She loaded up her escopeta and placed it by the door that very night, especially remembering the brother-in-law’s helper who lived in his truck and that demon dog. Quite often such thieves, seeing that they had gotten away with something the first time, returned to see what else they could get away with until there was nothing left to be got. Well, she was an old lady, as don Domingo had pointed out, with perhaps too big a heart for some people to appreciate, but defenseless, never! So, for two weeks after the sneaky departure of her unsavory tenants, doña Felicia slept in the living room with one eye open and Juan’s escopeta, which had not been fired since 1910, ready at the door.

It was during one of these nights of vigilance that Caridad returned. Doña Felicia’s ears, long-lobed from the weighty gold earrings she had worn all her life, pricked up, not like a rabbit’s but like a wolf’s when she heard the soft steps outside. She was hardly able to scramble out of the easy chair where she had dozed off while on guard when already the light was on in Caridad’s trailer.

But just as she swung her door wide open, aiming Juan’s escopeta in the direction of Caridad’s trailer, Caridad came out. A second later, doña Felicia noticed Caridad’s Chevy pickup parked just a few yards away. Caridad, at seeing doña Felicia’s escopeta pointed directly at her, froze in the doorway, and doña Felicia, startled to see a barely recognizable Caridad in deer-skin mocassins and raggedy clothes, took a few seconds to get her bearings before she put down her weapon.

“Ma Cheri! ¡Dios mío! You look like you just crossed the Jornada del Muerto!” doña Felicia finally said, referring to the treacherous desert road that traders used in times past to travel from Méjico Viejo to Méjico Nuevo. “¡Qué diablos te pasó qué we lost sight of you for so damned long, muchacha?”

Caridad walked slowly over to doña Felicia and with her usual candor and unadorned manner she said, “I don’t know, doña Felicia.”

But in a week’s time, Caridad’s family got over their excitement about having Caridad back safe and sound and were tired of badgering her about her whereabouts and why she had made such a big retreat, and the vecinos and strangers who had heard of La Armitaña finally gave up on her when she was not disposed to performing daily miracles no matter what the newspapers reported.