She led the way to the largest wickiup. As they approached, the skin flap was thrown back. The man who emerged looked incredibly frail. He wore buckskin leggings, a breech clout, and a blue flannel shirt, a band of the same material binding the long gray hair.
His face was his outstanding feature. Straight-nosed, thin-lipped, with skin the color 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-the 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 instinctively reached for the gun under his arm and 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 flickering across it. He laughed awkwardly and put the gun away.
“Nachita certainly has a sense of humor,” Dillinger said.
There was a pause as she looked at him steadily, and then she said, “We must go back to the hotel. Supper will be ready.”
Dillinger took her arm as they left the camp. “How old is he?”
“No one can be sure, but he rode with Victorio and Geronimo, that much is certain.”
“He must have been a great warrior.”
They paused on a little hill beside the ruined adobe wall, and Rose said, “In eighteen eighty one, Old Nana raided into Arizona with fifteen braves. He was then aged eighty. Nachita was one of the braves. In less than two months they covered a thousand miles, defeated the Americans eight times, and returned to Mexico safely, despite the fact that more than a thousand soldiers and hundreds of civilians were after them. That is the kind of warrior Nachita was.”
“Yet in the end the Apache were defeated, as they were bound to be.”
“To continue fighting when defeat is inevitable, this requires the greatest courage of all,” she said simply.
Funny she should say that. He’d imagined himself one day coming into a bank he’d cased, but not well enough, and finding himself in a trap, every teller a G-man waiting with a gun instead of a wad of bills. He’d imagined himself backing out of the bank, shooting machine guns from both hips, knocking out the G-men like ducks in a gallery. He’d walked out of three movies where he could tell that the gangster was going to get killed in the end.
…
After supper Dillinger went into the bar and joined Fallon, who was sitting with Chavasse at a small table in the corner. Fallon produced a pack of cards from his pocket and shuffled them expertly.
“How about joining us for a hand of poker?”
“Suits me.” Dillinger pulled forward a chair and grinned at the Frenchman. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
Rose arrived, carrying bottles of beer and glasses on a tray. “My manager is permitted to mingle with special guests,” she said.
“As always your devoted slave,” Chavasse said dramatically, grabbing her hand and kissing it with pretended passion.
She ruffled his hair and disappeared into the kitchen.
Dillinger felt a sting of jealousy. He said, “She just introduced me to old Nachita. Quite a guy.”
Chavasse said, “Everything that’s best in a great people. He taught me more than anyone else about the Apache.”