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By Root 2071 0

in the vanguard. In order to protect them, there are companies out combing the caatinga; if the jagunços stay where they are, they will soon find themselves nose to nose with one or another of them. Pajeú tells Macambira and Felício to go ahead to Rancho do Vigário, where the troops will doubtless bivouac. Crawling on all fours without a sound, without their movements so much as stirring a leaf, Felício’s band and old Macambira’s take off and disappear from sight. Shortly thereafter, shots ring out. Have they been discovered? Pajeú doesn’t move a muscle: through the bushes he has spied, just five yards away, a mounted squad of Freemasons, armed with long lances tipped with metal. On hearing the shots, the cavalrymen step up the pace; he hears horses galloping, bugles blowing. The fusillade continues, grows heavier. Pajeú does not look at Taramela, does not look at any of the jagunços hugging the ground, curled up in a ball amid the branches. He knows that the hundred fifty men are there all around him, like himself not breathing, not moving, thinking that Macambira and Felício are perhaps being wiped out…The sudden deafening roar of the cannon sets him shaking from head to foot. But what frightens him more than the cannon report is the little cry that it calls forth, despite himself, from a jagunço behind him. He does not turn round to reprimand him: what with the whinnying of the horses and the shouts of the cavalry troops, it is not likely that they have heard him. After the cannon report, the shooting stops.

In the hours that follow, Pajeú’s scar seems to become incandescent, emitting red-hot waves that reach his brain. His choice of a place to rendezvous has been a bad one; twice, patrols pass by just behind him, accompanied by men in peasant dress armed with machetes who swiftly hack the brush away. Is it a miracle that the patrols do not spy his men, even though they pass by so close they almost step on them? Or are those machete-wielders elect of the Blessed Jesus? If they are discovered, few will escape, for with all those thousands of soldiers it will be no trick at all to surround them. It is the fear of seeing his men decimated, without having fulfilled his mission, that is turning his face into a live wound. But it would be madness to change place now.

As dusk begins to fall, by his count twenty-two donkey carts have passed by; half the column is yet to come. For five hours he has seen troops, cannons, animals go past. He would never have dreamed that there were that many soldiers in the whole world. The red ball in the sky is rapidly setting; in half an hour it will be pitch-dark. He orders Taramela to take half the men with him to Rancho do Vigário and arranges to meet him in the caves where there are arms hidden. Squeezing his arm, he whispers to him: “Be careful.” The jagunços move off, bending over so far that their chests touch their knees, by threes, by fours.

Pajeú stays there where he is till stars appear in the sky. He counts ten carts more, and there is no doubt now: it is obvious that no battalion has taken another route. Raising his cane whistle to his mouth, he gives one short blast. He has not moved for so long a time that his body aches all over. He vigorously massages the calves of his legs before he starts walking. As he reaches up to pull his sombrero over his ears, he discovers that he is bareheaded. He remembers then that he lost it at Rosário: a bullet knocked it off, a bullet whose heat he felt as it went past.

The journey on foot to Rancho do Vigário, two leagues from Baixas, is slow, tiring: they proceed along the edge of the trail, single file, halting again and again to drop down and crawl like worms across the open stretches. It is past midnight when they arrive. Bypassing the mission that has given the place its name, Pajeú detours westward, heading for the rocky defile leading to hills dotted with caves. That is where all of them are to rendezvous. They find waiting for them not only Joaquim Macambira and Felício, who have lost only three men in the skirmish with the soldiers.