Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

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his daughters and brothers, not to ransack their homes. A 
few days later, he spotted his brother’s horse in the military 
detachment in Las Cruces.

XII

Saúl Arévalo was one of the men who entered the village. 

He found Federico Aquino Ruano hanging from a tree close 

to his house, with his face covered by a swarm of flies. A few 

meters away, he found his father’s boots.

When Saúl reached the well he realized that it had been 

covered with soil and he noticed a number of torn and 

bloodied female garments strewn around the edge. In order 

to ascertain whether the soil was indeed fresh, he cut a 

branch from a guarumo tree and pushed it into the well. It 

sunk in with surprising ease. Then he knelt by the well and 

wept in silence, refraining the impulse to yell “Murderers!” 

and remove the soil with his bare hands until he could find 

his father’s body.

A few weeks later, while the Gómez Hernández family slept 

in an open field after they had to flee the village, they felt a 

gust of wind stirring the branches and saw a helicopter land 

suddenly. They held their breath, fearing they were soldiers 

but they turned out to be tall, blond men who spoke a foreign 

language.

Catalino González also bumped into them and when they 

asked him what had happened in Dos Erres, he told them in 

a voice choked with sorrow that his two little daughters had 

gone to a birthday party and had never returned. All that 
was left of them was two tiny pairs of shoes and socks. 

He could never fathom how Carías managed to find out 
that he had spoken to those foreign men. Maybe it was that 
watchful eye that appeared to see everything from above or