cordonna's death, but by that time who knows what that Ortiz will have done to the child.'
'We will get her back now.' It was Dillinger, standing at Rose's side. 'Provided you do not send for the troops.'
Rivera looked at them, Rose and the American, and he could see what had passed between them.
'Rose,' Rivera said, 'in this moment of my greatest sorrow, I must tell you who this man is.'
'I know he is not Harry Jordan. His name is Johnny.'
'He is a wanted man.'
Rose said, 'He is wanted by me.'
'He is wanted by the police in North America. He is a gangster, a robber of banks!'
Dillinger looked at Rose as if to try to read what was going on in her mind.
She said, 'Uncle, I have known for some time what kind of man he is. That he takes money from banks that take money from people may be an act of justice which is against the law. Johnny,' she turned to him, 'have you ever taken a life?'
'No, except in self-defence.'
Rose whirled on Rivera. 'Yet just yesterday, uncle, you took twenty lives that he wanted to save. Who killed the priest? And how many lives have you taken over the years in order to pry gold out of the mountain. If there is a gangster here, it is you!'
Rivera, his eyes like dark steel, looked at her and at Fallon and Dillinger, all stepping back from him as if he was a pariah.
'I want my daughter back,' he said.
Dillinger said, 'Rivera, you are a businessman. I want to make a business proposition to you.'
Slowly, Rivera turned to fix his gaze on the man he had just reviled. 'Yes, Senor Dillinger.'
So, it is senor again, Dillinger thought. Out loud, he said, 'I'll take a small group into the mountains. Fallon, Rojas, Villa, Nachita as a guide. You can come, too, if you want to, but get this straight. I'm in charge.'
'Continue,' said Rivera.
'Rojas has got to obey my orders like everybody else.'
Rojas started to object but was immediately silenced by Rivera.
'Continue,' Rivera said.
'We'll need guns from your storehouse. Including my Thompson sub-machine gun. I'll need gas from your cache for my car, and horses. We'll get done what the stupid cavalry couldn't do.'
'And what is the other side of your proposition?' Rivera asked.
'If I get your kid back alive, I want twenty thousand