Kneeling, Antonio asks Ultima to bless him. She touches his forehead and blesses him in the name of all that is good, strong, and beautiful. She tells him to love life and to look for her in the gentle evening winds when he despairs.
Later, in the moonlight, after he has buried the owl beneath a forked juniper tree, Antonio hears the sheriff's siren. If help had arrived sooner, would Ultima still be alive? Ultima, he knows, would not approve of such thoughts. She will be buried in a pine coffin at a cemetery in Las Pasturas in a ceremony prescribed by custom, but Antonio knows that she will really be buried beneath the forked juniper tree.
