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The convoy arrived in Trabubu as night was falling. They distributed food to the jagunços entrenched amid the rocks and three women stayed behind with them. Then Antônio Vilanova ordered the rest of the convoy to go on to Cocorobó. They covered the last stretch in darkness. Jurema led the nearsighted man along by the hand. Despite her help, he stumbled and fell so many times that Antônio Vilanova had him ride a pack mule, sitting on top of the sacks of maize. As they started up the steep pass to Cocorobó, Pedrão came to meet them. He was a giant of a man, nearly as stout and tall as Big João, a light-skinned mulatto well along in years, with an ancient carbine slung over his shoulder that he never removed even to sleep. He was barefoot, with pants that reached down to his ankles and a sleeveless jacket that left his huge sturdy arms bare. He had a round belly that he kept scratching as he spoke. On seeing him, Jurema felt apprehensive, because of the stories that had circulated about his life in Várzea da Ema, where he had perpetrated many a bloody deed with the band that had never left his side, men with the fearsome faces of outlaws. She had the feeling that being around people such as Pedrão, Abbot João, or Pajeú was dangerous, even though they were saints now—like living with a jaguar, a cobra, and a tarantula who, through some dark instinct, might claw, bite, or sting at any moment.

Right now, Pedrão seemed harmless enough, lost in the shadows talking with Antônio and Honório Vilanova, the latter having materialized like a ghost from behind the rocks. A number of silhouettes appeared with him, suddenly popping up out of the brambles to relieve the porters of the burdens they were carrying on their backs. Jurema helped light the braziers. The men busied themselves opening cases of ammunition and sacks of gunpowder, distributing fuses. She and the other women began preparing a meal. The jagunços were so hungry they seemed scarcely able to wait for the pots to come to a boil. They congregated around Assunção Sardelinha, who filled their bowls and tins with water, as other women handed out fistfuls of manioc; as things became somewhat disorderly, Pedrão ordered the men to calm down.

Jurema worked all night long, putting the pots back on the fire to warm again and again, frying pieces of meat, reheating the beans. The men showed up in groups of ten, of fifteen, and when one of them recognized his wife among the women cooking, he took her by the arm and they withdrew to talk together. Why had it never occurred to Rufino, as it had to so many other sertanejos, to come to Canudos? If he had done so, he would still be alive.

Suddenly they heard a clap of thunder. But the air was dry; it couldn’t be a sign of a rainstorm about to break. She realized then that it was the boom of a cannon; Pedrão and the Vilanova brothers ordered the fires put out and sent the men who were eating back to the mountaintops. Once they had left, however, the three stayed there talking. Pedrão said that the soldiers were on the outskirts of Canche; it would be some time before they arrived. They did not march by night; he had followed them from Simão Dias on and knew their habits. The moment darkness fell, they set up their portable huts and posted sentinels and stayed put till the following day. At dawn, before leaving, they fired a cannon shot in the air. That must have been what the cannon report was; they must just be leaving Canche.

“Are there many of them?” a voice from the ground that resembled the screeching of a bird interrupted him. “How many of them are there?”

Jurema saw him rise to his feet and stand, frail and spindly, in profile between her and the men, trying to see though his monocle of splinters. The Vilanovas and Pedrão burst out laughing, as did the women who were putting away the pots and the food that was left. She refrained from laughing. She felt sorry for the nearsighted man. Was there anyone more helpless and terrified than her son? Everything frightened him: