Look at ’im, he’s so young. But he still looks so pale and ghastly. Ah! So the bullet wound won’t heal, huh? Listen, Señora Remigia, shouldn’t we do some kinda healin’ ourselves?”

Señora Remigia, naked from the waist up, stretches her lean, sinewy arms out over the handle of the metate, and presses it down and back and forth over her nixtamal,1grinding the corn over and over again.

“Who knows if they’ll like that any,” she answers without interrupting her tough task, nearly out of breath. “They have their own doctor, ya know.”

“Señora Remigia.” Another neighbor comes in, bending her bony body down to pass through the door. “Do ya have a few leaves of laurel ya could give me to prepare an infusion for María Antonia? She woke up with the colic.”

And since this request was merely a pretext to come in and gossip, she turns her eyes toward the corner where the wounded man is lying, and inquires about his health, winking.

Señora Remigia lowers her eyes to indicate that Demetrio is sleeping.

“Well, so you’re here too, Señora Pachita, I hadn’t seen ya.”

“Good mornin’ and God bless you, ’ñora Fortunata. And how’s your family this mornin’?”

“Well, María Antonia has got her the ‘curse.’ And, as always, she’s got the colic.”2

She squats down and crouches right next to Señora Pachita.

“I don’t have any laurel leaves, dear,” Señora Remigia replies, stopping her grinding for a moment. She wipes a few stray locks of hair that had fallen over her eyes from her drenched face. Then she digs her two hands deep into the earthenware tub and pulls out two large handfuls of cooked corn, dripping a turbid, yellowish water. “I don’t have any. You should ask Señora Dolores, though. She’s always got all kinds of herbs.”

“’ña Dolores left for the convent last night. They came to get ’er without any warning so she’d go help Uncle Matías’s girl.”

“Go on, Señora Pachita. You don’t say!”

The three old women form a lively chorus, gossiping in very low, hushed tones, but always in a very vivid, animated manner.

“As sure as there’s a God in heaven above us!”

“Well, ya know, I’m the first one who said anything about it: ‘Marcelina’s big,’ I said, ‘she’s really big ’round the middle! ’ But no one wanted to believe me.”

“Well, poor thing. And what if the baby turns out to be her uncle Nazario’s?”

“God help her!”

“No, woman, it’s not her uncle Nazario’s, no way! It’s those damned Federales, curse ’em all!”

The old women’s racket eventually wakes Demetrio up.

They quiet down. Then Señora Pachita reaches into her bosom and brings out a palomo3— the small pigeon’s beak is open and it is barely breathing—and says:

“Oh, tha’s right, I nearly forgot, I came to bring the señor these substances. But if he’s bein’ looked after by a doctor . . .”

“What you brought there won’t do nothin’, Señora Pachita. Tha’s somethin’ ya rub on the skin.”

“Señor, forgive how poor and how little this is, this gift I bring you,” said the wrinkled old woman, drawing close to Demetrio. “There’s nothin’ like this substance for blood ’morrhages.”

Demetrio quickly nodded his approval. They had already put slices of alcohol-soaked bread on his stomach, and even though they cooled off his belly when they were removed, he still felt very feverish inside.

“Go ahead, Señora Remigia. Go ahead and do it, since ya know it so good,” the other women said.

Señora Remigia pulled a long, curved knife typically used to slice cactus fruit out of a reed sheath. Then she grabbed the small pigeon in one hand, held it just above Demetrio’s belly, and slashed it in half with a single swipe of the blade, as skillfully as a surgeon.

“In the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Señora Remigia said, blessing the room, and very quickly applied the two halves of the pigeon, dripping warm blood, on Demetrio’s abdomen.

“Now ya’ll see how ya’ll start feelin’ a lotta relief real soon.”

Obeying Señora Remigia’s instructions, Demetrio remained still, his head tucked in as he lay on his side.

Then Señora Fortunata told of her troubles. She felt much goodwill toward the señores of the revolution. Three months ago the Federales had stolen her only daughter away, leaving her inconsolable and beside herself.

When Señora Fortunata began telling her story, Quail and Anastasio Montañés, sitting on their haunches at the foot of the stretcher, raised their heads and listened, their mouths hanging open. But Señora Fortunata went on to recount the story in so many details that halfway through Quail grew bored and went outside to stretch his legs in the sun. When she finally finished up—by saying in a solemn tone, “I pray to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary that you do not leave a single one of those damned Federales alive”—Demetrio, facing the wall, feeling much relief from the substances on his stomach, was thinking of the best route to proceed to Durango, while Anastasio Montañés snored as loud as a trombone.

X

“Why don’t you call the curro and have ’im cure you, compadre Demetrio,” Anastasio Montañés said to his leader, who continued to suffer strong chills and fevers every day. “If you could only see, he cured himself and he’s already so much better that he’s walkin’ ’round without even limpin’ no more.”

But Venancio, who was standing by with his tins of lard and his filthy strips of rags at the ready, protested:

“I cannot be held responsible for whatever happens if anyone else lays a hand on him.”

“Listen, compadre, where do you come off thinkin’ you’re such a great doctor? You gonna tell us you’ve forgotten how you came to be here with us?” Quail asked.

“Yeah, well, what I remember, Quail, is that you’re with us ’cause you stole a watch and some diamond rings,” Venancio responded, all worked up.

Quail burst out laughing.

“Well, at least I did that! What’s worse is that you ran away from your town ’cause you poisoned your girlfriend.”

“That’s a lie!”

“No, you did. You gave her some Spanish flies,1but they didn’t work . .