Here and there, tiles had crashed during the quake; an adobe hut, where plows were stored, had collapsed, dumping adobes like dominoes. From a distance, the residence seemed to have escaped. Manuel did not question El Cisne. The path led quickly through an orange grove to the mill, an eighteenth century building, with French earmarks, even a few fleurs-de-lis. A Medina had hired a Gascon architect to do both mill and house but the French influence had long ago disappeared from the house, due to quakes and remodelings. New ragged cracks appeared in the east wall of the mill, Manuel noted. Men sat by the pool, Farias among them. He and Manuel greeted each other heartily, slapping each other on the back. "Tell me what happened." "Pedro tried to keep me, a deliberate mix-up with some del Valle men, to cause trouble. It's just as Luis told you. They'd have kept us both if they could." "You got away today?" "I got away yesterday, but it took time to reach Petaca." "The fools--to keep you. Raul is wounded and at Palma Sola. Pedro tried to get him when we were riding in the campo." Several workers stood up. One of them stopped whittling. "What's that?" demanded Farias, instantly blaming Don Fernando. "Tell us again." "They tried to get Raul, out in the campo. A rifle shot. It's a nasty wound ... deep in the shoulder." "Did you see Pedro's men?" someone asked. "Sure, we saw them," said Manuel. "God damn that Chávez," a man cried. "Jesús Peza removed the bullet.... When did Luis come in?" Manuel asked Farias. "We lost him day before yesterday." "He came in yesterday," said Farias. "He's dog tired but he's all right. They stole his horse." Above the mill, the volcano released streamers of smoke, smoke that fanned wider and wider as it climbed. It had commenced as they talked; now everyone saw it, considered it silently, as if hypnotized. Manuel thought, as he looked, Raul will die. The haciendas will fall. In the smoke he saw the bodies of peasants, dead cattle, rifles, machetes, trees, women, children. Destiny ... the force that takes us, one by one. Farias stepped up close to Manuel. "The Clarín tried to kill Raul," he said. "The man's insane." Years of resentment went into his remark; he rubbed chaffed wrists and galled hands and regarded his Petacan friends, most of them bearded, in their fifties and sixties; they had stomached Don Fernando with patient desperation; all of them craved freedom. "Don Fernando wanted another killing," someone said. "You'd think he'd have enough by now." "Of course he put Pedro up to it." "His own son ... anything to have power over us." "Times will go worse for us, now that Raul's wounded," said a one-eyed man, with machete dangling from a cord around his neck.