When Caterina had had her broth, Don Fernando was carried upstairs, an easy trick with Manuel at one side and Esteban, a young fellow, a Coliman, very tall, very thin, at the other. They brought him in a chair and set him beside Caterina's bed. The wind still lashed, and Fernando shivered under his blanket. The two sick ones grinned at each other. Fernando reached out, patted Caterina, then straightened and sank back in his chair. He frowned, cleared his throat and rumbled, imitating someone: "Get up, pretty princess, I command you." He clapped his hands softly and at once hid his shaky arm. "I, the magician of El Rey del Mundo, bid you get well. Chia, chia ... hear the magic word." Laughter transformed his miserable face. "Come, little one, we'll go to the castle with the gold door." Raul and the nun smiled, smiles of apprehension. "My king, I shall obey," said Caterina, her eyes aglow, holding her hands out to him. "Oh, king let us visit the castle." "At once," said the magician. "At once," whispered the girl. "When I was a boy," Fernando began, his voice full of tenderness, "I got sick. The same trouble as yours. Just as bad, and I was seven or eight. I remember it very well. Papa rode to Colima for a doctor, and bandits beat him up on the way home--his mozo ran away and left him, when he saw the bandits closing in. Remember that story?" "Tell it again." "The men beat him and stole his horse and he began to walk home, limping along, because he had been so bruised and hurt. It was a long, long way, maybe ten miles. Dark. Cloudy. Pretty soon he heard a horseman. He hid behind a cactus bush. It was the doctor, following him, going as fast as he could to Petaca. He was astonished to find Papa, walking, all bruised and hurt. He helped him and they got on the doctor's horse and rode home...." Sometimes Caterina had thought about the bandits; sometimes she had wondered how badly hurt Great-Grandpa had been. She wanted to question her grandfather now, but her head throbbed. Fernando studied her face, considered its pallor, the feebleness of the eyelids, the tremble in the lips. Her throat pulse fluttered. "Raul and I will stay here with you," he said. "Raul," Fernando said. "What is it?" Raul replied. "Bring me morphine." "She wouldn't take her dosage." "I'll give it to her." "She wouldn't take the laudanum," Raul said. "Bring the morphine," said Fernando. Raul's shoes rubbed slickly on the tiled floor. "A spoon..." "Here's a spoon." "Caterina--a little dose, for Grandpa?" "Yes." "Raul, lift her head." "Take it, child.... You'll be all right." "Yes ... Gran'pa." The face trusted him. She swallowed the medicine and sank back on the pillows. "Rest now and we'll go to the castle together and I'll tell you how I found a tiny statue of the Huastecas. You haven't heard that story.... We were riding horseback through a barranca in San Luis Potosi; men had been digging a ditch for irrigation...."