They scrambled out into the diminishing rain. Nachita was staring to the north. Something seemed to flit between the bushes on the far side of the clearing.
Fallon’s instinct was to head for the horses. Crouching, he ran for the greasewood on the far edge of the thicket where the horses were tethered. Damn, he thought, puffing, he was feeling his age in his bones.
The horses moved restlessly, stamping their feet and snorting. Fallon strained his eyes searching the darkness, his rifle at the ready.
A tremendous flash of lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. A crash of thunder made the mountain seem to tremble. Then a second flash of lightning laid bare the hillside. In its brief light Fallon saw an Apache among the animals.
He gave a hoarse cry of alarm. The Apache rushed at him, and Fallon fired blindly again and again, but the Indian kept coming, his right hand swinging upward. Fallon was aware of the knife, but it was too late to do anything about it. The point caught him under the chin, penetrating the roof of the mouth, slicing into the brain.
In the next brief moment of illumination, Dillinger saw what was happening. He ran to save Fallon, but it was too late. The Apache and Fallon were sprawled over each other in death.
Gradually the thunder moved away, across the mountains, and the rain stopped. As dawn began to edge away the darkness, Nachita slipped into the brush. When he reappeared, he reported, “They have gone now.”
It was Villa, on his knees beside Fallon, who pulled out the knife and wiped it on his pants leg. Rose gazed down in horror.
“He wasn’t a cautious man,” Rivera said solemnly.
“If it wasn’t for you, he’d be a live man,” Dillinger replied.
Rose put her arm around Dillinger’s shoulders.
They took a short-handled miner’s pick that had been strapped to Fallon’s saddle and dug two shallow graves as best they could, covering the thin soil with rocks for protection against animals.
It wasn’t a time to conduct a service. “There’s one American who won’t make it home,” Dillinger said to no one in particular.
They moved out.
It was perhaps half an hour later when Dillinger noticed smoke up ahead, rising on the damp air. He stopped the car and got out. Nachita moved cautiously down through the trees, and they followed to where a white tracer of smoke lifted into the morning from a clearing in the brush.
They found Rojas, or what had been Rojas, suspended by his ankles from a dead thorn tree above a fire.
Fourteen
The Indians were all assembled around Ortiz.
“We started out with more than twice as many as they did,” Ortiz said, “and none of us is a woman. Now they have lost two to our one. The gods are turning in our favor.”
It was Chato who said, “Killing Rojas was enough. It was wrong to kill the old man.”
“Silence!” Ortiz said. “Manilot was told by me to turn the horses loose. The old man saw him and would have shot him. Now they are both dead. The next one to be dead must be Rivera.”
“Do we wait for them here?” Kata wanted to know.
Ortiz shook his head. “First we must confuse them a little.” He turned to a small, swarthy man in a green shirt and leather waistcoat. “Paco, take my horse and six men. Ride to Adobe Wells, then circle back here. We will take the pack trail through the canyon and across the mountains to the Place of Green Waters. We will wait for you there.”
“How can we be sure that Nachita will follow Paco and not us?” Kata said. “The old one is cunning.”
“Which is why he will follow the band led by my horse,” Ortiz said.
“Perhaps they also will split into two groups?”
“There are too few of them.” Ortiz shook his head. “They sleep lightly enough as it is.”
Paco had already selected his men. He mounted Ortiz’s pony and rode quickly down toward the desert.
Ortiz turned and looked to the east again. The dust was a little more pronounced, and he thought of Rivera, a smile touching his lips. It would not be long now. The pleasure he was beginning to find lay in the contemplation of his enemy’s destruction.