And even as he leaped, Ramón shot the knife, that was all bright red as a cardinal bird. It flew red like a bird, and the drops of Ramón’s handful of blood flew with it, splashing even Kate, who kept her revolver ready, watching near the stairway.
The bandit dropped on his knees again, and remained for a moment kneeling as if in prayer, the red pommel of the knife sticking out of his abdomen, from his white trousers. Then he slowly bowed over, doubled up, and went on his face again, once more with his buttocks in the air.
Ramón still crouched at attention, almost supernatural, his dark eyes glittering with watchfulness, in pure, savage attentiveness. Then he rose, very smooth and quiet, crossed the blood-stained concrete to the fallen man, picked up the clean, fallen knife that belonged to the fellow, lifted the red-dripping chin, and with one stroke drove the knife into the man’s throat. The man subsided with the blow, not even twitching.
Then again, Ramón turned to look at the first man. He gazed a moment attentively. But that horrible black face was dead.
And then Ramón glanced at Kate, as she stood near the stairs with the revolver. His brow was like a boy’s, very pure and primitive, and the eyes underneath had a certain primitive gleaming look of virginity. As men must have been, in the first awful days, with that strange beauty that goes with pristine rudimentariness.
For the most part, he did not recognise her. But there was one remote glint of recognition.
“Are they both dead?” she asked, awestruck.
“Creo que si!” he replied in Spanish.
He turned to look once more, and to pick up the pistol that lay on the concrete. As he did so, he noticed that his right hand was bright red, with the blood that flowed still down his arm. He wiped it on the jacket of the dead man. But his trousers on his loins were also sodden with blood, they stuck red to his hips. He did not notice.
He was like a pristine being, remote in consciousness, and with far, remote sex.