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By Root 2188 0

whistle with all his might. Jagunços instantly appear here and there, crouching over, crawling on all fours, turning tail, leaping from one refuge to another, some of them even slipping right through a soldier’s legs, all of them decamping as fast as they can. He blows his whistle again and, followed by Taramela, beats a hasty retreat, too. Has he waited too long? He does not run in a straight line but in a ragged tracery of curves, back and forth, so as to make himself a difficult target to aim at; he glimpses, to his right and his left, soldiers shouldering their rifles or running with fixed bayonets after jagunços. As he heads into the caatinga, as fast as his legs can carry him, he thinks of the woman again, of the two men who killed each other because of her; is she one of those women who bring bad luck?

He feels exhausted, his heart about to burst. Taramela is panting, too. It is good to have this loyal comrade here with him, his friend for so many years now, with whom he has never had the slightest argument. And at that moment four uniforms, four rifles suddenly confront him. “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt,” he shouts to Taramela. He throws himself to the ground and rolls, hearing at least two of them shoot. By the time he manages to get himself in a squatting position he has his rifle already aimed at the infantryman coming toward him. The Mannlicher has jammed: the pin hits the head of the cartridge but does not fire. He hears a shot and one of the Protestants falls to the ground, clutching his belly. “Yes, Taramela, you’re my good luck,” he thinks as he flings himself upon the three soldiers who have been thrown into confusion for a moment on seeing their comrade wounded, using his rifle as a bludgeon. He strikes one of them and sends him staggering, but the others leap on top of him. He feels a burning, shooting pain. Suddenly blood spurts all over the face of one of the soldiers and he hears him howl with pain. Taramela is there, landing in their midst like a meteor. The enemy that it falls to Pajeú’s lot to deal with is not a real adversary to Pajeú’s way of thinking: very young, he is dripping with sweat, and the uniform he is bundled up in barely allows him to move. He struggles till Pajeú gets his rifle away from him and then takes to his heels. Taramela and the other soldier are fighting it out on the ground, panting. Pajeú goes over to them and with a single thrust buries his knife in the soldier’s neck up to the handle; he gurgles, trembles, and stops moving. Taramela has a few bruises and Pajeú’s shoulder is bleeding. Taramela rubs egg poultice on it and bandages it with the shirt of one of the dead soldiers. “You’re my good luck, Taramela,” Pajeú says. “That I am,” Taramela agrees. They are unable to run now, for each of them is now carrying not only his own knapsack and rifle but also those of one of the soldiers.

Shortly thereafter they hear gunfire. It is scattered at first, but soon grows heavier. The vanguard is already in Pitombas, being fired on by Felício and his men. He imagines the rage the soldiers must feel on finding, hanging from the trees, the uniforms, the boots, the caps, the leather chest belts of the Throat-Slitter’s troops, the skeletons picked clean by the vultures. During nearly all of their trek to Pitombas, the fusillade continues and Taramela comments: “Anybody who’s got all the bullets in the world, the way those soldiers do, can shoot just to be shooting.” The fusillade suddenly ceases. Felício must have started falling back, so as to lure the column into following them along the road to As Umburanas, where old Macambira and Mané Quadrado will greet them with another hail of bullets.

When Pajeú and Taramela—they must rest awhile, for the weight of the soldiers’ rifles and knapsacks plus their own is twice as tiring—finally reach the scrubland of Pitombas, there are still scattered jagunços there. They are firing sporadically at the column, which pays no attention to them and continues to advance, amid a cloud of yellow dust, toward the deep depression, once a riverbed, that