Tacho’s face had sagged into complete despair. ‘To kill the police, even the rurales, is a very bad thing and there’s a lot of Federal cavalry out between here and Huila. There has been much trouble in this area lately.’
The girl appeared with a stone jar containing some kind of grease. She rubbed a little into the raw places on my neck, frowning in concentration, her fingers delicate and birdlike, then tore a strip of muslin off her petticoat and wound it round my neck a couple of times.
I patted her face. ‘That’s a lot better. I’m very grateful.’
She smiled for the first time, glanced uncertainly at Tacho then went back into the kitchen. ‘Your daughter?’
He shook his head. ‘Her name is Balbuena, señor. Victoria Balbuena. Her father owned a hacienda near here. I used to work for him. Five years ago it was burned to the ground during the fighting and the patron and his wife perished. Victoria saw it all. She was twelve at the time, only a child. Something happened to her, something most strange.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, up here in the head, señor.’ He tapped his skull. ‘She has been unable to speak from that day to this.’
There was a step in the doorway and van Horne stepped inside, the cigarillo still clamped between his teeth, the machine-gun under his arm.
‘What happened?’ I demanded.
‘He got away, that’s what damn well happened.’
It was as if a cloak had slipped away revealing another kind of man entirely underneath. Everything had changed, the way he moved and walked and his voice had become harsher, the speech clipped, incisive. There was a powerful, elemental force to the man which he had kept hidden before for obvious reasons.
He slammed the machine-gun down on the bar and snapped his fingers at Tacho. ‘Give me a bottle quick. Anything. I’ve got to think this out.’
My Enfield was stuck in Delgado’s belt. I pulled it free, checked the loading mechanically and shoved it into its holster. I stirred Delgado’s body with my toe. ‘Something else you picked up on the Western Front, father?’
‘Son,’ he said solemnly, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ve got a confession to make. All is not what it seems.’
‘It very seldom is.’
He laughed, that strange, harsh laugh of his. ‘Explanations can wait till a more suitable time. Right now, I’ve got other fish to fry. This is a mess. How long before the guy who got away reaches friends?’
‘Tacho says there are federales all over the place between here and Huila. There’s been a lot of trouble in the area lately. Did you mean it when you said you were hoping to get through the sierras to Guyamas?’
‘Yes, a friend of mine tells me they get trading schooners in there all the time from the Pacific islands with cargoes of copra. It seemed to me like a nice quiet way to leave.’
‘And you need that kind of passage out?’
‘I think you could say that. I’ll go and get a map.’
He went out to the Mercedes and while he was gone, the girl, Victoria, came in from the kitchen with a pot of coffee on a tray and several cups. When she filled them, she served me first which was, for some reason, curiously disturbing. She stood at the end of the bar watching me gravely, not even responding when I smiled at her, like some good dog waiting for its master’s command. Van Horne came in briskly with a large-scale map of northern Mexico which he spread out across the bar counter.
‘North, south or east seem out of the question to me,’ he said. ‘They’ll be telegraphing ahead of us within a few hours.’
‘Which only leaves the sierras.’ I ran my finger along the road to Huila. ‘That way would be by far the best. The road through the mountains branches off about forty miles this side of Huila.’
‘We’d never get that far, not without running into trouble.’
‘You’re including me in this business?’
‘Have you any choice? You’ll swing, anyway, if they ever lay hands on you, and two could make out better than one if things get a little rough.’
In other words he needed me. The true reason for his suggestion as I realized a moment later when he slammed a hand down hard on the map.
‘God, what a mess. Why the hell couldn’t I mind my own business?’
Which had already occurred to me, but I said nothing. It was Tacho who spoke then, leaning over the map, squinting at it short-sightedly. ‘There is another way through the mountains by way of the Nonava Pass. A very bad road and seldom used but during the Revolution some Yankee gringos brought arms through from the coast that way in two trucks. It has never been done since to my knowledge.’
‘He could be on to something,’ van Horne said. ‘They’d never look for us going through that way if what he says is true.’
‘What about petrol?’
‘There’s still about twenty-five gallons in the tank including the reserve and I’m carrying another fifty in the boot in five-gallon cans. Enough to get us all the way to the coast.’
I looked at the map again. We had to stay with the road to Huila for about fifteen miles, indeed had no choice in the matter. Then we cut off across the foothills through rough country, following what was obviously going to be little more than an old pack trail.
‘We could run into trouble out there in the dark,’ I said. ‘Lights or no lights.’
‘So what do we do? Sit on our backsides till sunrise and the federales get here? Be your age, Keogh. Sure, we might end up nose down in a hole or even drive straight over the edge of some arroyo, but we don’t exactly have a choice, do we, so let’s get moving.’
He folded his map, grabbed an unopened bottle of tequila and went out. I said to Tacho, ‘He’s got a point. No sense in hanging about.’
The girl caught me by the arm as I turned away. Her eyes tried to speak for her, the mouth opened and shut, the whole face working.
‘What is it?’ I demanded.
‘I think she wishes to go with you, señor,’ Tacho said.
She nodded eagerly as I turned to her and I took her by the shoulders and gave her a shake. ‘Don’t be a damn fool. What could I do with you? Where would you go? I’m running for my life.’
She gripped my hands convulsively, the eyes still pleading and I shook my head. ‘No, it just isn’t on.’
Something went out of her, I don’t know quite what. Hope perhaps, or something even more important to her. Some vital essence that is in all of us. She turned away, her shoulders sagging.
Tacho said, ‘In a way, she is running too, señor. For such a young one, she has known much sadness, many bad things. The Balbuenas were a name in these parts, and her father was a great aristocrat, but he committed the unforgivable sin for one of the high blood. He married an Indian. More than that – a Yaqui. A woman from the Wind River country on the other side of the mountain. His family never forgave him.’
‘So the girl has no one?’
‘Not here, señor, but on the other side of the mountains where her mother was born it would be a different story.’
‘All right,’ I said to the girl, bowing to the inevitable. ‘I’ll give you two minutes to get your things together.’
She gave me one startled glance over her shoulder, then disappeared into the kitchen. ‘Sometimes God looks down through the clouds, señor,’ Tacho said.
‘Not very often in my experience. What about you? How will the federales treat you?’
‘An