“Well,” She lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “That sure broke up the monotony.”

Jesus Helguera He walked a few feet and put his hand on another child’s head. She was pulling bandoliers off her tiny shoulders and placing them in a pile. “Maria.” He gently kissed her forehead and she smiled up at him, then immediately went back to the task at hand. “Maria was found at death’s door. She was beaten so badly that she could not walk. Her crime was that she was dipping her fingers into a pot of raw eggs. She was hungry and could not contain herself.” He grinned cynically. “The eggs were being rubbed into the coat of a hacendado’s prize racehorse.” He looked up at her and she thought she could see tears welling in his eyes. “A shiny coat on a horse is so important, Miss Walsh.”
Zapata remounted and rode up next to Rebecca, looked on at her and finally said, “Miss Walsh, the newspapers did get this part right,” He looked on at some others, two small boys and a girl unloading ammunition from a cattle car. “It’s better for them to die on their feet than to live on their knees.”
She knew that he was sincere. She understood why it was all happening but could not let it go. She wasn’t trying to fight with the man, but she wanted to, had to say it. “It’s not the dying that I worry over, General. When they die, their troubles will be over. It is living that will be so hard on them.” With that, as if on cue, to prove her point, Marta galloped up on them, stopped her mount amidst them and grinned broadly. She was on the high, the high that only battle brings.
“Well,” She lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “That sure broke up the monotony.” The Mule Tamer III, Marta's Quest