“They should be here in an hour. If not before.”
“Then wait for them. There has been enough stupidity already.”
“Bandidos!” the first officer shouted suddenly, getting to his feet and putting his head well up above the boulder so that the crest of the hill looked much closer as he stood upright. “Red swine! Cowards!”
The second officer looked at the sniper and shook his head. The sniper looked away but his lips tightened.
The first officer stood there, his head all clear of the rock and with his hand on his pistol butt. He cursed and vilified the hilltop. Nothing happened. Then he stepped clear of the boulder and stood there looking up the hill.
“Fire, cowards, if you are alive,” he shouted. “Fire on one who has no fear of any Red that ever came out of the belly of the great whore.”
This last was quite a long sentence to shout and the officer’s face was red and congested as he finished.
The second officer, who was a thin sunburned man with quiet eyes, a thin, long-lipped mouth and a stubble of beard over his hollow cheeks, shook his head again. It was this officer who was shouting who had ordered the first assault. The young lieutenant who was dead up the slope had been the best friend of this other lieutenant who was named Paco Berrendo and who was listening to the shouting of the captain, who was obviously in a state of exaltation.
“Those are the swine who shot my sister and my mother,” the captain said. He had a red face and a blond, British-looking moustache and there was something wrong about his eyes. They were a light blue and the lashes were light, too. As you looked at them they seemed to focus slowly. Then “Reds,” he shouted. “Cowards!” and commenced cursing again.
He stood absolutely clear now and, sighting carefully, fired his pistol at the only target that the hilltop presented: the dead horse that had belonged to Sordo. The bullet threw up a puff of dirt fifteen yards below the horse. The captain fired again. The bullet hit a rock and sung off.
The captain stood there looking at the hilltop. The Lieutenant Berrendo was looking at the body of the other lieutenant just below the summit. The sniper was looking at the ground under his eyes. Then he looked up at the captain.
“There is no one alive up there,” the captain said. “Thou,” he said to the sniper, “go up there and see.”
The sniper looked down. He said nothing.
“Don’t you hear me?” the captain shouted at him.
“Yes, my captain,” the sniper said, not looking at him.
“Then get up and go.” The captain still had his pistol out. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes, my captain.”
“Why don’t you go, then?”
“I don’t want to, my captain.”
“You don’t want to?” The captain pushed the pistol against the small of the man’s back. “You don’t want to?”
“I am afraid, my captain,” the soldier said with dignity.
Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the captain’s face and his odd eyes, thought he was going to shoot the man then.
“Captain Mora,” he said.
“Lieutenant Berrendo?”
“It is possible the soldier is right.”
“That he is right to say he is afraid? That he is right to say he does not want to obey an order?”
“No. That he is right that it is a trick.”
“They are all dead,” the captain said. “Don’t you hear me say they are all dead?’
“You mean our comrades on the slope?” Berrendo asked him. “I agree with you.”
“Paco,” the captain said, “don’t be a fool. Do you think you are the only one who cared for Julián? I tell you the Reds are dead. Look!”
He stood up, then put both hands on top of the boulder and pulled himself up, kneeing-up awkwardly, then getting on his feet.
“Shoot,” he shouted, standing on the gray granite boulder and waved both his arms. “Shoot me! Kill me!”
On the hilltop El Sordo lay behind the dead horse and grinned.
What a people, he thought. He laughed, trying to hold it in because the shaking hurt his arm.