He found the statue just as he had hoped it would be, the right size, the right pose. True to the artist's sketches, a young girl carried a bouquet of roses and contemplated them lovingly. The bronze had many lights and shadows. A gust of wind blew Raul's jacket, as he stood there, looking. Manuel, carrying a large box of sea shells, found him testing the statue's base, for balance and security. "I like it very much," Raul said. "It's beautiful," Manuel said, setting down the box. "I had them place it for you. Is it all right?" "It's just the way I wanted it." Manuel began laying down shells, one by one, in a design around the base of the figure, white shells, most of them identical in size, about as big as the hand. Raul found a spade and began leveling behind the statue, where Manuel had not placed his shells. "Shall I lay them in rows, here?" "I like them that way, Manuel." Blackbirds shot past on the wind; a large white butterfly wobbled by, as if injured; on a mound of sand an iguana scratched its way over a vine, its head cocked toward the men. Spade in hand, Raul stepped to a crooked marker that read Alberto Saenz, in jagged lettering. The musician had died during Raul's Guadalajara trip. Raul missed him now. So there would be no more cedar harp at the fiestas. Manuel said that his box of shells was empty and that he was going for more. "I'll go with you," Raul said. They walked together, and Raul asked, "Was Alberto born at Petaca?" "Yes. His father was born here too." "Who'll play the harp for us now?" "Cipriano." "Cipriano's only a boy." "He plays well." "Do you know who taught him?" "Alberto," said Manuel. "How time passes," said Raul. He and Manuel found cowboys struggling with a bull, outside the main corral, the bull flat in the mud near a watering trough, three lariats on him. While mounted cowboys kept the lariats tight, a veterinarian stuck a hypodermic needle in the animal. The bull bellowed. At a signal, the lariats went limp and the bull struggled to his feet and made off. The veterinarian, a small man wearing a five-gallon hat, explained the bull's serious condition to Raul, emptying his hypodermic as he talked. He had been trained in northern France and had ideas and methods of treatment frowned upon by most _hacendados_. Raul welcomed his care, for under his supervision Petaca cattle losses had decreased 20 per cent. In the dying light the volcano had a greenish mist over it and, with no smoke coming out of the crater, expressed indolence: it said men will dawdle in hammocks and rest on _petates_, that fruit will have time to ripen, that birds will be able to build their nests wherever they want to, that animals will find cool hideouts to escape the summer heat ... nothing will change, only the clouds, the flying things, maybe a fish, nothing more. Raul understood the lie, and grinned back at the old king. 15