"Give the child to me, Tixinopa, do not be so rough; see, you have hurt him."
Malita.
She tried to take the boy, but Tixinopa pushed her away roughly and she fell to the ground. Up she sprang and threw herself upon him, trying to get the boy, and in the struggle she scratched his face slightly, so
that the blood came. With a curse he struck her full in the face with his clinched fist and she fell as if dead, and lay with her hands twitching feebly.
"Take your half-breed brat," he hissed, throwing the baby roughly on the ground beside her. He turned to walk away, but something in the motionless form of the child caused him to look again, and he saw that his little head lay doubled under his arm in a way that could only mean one thing—a broken neck.
Malita rose unsteadily to her feet and looked about in a dazed way until her gaze rested upon the little body of her dead baby; the next instant she was striking and cutting at Tixinopa, screaming like a mad thing.
The attack was so sudden and fierce that, trained athlete and fighter as he was, Tixinopa received a deep cut on the shoulder and a slight one on the arm before he succeeded
in grasping her wrist, and twisting the knife from her. Then, seizing her by the hair, he drew her to him and drove the knife twice into her breast, throwing her to the ground, where she lay gasping her life away in broken sobs.