Nachita mounted, and they rode after him. The desert was purple and gray, turning black at the edges, and in the desolate light of evening the peaks were touched with fire.
It was cooler at this height, the air pleasant with the scent of pines, and the climb already seemed remote and impossible.
The ultimate ridge lifted to meet the dark arch of the sky where already a single star shone. They went over and a little way down the other side to a clearing in the pine trees. Nachita held up his hand, and they dismounted.
Chavasse felt weariness strike through him. It had been a long day. He carried the saddlebags across to where Nachita was already building a small fire of twigs and pine cones in a deep hollow between three boulders.
Everyone looked worn down to the bone. Rivera gazed into the fire vacantly, lines of fatigue etched into his face.
For the first few miles out into the desert, the going wasn’t too bad, a flat, sun-baked plain over which the Chevrolet moved fast. At one stage Dillinger pushed the car up to sixty, and Villa tapped his shoulder, laughing like a kid.
“This is better than riding, amigo,” he shouted.
Dillinger had to slow down as they came to a flat brown plain that was fissured and broken.
It was like driving your way through a maze, turning from one ancient dried-out water course into another, traveling at no more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. They ran into one dead end after another, frequently having to turn back and try again, and progress was painfully slow and darkness was falling before they finally emerged onto salt flats.
The heat and the dust were unbelievable. They stopped beside a clump of organ cactus, and Villa gathered a few dry sticks for a small fire to make coffee while Dillinger topped up the Chevy’s tank with gas from the cans in the trunk. Then, checking the radiator, he groaned.
“We must have been boiling away more water than I thought.” He got out the jerry can. “I was saving this in case the canteen ran dry and we had to drink this.” He poured what was left in the jerry can into the radiator carefully, not wanting to spill a drop.
He and Villa sat with Rose on the running board and drank coffee as darkness descended. Dillinger said, “Good to give the old car a chance to rest.”
“Just like horses, eh?” Villa said.
Dillinger patted the side of the Chevrolet. “If she lets us down, I wouldn’t give much for our chances when the sun comes up tomorrow.”
“Death, my friend, comes to all of us. The dice was thrown a long time ago. The result is already known, but then, you know this, I think, Mr. Dillinger.”
Dillinger looked at him calmly. “Rose knows, but how did you find out?”
“I saw your picture in the paper in Durango a couple of months back. I recognized you on the train, in spite of your new mustache. When we spoke, privately. When you let me go.”
“You told nobody?”
“I owed you, my friend, and besides, we are, after all, in the same line of business. Life is a pretty wild poker game.”
Villa tilted his hat and closed his eyes, turning his back so that Dillinger and Rose could lie side by side through the dark night.
It was in the middle of the night that Dillinger awoke because he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was about to leap up, ready to draw or fight, when he realized it was Rose’s hand.
“You are a restless sleeper,” she whispered. “I only wanted to say I love you.”
Dillinger turned over on his back. The sky was full of unexpected stars.
They got a good early start, the Chevy making time, when there was a sudden loud bang as the left front tire burst. The Chevrolet slued wildly, and Dillinger fought with the wheel as the car spun around and finally came to a stop.
They sat for a moment in silence. Dillinger said, “Anybody hurt?”
Villa said, “I think I just spat out my heart, a saying we have, but never mind.”