Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya Page 0,113

left me and I was afraid for Ultima. I realized the evil Tenorio had found a way to hurt Ultima, and that he would do anything to hurt her. Hadn’t he, almost within sight of the village, tried to trample me with his horse! I turned into the brush and fled.

“¡Ay cabroncito!” he cried at the noise, “so you yet crawl about! That is good, the coyotes will have sport when they devour you tonight—!”

I ran through the brush with only one thought in mind, to get to Ultima and warn her of Tenorio’s intents. The thick brush scratched at my face and arms, but I ran as hard as I could. A long time afterwards I thought that if I had waited and gone to my uncles, or somehow sneaked across the bridge and warned my grandfather that things would have turned out differently. But I was frightened and the only thing I was sure of was that I could run the ten miles to Guadalupe, and I knew that being on this side of the river I would come almost directly on the hills in which our home huddled. The only other thing that I thought about was Narciso’s mad rush through the snowstorm to warn Ultima, and not until now had I ever understood the sacrifice of his commitment. For us Ultima personified goodness, and any risk in defense of goodness was right. She was the only person I had ever seen defeat evil where all else had failed. That sympathy for people my father said she possessed had overcome all obstacles.

I ran miles before I could run no more and then fell to the ground. My heart was pounding, my lungs burned, and in my side there was a continuous stabbing pain. For a long time I lay on the ground, gasping for breath and praying that I would not die from the pain that racked my body before I could warn Ultima. When I had rested and was able to run again I paced myself so as not to tire myself as I had in the wild, first dash. The second time I stopped to rest I saw the flaming sun go down over the tops of the cottonwood trees, and the thick, heavy shadows brought dusk. The melancholy mood of evening spread along the river, and after the strange cries of birds settling to roost were gone, a strange silence fell upon the river.

With darkness upon me I had to leave the brush and run up in the hills, just along the tree line. I knew that if I left the contour of the river that I could save a mile or two, but I was afraid to get lost in the hills. Over my shoulder the moon rose from the east and lighted my way. Once I ran into a flat piece of bottom land, and what seemed solid earth by the light of the moon was a marshy quagmire. The wet quicksand sucked me down and I was almost to my waist before I squirmed loose. Exhausted and trembling I crawled onto solid ground. As I rested I felt the gloom of night settle on the river. The dark presence of the river was like a shroud, enveloping me, calling to me. The drone of the grillos and the sigh of the wind in the trees whispered the call of the soul of the river.

Then I heard an owl cry its welcome to the night, and I was reminded again of my purpose. The owl’s cry reawakened Tenorio’s threat:

“This very night I will avenge the death of my two daughters! It is the owl that is the spirit of the old witch—”

It was true that the owl was Ultima’s spirit. It had come with Ultima, and as men brought evil to our hills the owl had hovered over us, protecting us. It had guided me home from Lupito’s death, it had blinded Tenorio the night he came to hurt Ultima, the owl had driven away the howling animals the night we cured my uncle, and it had been there when the misery of the Téllez family was removed.

The owl had always been there. It sang to me the night my brothers came home from the war, and in my dreams I sometimes saw it guiding their footsteps as they stumbled through the dark streets of their distant cities. My brothers, I thought, would I ever see my brothers again. If my sea-blood