Page:Tales of Today.djvu/221

Rh that night in every quarter of the field animating his men: 'Come, courage, my children! Stand up to the enemy!' Zucarraga—had been brought in, wounded in the leg, the bone shattered, so it was said. It was in front of the gutted, empty house where he usually slept. The prisoners of the army of Madrid—the Carlists had made many prisoners during the night—saw this superb, lofty young man, his face as pale as his white beret, with his black beard, surrounded by his officers. Zucarraga could no longer stand erect; his friends were sustaining him, holding him under the armpits. Some of his men brought a bench and he was placed upon it with his leg extended at full length.

"Araquil was among the onlookers.

"He had been captured with Garrido's men and with them placed in the general herd, and now Carlist sentries, with loaded muskets, were standing guard over him, together with the others. His knife, his famous knife, had been of no use to him. When, swept away by the prevailing disorder, he had seen himself captured and included among the number of the prisoners, he had thrown it away, saying to himself: 'It will be to do over again!' And now, doomed as he probably was to be shot, since he alone among the prisoners was not in uniform, he said to himself that it was all over, all over, and that Pepa would marry another or would die a maid; and he shot a bitter, envenomed glance toward that human victim who was escaping him, toward that Zucarraga, whom he was beginning to hate, he could not tell why—or because, rather, while Zucarraga lived, his, Araquil's, life was a barren one, Pepa was lost to him.