“You’re coming with us!” one of the brothers said sternly to Caridad once they all were able to agree that she was indeed the woman that everybody had been looking for for so long.

Caridad shook her head. The man dismounted from his Arabian steed and went over to her to pull her firmly toward his horse. She resisted and let herself drop on the ground. He bent down to take her up in his arms, figuring she would be even easier to get on the horse without any resistance but he couldn’t lift her. “What the …!” he said, dumbfounded at how heavy she was although she was only half his size.

The other man joined him and finally Francisco el Penitente and yet the young woman could not be budged. The first brother, irate that his strength seemed no match for such a slight person, motioned to yank her along by the hair. “Stop!” Francisco el Penitente called, dropping to his knees. “It is not for us to bring this handmaiden of Christ back to her family. Can’t you all see that? It is not our Lord’s will.”

He said a quiet prayer on Caridad’s behalf and the men left, resigned that it was for them to simply relieve her mother of her worry by reporting that they had found her.

The word spread quickly, however, that a woman hermit was living in a cave up there and that she had resisted with passive yet herculean strength three men who tried to carry her back home. Many people remembered the stories regarding La Loquita Santa and were not surprised that her sister also showed out-of-the-ordinary abilities.

So it was that during that Holy Week, instead of going to Mass at their local parishes, hundreds of people made their way up the mountain to la Caridad’s cave in hopes of obtaining her blessing and just as many with hopes of being cured of some ailment or another. Not only the nuevo mejicano–style Spanish Catholics went to see her but also Natives from the pueblos, some who were Christian and some who were not, since for more than a year Caridad’s disappearance had been a mystery throughout the state and her spartan mountain survival alone seemed incredible.

The three men whom Caridad resisted by making herself into lead weight turned into a score of men as the story spread. Francisco’s humble gesture of delivering a prayer for her well-being became the act of many men brought to their knees before the holy hermit, all begging forgiveness for their audacious attempt at manhandling her. It was said that she lifted the very horse in the air that the hermano had tried to force her to mount—with him on it—but out of benevolence brought it back down safely without so much as spooking the horse with her defiant magic.