"Are you hurt?" asked Manuel.
"No ... just stunned."
"That damn' Chico! You cabrón!" Manuel cried, rushing angrily toward the horse, whip in hand. "God damn you!"
"Leave him alone," commanded Raul. "You can't teach him by beating him. He's too old to change. No, Manuel!"
Manuel, helping Raul mount, thought of the Petacan beatings, the men, even boys ... now all that had been stopped by Raul. Teach a horse. Maybe not one as old as Chico. Teach people, maybe so! But it was too late to change the haciendas. The butterfly was over Petaca.
16
A bullet crashed through a front window, as Angelina wrote a letter to Estelle. She had been having trouble with her pen point and was picking at it with her fingernail. At the thud of lead and crackle of glass, she dropped her pen and stared about her as if she had never seen the room before. A second bullet smashed another pane and embedded itself in a wall. Snatching her brass desk bell, she clanged it frantically. Her letter fluttered to the floor. Another bullet shattered glass. Sliding from her chair she began to crawl toward the wall where there were no windows. Servants screamed in the patio. Single shots became a volley, then silence.
She remembered childhood stories of bandits, sordid crimes; all kinds of fears crosshatched her brain; she hunched herself forward on hands and knees, certain she was going mad. When she reached the wall she stood, then sank, crumpled, doll-like, her legs of no use. She reached for the cross on her gold neck chain, but found she had forgotten it. Closing her eyes, she prayed.
A shot spanged prisms off the chandelier, and pieces of glass thumped the wall near her. Opening her eyes, she picked up a fragment of glass with shaky fingers; as she stared at it she saw Raul.