Walking the length of the room, Raul tried to concentrate. There was only concern: where to begin? Who needed help? How much corn and wheat were to be allotted? Yesterday, he and Velasco and Hernández had worked with the sick. He had put men to building huts behind the stables; the stable hands must have places of their own and not continue sleeping with the cattle. He had men clean the well that watered the stock. Carts had gone to Colima for lumber. Tomorrow he wanted repairs to begin on the granary roof. He wanted to speak to Gabriel about reconditioning the schoolroom, he wanted to see Salvador about the oxcarts. Where to begin ... the thought haunted. It seemed to him a million beginnings could add up to nothing. Most of all, he wanted to reassure his people. Life at Petaca would have to even out over a long stretch of time to reassure the peasants. Fussing with his pipe, he crossed the patio to look at his father. Fernando lay asleep, hand over the edge of his bed. A book lay open beside him, almost ready to slip to the floor. Perhaps Caterina had read to him. Raul smiled, as he took in an empty soup bowl under the bedside table lamp ... bread crumbs peppered the floor. Going to the veranda, to the intricate grilled gate that closed the front of the house at night, he saw a bonfire across the cobbled court, near the far wall. Flames bloodied the wall and the turret on top. Men huddled close and seemed to be heating tortillas or making _tacos_ over embers scraped from the blaze. Someone began to pluck a guitar, and Raul caught the glint of wood and strings. A man sang: "Es de los que bailan grande obligación darle a su pareja ..." When had his people known freedom. Had it been under the last Indian emperor, Cuauhtemoc? Had it been under Moctezuma? Had it been at Chichén Itzá or Palenque? Surely, in some bygone age, his people had been freer and suffered less. Men still worshiped the old gods. A while ago, at the base of the volcano, at a place called Ojo Blanco, he had discovered an altar encrusted with blood. Turkey blood, said Manuel, since feathers had gotten stuck in the black crust. Deep inside a granite niche, a stone figure had grinned apishly. "Toltec?" he asked Manuel. "I don't know, Don Raul." Higher up the volcano, on the seaward side, his men had reported other altars, through the years. On his own climbs, Raul had come across other idols, one a bloated thing of obsidian, the glass unpocked by time. Had these men known happier days? The moon shone brightly, and it was chilly. He wanted to stroll along the lagoon and yet felt he should not walk alone, not for the time being. As a boy, he had played along the lagoon, speared frogs, sailed boats, waded and swum. As a boy ... What about Vicente? Would anyone molest him? Of course not. Then his own risk was an exaggeration.