There were about three hundred soldiers in the formation. They
belonged to the volunteers, and they deployed upon the plain with
their band in front playing a jaunty quickstep, while their officers
galloped from one side to the other through the grass, seeking a
suitable place for the execution. Outside the line the band still
played merrily.
A few men and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the
music, moved about the ridges behind the soldiers, half-clothed,
unshaven, sleepy-eyed, yawning, stretching themselves nervously and
shivering in the cool, damp air of the morning.
Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their
errand, or because the men were still but half awake, there was no
talking in the ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on
their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, looking out across
the plain to the hills.
The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew
that whatever they might say would be twisted into a word of sympathy
for the condemned man or a protest against the government. So no one
spoke; even the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the
men in the crowd did not mix together, but looked suspiciously at one
another and kept apart.
As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town
with two black figures leading them, and the soldiers drew up at
attention, and part of the double line fell back and left an opening
in the square.
With us a condemned man walks only the short distance from his cell
to the scaffold or the electric chair, shielded from sight by the
prison walls, and it often occurs even then that the short journey is
too much for his strength and courage.
But the Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a
half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to
find the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be,
stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey; but as he came nearer
I saw that he led all the others, that the priests on either side of
him were taking two steps to his one, and that they were tripping on
their gowns and stumbling over the hollows in their efforts to keep
pace with him as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in
advance of them.
He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed
beard, great wistful eyes, and a mass of curly black hair.
