Chapter 12

XII

"BUT Gaspar Ruiz breathed yet. I had him carried in his poncho under
the shelter of some bushes on the very ridge from which he had been
gazing so fixedly at the fort while unseen death was hovering already
over his head.

"Our troops had bivouacked round the fort. Towards daybreak I was not
surprised to hear that I was designated to command the escort of a
prisoner who was to be sent down at once to Santiago. Of course the
prisoner was Gaspar Ruiz' wife.

"'I have named you out of regard for your feelings,' General Robles
remarked. 'Though the woman really ought to be shot for all the harm
she has done to the Republic.'

"And as I made a movement of shocked protest, he continued:

"'Now he is as well as dead, she is of no importance. Nobody will
know what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.' He
shrugged his shoulders. 'I suppose he must have buried large
quantities of his loot in places that she alone knows of.'

"At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and
carrying her child on her arm.

"I walked to meet her.

"'Is he living yet?' she asked, confronting me with that white,
impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way.

"I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word.
His eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name
with a great effort.

"'Erminia!'

"She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with
her big eyes, looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous,
thin voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise
behind the black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk,
incomprehensible and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying
man and the kneeling woman, remained silent, looking into each other's
eyes, listening to the frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The
child laid its head against its mother's breast and was still.

"'It was for you,' he began. 'Forgive.' His voice failed him.
Presently I heard a mutter, and caught the pitiful words: 'Not strong
enough.'

"She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile,
and in a humble tone, 'Forgive me,' he repeated. 'Leaving you. . .'

"She bent down, dry-eyed, and in a steady voice: 'On all the earth I
have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,' she said.

"His head made a movement. His eyes revived. 'At last! 'he sighed out.
Then, anxiously, 'But is this true . . . is this true?'

"'As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,' she
answered him passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to
raise his head, but