For years I had lived a life in which everything had, of necessity, to be sacrificed to the Cause. There had been no room for honour, friendship, love or any kind of human response that might be considered a weakness.
I was not used to involvement and the responsibilities that came with it. I was a solitary lonely man and content to be so mainly because of the fact that for so many years I had not expected to live beyond the day after tomorrow.
But now there was Victoria, had been from that first moment at Tacho’s when she had run to my side, clutching at my jacket like a lost child recognizing a loved one in a crowd.
She is in your care now, señor. Tacho’s words came back to haunt me, but I was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t the other way round. She had changed considerably since choosing sides. Had become all Yaqui. Van Horne had once said that she would take a knife to me in bed the first time I displeased her. More likely on last night’s performance, that she would take a knife to anyone who harmed me.
So she was wholly in my mind as I drove the Mercedes out through the gate on the following morning, van Horne beside me and Janos in the rear as usual and when I saw the encampment still there by the stream, smoke rising from the fire, I was filled with a feeling of real and conscious pleasure.
She was standing by the fire, leaning over a cooking pot. Nachita spoke to her and she glanced up, shading her eyes from the morning sun. Then she did a strange thing. She ran across to the nearest horse, swung up on its bare back and urged it into a gallop.
There was only the rope halter to hang on to, but she was a marvellous rider and was beside us in a moment, her face turned towards me. She was laughing, perhaps at the very joy of living on such a morning although I like to think it was because of me. I waved and as we drew away, she pulled her mount round and went back towards the camp.
Van Horne said, ‘I told you she wouldn’t let go, Keogh.’
‘Did I ever say I wanted her to?’
He seemed surprised, but said simply, ‘You go to hell in your own way, boy.’
‘Exactly,’ Janos said patiently. ‘Could we now discuss the day’s plan of campaign?’
‘Simplicity itself,’ van Horne said. ‘I came here to get de la Plata one way or the other as Bonilla suggested, not to commit suicide.’
‘I could have taken him yesterday,’ I said. ‘And dead meat after, his men would have seen to that.’
‘Exactly, so we have to draw him into some kind of direct confrontation, either alone or with the kind of backing we can take care of.’
‘And how do we manage that?’
‘We play it by ear and hope. I suggest you make your inspection of the mine this morning, then tell the girl and the old man you’ll consider all the relevant facts, compile a report on the situation this afternoon. She’ll ask you back for a meeting to discuss things this evening, nothing is more certain.’
‘And you think Tomas will put in an appearance?’ Janos asked.
‘There or at the hotel. He’ll want to know what’s in that report. Wouldn’t you agree, Keogh?’
I nodded slowly. ‘I’d be surprised if he didn’t. The thing is, will he turn up on his own?’
‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’
He lit a cigarillo, leaned back cheerfully, took a book from his pocket and started to read. It was a copy of St Augustine’s City of God in Latin, but I had ceased to be surprised at anything now where van Horne was concerned.
As we drove into the courtyard and came to a halt at the bottom of the steps, Chela de la Plata appeared in the doorway. She was dressed for riding as she had been the previous day in leather breeches and boots, the Cordoban hat tilted over her eyes. The riding whip in her left hand tapped nervously against her leg and she seemed tired and drawn, the pale skin stretched tightly over the cheekbones.
She came down to meet us, a manilla folder in one hand bound with red tape which she handed to me. ‘You will find assay reports in there for the last five years the mine was fully operating and other information which I presume you will need.’
Janos removed his hat. ‘May I inquire how your father is this morning?’
‘Not well, I’m afraid. He is confined to his bed.’ She hesitated, then turned to van Horne. ‘He is in no condition to see visitors, father. I am sorry to have wasted your time in this manner.’
‘I understand perfectly,’ he told her, and for a moment, there was that strange quality of intimacy between them that I had noticed during their first meeting at the church.
She brightened suddenly. ‘Perhaps you would care to accompany us to the mine? Many of the village men are working there at the moment. You might find it of interest.’
‘I’d like nothing better.’
‘You ride, father?’
‘I’ve been known to.’
She smiled in a way she hadn’t smiled in a long, long time unless I was mistaken. Strange, but they had talked together as if Janos and I had ceased to exist.
The trail was difficult, mainly because of the kind of terrain it had to cross, but it had also deteriorated due to neglect over the years. It was obviously the first matter that would require attention if the mine was ever to become fully operational again.
Van Horne and I followed Chela in single file, allowing our mounts to pick their own way and Janos toiled along behind in a buckboard hauled by two horses, one of the hacienda’s peons at the reins.
We ascended into a country of broken hills and narrow, twisting watercourses. The slopes were covered with mesquite and grease wood and as we climbed higher, a few pinons rooted in the scant soil, pushing their pointed heads into the morning.
We went over a rise to a small plateau and found half a dozen men ranged across the path, each with his reins in his left hand, his rifle in the right. All very military, but as I remembered, Tomas de la Plata had been an army officer.
He appeared from the pinons above us, a sombre, rather clerical-looking figure in his black clothes. Chela was angry and frightened at the same time.
‘What is it?’ she called. ‘What do you want? You gave me your word. You promised two days.’
One of his men urged his horse in close, reached inside my coat and plucked the Enfield from my shoulder holster, had obviously been told beforehand exactly where to look.
‘Tomas!’ Chela cried, a kind of agony in her voice.
‘I gave my word,’ he said. ‘Now carry on to the mine. Your friends will follow when I have finished with them.’
She knew him, I suppose, well enough to know the futility of arguing, but her face was white and angry as she hauled her mount round viciously and rode away.
The buckboard was still some considerable way down the trail behind us and Janos was well out of things. Tomas pushed his hat back to hang around his neck and stood looking down at us for a while. He had pale flaxen hair, strange for a Mexican, blue eyes and the aesthetic face was calm, empty. Yes, empty was an excellent word to describe it.
‘Come up here, Señor Keogh,’ he said. ‘And bring the priest with you.’
We did as we were told, not that we had any option in the matter, dismounted and scrambled up the bank to find him leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette.
He behaved at first as if van Horne didn’t exist. ‘When will you be ready with an opinion on the mine?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to look at the place this morning, go through the figures your sister has given me this afternoon, then prepare a report.’
‘You have arranged to see her and my father this evening?’
‘No, I understand he’s not too well. He’s confined to his bed.’
‘I wish to see this report when it is finished, you understand me?’
‘I would have thought that your sister’s business under present circumstances, not yours,’ van Horne told him quietly.
Tomas de la Plata said in a voice of dreadful calm, ‘I was not aware that I had given you permission to speak, but now I have started let me make one thing clear. I allow you to survive at my sister’s urging for two days only and in that time, no preaching, no approaches to the people, no priest’s tricks. Two days, then you go. If you break my conditions in the meantime I shall kill you.’
‘And that would give you some kind of pleasure?’ van Horne said.
‘No more than to put my foot on a beetle.’ He turned and looked at me speculatively. ‘You saw Colonel Bonilla in Huila. He warned you against coming here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what did he tell you about me?’
‘He said that the people had had their Revolution. That what they and the country needs now is stability and order which means there can be no room for men like you.’
Why I had said it and in quite that way, I do not know, but the words were out and impossible to retrieve. It didn’t seem to matter for only one aspect of what I had said registered with him.
He turned to look at me and his eyes seemed to have changed colour, glittering like pieces of ice in the pale face. ‘The people,’ he said. ‘You speak to me of the people? Shall I tell you what they are? Dung on the face of the land. I went to prison for them, spent three years in a penal colony for political offenders in the jungles of Yucatan. Suffered every conceivable degradation. I gave my life to a struggle whose one ideal was to win them their freedom and freedom they took. To murder, to rape and burn and turn this land into a charnel house.’
‘They were under the boot for a considerable time,’ I reminded him. ‘A reaction that might have been expected.’
‘You think so?’ He shivered as if suddenly cold and stared out over the mountainside and it was as if he was speaking to himself. ‘Not by me, señor. I came home after ten years of fighting the people’s war to find my father a broken old man more out of his wits than in them, a sister who cried out in terror if a man even brushed her sleeve in passing.’
There was a stillness, only the slightest of breezes through the pinons and for a moment, it was so quiet that I could hear the wheels of the buckboard on the hillside below.
‘They came to my home one night in the last months of the war, soldiers of the ranks of the Revolution and their commanding officer, an animal named Varga, military governor in the area. My father, they beat half to death, left him for dead after defecating on his body as he lay there. As for my sister, Varga took her for himself, abused and degraded her in every possible way, then gave her to the men.’
The story was such a commonplace one, that was the dreadful thing, for I could have capped it with accounts of a score of such incidents known to me, the details of which were even more horrifying.
It was van Horne who spoke then, his voice harsh and angry. ‘And no one did anything to prevent this? No one stood by them?’
‘The people of Mojada stayed home like whipped dogs and the priest of that time, their spiritual adviser, had room in his life for only two things each day. At least one full bottle of tequila and the stinking bed of the widow who kept house for him. A father to his people as you can see.’
‘And for this you became the enemy of all the world?’
‘Once I believed in reason and the intellect, señor, but I learned better. I learned the true worth of men. I cut Varga’s throat with my own hand, hanged the priest and the one who came after him and as for the people? They would eat their own dirt if I ordered it.’
‘And this makes you a happy man?’ van Horne asked.
Tomas de la Plata glared at him and the eyes seemed to enlarge, grew darker. When he extended two fingers of his left hand, that hand was shaking. ‘Two days, priest. Two days.’ He turned and in the same breath added, ‘And you, señor, will be hearing from me at the appropriate time. Now go.’
As we scrambled down the bank his men urged their horses up to join him. There was a brief flurry and they were away through the pinons. The Enfield was lying on top of a boulder. I picked it up carefully, checked the loading and pushed it into the shoulder holster.
Van Horne’s face was grey. He said, ‘I don’t know about you, but he scared the hell out of me. He’s over the edge, that one.’
‘And beyond,’ I said.
The buckboard came over the rise below us and rolled to a halt. Janos called, ‘I thought you’d be there by now. What happened? Did you run into trouble?’
‘Oh, I think you could say that,’ I told him and van Horne started to laugh, but it was flat, cold stuff, no mirth in it at all.
Our final destination proved to be a small plateau against the great rocky face of the mountain. Chela de la Plata had ridden down to meet us, reining in her horse beside van Horne who led the way. I didn’t hear what she said, but he reached out to take her hand and smiled confidently. ‘Everything is fine, I promise. He has no intention of breaking his word.’
The relief in her face was there for all to see and she pulled ahead to lead the way up on to the plateau, reined in and dismounted. It was a drift mine, the entrance, a large irregular hole in the cliff face and nearby an old steam engine, obviously the major source of power, puffed smoke into the still air.
Water had been channelled down the face of the mountain in several places, running finally into a wooden conduit that emptied into a large, dilapidated shed, open at both ends and used to process the ore.
It was a scene of great activity. Periodically, a truck laden with ore emerged from the mouth of the mine pushed by a couple of sweating peons stripped to the waist. The rusting rails took this down a short incline into the ore shed where the processing took place.
Inside the shed, the only piece of machinery was a steam-operated crusher and the heat from its furnace made working conditions almost unbearable. The water ran into a tank lined with clay against leakage and there were the usual cradles and puddling troughs. Perhaps half a dozen men worked in there, all stripped to the waist and a young boy spent his time dousing them with buckets of water when called upon to do so.
‘As you can see,’ Chela said. ‘Our methods are primitive by the standards you gentlemen are used to.’
‘Which can be remedied easily enough,’ Janos told her, ‘as long as the prospect exists for the right kind of return, then the introduction of modern machinery and methods will be our first priority.’
‘Since starting again what particular problems have you had?’ I asked her.
‘So many rockfalls that I have lost count.’
‘Then your timbering must be at fault,’ Janos said. ‘Only to be expected after so many years of idleness and decay. Have you any kind of expert assistance available?’
‘Many of the villagers worked here before when the mine was fully operational. Rafael Moreno from the hotel was shift foreman as a young man and also an expert shot-firer. He is supervising the work at the rock face for us and Jurado organizes the actual labour force.’
On her brother’s insistence, presumably, but Janos let it go and smiled brightly. ‘Señorita, I have a confession to make. I have had a hatred of confined places since childhood. Surprising, I know, in one with my business interests. That is why I employ professionals such as Mr Keogh to give me the benefit of their expert advice.’
‘Which means you’ll sit out here enjoying a cigar while I do the necessary tour of inspection,’ I said.
‘Correct.’ He smiled rather complacently and perfectly in character. ‘The privilege not only of age, but of position, Mr Keogh. I shall sit on a boulder in the sun contemplating this extraordinary view and think of you down there in the darkness – often.’
Chela de la Plata smiled. ‘Then if I may be your guide, Señor Keogh, and yours, father?’
And so the three of us left him in the sunlight and ventured into the darkness.
At the Hermosa Mine there was a considerable criminal element provided by the local state prison and the rest of the labour force had consisted of men newly released from the ranks of the army of the Revolution. A pot constantly on the boil.
The company had operated according to the age-old formula of working them until they dropped, but one essential requirement always faced up to was the need for adequate ventilation, for underground you either breathed or died. A step inside the tunnel and the heat seized me by the throat which gave me an opportunity to play mining engineers.
‘What’s wrong with the ventilation?’
‘The main airshaft was blocked by a rockfall a week or two back. Moreno says it would take quite an operation to clear it so we decided to carry on for the time being.’
‘Surely he told you how dangerous that could be?’
‘We are short of everything, señor, time as well as money and we needed as much ore out as possible to be in a position to raise more capital. A vicious circle.’
We turned a corner and the light faded, leaving us in a corridor of shadows, patches of light illuminated by guttering candles in niches in the rock, marching into the darkness at spaced intervals. We stood to one side as a truck rattled over the rails pushed by a couple of weary, dust-covered men who seemed at the end of their tether.
‘As you can see, the work takes a great deal out of them. They can only manage an hour or two at a time in the heat and are then compelled to return to the surface.’
‘Which would all be effectively remedied by a reasonable ventilating system, I presume, as Mr Keogh indicates,’ van Horne said helpfully.
We reached a fork and Chela paused. ‘There are two main faces. Have you any preference?’
‘I think I’d like a chance to speak to Moreno,’ I said.
‘Then we must try what we call Old Woman. He is usually there.’
There was a lamp on a hook in the wall. She took it down and led the way, stooping as the tunnel closed in. There was a strange, humming vibration in the rock, sure sign that picks were at work not too far away, a light in the distance, and we emerged into a low-roofed cavern illuminated by a couple of pressure lamps.
A dozen or fifteen men worked at the rock face, jabbing away with short-handled picks. Three or four more gathered ore into baskets which they then emptied into another truck. It was almost impossible to breathe because of the heat and the dust. One of the men at the face got up and came to meet us and in spite of the sweatband around his forehead, the patina of dust, I recognized Moreno.
‘Señorita.’ He nodded his head awkwardly.
‘You will answer any questions Señor Keogh puts to you,’ she told him.
He turned to me, obviously uncertain. There was a sudden shower of soil and pebbles in the corner and one of the men got out of the path fast.
‘The timbering could be better,’ I said.
He took out a knife, sprung the blade and jabbed at the nearest prop, breaking away a large, brittle flake. ‘As you can see, the wood is old, dried-out to the point of desiccation. The whole mountain waits to come down on us. Each time a man coughs another rock falls.’
‘Which is why you aren’t using machinery down here?’
‘The vibration might be all that is needed.’
I asked him one or two reasonably intelligent questions about ore samples and so on, then we left and went back along the tunnel until we reached the place where it forked.
‘Would you like to see the other face?’ she asked me. ‘The one we call Crazy Man?’
It was necessary, I suppose, to make things look as authentic as possible although the sooner I was out of the place, the happier I would be.
I said, ‘A brief visit only, señorita, I promise you.’
She turned to van Horne. ‘The tunnel to Crazy Man drops to four feet in places. An uncomfortable journey for you particularly and not necessary.’
‘Then I’ll wait for you here,’ he told her.
I didn’t blame him for his enormous size was ill-suited to the conditions we had found and he had scraped his head on roof trusses more than once on our way to the other face.
We left him there and started along the tunnel which was in many ways a replica of the first except for the fact that the roof came down to meet us rather sooner than I had expected, in spite of her warning. I was aware of the same vibration in the rock, the tapping of picks. We got out of the way of another truck which scraped past us, its top almost touching the roof. When it had gone, we moved on towards the dim light at the far end.
There was a considerable amount of angry shouting, disagreeably loud in that confined space and when we finally emerged into the cavern which contained the working face, I quickly discovered the cause – Jurado, his face a mask of dust and sweat, a rawhide whip in one hand.
He cracked it at the heels of the men who loaded the baskets with ore. ‘Come on, you lazy scum. Faster!’
Like van Horne, the man had not been built for such work and his enormous bulk obviously made his existence in such a place extremely uncomfortable. The anger and frustration showed clearly in the eyes, the twitching whip and his face and chest were thick with dust.
He nodded to Chela, ignoring me completely. She said, ‘Is there anything you wish to know, Señor Keogh?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied. ‘Conditions here seem much the same as at Old Woman.’
She turned to Jurado. ‘Everything is in order?’
‘It would be if these miserable swine would put their backs into it.’
‘Surely the fault of their working conditions?’ I said. ‘I would have thought the whip possessed only a limited application.’
‘You don’t know these people as I do. It is all they understand.’
One of the men collecting ore hoisted his basket to the edge of the truck, paused to take breath and lost his grip, tipping the contents over the floor. Jurado sprang forward and started to belabour him with the weighted handle of the whip.
Chela de la Plata grabbed his arm and cried, ‘Leave him, Jurado, I order you.’
His control had gone to such a degree that he lashed out, catching her across the side of the face with his clenched fist, sending her back into my arms. In the same moment, the unfortunate peon who had been the cause of things tried to make a run for it. Jurado lunged at him, lost his footing and fell against one of the timber roof supports, his great weight knocking it from position.
A waterfall of shale and pebbles erupted from the darkness above. The men who had been working at the face were on their feet with cries of alarm, already moving towards the tunnel and already too late.
There was a distinct cracking sound as a twenty-foot roof truss split in the centre and the mountain rushed in on us.
The air had changed into layers of thick whirling dust that was impossible to breathe. I found myself on my back. The most frightening discovery of all was to find that my legs were trapped and yet, at the first frantic kick, they pulled free of what turned out to be nothing more than a great mound of earth and shale.
I groped forward blindly through the curtain of dust towards a dim glow on the floor and found the pressure lamp half buried. I pumped it up quickly to increase the brightness and held it above my head.
Chela crouched on her hands and knees, dazed and frightened, a streak of blood on her cheek staining the dust and on a first quick check, most of the miners seemed to be in one piece.
Jurado was standing against the rock face, a look of complete incomprehension on his face. It was as if he could not believe that this was happening to him. As I held up the lamp, illuminating the working and its furthest corners, he gave an angry growl and scrambled up the sloping ramp of rubble which now blocked the entrance to the tunnel.
He started to tear at the top of the mound with his bare hands and several of the miners joined him, coughing spasmodically as they choked on the thick dust. Chela got to her feet and stood there, swaying a little as if uncertain of her balance. I put out a hand to steady her and she pulled away from me violently. So, even in circumstances like this she could not help but react on being touched by a man as her brother had described, but before I could do or say anything, there was a hoarse cry from Jurado.
When I scrambled up beside him with the lamp, I saw that there was now a distinct gap between the heap of rubble and the roof of the tunnel and there was a steady current of air moving through. It was all that was needed. The men started working like beavers and I went back to Chela and took her firmly by the arm.
She started to react in the same violent manner, trying to pull free of me. I slapped her face and shook her hard. ‘Will you damn well listen to me? It’s going to be all right. We’re going to get out.’
She stopped struggling, staring at me rather vacantly as if unable to comprehend and the mountain chose that moment to deposit another couple of tons of rubble in the far corner. She came into my arms and held on tight.
Not too long after that, Jurado called to me again. I sat her down against the rock face, climbing up the sloping pile of rubble to join the others. There was a gap a good foot wide now, light streaming through from the other side, voices.
It was with no particular surprise that I saw Oliver van Horne peering through at me.
It took perhaps an hour of hard work from both sides to create a gap on top of the rock fall about ten feet long and two high, just right for a cautious passage out, and not before time for the mountain groaned above our heads and the roof trusses moved uneasily as if in protest at having to continue to carry all that weight.
Chela was second out and only because Jurado went through the instant the passage was clear in what can only be described as indecent haste. I brought up the rear and found Moreno waiting on the other side with two or three men to help me through.
‘Father van Horne has gone on ahead with the señorita,’ he told me. ‘She seemed much disturbed.’
A remark which certainly ranked as the understatement of the day, but I was concerned only with one thing at that moment which was getting to some fresh air. When I finally stumbled out into the sunlight, everyone was there, not only the workers, but also Tomas de la Plata and his men.
He had Chela on the ground against his knee, one arm about her shoulders as he gently wiped the filth from her face with a damp cloth provided by one of his men who stood holding a bucket of water. As I discovered later, he had been attracted by the sound of the alarm bell which hung in a tripod by the ore shed and was always rung in time of disaster.
Van Horne watched, stripped to the waist, exhibiting the kind of muscular development that would not have disgraced a heavyweight wrestler. Jurado, the cause of it all, stood hesitantly by, wild-eyed.
Tomas de la Plata looked up as I appeared, his face white and angry. ‘So, now you know how things stand here, Señor Keogh and no need of any official reports. I will hear no more of this nonsense which has almost cost me my sister’s life.’
Interesting that the emphasis should be upon his own loss and not hers. If there was a time to throw Jurado to the wolves it was then, but to my surprise, Chela opened her eyes and said simply, ‘Take me home, Tomas.’
He murmured something softly that was for no one but her, kissed her on the brow, then picked her up in his arms. When he went, he took her on the saddle with him, his men following behind and all watched them go in silence.
It was Janos who spoke first and the remark was typical. ‘By God, sir, Mr Keogh, but you have a remarkable facility for survival in all things.’
‘It can’t come any closer than that. The roof was still coming down as we got out.’ I managed a weary grin for van Horne. ‘A beautiful sight, that face of yours peering through.’
I walked to a nearby water trough, sluiced my head and shoulders, then slumped down on the ground, my face turned to the sun. It was too good to last, of course, for Moreno who had been moving among the men making a tally, came and stood before me, his face grave.
‘We are missing one man, señor.’
I got up wearily and van Horne, who was washing himself at the trough, turned at once.
‘Are you certain?’
‘Oh yes, señor, Jose Jardona, the shotfirer on that face. There can be no question.’
Jurado, who had been sitting sullenly on the ground, his back against one wall of the ore shed, got to his feet and came forward. ‘He will be dead by now.’
‘We can’t be certain,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to go and see.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘How long were we in there before getting out? An hour at least. Did anyone hear a sound?’ He turned in appeal to the miners who stood listening in a semicircle. No one answered and he turned back to me. ‘He must have been killed instantly under that first fall.’
I said to Moreno, ‘You’ll come with me?’
There was fear on his face, real fear and he was, after all, no longer young. He took a deep breath and gave me a queer little bow. ‘At your orders, señor, but no one else, not under the circumstances.’
Hardly a pleasant thought, but it made sense. We started towards the mine and Jurado caught me by the shoulder. ‘Don’t be a fool, the mountain still moves.’
But he was more afraid for himself than me and I pulled away and went after Moreno. When I joined him, he already had two pressure lamps burning, gave me one and we started in.
Van Horne caught up with us just as we reached the fork in the tunnel.
Crawling back across the rockfall, the roof of the tunnel close enough occasionally to scrape my back, was not the most rewarding of experiences, especially as the rattle of falling stones and soil could be heard monotonously in the darkness ahead.
When I went back inside the working, it was to find a scene of even greater chaos. There had obviously been a bad fall quite recently and the mountain, squeezing in, had reduced the size of things by half, roof trusses and props smashed like matchsticks and pointing every which-way.
Just to move among them was a hazard and yet it was not to be avoided for a low, continuous moaning as of someone in great pain, led us to the corner where the full force of the first fall had been felt.
Jardona was under a ton or so of rock, his head and shoulders and one arm only clear, the dust-covered face glistening with sweat. I can only presume that he had lost his senses at the first shock and had lain unconscious in the darkness of the corner during the time we had been clearing our way out.
Moreno started to dig carefully with his hands, feeling his way gingerly. After a while he looked at me and shook his head slightly. Not that it mattered for Jose Jardona was a dying man, had only clung to life by a miracle.
He opened his eyes and stared blankly at us and then something clicked, a kind of wonder. His lips moved and he said quite distinctly, ‘Father, is it you?’
I found van Horne at my shoulder. He was stripped to the waist again, the face a mask of dust. He ran the back of a hand across his eyes as if to clear them and edged forward.
‘I saw you at the church,’ Jardona said. ‘There was a fire.’ He closed his eyes again, shuddering in pain, then opened them and said weakly, ‘I am going to die, father, and I’ve done so many terrible things. I didn’t think it would matter, but it does.’
There was a sudden rumble like distant thunder above us and I ducked, arms raised to cover my head as shale and rubble cascaded across us.
There was blood on Jardona’s mouth. He spat it out and said weakly, ‘Don’t leave me, father.’
Van Horne took his hand and a roof truss cracked and sagged in the far corner. He glanced over his shoulder and said, ‘No sense in you two staying.’
Moreno, poor devil, looked as if he expected to meet his Maker at any moment and yet some stubborn streak would not allow him to betray his manhood. ‘Jose is my cousin, señor.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘A matter of family, you understand me?’
I held up the lamp and said, ‘A little light against the dark, father. I suggest you get on with it.’
Van Horne did not waste further time in argument. He leaned close and said in a calm strong voice, ‘I want you to make an act of contrition. Say after me: “O, my God, who art infinitely good in Thyself …”’
Jardona, choking on his own blood, followed him, painfully, brokenly, each word a personal Calvary. Step by step van Horne moved through the final rites, his voice never faltering and for a while, even the mountain seemed to stop moving and there was silence.
There was a final effusion of blood from Jardona’s mouth and his eyes closed. Moreno crossed himself and started to slide out backwards. ‘Go with God, Jose,’ he called softly.
I touched van Horne on the shoulder. He ignored me, leaning over the body, listening, and in the silence I heard slight irregular breathing, Jardona still clinging fast to life. Soil, the merest trickle, dribbled out of the shadows, and van Horne, leaning forward to protect the body, started to recite the prayers for the dying.
‘Go Forth, O Christian soul, from this world, in the Name of God the Father Almighty Who created thee; in the Name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, Who suffered for thee; in the Name of the Holy Ghost …’
With a mighty rush that was like no sound I had heard before, the mountain shook itself and poured in on us.
Moreno cried out urgently from the tunnel entrance. I grabbed van Horne by the hair and pulled him backwards with all my strength. Jose Jardona disappeared from sight for ever and I scrambled for the way out as fast as any terrified animal seeking a bolt hole.
A flying stone shattered my lamp and I dropped it and crawled into the darkness over rough stones and then Moreno was there, his lamp above his head, a hand outstretched to help me.
I fell to my knees, but got up frantically and turned and when his head and shoulders appeared above me, could not believe it. There was no time for anything but survival now. Moreno and I got an arm a piece and pulled him through, then we ran for our lives as the mountain shook itself above us.
I don’t suppose any of those waiting expected to see us emerge from the great cloud of dust that billowed from the entrance, but when we did, there was an incredulous roar and everyone crowded round.
I pushed my way through the press, fell on my hands and knees beside the trough and plunged my head into the cool water. Then I rolled over on my back. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply. When I opened them again, Janos was standing over me.
‘By God, sir, but this is really too much,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to imagine myself alone in a strange land.’
‘Van Horne’s the man you should talk to,’ I told him. ‘He seems to have some sort of death wish if you ask me. Either that or he’s tired of living.’
He asked me what had happened and I told him briefly. There was a frown on his face when I had finished, unusual for him. ‘So, he is taking the part seriously again?’
‘When the mood’s on him.’
‘And you?’ I frowned in bewilderment. ‘You stayed also, Mr Keogh. You could have died, sir, and for what?’
Which was certainly a point. I got up and saw van Horne coming towards us, men easing out of his way, yet staying close, many crossing themselves.
He sluiced water over his head and shoulders and smiled. ‘We have our moments, Keogh.’
But the smile was fleeting and beneath it, there was a new seriousness. He reached for his shirt and Moreno approached, the rest of the men crowding behind. I noticed Jurado lurking on the outskirts of things, obviously waiting to see what was going to happen. I ignored him for the moment, for I was too interested myself.
Moreno said, ‘What you did in there, father, for my poor cousin, to ease his going in such terrible circumstances … this was a remarkable thing. We are in your debt, all of us. If there is anything we can do …’
Van Horne stood looking at them, shirt dangling from one hand, water beading his head and shoulders. I could not see his face, but there was a peculiar quality of stillness to him.
He said clearly, ‘To mourn the death of one man would be to fly in the face of God’s mercy when so many have been saved. I shall hold a service of thanksgiving in the church at two-thirty this afternoon. All who are truly grateful will be there.’
There was consternation even on Janos’s face. As for Moreno and his friends, I have seldom seen men more dismayed.
Jurado was already galloping away to bear the glad tidings to his master.