"Good morning," said Alberto, smiling, bowing a little, big hat dangling in front of his stomach, gripped by both hands. His immaculate whites must have been ironed that morning. "Good morning, Alberto," said Raul. "Sorry to hear you've been sick. I didn't know. How are you feeling?" "Ai, patrón, I feel better, thank God. My legs troubled me. I'm old ... it is nothing. It will pass." "When are you coming again to play for us?" "Soon--God willing." "Here's something for you." Alberto limped close to Chico and patted his mane. The horse shied and blew through his nose, clicking his bit. "Steady now, Chico," Raul said, and handed a few coins to Alberto. The old man accepted the money graciously, jingling it before pocketing it. For Raul, there was Christ in Alberto's face, the Christ of his own hacienda, of many haciendas. A few thorns, he thought, a few drops of blood ... He remembered Alberto at a fiesta years before: a drunk had struck him in the mouth. Alberto had toppled. Yet he had not complained. The jingle of coins in the open air, the cross on the hill, made Raul taste betrayal--he was offering the vinegar sop to his people. He hadn't the guts to free them! He jerked Chico's bit angrily, the horse reared, and Raul went on down the road. Disturbed, Manuel eyed his friend doubtfully as they jogged along. Huts lay around another bend, and they rode slowly, over badly placed cobbles. The area was semi-arid, the soil rocky and alkaline. A few stone huts pimpled the ground among maguey and tangles of prickly pear and candelabra. Each hut resembled a cairn topped by a straw wig. The unmortared walls were made of lava, rough, porous, grayish-lavender. Big and suckling pigs slumped in front of a wooden watering trough that had a leak at one end; chickens fed here and there; dogs yapped at the horsemen. Raul dismounted in front of a doorless hut, and began to pull off his corn sack, tugging at the leather thongs and henequen cords. A deep voice said, "Bueno," and Raul looked into the face of Salvador, the head man of the hutment, a three-hundred-pound fellow, with a paunch, a stevedore's shoulders, grinning jowl and swooping mustache. "Let me take the sack, patrón." "I heard you had no corn here," Raul said, backing away. "No corn for three days." "You should have come to me." "Sometimes it's better to wait. We have our chickens and pigs. We're not starving." "You can't make tortillas out of chickens and pigs," said Raul. Salvador laughed soundlessly, and the upper part of his body shook. He untied the corn sack and shouldered its weight easily. Barefooted, standing there, legs spread, one hand balancing the burlap, he faced Raul, the sun streaming over his whites. "Will you go inside and wait for me?" Salvador asked. "I want to talk to you," said Raul.