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How these things end, in confusion and curses and blood.
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They drank on and the wind blew in the streets
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and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west
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and these young men fell afoul of others
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and words were said that could not be put right again,
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and in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over
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the boy from Missouri who had been named Earl
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and they spoke his name but he never spoke back.
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He lay on his side in the dust of the courtyard.
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The men were gone.
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The whores were gone.
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An old man swept the clay floor within the cantina.