Cordona mounted quickly and galloped away, followed by his men. Within a few moments they were only a cloud of dust traveling fast across the desert. Fallon shook his head, climbed back on his pony and rode off toward Hermosa.
At the entrance to the canyon Cordona halted and sent Bonilla and a trooper forward. The two men rode through into the great bowl and reined in their horses sharply at the scene which met their eyes.
The fire still smoldered, its heat making things lose definition, and the charred body of Felipe, with its unrecognizable face, was sprawled across the embers.
Bonilla rode on through to the other side, where a broad trail of pony tracks turned into the desert. He dismounted for a moment to examine the tracks and then rode back to his companion.
“Tell the lieutenant to come on in. They’ve cleared off.”
He dismounted and lit a cigarette while he waited, gazing up at the steeply sloping sides of the bowl, at the rocks above, imagining the poor devils trapped in here with no hope of retreat.
He shuddered and turned to meet Cordona as he rode in with the rest of the men. The young officer dismounted and walked forward.
He examined the bodies, Dona Clara’s, Maria’s, Felipe’s, and Father Tomas’s, then turned, his face expressionless.
“One grave for all of them, then let’s get out of here. We must keep after the Indians now they’re on the run.”
As part of his equipment, each trooper carried a small military trenching shovel. The men unstrapped them from behind their saddles, stacked their carbines, and got to work.
Cordona and Bonilla stood watching them without speaking. When the wide grave was about three feet deep, the lieutenant nodded, and they carried the four bodies across and laid them side by side. The men turned expectantly, grouping round the grave, and Cordona removed his cap and started to pray.
From the rocks above, Ortiz brought the sights of his rifle to bear on the base of the lieutenant’s skull and squeezed the trigger. It was the signal to begin. As Cordona pitched forward into the grave, the Apaches fired at each of the men below.
Within a few moments it was all over. Here and there an unfortunate trooper still moved or tried to shelter behind the bodies of his friends, but there was no escape. The shots continued until no limb moved. Finally, Ortiz held up his hand and scrambled to his feet.
As he stood gazing down at the carnage, one of his men ran between the boulders and tugged at his sleeve excitedly. Ortiz followed him across the hillside to a point where he could look out across the desert. Two riders were galloping along the trail from the direction of the hacienda.
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.
Standing 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.”
Twelve
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 Donna Clara, Maria, and Felipe, and fixed on Cordona 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.