alfalfa in a corner.
The officer marched beside Kate, his spurs sparking in the firelight. He went to the muddy car, that stood in the middle of the yard; then to his horse. From a saddle-pocket he took an electric torch, and led Kate across to the end shed.
There he suddenly flashed his light upon seven dead bodies, laid side by side. The two from the roof were wet. Ramón’s dead man lay with his dark, strong breast bare, and his blackish, thick, devilish face sideways; a big fellow. Kate’s man lay rigid. Martin had been stabbed in the collar bone; he looked as if he were staring at the roof of the shed. The others were two more peons, and two fellows in black boots and grey trousers and blue overall jackets. They were all inert and straight and dead, and somehow, a little ridiculous. Perhaps it is clothing that makes dead people gruesome and absurd. But also, the grotesque fact that the bodies are vacant, is always present.
“Look!” said the lieutenant, touching a body with his toe. “This is a chauffeur from Sayula; this is a boatman from Sayula. These two are peons from San Pablo. This man—” the lieutenant kicked the dead body—“we don’t know.” It was Ramón’s dead man. “But this man—” he kicked her dead man, with the tall domed head—“is from Ahuajijic, and he was married to the woman that now lives with a peon here.—You see, Señora! A chauffeur and a boatman from Sayula—they are Knights-of-Cortes men; and those two peons from San Pablo are priests’ men.—These are not bandits. It was an attempt at assassination.