k in half, and two
streams of scarlet spurted from the wound.

"Kill the soldiers, kill them all!"

Pancracio and Manteca surpassed the others in the savagery of their
slaughter, and finished up with the wounded. Montanez, exhausted, let
his arm fall; it hung limp to his side. A gentle expression still
filled his glance; his eyes shone; he was naive as a child, unmoral as
a hyena.

"Here's one who's not dead yet," Quail shouted.

Pancracio ran up. The little blond captain with curled mustache turned
pale as wax. He stood against the door to the staircase unable to
muster enough strength to take another step.

Pancracio pushed him brutally to the edge of the corridor. A jab with
his knee against the captain's thigh--then a sound not unlike a bag of
stones falling from the top of the steeple on the porch of the church.

"My God, you've got no brains!" said Quail. "If I'd known what you were
doing, I'd have kept him for myself. That was a fine pair of shoes you
lost!"

Bending over them, the rebels stripped those among the soldiers who
were best clad, laughing and joking as they despoiled them. Brushing
back his long hair, that had fallen over his sweating forehead and
covered his eyes, Demetrio said:

"Now let's get those city fellows!"

XVIII

On the day General Natera began his advance against the town of
Zacatecas, Demetrio with a hundred men went to meet him at Fresnillo.

The leader received him cordially.

"I know who you are and the sort of men you bring. I heard about the
beatings you gave the Federals from Tepic to Durango."

Natera shook hands with Demetrio effusively while Luis Cervantes said:

"With men like General Natera and Colonel Demetrio Macias, we'll cover
our country with glory."

Demetrio understood the purpose of those words, after Natera had
repeatedly addressed him as "Colonel."

Wine and beer were served; Demetrio and Natera drank many a toast.
Luis Cervantes proposed: "The triumph of our cause, which is the
sublime triumph of Justice, because our ideal--to free the noble,
long-suffering people of Mexico--is about to be realized and because
those men who have watered the earth with their blood and tears will
reap the harvest which is rightfully theirs."

Natera fixed his cruel gaze on the orator, then turned his back on him
to talk to Demetrio. Presently, one of Natera's officers, a young man
with a frank open face, drew up to the table and stared insistently at
Cervant