“Come see! The soldiers from San Angel are leaving!”

They ran in vain, because all they were able to see in the end was a cloud of dust that rose from the unpaved road to defend horses and riders like an impenetrable shield from the curious gaze of the villagers. Only at a single moment, as the detachment climbed the paved approach to the high bridge at El Altillo, did the dust dissipate enough so that one could glimpse the backs of the dragoons who rode in the rear guard, their carbines slung across their backs, their horses' rumps twitching and tails whipping back and forth furiously because of the flies. Santa realized at last that she was the victim of the cowardly, eternal abandonment she had most dreaded, she leaned against a high wall of cut stone—softer stuff, it now seemed to her, than her fugitive lover's heart—where she raised her apron to her eyes and, Virgin Santísima, how she cried! For her broken heart and her broken body, for the ingrate who was leaving her and for the innocent life that was already making its presence felt inside of her …

Here Santa's memories became confused, cutting off the involuntary evocation of her story. One thing that she did remember, however, with admirable and painful precision, was her miscarriage more or less four months into her sinful, clandestine pregnancy. She had one foot on the rim of the well and was pulling up a heavy earthenware jar of water that chanced to spill, throwing her off balance. She felt a bolt of lightning: a sudden, copious sweat, a horrible sensation in her hips and groin, and in her lower back a stabbing pain so powerful that Santa dropped the jar, let out a scream, and collapsed on the ground. Then came the hemorrhage, as abundant and loud in her memory as the water that had spilled from the jar as it fell and shattered against the moist walls of the well. Then Agustina was there, bending over her, discovering the secret, wavering between the impulses to curse and slap her, on the one hand, or to forgive and care for her on the other. Then Coyote was licking at the blood that sank into the mud, and one of the fighting cocks started singing for no reason. What happened next? Somber faces, the hushed silence that accompanies catas trophes, an intense fever, the whispered gossip of the villagers as they sniffed around for clues about what had occurred, inventing their own distorted versions of it.

Finally, twenty days after the doctor pronounced Santa all better, Agustina—older and more bent over since the accident, her eyes sunken and her hands shaky—convened an implacable family tribunal to sit in judgment. The accusers were Fabián and Esteban, harsh, sorely ashamed of their sister, and determined, like avenging storybook heroes, to reclaim and cleanse the family's stained honor, its rustic and humble, but much-prized honor, which they had always upheld. Santa, pale and with dark circles under her eyes, faced this tribunal in the yard in front of the little white house, under the orange trees laden with fruit. High above her, the heavens hung limpid, impenetrable, and serene. Below, from behind the house, came the sound of the river, condemned to its endless voyage, grasping perpetually at the rocks and trees along its banks, as if trying to stop and rest if only for a moment, but always failing to hang on, always continuing its voyage of exile, leaving only bits of foam that finally burst with a sigh to sprinkle flowers and leaves with glistening tears.