“Then the wind rose and the dust was now dry in the plaza for the men walking and standing and shuffling had loosened it and it commenced to blow and a man in a dark blue Sunday jacket shouted ‘Agua! Agua!’ and the caretaker of the plaza, whose duty it was to sprinkle the plaza each morning with a hose, came and turned the hose on and commenced to lay the dust at the edge of the plaza, and then toward the center. Then the two lines fell back and let him lay the dust over the center of the plaza; the hose sweeping in wide arcs and the water glistening in the sun and the men leaning on their flails or the clubs or the white wood pitchforks and watching the sweep of the stream of water. And then, when the plaza was nicely moistened and the dust settled, the lines formed up again and a peasant shouted, ‘When do we get the first fascist? When does the first one come out of the box?’
“‘Soon,’ Pablo shouted from the door of the Ayuntamiento. ‘Soon the first one comes out.’ His voice was hoarse from shouting in the assault and from the smoke of the barracks.
“‘What’s the delay?’ some one asked.
“‘They’re still occupied with their sins,’ Pablo shouted.
“‘Clearly, there are twenty of them,’ a man said.
“‘More,’ said another.
“‘Among twenty there are many sins to recount.’
“‘Yes, but I think it’s a trick to gain time. Surely facing such an emergency one could not remember one’s sins except for the biggest.’
“‘Then have patience. For with more than twenty of them there are enough of the biggest sins to take some time.’
“‘I have patience,’ said the other. ‘But it is better to get it over with. Both for them and for us. It is July and there is much work. We have harvested but we have not threshed. We are not yet in the time of fairs and festivals.’
“‘But this will be a fair and festival today,’ another said. ‘The Fair of Liberty and from this day, when these are extinguished, the town and the land are ours.’
“‘We thresh fascists today,’ said one, ‘and out of the chaff comes the freedom of this pueblo.’
“‘We must administer it well to deserve it,’ said another. ‘Pilar,’ he said to me, ‘when do we have a meeting for organization?’
“‘Immediately after this is completed,’ I told him. ‘In the same building of the Ayuntamiento.’
“I was wearing one of the three-cornered patent leather hats of the guardia civil as a joke and I had put the hammer down on the pistol, holding it with my thumb to lower it as I pulled on the trigger as seemed natural, and the pistol was held in a rope I had around my waist, the long barrel stuck under the rope. And when I put it on the joke seemed very good to me, although afterwards I wished I had taken the holster of the pistol instead of the hat. But one of the men in the line said to me, ‘Pilar, daughter. It seems to me bad taste for thee to wear that hat. Now we have finished with such things as the guardia civil.’
“‘Then,’ I said, ‘I will take it off.’ And I did.
“‘Give it to me,’ he said. ‘It should be destroyed.’
“And as we were at the far end of the line where the walk runs along the cliff by the river, he took the hat in his hand and sailed it off over the cliff with the motion a herdsman makes throwing a stone underhand at the bulls to herd them. The hat sailed far out into space and we could see it smaller and smaller, the patent leather shining in the clear air, sailing down to the river. I looked back over the square and at all the windows and all the balconies there were people crowded and there was the double line of men across the square to the doorway of the Ayuntamiento and the crowd swarmed Outside against the windows of that building and there was the noise of many people talking, and then I heard a shout and some one said ‘Here comes the first one,’ and it was Don Benito Garcia, the Mayor, and he came out bareheaded walking slowly from the door and down the porch and nothing happened; and he walked between the line of men with the flails and nothing happened. He passed two men, four men, eight men, ten men and nothing happened and he was walking between that line of men, his head up, his fat face gray, his eyes looking ahead and then flickering from side to side and walking steadily. And nothing happened.