U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [287]
we stop in our tracks
to look at a waxwork
the old man has shot the pretty peasant girl who looks like Madeleine but younger she lies there shot in the left breast in the blood in the ruts of the road pretty and plump as a little quail
-254-The old man then took off one shoe and put the shotgun under his chin pul ed the trigger with his toe and blew the top of his head off we stand looking at the bare foot and the shoe and the foot in the shoe and the shot girl and the old man with a gunnysack over his head and the dirty bare toe he pul ed the trigger with Faut pas toucher until the commissaire comes proce's verbale on this first day
of the year the sun
is shining
NEWSREEL XXXI
washing and dressing hastily they came to the ground floor at the brusque cal of the commissaries, being assembled in one of the rear rooms in the basement of the house. Here they were lined up in a semicircle along the wal , the young grandduchesses trembling at the unusual nature of the orders given and at the gloomy hour. They more than suspected the errand upon which the commissaries had come. Addressing the czar, Yarodsky, without the least attempt to soften his announcement, stated that they must al die and at once. The revolution was in danger, he stated, and the fact that there were stil the members of the reigning house living added to that danger. Therefore to remove them was the duty of al Russian patriots. "Thus your life is ended," he said in con, clusion.
"I am ready," was the simple announcement of the czar, while the czarina, clinging to him, loosed her hold long enough to make the sign of the cross, an example fol owed by the grandducbess Olga and by Dr. Botkin.
The czarevitch, paralyzed with fear, stood in stupefac-tion beside his mother, uttering no sound either in supplication
-255-or protest, while his three sisters and the other grandduchesses sank to the floor trembling.
Yarodsky drew his revolver and fired the first shot. A vol ey fol owed and the prisoners reeled to the ground. Where the bul ets failed to find their mark the bayonet put the finishing touches. The mingled blood of the victims not only cov-ered the floor of the room where the execution took place but ran in streams along the hal way
DAUGHTER
The Trents lived in a house on Pleasant avenue that was the finest street in Dal as that was the biggest and fastest growing town in Texas that was the biggest state in the Union and had the blackest soil and the whitest people and America was the greatest country in the world and Daugh-ter was Dad's onlyest sweetest little girl. Her real name was Anne Elizabeth Trent after poor dear mother who had died when she was a little tiny girl but Dad and the boys cal ed her Daughter. Buddy's real name was Wil iam Delaney Trent like Dad who was a prominent attorney, and Buster's real name was Spencer Anderson Trent.
Winters they went to school and summers they ran wild on the ranch that grandfather had taken up as a pioneer. When they'd been very little there hadn't been any fences yet and stil a few maverick steers out along the creekbot-toms, but by the time Daughter was in highschool every-thing was fenced and they were building a macadam road out from Dal as and Dad went everywhere in the Ford in-stead of on his fine Arab stal ion Mul ah he'd been given by a stockman at the Fat Stock Show in Waco when the stockman had gone broke and hadn't been able to pay his lawyer's fee. Daughter had a creamcolored pony named Coffee who'd nod his head and paw with his hoof when he