When Demetrio awoke, Cervantes said:
"General, look at the mess these boys have made here. Don't you think it would be advisable to forbid this sort of thing?"
"No. It's about their only pleasure after putting their bellies up as targets for the enemy's bullets."
"Yes, of course, General, but they could do it somewhere else. You see, this sort of thing hurts our prestige, and worse, our cause!"
Demetrio leveled his eagle eyes at Cervantes. He drummed with his fingernails against his teeth, absent-mindedly. Then:
"Come along, now, don't blush," he said. "You can talk like that to someone else. We know what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. You picked the box, all right; I picked my gold watch; all right too!"
His words dispelled any pretense. Both of them, in perfect harmony, displayed their booty.
War Paint and her companions were ransacking the rest of the house. Quail entered the room with a twelve-year-old girl upon whose forehead and arms were already marked copper-colored spots. They stopped short, speechless with surprise as they saw the books lying in piles on the floor, chairs and tables, the large mirrors thrown to the ground, smashed, the huge albums and the photographs torn into shreds, the furniture, objets d'art and bric-a-brac broken. Quail held his breath, his avid eyes scouring the room for booty.
Outside, in one corner of the patio, lost in dense clouds of suffocating smoke, Manteca was boiling corn on the cob, feeding his fire with books and paper that made the flames leap wildly through the air.
"Hey!" Quail shouted. "Look what I found. A fine sweat-cover for my mare."