The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [263]
The boy is dry-eyed and the look on his face is that of an adult, as though he had grown five years older in five minutes. “I can, Pajeú.”
They meet up with Mané Quadrado and Macambira on the outskirts of Rosário, in the ruins of what were once the slave quarters and the manor house of the hacienda. Pajeú deploys the men in a ravine that lies at a right angle to the trail, with orders to fight just long enough for the dogs to see them turn tail and head in the direction of Bendengó. The boy is at his side, his hands on the shotgun that is very nearly as tall as he is. The engineer corpsmen pass by without seeing them, and a while later, the first battalion. The fusillade begins and raises a cloud of gunsmoke. Pajeú waits for it to disperse a little before shooting. He does so calmly and deliberately, aiming carefully, firing at intervals of several seconds the six Mannlicher bullets that he has had with him since Uauá. He hears the din of whistles, bugle calls, shouts, sees the troops’ disorder. Once they have overcome their confusion somewhat, the soldiers, urged on by their officers, begin to fall to their knees and return fire. There is a frantic flurry of bugle calls; reinforcements will soon be arriving. He can hear the officers ordering their men to enter the caatinga in pursuit of their attackers.
He then reloads his rifle, rises to his feet, and, followed by other jagunços, steps out into the center of the trail, facing the soldiers, fifty yards away, head on. He aims at them and shoots. His men, who have taken their stand all round him, do likewise. More jagunços emerge from the brush. The soldiers, finally, advance toward them. The youngster, still at his side, shoulders his shotgun, closes his eyes, and shoots. The backfire of the buckshot leaves him blood-spattered.
“Take my piece, Pajeú,” he says, handing it to him. “Take care of it for me. I’ll escape and make my way back to Belo Monte.”
He throws himself on the ground and begins to scream in pain, clutching his face in his hands. Pajeú breaks into a run—bullets are whistling by from all directions—and disappears into the caatinga, followed by the jagunços. A company of soldiers plunges into the scrub after them and they allow themselves to be pursued for quite some time; they get the company completely disoriented in the thickets of xiquexiques and tall mandacarus, till suddenly it finds itself being sniped at from behind by Macambira’s men. The soldiers decide to retreat. Pajeú also falls back. Dividing his men up into the four usual groups, he orders them to turn around, get ahead of the troops, and wait for them in Baixas, half a league from Rosário. On the way there, all of them talk of how plucky the youngster is. Have the Protestants been fooled into believing they’ve wounded him? Are they interrogating him? Or are they so furious at being ambushed that they’re hacking him to pieces with their sabers?
A few hours later, from the dense brush on the clayey plateau of Baixas—they have rested, eaten, counted their men, discovered that there are two missing and eleven wounded—Pajeú and Taramela see the vanguard approaching. At the head of the column, in the midst of a group of soldiers, hobbling after a cavalryman who is leading him along on a rope, is the youngster. He is walking along with his head hanging down, a bandage round it. “They’ve believed him,” Pajeú thinks. “If he’s up there in the front of the column, it’s because they’re making him act as a guide.” He feels a sudden wave of affection for the young half-breed.
Taramela nudges him and whispers that the dogs are no longer disposed in the same marching order as at Rosário. It is true: the banners of the escorts of the head of the column are red and gold instead of blue, and the cannons—A Matadeira among them—are now