Then came the sound of an Apache chant, voices rising and falling like waves coming in across a beach.
“It is the courage chant,” Nachita said.
“If they attack,” Chavasse said, “they will drug themselves with mescaline first. They will think they are invulnerable.”
Villa nodded. “You could empty your gun into one of them, and he’ll still keep coming.”
“Bullshit,” Dillinger said. “I’ve made up my mind. Rivera will be exchanged for the girl.”
“No,” Rivera said from the corner. “I will not do it!”
Nachita stood facing all of them. To Dillinger he said, “You believe Ortiz because he spilled the rest of the water.”
Dillinger nodded.
“You think he will act with honor?”
“It’s a chance worth taking.”
“You Yankees,” Nachita said, “are naive. You believe what you want to believe.”
Dillinger turned to Villa. “You bring Rivera out. I’ll come with you to take the kid. She’s just seen me, she’ll be less frightened if I pick her up.”
Villa twisted Rivera’s arms behind his back and pushed him out the door.
Outside the chapel Dillinger made himself fully visible so that Ortiz could see he wasn’t armed. The chanting stopped. There was a rustling in the thicket across the clearing, and Ortiz appeared. Near him, the thicket opened and a young Apache was visible, carrying Juanita in a blanket.
“Put her down!” Dillinger barked.
The young Apache didn’t understand him, but Ortiz said something, and the Apache put Juanita at Ortiz’s feet. It was at that moment that the child recognized Rivera, who was being held and pushed by Villa from behind. She got up to run to her father, but Ortiz grabbed her hand.
“Sit!” he commanded. “Not yet.”
Then Ortiz advanced to the center of the clearing. “At last, Rivera,” he said. Then to Villa, “I will take him.”
No man in the history of the world could have looked more frightened than Rivera did at that moment, or more pathetic.
Ortiz said, “Rivera, you died when you shot Father Tomas. You died when you let twenty Apaches die in the mine. Today I merely carry out the sentence.”
Dillinger said, “Let’s cut the palaver. Have the kid brought forward.”
Ortiz motioned to the young Apache, who picked up Juanita in her blanket and again moved her to where Ortiz now stood.
“We will now exchange justice for justice,” Ortiz said, “life for life.”
“No you won’t,” Rivera said, suddenly lunging for the child, trying to take her up in his arms. Villa, taken by surprise, made a try at holding Rivera back.
In one swift movement Ortiz reached into his clothing and pulled out a long-barreled Smith and Wesson. His eyes like a madman’s, he aimed at Rivera, pulling the trigger again and again. Rivera dropped the wriggling, screaming, frightened child. As Rivera crumpled, Ortiz raised the Smith and Wesson and emptied it at Villa’s chest. Then he swooped up the screaming Juanita and ran with her back into the thicket, leaving her blanket behind.
Dillinger could see that Ortiz’s perfidy had taken the young Apache completely by surprise, for he stood like a statue for a second before dashing after Ortiz into the bushes.
Dillinger, betrayed, waited for bullets to thud into him from either direction, the thicket or the chapel. He glanced down at the bodies. Rivera was clearly dead. Villa was still breathing, so Dillinger knelt beside the man, whose breath came in bubbles. His eyes said, it is the luck of the game, and he died.
Chavasse, Rose, Nachita, were all coming across the clearing from the chapel, armed with rifles but not firing into the thicket after Ortiz, for fear of hitting the child.
Dillinger tried to say something to Rose, but she averted her face.
Nachita said, “You all go back to the chapel. I will be back soon,” and he went off in the direction in which Ortiz had vanished.
Seventeen
They buried Rivera and Villa in a shallow grave in the pine trees. When they had finished, Dillinger returned to the chapel.
He stood at the window and looked out across the desert at the mountain. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel tired, but as if he had just awakened from a long sleep.