THE DAWN OF Holy Thursday broke with a clamor of bells and firecrackers. From the plaza came the sound of a growing, milling throng.

Fernando and Cesar awoke with a start and hurried to get dressed. As they left the wide corridors of the parish house they heard Doña Mercedes’ voice urging the mule driver to move a load to the stand where it would be sold. She interrupted herself to greet the engineer and his assistant.

“God got up on the right side of bed this morning! People have come, even from the farthest villages. They need things, and where there’s a need there’s got to be money. Business is going to be good because they all have to come to me. Nobody else wanted to take a chance on coming out here to the boondocks.”

Responding with no more than a smile and a wave, Fernando and César continued on their way toward the plaza.

Despite the early hour (the mist had not yet lifted entirely) the number of people congregated there was already great and was increasing at every moment with the addition of families that emerged from the various footpaths, dressed in their best clothes and carrying their household goods and their children with them.

“Look,” César said, pointing to the church’s bell tower.

There, several martomas were trying to hang a Judas, a grotesque effigy filled with straw whose mask depicted a Ladino face with a threatening expression. Fernando watched their maneuvering attentively. Suddenly he thought he recognized one of the participants.

“Isn’t that the sacristan?”

He mistrusted his memory and his eyesight. What was more, he hadn’t learned to tell one Indian from another.

César strained to pick him out in the distance amid the constant movement of the figures.

“Xaw Ramírez Paciencia. What the hell is he doing here?”

“He’d gone to hide out in Ciudad Real. He was afraid. If he came back, things must be getting better. Everything seems calm.” Fernando registered this with a mixture of relief and disappointment. So deeply had the idea of intervening in the conflict, resolving it through his mediation, taken root in him.

“Don’t be naive, ingeniero! Just having the Indians beg their pardon isn’t going to be enough for the Coletos. They want to punish those responsible for the death of Padre Mandujano, teach them a good lesson. Otherwise, what assurance do they have that the crime won’t happen again?”

“It depends largely on them. Padre Mandujano was a firebrand.”

“Who cares about Padre Mandujano? The point is not to give free rein to the Indians, and to make them feel the bit on their tongues. So they’ll acknowledge their place and their status and won’t even think about asking for the land to be redistributed.”