He tried to rise but crumpled onto the floor. His mind blurred.... Someday ride to Colima, jacket with silver buttons ... ride to Colima ... drink beer. The snake coiled over the fallen log, and the mayordomo shouted: Watch out, I'm going to shoot it! I pulled my .45 and shot him.... There he was ... there my father was, on his white horse, outside the tienda door.... His father and the snake writhed in the old man's brain and the quake returned and red flared through the window. Fernando crawled toward the light. He was trying to find his bed now. The red blurred and faded and he turned and began to crawl in the other direction. A man in a dark blue suit, a neat blue suit, tapped him on the arm and said: "You must stop taking money from the store without my permission." Papa spoke calmly but he was on a white horse, just outside the tienda door.... I swiveled my chair at the desk and shot him, as he rode away. The quake grew more severe and large blocks of masonry loosened in the inside wall, on the patio side, and fell on Fernando. He died at once. Outside, men went on shouting and shooting.... They had set fire to the mill and the flames soared high. Raul had jumped out of bed and grabbed his trousers and shirt. Carrying his shoes, he rushed down a tottering stairs--through the pale dawn--into the patio, where water sloshed out of the fountain, across the cobbles. Servants were screaming and shouting. Toward the mill, flames gushed up; the wall of Fernando's room crumbled: as Raul stood by the fountain, he saw blocks bulge, lean forward, crash to the floor, dust rising, as fine as flour from a smashed flour barrel. The door to his father's room was ripped from its hinges and thrown to the ground. Rushing into the dusty room, Raul opened the outer window. Then he found his father. Death, in the midst of this disaster, seemed natural to Raul--yet not the gaping mouth and angry eyes. Their anger and derision drove him out of the room, into the patio. "Are you hurt?" asked Sandoval, rushing up to him, a crowbar in his hand, his hat around his neck on a cord, his shirt ripped. "My father's dead ... buried under that wall," said Raul, buttoning his shirt, wiping a smudge from his face. "Somebody set fire to the mill; it's all in flames. I just came from there.... There's shooting." "Do what you can at the mill--I'll find you later," said Raul. "I'm going for Manuel, I'll see about Father Gabriel.... Find Velasco. Get Esteban. Let's fight 'em off at the mill. Let's fight for this place!" In the living room a fine old set of ivory dominoes had been hurled to the floor, the box splintering into many pieces. He saw them, as he lit a table lamp and put on his shoes. For a moment, he knelt to pick them up and then remembered his father. Suppose Manuel or Gabriel or someone else had been pinned down? "Gabriel!" Raul shouted outside the hacienda, aware of the whitening sky. "Gabriel!" "Raul?" "Where are you?"