signal of the administrador did I know that the blows were delivered by the watch and not until it was all over did I know that, in order to multiply the torture, six seconds were allowed to intervene between each stroke.
The second blow fell, and the third, and the fourth. I counted the blows as they fell, ages apart. At the fourth the strong brown skin broke and little pin-heads of crimson pushed themselves out, burst, and started downward in thin tricklets. At the sixth the glistening back lost its rigidity and fell to quivering like a jellyfish. At the ninth a low whine somewhere in the depths of that Yaqui, found its devious way outward and into the open. Oh, that whine! I hear it now, a hard, hard whine, as if indurated to diamond hardness by drilling its way to the air through a soul of adamant.
At last the spats ceased—there were fifteen—the administrador, with a final nod, put away his watch, the giant Chinaman released his grip on the brown wrists and the Yaqui tumbled in a limp heap to the ground. He lay there for a moment, his face in his arms, his quivering, bleeding flesh to the sky, then a foreman stepped forward and put a foot roughly against his hip.
The Yaqui lifted his head, disclosing to the light a pair of glazed eyes and a face twisted with pain. A moment later he rose to his feet and staggered forward to join his fellow bondsmen. In that moment the spell of breathless silence on the seven hundred snapped, the ranks moved in agitation and there rose a hum of low speech from every section of the crowd. The special "cleaning up" of the morning was over. Five minutes later the day's work on the farm had begun.
Naturally I made inquiries about Rosanta Bajeca to find out what crime he had committed to merit fifteen
