In the midst of this extraordinary manœuver, Strawbridge found himself trying to scramble up the corner of a building. He could not take off from the saddle. From the ground he could just reach the eave. He clung to the hot adobe and pulled with all his strength, kicking and pawing at the corner with knees and feet. Now and then a bullet flicked adobe dust into his face. With a desperate kick he did succeed in hanging a toe over the cornice. Just as he was wriggling his heavy body up on the roof, something about his hold broke. He dropped broadside from where he sagged, falling about five feet and landing in the litter which collects about Spanish-American huts.
The big drummer lay inert, and cursed with every blasphemy to which he could lay his tongue. He cursed Federals, insurgents, house, sun, dust. He invoked the Deity to consign each to its particular hell. He lay in burning dust, swearing at a mud wall not six inches from his nose.
The tearing volleys of rifle shots were drawing a little away from where Strawbridge lay. The quest of the peons for liberty was withdrawing itself somewhat. Presently the American made an effort to get out of his burning bed. He stirred, and found to his discomfiture that one of his arms was numb. He wondered anxiously if he had broken it.
He used his good arm, made shift to sit up, then got to his feet. Then he was surprised to see that his numb hand was bloody. A closer examination showed that the bones in his palm had been shattered by a bullet. That was what flung him from the roof. He looked at his hand in dismay, turning it over and back. It did not seem to belong to him. He began swearing again, mentally. What a hell of an accident to happen to him! For him, Thomas Strawbridge, to get shot! What a damnable piece of luck! He continued damning his luck, with quivering earnestness. He could not realize that it was his hand, attached to his wrist. He kept looking at it. The hand did not pain him in the least. It had no sensation at all.
There had been a certain order kept by the peon cavalry, of which Strawbridge had not been aware. Now, as he looked about, he saw the insurgents' horses trotting in a dark group far down the playa. They were under the care of hostlers, which the hair-splitting plans of Saturnino no doubt had arranged for, for just such an emergency as this. Naturally, Strawbridge's English stallion had vanished with the herd.
Near at hand lay men and horses, dead and wounded. One mule, shot through the back, was dragging itself by its fore feet. Strawbridge picked up his carbine with his good hand and ended its struggles.
For a few minutes the drummer stood looking at this dead mule, at a dead peon some ten steps farther east, then at a sort of windrow of mules and horses and peons where the cavalry had hesitated before charging.
These were the men whom Strawbridge had seen, only an hour before, embracing and weeping over their loves; now they lay in all sorts of twisted and grotesque postures; already the green flies were buzzing about the mouths their sweethearts had kissed. Such was the outcome of their fight for liberty. This was the freedom they had found, these brown exhalations of the llanos, who rose up out of the earth, fought, struggled, plotted, murdered, and sank into the llanos again. And all their pain and fury had ever done in four centuries was to exchange one dictator for another....
A profound weariness came over Strawbridge. The crotches of his legs, which the horse had skinned, began burning again. An unlocalized throbbing set up in his wounded arm. A fly came buzzing about, and the drummer waved it away. Then he examined his wound again, and as he looked he grew sick at heart. He would be crippled for the rest of his life. Never before had a mishap befallen his big, comfortable body, and now his hand was gone and he could never have it again. This seemed to Strawbridge the most tragic thing which had happened in the battle of San Geronimo—that he, who was such a busy man, who needed his hand so much, should have lost it.