we would make of it, friend,
if we, who offer our enthusiasm and lives to crush a wretched tyrant,
became the builders of a monstrous edifice holding one hundred or two
hundred thousand monsters of exactly the same sort. People without
ideals! A tyrant folk! Vain bloodshed!"

Large groups of Federals pushed up the hill, fleeing from the "high
hats." A bullet whistled past them, singing as it sped. After his
speech, Alberto Solis stood lost in thought, his arms crossed.
Suddenly, he took fright.

"I'll be damned if I like these plaguey mosquitoes!" he said. "Let's
get away from here!"

So scornfully Luis Cervantes smiled that Solis sat down on a rock quite
calm, bewildered. He smiled. His gaze roved as he watched the spirals
of smoke from the rifles, the dust of roofs crumbling from houses as
they fell before the artillery. He believed he discerned the symbol of
the revolution in these clouds of dust and smoke that climbed upward
together, met at the crest of the hill and, a moment after, were
lost....

"By heaven, now I see what it all means!"

He sketched a vast gesture, pointing to the station. Locomotives
belched huge clouds of black dense smoke rising in columns; the trains
were overloaded with fugitives who had barely managed to escape from
the captured town.

Suddenly he felt a sharp blow in the stomach. As though his legs were
putty, he rolled off the rock. His ears buzzed... Then darkness ...
silence ... eternity....

PART TWO

I

Demetrio, nonplussed, scratched his head: "Look here, don't ask me any
more questions.... You gave me the eagle I wear on my hat, didn't you?
All right then; you just tell me: 'Demetrio, do this or do that,' and
that's all there is to it."

To champagne, that sparkles and foams as the beaded bubbles burst at
the brim of the glass, Demetrio preferred the native tequila, limpid
and fiery.

The soldiers sat in groups about the tables in the restaurant, ragged
men, filthy with sweat, dirt and smoke, their hair matted, wild,
disheveled.

"I killed two colonels," one man clamored in a guttural harsh voice. He
was a small fat fellow, with embroidered hat and chamois coat, wearing
a light purple handkerchief about his neck.

"They were so Goddamned fat they couldn't even run. By God, I wish you
could have seen them, tripping and stumbling at every step they took,
climbing up the hill, red as tomatoes, their tongues hanging out like
hounds. 'Don't run so fast, y