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 sym-
bol 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 fugi-
tives who had barely managed to escape from the cap-
tured 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. . . .