“Yes.”
“You know what happened to the last American who worked for him?”
“Yes.”
“You think God gives you special protection that others do not have?”
“Yes,” he said, laughing.
“You haven’t answered anything I’ve asked you. Why are you being so mysterious?”
Dillinger thought how different she was from the pushovers back home. If he’d seen her in Indiana, he’d have thought of her as a stranger. His girl friend, Billie Frechette, was part Indian, really a dish, but nothing like Rose.
Dillinger kissed Rose lightly, the way he’d seen in the movies, keeping his chest away from her so she wouldn’t feel the holster pressing against her. When he’d kissed Billie, she always put her hand down there right away, but Rose just smiled and turned away just enough so he wouldn’t try again.
For a second he thought it was his heart beating loudly, but it was a drum pulsating through the dusk. Voices started an irregular chant, the sound of it carrying toward them on the evening breeze. There was a flicker of flame from a hollow about a hundred yards away, and he noticed an encampment.
“Indians?”
“Chiricahua Apaches. They sing their evening prayer to the Sky God asking him to return the sun in the morning. Would you like to visit them? We have time before supper.”
A flight of wooden stairs gave access to the courtyard, and they moved out through the great gateway toward the camp. Rose took his arm, and they walked in companionable silence.
After a while she said, “Fallon told me about how my uncle tricked you. He is a hard man.”
“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. Something 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. 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 a 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 toward the encampment. There were three wickiups, skin tents stretched tightly over a frame of sticks, grouped around 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 then they stopped shyly. She laughed. “They are unsure with strangers.”
Rose moved toward them, and the children crowded around, wreathed in smiles. She spoke to them in Apache, then beckoned to Dillinger. “There is someone I want you to meet.”