“Oh, I will not stay with you another day,” she vowed, breath and wits taxed at last for epithets. “I, a girl that all have desired, that could have a better house, yes, one covered with pink stucco, and finer clothes, and shoes, and even a ring or two, and no work, and all the cigarettes I want—here I am with you, who are coiled like a culebra, ready to sting, to kill. You coward!”
“I have always treated you well,” retorted Ricardo sulkily, “and I am not a coward. I shall show you. I shall go to fight with the Revolutionists.”
“Go, go, go,” she answered. “I shall not mourn. You cannot shame me before them all. Go, and take her with you!”
She flung herself upon the bed, without a look at him, without a thought for their supperless baby, curled up on a gunny sack by the door. There, worn out with the violence of her quarrelling, she sobbed herself to sleep.
Late in the night she awoke suddenly and sat up. She was cold; she felt alone; she was startled, too, as if something direful had happened. Forgetting her wrongs in her fear, she reached out her arms and called softly. The cubierta was not spread over her. Only the under blanket was left upon the rushes of the bed. And Ricardo was not by her side! She sprang out upon the floor, feeling this way and that.
“Ricardo! Where are you?” she demanded. “Answer. You will have me wakening Niñito next.”
She touched the reed partition, the table, the chairs. Then she lit the lámpara and held it above her, looking into every corner of the living room and the kitchen. He was not in the hut!
On the instant she was like one gone mad.
“Madre de Dios!” she gasped. “They are together!”
She set the lamp on the table, snatched up a flat, spear-shaped lanza, and raced off down the street. Arrived at Antonia’s, she entered swiftly.