Free Dillinger (v5) by Jack Higgins Page B

small wiry ponies. They wore red flannel shirts and breech-clouts, almost like a uniform, their long hair held back with bands of red flannel. Both of them carried rifles in the crooks of their arms. One of them held the carcass of a small deer across his blanket saddle.
    'I told you it was a hunter,' Rivera said.
    'Hunting for him,' Fallon whispered.
    The Indians came down the slope. Instead of reining in their ponies, they let the animals crowd the stopped car, as if getting a message across.
    Dillinger started to inch the convertible forward. One of the Indians raised the barrel of his rifle slightly.
    'We don't want any trouble with these now,' Rivera said, but Dillinger noticed in the rear-view mirror that Rivera had slid his revolver out of his waistband onto the car seat beside him. Dillinger felt naked without his Colt.
    Suddenly a voice called out, high and clear in a language Dillinger was not familiar with, and a third rider came over the rim of the hill and moved down towards them fast and the two Indians backed off slightly.
    The new arrival reined in beside the Chevrolet and sat looking at Rivera, a fierce Indian with a wedge-shaped face that might have been carved from brown stone. He wore his black hair shoulder length under a shovel hat of the kind affected by some priests, and a faded black cassock, pulled up to his knees, revealed untanned hide boots.
    There was a silence, dust rising in small whirls as the ponies danced. Rivera had turned quite pale. He sat there staring back at the man, a muscle twitching in his jaw. The Indian returned the gaze calmly, the sunlight slanting across his slate-coloured eyes and then he abruptly turned his pony and went galloping away, followed by his companions, leaving the Chevvy in a thin cloud of dust.
    'One day I shall kill that animal,' Rivera said, as Dillinger shifted gears and resumed speed.
    'He didn't look like a man it would be too easy to kill,' Dillinger commented.
    'Filthy Apache,' Rivera said.
    'Name's Ortiz - Juan Ortiz,' Fallon said. 'His people call him Diablo. Ever come across Apaches before?'
    Dillinger shook his head. 'Only in the movies.'
    As Dillinger drove, Fallon filled him in.
    'I guess you don't know too much about Apaches. Even their name means enemy. In the old days what they really lived for was war, against other tribes, against the settlers, against anybody. The ones in the States have been pretty much tamed. Lot of them shipped off to Florida somewhere. But the ones who came back down here ... you don't want to tangle with them. Ortiz was what they call a Broncho Apache, the kind that stick to the old ways. When he broke his back in a riding accident, he ended up in the mission hospital at Nacozari. The Jesuits started educating him.'
    'Madness,' Rivera interjected.
    'Now he's a kind of lay brother or something,' Fallon went on. 'Works with the priest in Hermosa, Father Tomas. I think the old man would like the Indian to take his place when he's gone.'
    'Over my dead body,' Rivera shouted. 'Ortiz is a Chiricahua Apache, cruellest savages that ever set foot on God's earth.'
    'Geronimo was a Chiricahua,' Fallon said. 'It's only forty-five years since the American cavalry chased him right into these mountains and forced him to surrender.'
    'They should have been exterminated,' Rivera said. 'Every last one of them.'
    'He's doing a pretty good job of that right now up at the mine,' Fallon whispered.
    Rivera glared at them. 'What are you whispering?'
    'Don't get paranoid,' Dillinger said. 'Just two Yankees shooting the breeze.' To Fallon he said, 'The Indians at the mine are Apaches?'
    Fallon nodded. 'Mainly Chiricahua with a sprinkling of Mimbrenos.'
    'Where'd you learn all this?'
    'From Chavasse. He's only a kid, mid-twenties, I'd guess, but he knows more about Apaches than any man I know. Came here from Paris to write a book about them and ended up being manager of Rose's place.'
    'Ah, Rose's place,' Dillinger said.
    A moment later they topped a