"Sure, we saw them," said Manuel.
"God damn that Chávez," a man cried.
"Jesús Peza removed the bullet.... When did Luis come in?" Manuel asked Farias. "We lost him day before yesterday."
"He came in yesterday," said Farias. "He's dog tired but he's all right. They stole his horse."
Above the mill, the volcano released streamers of smoke, smoke that fanned wider and wider as it climbed. It had commenced as they talked; now everyone saw it, considered it silently, as if hypnotized. Manuel thought, as he looked, Raul will die. The haciendas will fall. In the smoke he saw the bodies of peasants, dead cattle, rifles, machetes, trees, women, children. Destiny ... the force that takes us, one by one.
Farias stepped up close to Manuel.
"The Clarín tried to kill Raul," he said. "The man's insane." Years of resentment went into his remark; he rubbed chaffed wrists and galled hands and regarded his Petacan friends, most of them bearded, in their fifties and sixties; they had stomached Don Fernando with patient desperation; all of them craved freedom.
"Don Fernando wanted another killing," someone said.
"You'd think he'd have enough by now."
"Of course he put Pedro up to it."