The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

At Paso Rojo

When old Señora Sanchez died, her two daughters Lucha and Chalía decided to visit their brother at his ranch. Out of devotion they had agreed never to marry while their mother lived, and now that she was gone and they were both slightly over forty there seemed just as little likelihood of a wedding in the family as there ever had. They would probably not admit this even to themselves, however. It was with complete understanding of his two sisters that Don Federico suggested they leave the city and go down to Paso Rojo for a few weeks.

Lucha arrived in black crêpe. To her, death was one of the things that happen in life with a certain regularity, and it therefore demanded outward observance. Otherwise her life was in no way changed, save that at the ranch she would have to get used to a whole new staff of servants.

“Indians, poor things, animals with speech,” she said to Don Federico the first night as they sat having coffee. A barefooted girl had just carried the dessert dishes out.

Don Federico smiled. “They are good people,” he said deliberately. Living at the ranch so long had lowered his standards, it was said, for even though he had always spent a month or so of each year in the capital, he had grown increasingly indifferent to the social life there.

“The ranch is eating his soul little by little,” Lucha used to say to Señora Sanchez.

Only once the old lady had replied. “If his soul is to be eaten, then let the ranch do it.”

She looked around the primitive dining room with its dry decorations of palm leaves and branches. “He loves it here because everything is his,” she thought, “and some of the things could never have been his if he had not purposely changed to fit them.” That was not a completely acceptable thought. She knew the ranch had made him happy and tolerant and wise; to her it seemed sad that he could not have been those things without losing his civilized luster. And that he certainly had lost. He had the skin of a peasant—brown and lined everywhere. He had the slowness of speech of men who have lived for long periods of time in the open. And the inflections of his voice suggested the patience that can come from talking to animals rather than to human beings. Lucha was a sensible woman; still, she could not help feeling a certain amount of regret that her little brother, who at an earlier point in his life had been the best dancer among the members of the country club, should have become the thin, sad-faced, quiet man who sat opposite her.

“You’ve changed a great deal,” she suddenly said, shaking her head from side to side slowly.

“Yes. You change here. But it’s a good place.”

“Good, yes. But so sad,” she said.

He laughed. “Not sad at all. You get used to the quiet. And then you find it’s not quiet at all. But you never change much, do you? Chalía’s the one who’s different. Have you noticed?”

“Oh, Chalía’s always been crazy. She doesn’t change either.”

“Yes. She is very much changed.” He looked past the smoking oil lamp, out into the dark. “Where is she? Why doesn’t she take coffee?”

“She has insomnia. She never takes it.”

“Maybe our nights will put her to sleep,” said Don Federico.

Chalía sat on the upper veranda in the soft night breeze. The ranch stood in a great clearing that held the jungle at bay all about, but the monkeys were calling from one side to the other, as if neither clearing nor ranch house existed. She had decided to put off going to bed—that way there was less darkness to be borne in case she stayed awake. The lines of a poem she had read on the train two days before were still in her mind: “Aveces la noche. . . . Sometimes the night takes you with it, wraps you up and rolls you along, leaving you washed in sleep at the morning’s edge.” Those lines were comforting. But there was the terrible line yet to come: “And sometimes the night goes on without you.” She tried to jump from the image of the fresh sunlit morning to a completely alien idea: the waiter at the beach club in Puntarenas, but she knew the other thought was waiting there for her in the dark.

She had worn riding breeches and a khaki shirt open at the neck, on the trip from the capital, and she had announced to Lucha her intention of going about in those clothes the whole time she was at Paso Rojo. She and Lucha had quarreled at the station.

“Everyone knows Mamá has died,” said Lucha, “and the ones who aren’t scandalized are making fun of you.”

With intense scorn in her voice Chalía had replied, “You have asked them, I suppose.”

On the train as it wound through the mountains toward tierra caliente she had suddenly said, apropos of nothing: “Black doesn’t become me.” Really upsetting to Lucha was the fact that in Puntarenas she had gone off and bought some crimson nail polish which she had painstakingly applied herself in the hotel room.

“You can’t, Chalía!” cried her sister, wide-eyed. “You’ve never done it before. Why do you do it now?”

Chalía had laughed immoderately. “Just a whiml” she had said, spreading her decorated hands in front of her.

Loud footsteps came up the stairs and along the veranda, shaking it slightly. Her sister called: “Chalía!”

She hesitated an instant, then said, “Yes.”

“You’re sitting in the dark! Wait. I’ll bring out a lamp from your room. What an idea!”

“We’ll be covered with insects,” objected Chalía, who, although her mood was not a pleasant one, did not want it disturbed.

“Federico says no!” shouted Lucha from inside. “He says there are no insects! None that bite, anyway!”

Presently she appeared with a small lamp which she set on a table against the wall. She sat down in a nearby hammock and swung herself softly back and forth, humming. Chalía frowned at her, but she seemed not to notice.

“What heat!” exclaimed Lucha finally.

“Don’t exert yourself so much,” suggested Chalía.

They were quiet. Soon the breeze became a strong wind, coming from the direction of the distant mountains; but it too was hot, like the breath of a great animal. The lamp flickered, threatened to go out. Lucha got up and turned it down. As Chalía moved her head to watch her, her attention was caught by something else, and she quickly shifted her gaze to the wall. Something enormous, black and swift had been there an instant ago; now there was nothing. She watched the spot intently. The wall was faced with small stones which had been plastered over and whitewashed indifferently, so that the surface was very rough and full of large holes. She rose suddenly and approaching the wall, peered at it closely. All the holes, large and small, were lined with whitish funnels. She could see the long, agile legs of the spiders that lived inside, sticking Out beyond some of the funnels.

“Lucha, this wall is full of monsters!” she cried. A beetle flew near to the lamp, changed its mind and lighted on the wall. The nearest spider darted forth, seized it and disappeared into the wall with it.

“Don’t look at them,” advised Lucha, but she glanced about the floor near her feet apprehensively.

Chalía pulled her bed into the middle of the room and moved a small table over to it. She blew out the lamp and lay back on the hard mattress. The sound of the nocturnal insects was unbearably loud—an endless, savage scream above the noise of the wind. All the vegetation out there was dry. It made a million scraping sounds in the air as the wind swept through it. From time to time the monkeys called to each other from different sides. A night bird scolded occasionally, but its voice was swallowed up in the insistent insect song and the rush of wind across the hot countryside. And it was absolutely dark.

Perhaps an hour later she lit the lamp by her bed, rose, and in her nightgown went to sit on the veranda. She put the lamp where it had been before, by the wall, and turned her chair to face it. She sat watching the wall until very late.

At dawn the air was cool, full of the sound of continuous lowing of cattle, nearby and far. Breakfast was served as soon as the sky was completely light. In the kitchen there was a hubbub of women’s voices. The dining room smelled of kerosene and oranges. A great platter heaped with thick slices of pale pineapple was in the center of the table. Don Federico sat at the end, his back to the wall. Behind him was a small niche, bright with candles, and the Virgin stood there in a blue and silver gown.

“Did you sleep well?” said Don Federico to Lucha.

“Ah, wonderfully well!”

“And you?” to Chalía.

“I never sleep well,” she said.

A hen ran distractedly into the room from the veranda and was chased out by the serving girl. Outside the door a group of Indian children stood guard around a square of clothesline along which was draped a red assortment of meat: strips of flesh and loops of internal organs. When a vulture swooped low, the children jumped up and down, screaming in chorus, and drove it into the air again. Chalía frowned at their noise. Don Federico smiled.

“This is all in your honor,” he said. “We killed a cow yesterday. Tomorrow all that will be gone.”

“Not the vultures!” exclaimed Lucha.

“Certainly not. All the cowboys and servants take some home to their families. And they manage to get rid of quite a bit of it themselves.”

“You’re too generous,” said Chalía. “It’s bad for them. It makes them dissatisfied and unhappy. But I suppose if you didn’t give it to them, they’d steal it anyway.”

Don Federico pushed back his chair.

“No one here has ever stolen anything from me.” He rose and went out.

After breakfast while it was still early, before the sun got too high in the sky, he regularly made a two-hour tour of the ranch. Since he preferred to pay unexpected visits to the vaqueros in charge of the various districts, he did not always cover the same regions. He was explaining this to Lucha as he untethered his horse outside the high barbed-wire fence that enclosed the house. “Not because I hope to find something wrong. But this is the best way always to find everything right.”

Like Chalía, Lucha was skeptical of the Indian’s ability to do anything properly. “A very good idea,” she said. “I’m sure you are much too lenient with those boys. They need a strong hand and no pity.”

Above the high trees that grew behind the house the red and blue macaws screamed, endlessly repeating their elliptical path in the sky. Lucha looked up in their direction and saw Chalía on the upper porch, tucking a khaki shirt into her breeches.

“Rico, wait! I want to go with you,” she called, and rushed into her room.

Lucha turned back to her brother. “You won’t take her? She couldn’t! With Mamá . . .”

Don Federico cut her short, so as not to hear what would have been painful to him. “You both need fresh air and exercise. Come, both of you.”

Lucha was silent a moment, looking aghast into his face. Finally she said, “I couldn’t,” and moved away to open the gate. Several cowboys were riding their horses slowly up from the paddock toward the front of the house. Chalía appeared on the lower porch and hurried to the gate, where Lucha stood looking at her.

“So you’re going horseback riding,” said Lucha. Her voice had no expression.

“Yes. Are you coming? I suppose not. We should be back soon; no, Rico?”

Don Federico disregarded her, saying to Lucha: “It would be good if you came.”

When she did not reply, but went through the gate and shut it, he had one of the cowboys dismount and help Chalía onto his horse. She sat astride the animal beaming down at the youth.

“Now, you can’t come. You have no horse!” she cried, pulling the reins taut violently so that the horse stood absolutely still.

’Yes, Señora. I shall go with the señores.” His speech was archaic and respectful, the speech of the rustic Indian. Their soft, polite words always annoyed her, because she believed, quite erroneously, that she could detect mockery underneath. “Like parrots who’ve been taught two lines of Gongoral” she would laugh, when the subject was being discussed. Now she was further nettled by hearing herself addressed as Señora. “The idiot!” she thought. “He should know that I’m not married.” But when she looked down at the cowboy again she noticed his white teeth and his very young face. She smiled, saying, “How hot it is already,” and undid the top button of her shirt.

The boy ran to the paddock and returned immediately, riding a larger and more nervous horse. This was a joke to the other cowboys, who started ahead, laughing. Don Federico and Chalía rode side by side, and the boy went along behind them, by turns whistling a tune and uttering soothing words to his skittish horse.

The party went across the mile or so of open space that lay between the house and the jungle. Then the high grass swept the riders’ legs as the horses went downward to the river, which was dry save for a narrow stream of water in the middle. They followed the bed downstream, the vegetation increasing the height along the banks as they progressed. Chalía had enameled her fingernails afresh before starting out and was in a good humor. She was discussing the administration of the ranch with Don Federico. The expenses and earning capacity interested her particularly, although she had no clear idea of the price of anything. She had worn an enormous soft straw sombrero whose brim dropped to her shoulders as she rode. Every few minutes she turned around and waved to the cowboy who still remained behind, shouting to him: “Muchacho! You’re not lost yet?”

Presently the river was divided into two separate beds by a large island which loomed ahead of them, its upper reaches a solid wall of branches and vines. At the foot of the giant trees among some gray boulders was a score or so of cows, looking very small indeed as they lay hunched up in the mud or ambled about seeking the thickest shade. Don Federico galloped ahead suddenly and conferred loudly with the other vaqueros. Almost simultaneously Chalía drew in her reins and brought her horse to a halt. The boy was quickly abreast of her. As he came up she called to him: “It’s hot, isn’t it?”

The men rode on ahead. He circled around her. “Yes, señora. But that is because we are in the sun. There”—he indicated the island—“it is shady. Now they are almost there.”

She said nothing, but took off her hat and fanned herself with the brim. As she moved her hand back and forth she watched her red nails. “What an ugly color,” she murmured.

“What, señora?”

“Nothing.” She paused. “Ah, what heat!”

“Come, señora. Shall we go on?”

Angrily she crumpled the crown of the sombrero in her fist. “I am not señora,” she said distinctly, looking at the men ahead as they rode up to the cows and roused them from their lethargy. The boy smiled. She went on. “I am señorita. That is not the same thing. Or perhaps you think it is?”

The boy was puzzled; he was conscious of her sudden emotion, but he had no idea of its cause. “Yes, señorita,” he said politely, without conviction. And he added, with more assurance, “I am Roberto Paz, at your orders.”

The sun shone down upon them from above and was reflected by the mica in the stones at their feet. Chalía undid another button of her shirt.

“It’s hot. Will they came back soon?”

“No, señorita. They return by the road. Shall we go?” He turned his horse toward the island ahead.

“I don’t want to be where the cows are,” said Chalía with petulance. “They have garrapatas. The garrapatas get under your skin.”

Roberto laughed indulgently. “The garrapatas will not molest you if you stay on your horse, señorita.”

“But I want to get down and rest. I’m so tired!” The discomfort of the heat became pure fatigue as she said the words; this made it possible for the annoyance she felt with him to transform itself into a general state of self-pity and depression that came upon her like a sudden pain. Hanging her head she sobbed: “Ay, madre mía! My poor mamá!” She stayed that way a moment, and her horse began to walk slowly toward the trees at the side of the river bed.

Roberto glanced perplexedly in the direction the others had taken. They had all passed out of sight beyond the head of the island; the cows were lying down again. “The señorita should not cry.”

She did not reply. Since the reins continued slack, her horse proceeded at a faster pace toward the forest. When it had reached the shade at the edge of the stream, the boy rode quickly to her side. “Señorita!” he cried.

She sighed and looked up at him, her hat still in her hand. “I’m very tired,” she repeated. “I want to get down and rest.”

There was a path leading into the forest. Roberto went ahead to lead the way, hacking at stray vines and bushes with his machete. Chalía followed, sitting listlessly in the saddle, calmed by the sudden entrance into the green world of silence and comparative coolness.

They rode slowly upward through the forest for a quarter of an hour or so without saying anything to each other. When they came to a gate Roberto opened it without dismounting and waited for Chalía to pass through. As she went by him she smiled and said: “How nice it is here.”

He replied, rather curtly, she thought: “Yes, Señorita.”

Ahead, the vegetation thinned, and beyond lay a vast, open, slightly undulating expanse of land, decorated here and there, as if by intent, with giant white-trunked ceiba trees. The hot wind blew across this upland terrain, and the cry of cicadas was in the air. Chalía halted her horse and jumped down. The tiny thistlelike plants that covered the ground crackled under her boots. She seated herself carefully in the shade at the very edge of the open land.

Roberto tied the two horses to a tree and stood looking at her with the alert, hostile eyes of the Indian who faces what he does not understand.

“Sit down. Here,” she said.

Stonily he obeyed, sitting with his legs straight on the earth in front of him, his back very erect. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Quécolor,” she murmured.

She did not expect him to answer, but he did, and his voice sounded remote. “It is not my fault, señorita.”

She slipped her arm around his neck and felt the muscles grow tense. She rubbed her face over his chest; he did not move or say anything. With her eyes shut and her head pressing hard against him, she felt as if she were hanging to consciousness only by the ceaseless shrill scream of the cicadas. She remained thus, leaning over more heavily upon him as he braced himself with his hands against the earth behind him. His face had become an impenetrable mask; he seemed not to be thinking of anything, not even to be present.

Breathing heavily, she raised her head to look at him, but found she did not have the courage to reach his eyes with her gaze. Instead she watched his throat and finally whispered, “It doesn’t matter what you think of me. It’s enough for me to hold you like this.”

He turned his head stiffly away from her face, looking across the landscape to the mountains. Gruffly he said, “My brother could come by this place. We must go back to the river.”

She tried to bury her face in his chest, to lose herself once more in the delicious sensation. Without warning, he moved quickly and stood up, so that she tumbled forward with her face against the ground.

The surprise of her little fall changed her mood instantly. She sprang up, dashed blindly for the nearer of the two horses, was astride it in an instant, and before he could cry, “It’s the bad horse!” had pounded the animal’s flanks with her heels. It raised its head wildly; with a violent bound it began to gallop over the countryside. At the first movement she realized dimly that there had been a change, that it was not the same horse, but in her excitement she let her observation stop there. She was delighted to be moving swiftly across the plain against the hot wind. Roberto was left behind.

“Idiota!” she screamed into the air. “Idiota! Idiota!” with all her might. Ahead of her a tremendous vulture, panic-stricken at the approaching hoof sounds, flapped clumsily away into the sky.

The saddle, having been strapped on for less vigorous action, began to slip. She gripped the pommel with one hand, and seizing her shirt with the other gave it a convulsive tug that ripped it completely open. A powerful feeling of exultation came to her as she glanced down and saw her own skin white in the sunlight.

In the distance to one side, she dimly saw some palm trees reaching above a small patch of lower vegetation. She shut her eyes: the palms looked like shiny green spiders. She was out of breath from the jolting. The sun was too hot. The saddle kept slipping further; she could not right it. The horse showed no sign of being aware of her existence. She pulled on the reins as hard as she could without falling over backward, but it had no effect on the horse, which continued to run at top speed, following no path and missing some of the trees by what seemed no more than inches.

“Where shall I be in an hour?” she asked herself. “Dead, perhaps?” The idea of death did not frighten her the way it did some people. She was afraid of the night because she could not sleep; she was not afraid of life and death because she did not feel implicated to any extent in either one. Only other people lived and died, had their lives and deaths. She, being inside herself, existed merely as herself and not as a part of anything else. People, animals, flowers and stones were objects, and they all belonged to the world outside. It was their juxtapositions that made hostile or friendly patterns. Sometimes she looked at her own hands and feet for several minutes, trying to fight off an indefinite sensation they gave her of belonging also to the world outside. But this never troubled her deeply. The impressions were received and accepted without question; at most she could combat them when they were too strong for her comfort.

Here in the hot morning sun, being pulled forward through the air, she began to feel that almost all of her had slipped out of the inside world, that only a tiny part of her was still she. The part that was left was full of astonishment and disbelief; the only discomfort now lay in having to accept the fact of the great white tree trunks that continued to rush by her.

She tried several times to make herself be elsewhere: in her rose garden at home, in the hotel dining room at Puntarenas, even as a last resort which might prove feasible since it too had been unpleasant, in her bed back at the ranch, with the dark around her.

With a great bound, the horse cleared a ditch. The saddle slipped completely around and hung underneath. Having no pommel to cling to, she kept on as best she could, clutching the horse’s flanks with her legs and always pulling on the reins. Suddenly the animal slowed down and stepped briskly into a thicket. There was a path of sorts; she suspected it was the same one they had used coming from the river. She sat listlessly, waiting to see where the horse would go.

Finally it came out into the river bed as she had expected, and trotted back to the ranch. The sun was directly overhead when they reached the paddock. The horse stood outside, waiting to be let in, but it seemed that no one was around. Making a great effort, she slid down to the ground and found she had difficulty in standing because her legs were trembling so. She was furious and ashamed. As she hobbled toward the house she was strongly hoping Lucha would not see her. A few Indian girls appeared to be the only people about. She dragged herself upstairs and shut herself in her room. The bed had been pushed back against the wall, but she did not have the force to pull it out into the center where she wanted it.

When Don Federico and the others returned, Lucha, who had been reading downstairs, went to the gate. “Where’s Chalía?” she cried.

“She was tired. One of the boys brought her back a while ago,” he said. “It’s just as well. We went halfway to Cañas.”

Chalía had her lunch in bed and slept soundly until late in the afternoon. When she emerged from her room onto the veranda, a woman was dusting the rocking chairs and arranging them in a row against the wall.

“Where’s my sister?” demanded Chalía.

“Gone to the village in the truck with the señor,” the woman replied, going to the head of the stairs and beginning to dust them one by one, as she went down backward.

Chalíva seated herself in a chair and put her feet up on the porch railing, reflecting as she did so that if Lucha had been there she would have disapproved of the posture. There was a bend in the river—the only part of it that came within sight of the house—just below her, and a portion of the bank was visible to her through the foliage from where she sat. A large breadfruit tree spread its branches out almost to the opposite side of the stream. There was a pool at the turn, just where the tree’s trunk grew out of the muddy bank. An Indian sauntered out of the undergrowth and calmly removed his trousers, then his shirt. He stood there a moment, stark naked, looking at the water, before he walked into it and began to splash and swim. When he had finished bathing he stood again on the bank, smoothing his blue-black hair. Chalía was puzzled, knowing that few Indians would be so immodest as to bathe naked in full view of the upstairs veranda. With a sudden strange sensation as she watched him, she realized it was Roberto and that he was wholly conscious of her presence at that moment.

“He knows Rico is gone and that no one can see him from downstairs,” she thought, resolving to tell her brother when he came home. The idea of vengeance upon the boy filled her with a delicious excitement. She watched his deliberate movements as he dressed. He sat down on a rock with only his shirt on and combed his hair. The late afternoon sun shone through the leaves and gave his brown skin an orange cast. When finally he had gone away without once glancing up at the house, she rose and went into her room. Maneuvering the bed into the middle of the floor once more, she began to walk around it; her mood was growing more and more turbulent as she circled about the room.

She heard the truck door slam, and a moment later, voices downstairs. With her finger to her temple, where she always put it when her heart was beating very fast, she slipped out onto the veranda and downstairs. Don Federico was in the commissary, which he opened for a half hour each morning and evening. Chalía stepped inside the door, her mouth already open, feeling the words about to burst from her lungs. Two children were pushing their copper coins along the counter, pointing at the candy they wanted. By the lamp a woman was looking at a bolt of goods. Don Federico was on a ladder, getting down another bolt. Chalía’s mouth closed slowly. She looked down at her brother’s desk by the door beside her, where he kept his ledgers and bills. In an open cigar box almost touching her hand was a pile of dirty bank notes. She was back in the room before she knew it. She shut the door and saw that she had four ten-colon notes in her hand. She stuffed them into her breeches pocket.

At dinner they made fun of her for having slept all the afternoon, telling her that now she would lie awake again all night.

She was busy eating. “If I do, so much the worse,” she said, without looking up.

“I’ve arranged a little concert after dinner,” said Don Federico. Lucha was ecstatic. He went on: “The cowboys have some friends here, over from Bagaces, and Raul has finished building his marimba.”

The men and boys began to assemble soon after dinner. There was laughter, and guitars were strummed in the dark on the terrace. The two sisters went to sit at the end near the dining room, Don Federico was in the middle with the vaqueros, and the servants were ranged at the kitchen end. After several solo songs by various men with guitars, Raul and a friend began to play the marimba. Roberto was seated on the floor among the cowboys who were not performing.

“Suppose we all dance,” said Don Federico, jumping up and seizing Lucha. They moved about together at one end of the terrace for a moment, but no one else stirred.

“A bailar!” Don Federico shouted, laughing.

Several of the girls started to dance timidly in couples, with loud giggling. None of the men would budge. The marimba players went on pounding out the same piece over and over again. Don Federico danced with Chalía, who was stiff from her morning ride; soon she excused herself and left. Instead of going upstairs to bed she crossed onto the front veranda and sat looking across the vast moonlit clearing. The night was thick with eternity. She could feel it there, just beyond the gate. Only the monotonous, tinkling music kept the house within the confines of time, saved it from being engulfed. As she listened to the merrymaking progress, she had the impression that the men were taking more part in it. “Rico has probably opened them a bottle of rum,” she thought with fury.

At last it sounded as though everyone were dancing. Her curiosity having risen to a high pitch, she was about to rise and return to the terrace, when a figure appeared at the other end of the veranda. She needed no one to tell her it was Roberto. He was walking soundlessly toward her; he seemed to hesitate as he came up to her, then he squatted down by her chair and looked up at her. She had been right: he smelled of rum.

“Good evening, señorita.”

She felt impelled to remain silent. Nevertheless, she said, “Good evening.” She put her hand into her pocket, saying to herself that she must do this correctly and quickly.

As he crouched there with his face shining in the moonlight, she bent forward and passed her hand over his smooth hair. Keeping her fingers on the back of his neck, she leaned still further forward and kissed his lips. The rum was very strong. He did not move. She began to whisper in his ear, very low: “Roberto, I love you. I have a present for you. Forty colones. Here.”

He turned his head swiftly and said out loud, “Where?”

She put the bills into his hand, still holding his head, and whispered again: “Sh! Not a word to anyone. I must go now. I’ll give you more tomorrow night.” She let go of him.

He rose and went out the gate. She went straight upstairs to bed, and as she went to sleep the music was still going on.

Much later she awoke and lit her lamp. It was half past four. Day would soon break. Feeling full of an unaccustomed energy, Chalía dressed, extinguished the lamp and went outdoors, shutting the gate quietly behind her. In the paddock the horses stirred. She walked by it and started along the road to the village. It was a very silent hour: the night insects had ceased their noises and the birds had not yet begun their early-morning twitter. The moon was low in the sky, so that it remained behind the trees most of the time. Ahead of her Venus flared like a minor moon. She walked quickly, with only a twinge of pain now and then in her hip.

Something dark lying in the road ahead of her made her stop walking. It did not move. She watched it closely, stepping cautiously toward it, ready to run the other way. As her eyes grew accustomed to its form, she saw that it was a man lying absolutely still. And as she drew near, she knew it was Roberto. She touched his arm with her foot. He did not respond. She leaned over and put her hand on his chest. He was breathing deeply, and the smell of liquor was almost overpowering. She straightened and kicked him lightly in the head. There was a tiny groan from far within. This also, she said to herself, would have to be done quickly. She felt wonderfully light and powerful as she slowly maneuvered his body with her feet to the right-hand side of the road. There was a small cliff there, about twenty feet high. When she got him to the edge, she waited a while, looking at his features in the moonlight. His mouth was open a little, and the white teeth peeked out from behind the lips. She smoothed his forehead a few times and with a gentle push rolled him over the edge. He fell very heavily, making a strange animal sound as he hit.

She walked back to the ranch at top speed. It was getting light when she arrived. She went into the kitchen and ordered her breakfast, saying: “I’m up early.” The entire day she spent around the house, reading and talking to Lucha. She thought Don Federico looked preoccupied when he set out on his morning tour of inspection, after closing the commissary. She thought he still did when he returned; she told him so at lunch.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I can’t seem to balance my books.”

“And you’ve always been such a good mathematician,” said Chalía.

During the afternoon some cowboys brought Roberto in. She heard the commotion in the kitchen and the servants’ cries of “Ay, Dios!” She went out to watch. He was conscious, lying on the floor with all the other Indians staring at him.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

One of the cowboys laughed. “Nothing of importance. He had too much—” the cowboy made a gesture of drinking from a bottle, “and fell off the road. Nothing but bruises, I think.”

After dinner Don Federico asked Chalía and Lucha into his little private office. He looked drawn, and he spoke more slowly than usual. As Chalía entered she saw that Roberto was standing inside the door. He did not look at her. Lucha and Chalía sat down; Don Federico and Roberto remained standing.

“This is the first time anyone has done this to me,” said Don Federico, looking down at the rug, his hands locked behind him. “Roberto has stolen from me. The money is missing. Some of it is in his pocket still, more than his monthly wages. I know he has stolen it because he had no money yesterday and because,” he turned to Chalía, “because he can account for having it only by lying. He says you gave it to him. Did you give Roberto any money yesterday?”

Chalía looked puzzled. “No,” she said. “I thought of giving him a colon when he brought me back from the ride yesterday morning. But then I thought it would be better to wait until we were leaving to go back to the city. Was it much? He’s just a boy.”

Don Federico said: “It was forty colones. But that’s the same as forty centavos. Stealing . . .”

Chalía interrupted him. “Rico!” she exclaimed. “Forty colones! That’s a great deal! Has he spent much of it? You could take it out of his wages little by little.” She knew her brother would say what he did say, a moment later.

“Never! He’ll leave tonight. And his brother with him.”

In the dim light Chalía could see the large purple bruise on Roberto’s forehead. He kept his head lowered and did not look up, even when she and Lucha rose and left the room at a sign from their brother. They went upstairs together and sat down on the veranda.

“What barbarous people they are!” said Lucha indignantly. “Poor Rico may learn some day how to treat them. But I’m afraid one of them will kill him first.”

Chalía rocked back and forth, fanning herself lazily. “With a few more lessons like this he may change,” she said. “What heat!”

They heard Don Federico’s voice below by the gate. Firmly it said, “Adiós.” There were muffled replies and the gate was closed. Don Federico joined his sisters on the veranda. He sat down sadly.

“I didn’t like to send them away on foot at night,” he said, shaking his head. “But that Roberto is a bad one. It was better to have him go once and for all, quickly. Juan is good, but I had to get rid of him too, of course.”

“Claro, claro,” said Lucha absently. Suddenly she turned to her brother full of concern. “I hope you remembered to take away the money you said he still had in his pocket.”

“Yes, yes,” he assured her, but from the tone of his voice she knew he had let the boy keep it.

Don Federico and Lucha said good night and went to bed. Chalía sat up a while, looking vaguely at the wall with the spiders in it. Then she yawned and took the lamp into her room. Again the bed had been pushed back against the wall by the maid. Chalía shrugged her shoulders, got into the bed where it was, blew out the lamp, listened for a few minutes to the night sounds, and went peacefully to sleep, thinking of how surprisingly little time it had taken her to get used to life at Paso Rojo, and even, she had to admit now, to begin to enjoy it.