ed that no man had failed to go with her behind the
river weeds at some time or other--shouted to Camilla:

"Hey there, you! What's the matter? What are you doing there skulking
in the corner with a shawl tied round your head! You're crying, I
wager. Look at her eyes; they look like a witch's. There's no sorrow
lasts more than three days!"

Agapita knitted her eyebrows and muttered indistinctly to herself.

The old crones felt uneasy and lonesome since Demetrio's men had left.
The men, too, in spite of their gossip and insults, lamented their
departure since now they would have no one to bring them fresh meat
every day. It is pleasant indeed to spend your time eating and
drinking, and sleeping all day long in the cool shade of the rocks,
while clouds ravel and unravel their fleecy threads on the blue shuttle
of the sky.

"Look at them again. There they go!" Maria Antonia yelled. "Why, they
look like toys."

Demetrio's men, riding their thin nags, could still be descried in the
distance against the sapphire translucence of the sky, where the broken
rocks and the chaparral melted into a single bluish smooth surface.
Across the air a gust of hot wind bore the broken, faltering strains of
"La Adelita," the revolutionary song, to the settlement. Camilla, who
had come out when Maria Antonia shouted, could no longer control
herself; she dived back into her hut, unable to restrain her tears and
moaning. Maria Antonia burst into laughter and moved off.

"They've cast the evil eye on my daughter," Agapita said in perplexity.
She pondered a while, then duly reached a decision. From a pole in the
hut she took down a piece of strong leather which her husband used to
hitch up the yoke. This pole stood between a picture of Christ and one
of the Virgin. Agapita promptly twisted the leather and proceeded to
administer a sound thrashing to Camilla in order to dispel the evil
spirits.

Riding proudly on his horse, Demetrio felt like a new man. His eyes
recovered their peculiar metallic brilliance, and the blood flowed, red
and warm, through his coppery, pure-blooded Aztec cheeks.

The men threw out their chests as if to breathe the widening horizon,
the immensity of the sky, the blue from the mountains and the fresh
air, redolent with the various odors of the sierra. They spurred their
horses to a gallop as if in that mad race they laid claims of
possession to the earth. What man among them now remembered the stern
chief of po