Dillinger (v5) (10 page)

'Where is he now?'

'Went into the mine about five minutes ago, looking like murder. I pity any poor devil in there who gets in his way.'

They walked beside the rails past the steam engine, and entered the mouth of the tunnel. Dillinger had expected it to be cooler in the tunnel. Instead, the heat was worse.

'What's wrong with the ventilation in here?'

'The air shaft was blocked by a rock fall a couple of months ago,' Fallon replied. 'Rivera gave orders to leave it alone and concentrate on bringing the ore out.'

'Hell, that sounds dangerous to me. Didn't you tell him that.'

Fallon shrugged. 'He said we hadn't got the time to waste.'

They turned a corner and the sunlight died, leaving them in a place of shadows illuminated by lanterns and guttering candles. When they reached a fork Fallon hesitated. 'There are two faces, north and south. Rojas could be at either.'

They stood to one side as a truck moved past them pushed by half a dozen weary, dust-coated Indians. Fallon lifted a lantern from a hook in the wall and led the way into the darkness.

Gradually, Dillinger was conscious of faint sounds, and a light appeared. The tunnel narrowed until they had to stoop and then it opened into a low-roofed cavern, badly illuminated by several candles.

Ten or twelve Indians crouched at the rock face swinging short-handled picks. Others gathered the ore into baskets, which they emptied into another truck. The air was heavy, thick with dust and almost unbreathable.

Dillinger turned away and moved back along the tunnel. He paused once, leaning against the wall, and coughed harshly, trying to clear the dust from his lungs. There was a sudden slide of pebbles from the darkness above.

'See what I mean?' Fallon said.

Dillinger didn't reply. He turned and moved back along the tunnel. Suddenly a man cried out in pain, the sound echoing flatly through the darkness.

Dillinger started to run, and gradually the light increased as he came out into the main tunnel and saw several Indians crouched against the wall, their truck tipped on to its side, ore blocking the track.

With one hand Rojas kept an old, grey-haired Indian down on his knees. In the other he wielded a whip. It whistled through the air and curved round the thin shoulders, drawing blood. The old man cried out in pain.

When the whip rose again, Dillinger spun Rojas round and sent him crashing back against the wall. The Mexican gave a cry of rage and came up from the floor, drawing his revolver.

Dillinger moved in fast, ramming one arm against the man's throat, grabbing the gun hand and forcing the barrel towards the floor. For a moment they swayed there and suddenly the revolver went off.

The sound re-echoing in the confined space was like a charge of dynamite exploding and the earth seemed to tremble. As the Indians cried out in alarm, the mountain rushed in on them.

9

Dillinger remembered thinking, 'This is it,' as everything seemed to cave in all around him. He'd thought that once before in a small bank, an easy job, and as he'd gone out the door carrying a bagful of bills he saw ten feet ahead of him a man too old still to be a cop pointing his .38 at him from a distance nobody could miss at. 'This is it,' he'd thought, but the policeman's gun clicked, a misfire, and Dillinger had kicked the weapon out of the cop's hand, jumped on the running board of the waiting car that took him on the grit road to safety. That was the time he decided never to do a job without the protection of a bullet-proof vest.

A bullet-proof vest, even if he'd had one on, is no protection against a mine cave-in. Dillinger lurched forward, groping his way through clouds of dust. He tripped and fell on his hands and knees. He lay there for a moment, coughing and choking, and then scrambled up a sloping ramp of rubble to where light gleamed between stones.

He pulled at them with his fingers and Fallon and Rojas appeared on either side of him, the Mexican obviously gripped by fear. A few minutes later the gap was wide enough and they crawled out into the sunlight followed by four Indians.

A crowd was already running toward them from the ore shed and Father Tomas came over the hill behind them in his buckboard. He reined in a few yards away and jumped to the ground.

'How bad is it?'

Fallon's face was a mask of dust. 'I think the whole damned mountain's fallen in.'

Dillinger took the bottle of tequila from his pocket, swallowed some and passed it to Fallon. Rojas was sitting on a boulder, his head in his hands, dazed. Dillinger handed him the bottle of tequila and said roughly, 'Get some of that down you and pull yourself together.'

Rojas took a long swallow, coughing as the fiery liquid burned into his stomach. He got to his feet and wiped his mouth.

'How many men are still inside?' Dillinger demanded.

'I'm not sure. Twenty or so.'

Fallon scrambled on top of the boulder and addressed the crowd in Spanish. 'Those men in there haven't got long. If we're going to do anything it's got to be now. Get pick-axes, shovels, baskets - anything you can lay your hands on.'

Dillinger and Fallon led the way up the slope and started to pull boulders away from the entrance. Everyone joined in, even the old priest, forming a human chain to pass the earth and stones backwards as they progressed farther into the tunnel.

The gap through which they had made their escape was widened until it would admit a dozen men with equipment. Lanterns were passed through and Dillinger stripped off his shirt and examined the wall of rock that filled the rear of the tunnel.

It was hot. The air was heavy with the settling dust. Fallon moved beside him. 'We've got to keep on digging. At least we've got the tools.'

Rojas crawled through the darkness to join them. He reached up and touched the ceiling. Immediately several flakes of stone peeled away.

'It wouldn't take much to bring down the rest.'

'We'll be all right if we're damn careful,' Fallon told him, trying to sound confident.

They laboured feverishly in the weird, dust-filled light, stripped to their waists, sweat glistening on their naked backs. Rojas proved to be a pillar of strength, his great hands lifting, unaided, rocks which Dillinger and Fallon would have found difficulty in moving together. Behind them a line of Indians formed up, passing back the baskets of stone and earth.

They worked in shifts, supporting the roof with fresh timbering as they advanced, but progress was slow. The lack of air and the great heat made it impossible for anyone to last for longer than half an hour at a time at the face. By the middle of the afternoon they were no more than forty feet into the tunnel.

Just after three, Rojas, in front, let loose a groan.

'What is it?' Dillinger demanded.

Rojas turned, the whites of his eyes shining in the lamplight. Dillinger crawled forward into the narrow cutting they had cleared into the heart of the rockfall. An immense slab of stone weighing at least five or six tons was stretched across their path.

Fallon crouched at his side and whistled softly. 'We haven't a hope in hell of moving that by hand.'

'What about dynamite?' Dillinger said.

Rojas sucked in his breath sharply. 'You must be crazy. Half a stick would be enough to bring down the rest of the mountain.'

'If there's anyone still alive back there they're going to die anyway,' Dillinger said. 'At least we'd be giving them a sporting chance.'

He crawled back along the tunnel past the line of Indians and emerged into bright sunlight. The whole village seemed to be there, women and children included, some squatting on the earth, others standing as they waited patiently.

Dillinger thought, whoever thinks robbing a bank is dangerous ought to try this some time.

An Indian handed him a bucket of water and he raised it to his lips, drinking deeply before pouring the rest over his head and shoulders. Then he noticed Rivera.

'How bad?' Rivera asked.

'We've gone as far as we can with pick and shovel. There's a five-ton slab blocking our way.'

'Have you tried splitting it?'

'It would take hours by hand,' Dillinger said. 'Dynamite is the only answer.'

'It could also bring the whole place down.'

'Maybe, but there are at least twenty men in there according to Rojas. If we don't get them out within three or four hours they'll be dead.'

'You don't even know that they are alive now.'

'For Christ's sake, we've got to try,' Fallon said.

'He's right,' Dillinger said. 'They deserve some sort of chance.'

Rivera said, 'I am not going to destroy the source of gold to save a few Indians. You can try to reach them with pick and shovel. On no account will you use dynamite.'

'We'll see about that,' Dillinger said.

As Dillinger turned to go, he heard Fallon's 'Watch out!' Rivera had levelled the revolver in his hand at the back of Dillinger's skull.

'One false move and you're dead,' Rivera said. Then called out, 'Are you there, Rojas?'

'Yes,
patron.'
Rojas had three Mestizos beside him now, all armed.

'Excellent. Now this is what I want. You, Fallon, get back into the mine and keep the men digging around the big slab. No dynamite!'

'Yes, senor,' Fallon said like a beaten man.

'As for you,' Rivera said to Dillinger, 'your friend Rojas will sit alongside you as you drive your pretty white car back to Hermosa where you will be turned over to the authorities, who will advise their American counterparts that they have captured the man in the white convertible. Understood? You are finished here.'

Dillinger looked around at what 'here' represented. A crowd of rescue workers and their women. Rose, watching him from less than fifty feet away helplessly. Next to her, in black, Father Tomas. And far behind them, standing on an outcrop of rock, Ortiz and two of his warriors.

Dillinger knew instinctively how men like Rivera control a community by their harshness in public. He would not hesitate to shoot 'as an example to others'. The easiest one to shoot and get away with was the big-shot
gringo
who was an escapee from the law in his own country.

To Dillinger's surprise, it was Father Tomas who came forward.

Immediately Rivera waved his revolver in his direction. 'Do not come closer, Father.'

Father Tomas did not miss a step until he was close enough to Rivera to touch him. He touched the left arm, the one without the gun, and said, 'Please, Senor Rivera, this man from America is right. We must try quickly to save the lives of those souls who are entombed in the mine. If the only way to work quickly is dynamite, let it be dynamite. If God wills, the men will be rescued alive.'

'And if God doesn't will, the mine will collapse and not another ounce of gold ore will be gotten out of there. Let go of my arm, Father. Tend to God's business, not mine.'

'Please, let the men be rescued,' Father Tomas said, 'and put that thing away.' He reached for Rivera's gun arm, and in that same instant, Rivera turned to face him and point blank shot Father Tomas in the forehead. The force of the bullet sent Father Tomas back into the dirt, as people gasped and cried out.

'Rivera,' Dillinger said, 'you are a son of a bitch and a coward.'

Rojas was about to strike Dillinger when a voice, louder than the crash of thunder, was heard. It was Ortiz, standing on the rock with his two warriors. 'Rivera,' he boomed, 'as God is my witness, you are a dead man!'

Ortiz and his men clambered off the rock, mounted, and with a war cry as of old, galloped off.

As Dillinger drove slowly back to Hermosa, trying for the second time in a month to hatch out an escape plan, he could see that Rojas, sitting in the passenger seat, would much rather find an excuse for drilling him than for turning him over to the authorities as Rivera had ordered.

Suddenly there was the sound of hoofbeats and catching up with the car were Ortiz and his warriors on their ponies. Ortiz's rifle was in his saddle, but he knew it was useless to draw. The hated Rojas would kill the American before Ortiz's bullet would reach Rojas.

'American,' Ortiz yelled. 'Rivera should let you use dynamite. The men in the mine are my people,' the Apache said. He dug his heels into his pony and went over the ridge toward the village in full gallop.

'Catch up with him,' Rojas ordered.

'I don't dare,' Dillinger said. 'The radiator's boiling. Can't you see the steam. We have to add water.'

'You have a water can in the trunk?'

'Only gasoline.'

'Don't get nervous,' Dillinger said to Rojas. And then he did a trick that he'd learned when he was sixteen years old, what they used to do in Indiana if an old car boiled over far from a gas station. He unscrewed the radiator cap, stood on the hood, unbuttoned his trousers, and in full view of Rojas, urinated a stream three feet straight into the steaming radiator.

As they entered the town, Dillinger and Rojas could see a huge milling crowd around Ortiz in the main square.

'He's getting them roused up,' Rojas said. 'Why are you stopping?'

'Too many people.'

'Keep going!' Rojas barked.

'I'll hit somebody,' Dillinger said, the car now going at a snail's pace.

'Faster,' Rojas said. 'Run the vermin down!'

As Dillinger applied his brakes, the crowd turned as if it were one person, and everyone, women, children, some men all came toward the car. These were not a beaten people, but an aroused mob.

Dillinger could hear Ortiz yelling, 'There in the car is Rivera's man Rojas, the murderer's murderer, who will not use dynamite to free our trapped people.'

Rojas knew how to read faces.

'Back this out of here,' Rojas ordered.

'You drive it,' Dillinger said, putting on the hand brake and getting out of the car.

'I don't know how to drive, you idiot!' Rojas yelled. 'Get back in here.'

'Put the gun down in the driver's seat. Gently.'

Rojas was livid, but when he turned to face the mob, he knew that however many he might shoot, before he could reload they would be at him like ants, choking him, stomping on him, then stringing him up. Carefully, he put the gun down in the driver's seat. Dillinger picked up the gun as he slid behind the wheel and slowly backed the car away from the mob, then turned, and sped out of town, holding the wheel with his left hand, the gun aimed at Rojas in his right, and at the top of his voice singing the song that was on the Hit Parade when he left home, 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'

Ortiz rode hard for almost half an hour before reaching an encampment of five wickiups grouped beside a small pool of water in a horseshoe of rock that sheltered them from the wind.

The carcass of a small deer roasted over a fire on an improvised spit and three young Indians squatted beside it smoking cigarettes.

He dismounted and tethered his pony and gazed at them impassively for a moment, then went into his wickiup, lay on his face and closed his eyes.

In the darkness there was only a deep satisfaction and a hate that burned like a white-hot flame, so pure that it was an ecstasy, a mystical reality as great as any the fathers at Nacozari had told him about.

Ortiz decided what he must do. He left the peace of the wickiup and assembled his warriors.

He said, 'I have worn a priest's cassock in the hope that I would one day be received as a man of God. Today, I saw Father Tomas, a man of God, shot in the head by that butcher Rivera. Before everything, I am an Apache,' he said, and with one rent of his powerful hands ripped the cassock from his body and flung it aside. Underneath he was wearing the breech-clout and on his head he now put the headband of an Apache warrior.

He continued, 'This is what we must do. Chato and Cochin, go for those of our brothers who would join us in this thing. Ride to the north pasture, break down the fences and slaughter some of the cattle. You will not harm the herdsman. He must be spared to carry the news to Rivera.'