gash across the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making
sure of that strong man's death, as if a powerful physique were more
able to resist the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar
Ruiz had been shot through in many places. Then he passed on, and
shortly afterwards marched off with, his men, leaving the bodies to
the care of crows and vultures.

Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that his
head was cut off at a blow; and when darkness came, shaking off the
dead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain
on his hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast,
at a shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered on
light-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clear
night. A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. He
stumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There
was not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the
inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the
neighbourhood, had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered
his thumping. In his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming
seemed to him part of a hallucination belonging to the weird dreamlike
feeling of his unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst
suffered, of the volleys fired at him within fifteen paces, of his
head being cut off at a blow. "Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the
name of God!"

An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. This
house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.