Dillinger - Jack Higgins [63]
The well was sunk into the centre of the floor and was constructed of some strange, translucent stone shot with green fire that tinted the water, giving the place its name.
Dillinger turned slowly, examining everything. There was a stout locking bar on a swing pin behind the door, and the lower windows had wooden shutters that fastened on the inside.
'Anyone would think the place had been built to stand a siege.'
'In the old days it was a refuge for the mule drivers on many occasions,' Villa said. 'It is a mystery why the water should come up here and nowhere else. That is why they built the chapel in the first place more than two hundred years ago.'
Through the windows on the other side the view was magnificent. The chapel stood on the extreme edge of the shelf looking out across the desert to the Devil's Spine and there was a drop of almost a thousand feet to the valley floor.
'I feel as if I could almost reach out and touch it,' Dillinger said, nodding across at the mountain.
Villa grinned. 'You would need a long arm, amigo. It is at least fifteen miles away. The desert air plays strange tricks.'
They slept the sleep of the dead. When Dillinger finally awoke, he saw Rose still sleeping and imagined what it might be like waking up in a real house in Indiana late on a Sunday morning and seeing Rose in the bed beside him.
There was the slightest breath of wind, a dying fall. But in the sound he detected a footfall. And then another. He reached for his Thompson, got up noiselessly, and then kicked open the chapel door. Nachita was standing in the open doorway, rifle crooked in his arm.
Nachita and Chavasse led their horses in through the door. When all the animals were hobbled together at one end of the building, the old Apache cut a switch of brush from the thicket and walked backwards to the chapel, smoothing their tracks from the sand.
He barred the door and turned to face them. 'When they come, no one must make a move till they have dismounted. Then, with all of you taking aim, I will call out in Apache language. I will go out and bargain with Ortiz while he and his men are in your gunsights.'
'That's crazy,' Rivera said, gesticulating with both fists. 'We should kill as many as possible with the first volley. Then bargain with Ortiz.'
'And kill the child?' said Nachita in anger.
'I didn't say shoot at the child,' Rivera shouted.
'It could be hit by accident. Or any one of them we missed could throw the child off the mountain,' Nachita said. 'I am here to set free a child who is paying for your sins. I am not here idly to kill my fellow Apaches who are following a leader who is as mad as you are.'
Rivera looked ten years older than when Dillinger had first met him. A muscle twitched in Rivera's right cheek. He gripped his rifle tightly. Dillinger was ready to let loose the second Rivera made a wrong move.
Rivera looked at each of their faces. Then to Rose he said, 'What about you? What do you think?'
Calmly, Rose said, 'In all our years, this is the first time uncle, you have asked my opinion as if you meant it. I think all these younger men believe that Nachita, who led us here, should have a chance to do things his way. As he said at the outset, a good plan is one that works. If his fails, there are always the rifles.'
Dillinger had to restrain himself from actually clapping his hands in applause, just as he did in movie houses when an actor said something he agreed with strongly. He'd never thought he'd meet a woman who was more than his equal, and here she was, as brave as a man, and saying the right thing with an eloquence he never had.
Suddenly they all heard the sound of trotting horses.
A moment later the first Apache turned the corner of the bluff and moved into the clearing. Ortiz was almost directly behind him.
He sat his horse with an insolent and casual elegance, a supremely dangerous