• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2282 0

the west, and tells them once more that this time they are not to start running immediately. That comes later. First they must stand their ground and withstand the enemy’s fire, so that the Antichrist will be led to believe that there are hundreds of jagunços confronting him. Then they must let themselves be seen, be put on the run, be followed to Pitombas. One of the jagunços he has left at the summit comes down to tell him that a patrol is coming. It is made up of six men; they let them pass by without shooting at them. One of them falls from his horse, for the rock slope is slippery, especially in the morning, because of the dew that has collected in the night. After that patrol, two more go by, preceding the engineer corps with their picks, shovels, and handsaws. The second patrol heads off toward O Cambaio. A bad sign. Does it mean that they are going to deploy at this point? Almost immediately thereafter the vanguard appears, close on the heels of those who are clearing the way. Will all nine corps be that close together?

Pajeú has already put his gun to his shoulder and is aiming at the elderly cavalryman who must be the leader when a shot rings out, then another, then several bursts of fire. As he observes the disorder on the slope, the Protestants piling up on top of each other, and begins shooting in his turn, he tells himself that he will have to find out who started the fusillade before he had fired the first shot. He empties his magazine slowly, taking careful aim, thinking that through the fault of the man who started shooting the dogs have had time to withdraw and take refuge at the summit.

The gunfire ceases once the slope is empty. At the summit red-and-blue caps, the gleam of bayonets can be seen. The troops, under cover behind the rocks, try to spot them. He hears the sound of arms, men, animals, occasional curses. All of a sudden a cavalry squad, headed by an officer pointing to the caatinga with his saber, dashes down the slope. Pajeú sees that he is digging his spurs mercilessly into the flanks of his nervous, pawing bay. None of the cavalrymen falls on the slope, all of them arrive at the foot of it despite the heavy fire. But they all fall, riddled with bullets, the moment they enter the caatinga. The officer with the saber, hit several times, roars: “Show your faces, you cowards!”

“Show our faces so you can kill us?” Pajeú thinks. “Is that what atheists call courage?” A strange way of looking at things; the Devil is not only evil but stupid. He reloads his overheated rifle. The slope is swarming with soldiers now, and more are pouring down onto the rock face. As he takes aim, still calm and unhurried, Pajeú calculates that there are at least a hundred, perhaps a hundred fifty, of them.

He sees, out of the corner of his eye, that one of the jagunços is fighting hand to hand with a soldier, and he wonders how the dog got there. He puts his knife between his teeth; that is how he has always gone into the fray, ever since the days of the cangaço. The scar makes itself felt and he hears, very close by, very loud and clear, shouts of “Long live the Republic!”

“Long live Marshal Floriano!”

“Death to the English!” The jagunços answer: “Death to the Antichrist!”

“Long live the Counselor!”

“Long live Belo Monte!”

“We can’t stay here, Pajeú,” Taramela says to him. A compact mass is descending the slope now: soldiers, bullock carts, a cannon, cavalrymen, protected by two companies of infantrymen that charge into the caatinga. They fling themselves into the scrub and sink their bayonets in the bushes in the hope of running their invisible enemy through. “Either we get out now or we won’t get out, Pajeú,” Taramela insists, but there is no panic in his voice. Pajeú wants to make sure that the soldiers are really heading toward Pitombas. Yes, there is no question of it, the river of uniforms is definitely flowing northward; nobody except the men who are combing the brush veers off toward the west. He keeps shooting till all his bullets are gone before taking the knife out of his mouth and blowing the cane