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of hospitality. In view of such progress, Alejandro de la Vega considered it indispensable for the town to have a school. No one shared his concern. With his own money then, completely on his own, he founded the first school in the province, and for many years it would be the only one. It opened its doors just as Diego turned nine and Padre Mendoza announced that he had taught the boy everything he knew, except for saying mass and exorcising demons. The building was as dark and dusty as the jail, located on a corner of the main plaza and furnished with a dozen iron benches; a menacing-looking whip hung beside the blackboard. The teacher turned out to be one of those insignificant little men whom the slightest hint of authority converts into a brutal tyrant. Diego had the bad fortune to be one of his first students, along with a handful of other male children, the budding sprouts of the well-to-do families of the town. Bernardo was not allowed to attend, even though Diego begged his father to let him come.
    Alejandro de la Vega found Bernardo’s ambition praiseworthy, but he decided not to make an exception; if one Indian were accepted, others would have to be let in, and the teacher had already announced, with unmistakable clarity, his intention to leave if any Indian so much as stuck his nose into his “honorable establishment of learning.” The need to teach Bernardo, more than the intimidating whip, motivated Diego to pay attention in his classes. Among the students was a certain Garcia, son of a Spanish soldier turned tavern owner, a fat boy, not overly bright, with flat feet and a foolish smile, the teacher’s favorite victim and that of the students, who tormented him ruthlessly. Through some desire for justice that he himself could not explain, Diego became Garcia’s defender, winning the pudgy boy’s fanatic admiration.
    For Padre Mendoza the years were taken up by many chores farming, herding cattle, and Christianizing Indians and he still had not repaired the church roof that had been damaged during Toypumia’s attack, when the explosion had shaken the building to its foundations.
    Every time the good father held up the host to consecrate it during mass, his eyes inevitably fell on the weakened beams; he would promise himself with alarm to fix them before they crashed down upon his small congregation, but just as inevitably he had to tend to other matters and would forget his intentions till the next mass. Worse, termites were devouring the wood in the building, so it should have been no surprise when finally the accident Padre Mendoza had feared happened.
    Fortunately, it was not when the entire congregation was present, something that would have been catastrophic. It came during one of the many temblors that frequently shook the area it wasn’t for nothing that their river was named Jesus de los Temblores. The roof collapsed on a single victim, Padre Alvear, a sainted brother who had traveled from Peru to visit the San Gabriel mission. The noise of the roof’s giving way and the cloud of dust brought the neophytes running, and they immediately started clawing at the rubble to unearth the unfortunate visitor. They found him squashed like a cockroach beneath the main beam. In all logic he should have died, because it took them most of the night to rescue him, and all the while the poor man’s lifeblood was oozing away. But God performed a miracle, as Padre Mendoza explained, and when finally they pulled the victim from the ruins, he was still breathing. Padre Mendoza needed only one glance to recognize that his meager knowledge of medicine would not save the wounded man, however much help he received from the divine power. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sent a neophyte with two horses to look for White Owl.
    Over the years he had become convinced that the Indians’ veneration of the woman was fully justified.
    By chance, Diego and Bernardo arrived at the mission the day after the earthquake, bringing