Red the blood that we shed for our faith,
Red the flag that we cherish to the death,
Red our hope for our enemies’ confusion
In the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
“Perro de Rojo,” the old woman screamed. “Abajo, perro de Rojo,” she leaped up to a kneeling posture and spat in the American’s face.
“Now, now, momma,” he said, “That don’t go. You didn’t ought to spit at people, even when you’ve bit ’em and hate the taste.”
She snarled at him like a wild beast; then, seeing foot soldiers marching by in the dust stirred up by the Pitubas’ horses, she wrestled her way to the tail-board of the waggon, from which she cursed them for being Red.
“Come back into the waggon, mother,” the American said. “Gee, kid, catch a holt of mommer. These Reds will shoot her if she don’t let up.” An officer who was passing struck her with the flat of his sword in the face: “Keep in,” he said. “And you, driver, get on with you into the city.”
The waggon moved on slowly after that. Troops were passing, horse, foot and a few guns, with waggons and gear. They were in the suburbs by this time, among houses, in a stream of people who were setting into the city, carrying whatever they could from their homes in the threat of war. At the gate, there was delay and confusion; the waggon was jammed in the crowd, waiting its turn to pass. When they came through the gate, a big mulatto, with a bright green ostrich plume in his hat, looked under the tilt at them, and said, “Suspecteds. Take all Suspecteds to the Church of the Sanctity of Lopez, once called by the slaves of superstition Trinity.”
They had not far to go to this church. They passed a public square used as a camp for refugees, then they entered what seemed like a city of the dead, where none stirred out from the shuttered houses. As the guards herded them into the church once called the Trinity, Hi heard the distant fire of rifles, popping more constantly from the region through which he had passed.