plated and plumed, and making our hero look less like a soldier than a carnival figure.
“Are you coming to help carry the wounded?” he asked. “They have just killed two more for us that we are carrying to San Pablo. They need men there to open the ditch where they are burying our dead of yesterday, but I have worked enough. I am going to the house of Manuela Sancho to see if I can get a snatch of sleep. But, first, we are going to dance a little. Don’t you want to come along?”
“No, we are going to San Pablo,” I replied, “to bury the dead. There is enough to do.”
“They say that so many dead make the air bad, and that is why there are so many ill of the fever. That is finishing them faster than their wounds, over by the other barricade. I would rather have some ‘hot cakes’ than the epidemic. A ‘señora’ wouldn’t scare me, but a chill and a fever would. So then you are going to bury the dead?”