She clicked with her tongue, Indigo’s signal to ride more forward in the change, and she felt the slight pull in the lead rein as he went to switch legs. But a sudden shout – shouts – threw him off his stride. He tossed his head, pulling back into his hind quarters and rearing slightly. Nene instinctively threw her weight forward, shushing him with her voice and calming him down from the unexpected fright as the clamour quickly grew. Her heart went into a gallop of its own; the sound of angry men was becoming increasingly familiar. Most times it was their shouts and taunts and threats that made her recoil, but when her family drove into town for Mass these days, it was the silence of the campesinos that frightened her most, the resentment glinting in their eyes as the car swept past, throwing up dust clouds in its wake. Even those families she knew, and who knew her, now turned away whenever she approached, their old friendliness gone.

She squinted, trying to see through the narrow gap between the roof and the sand school walls to the fields beyond, but thanks to the angle of the setting sun, she could see nothing more than bleached-out rectangular strips.

Another flurry of shouts, growing in heat, made Indigo step back again, tossing his head agitatedly and getting ready to rear. Sliding off the saddle, she hurriedly led him to the far corner, away from the direction of the fracas, and tied him to the post, fishing in her skirt for his sugar cube. She fed him, shushing in his ear, but the clamour was only growing in intensity.

‘Take him back to the stable, please,’ she said to the instructor, beginning to stride out towards the fields.

‘But, señorita—’

‘Please. Get him to the stable before this gets any worse,’ she said sharply, breaking into a run.

As she approached, the glare dimmed, the sun sliding behind the tree-line and setting the melee into silhouette. There must have been twenty, maybe thirty, men there, all of them holding farming equipment – scythes, threshers, pitchforks – but which, in their hands here now, looked like weapons.

Señor Martin, her father’s foreman, was standing on the steps outside his office, his legs planted wide, his hands on his hips as he stared them down, seemingly unafraid of the mob. The more they bayed, the more still he seemed to become, and he made no attempts to placate or calm them, merely watching instead as though this were somehow ‘interesting’ – his eyes skating over them and taking in who were the leaders, who the muscle, who the stragglers.

‘. . . is our right!’ Juan Jose Perez was yelling, the sinews in his neck taut, his eyes bulging from a gaunt, leathery face. ‘The law is on our side and we have come to claim what is ours. You cannot keep this land as grazing for your bulls, when people are starving at your feet!’ His face was twisted with contempt, spittle flying as he spoke and landing on the parched ground.