“Paco said, ‘That was a cowardly and foolish thing. I am sorry that I did that thing. But I try to be useful with one hand. I will do what I can with one hand for the Cause.’”

“Yes,” interrupted a soldier. “He said that. I heard him say that.”

“We spoke with him,” the Extremaduran said. “And he spoke with us. When such people with the leather coats and the pistols come it is always a bad omen in a war, as is the arrival of people with map cases and field glasses. Still we thought they had brought him for a visit, and all of us who had not been to the hospital were happy to see him, and as I say, it was the hour of the evening meal and the evening was clear and warm.”

“This wind only rose during the night,” a soldier said.

“Then,” the Extremaduran went on somberly, “one of them said to the officer in Spanish, ‘Where is the place?’

“‘Where is the place this Paco was wounded?’ asked the officer.”

“I answered him,” said the man in command. “I showed the place. It is a little further down than where you are.”

“Here is the place,” said a soldier. He pointed, and I could see it was the place. It showed clearly that it was the place.

“Then one of them led Paco by the arm to the place and held him there by the arm while the other spoke in Spanish. He spoke in Spanish, making many mistakes in the language. At first we wanted to laugh, and Paco started to smile. I could not understand all the speech, but it was that Paco must be punished as an example, in order that there would be no more self-inflicted wounds, and that all others would be punished in the same way.

“Then, while the one held Paco by the arm; Paco, looking very ashamed to be spoken of this way when he was already ashamed and sorry; the other took his pistol out and shot Paco in the back of the head without any word to Paco. Nor any word more.”

The soldiers all nodded.

“It was thus,” said one. “You can see the place. He fell with his mouth there. You can see it.”

I had seen the place clearly enough from where I lay.

“He had no warning and no chance to prepare himself,” the one in command said. “It was very brutal.”

“It is for this that I now hate Russians as well as all other foreigners,” said the Extremaduran. “We can give ourselves no illusions about foreigners. If you are a foreigner, I am sorry. But for myself, now, I can make no exceptions. You have eaten bread and drunk wine with us. Now I think you should go.”

“Do not speak in that way,” the man in command said to the Extremaduran. “It is necessary to be formal.”