The audiences took place in the central chamber of the Cabildo. The judges heard only the conflicts that had not been resolved by deliberations between the families or by the intervention of a brujo. Accused and accuser presented themselves, bearing gifts to excite the benevolence and partiality of the authorities. They took their seats, unsealed the demijohns of aguardiente and offered the drink to those who were there, in order of their rank. Between one swig and another, accusers, accused and judges ranged far and wide around the matter that had brought them together, gratifying themselves in endless reticences. When the liquor had taken its effect and logic was uncertain, the matter at hand was addressed at last. Denunciations were made, punctuated by hiccups; the allegations of the defendants were piteous and absurd. The judges stumbled their way through this thicket of contradictory arguments. Roles were erratically reversed and victim and victimizer exchanged masks by turns. Faced with the impossibility of passing judgment, the judges exhorted the two parties to reconcile their differences. They reminded them of their childhoods spent together, the vicissitudes they had shared, the consideration they owed to relatives and neighbors. The contending parties wept, touched by the judges’ evocation, by drunkenness. They took their leave together in perfect agreement. They walked along arm in arm, each one supporting the other’s inebriated unsteadiness. They arrived back at their village, allies. But once the drunkenness passed, discord overcame them once more. The judges, in quick exasperation, locked the troublemakers in the calaboose. Jails, however, can be gotten out of. Prison doors are opened by gifts or by time. But the knot: how can it be undone, except by the slash of a weapon? The boundaries between properties were marked out by machete blows; theft and slander were punished by the machete; marital fidelity was nourished with blood.

During his tenure as a judge, Winiktón became familiar not with justice but with its opposite, the wild beast that devours it. After meeting that beast at every crossroads, he was learning about it, trait by trait. He knew its animal cunning, the lair it retreats to, its disguises, the speed with which it flees. Pedro’s will to exterminate, his hunter instinct, became sharper and increasingly urgent. He tracked the beast, set out snares for it. And the prey (the prey whose name was garbled when he first heard it) always thwarted him. Now, today, this phrase—“A Caxlán made ill use of her”—coiled itself like a rope around injustice’s throat and handed it over to Pedro with the same face it had shown him the first time. There it was, struggling, having just sated itself on the frail flesh of a woman, almost a girl. Pedro González Winiktón recognized it. He trembled with an eagerness to defend; he trembled with a need to destroy. And yet he remained still, immobile, captivated.