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By Root 2225 0

“Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor.” As he starts to wade through the bog again, alone this time, Big João hears the whistles that sound like the screeching of parakeets, signaling to the jagunços to let him through. As he splashes through the mud and feels mosquitoes biting his face, arms, and chest, he tries to picture A Matadeira, that war machine that so alarms Macambira. It must be enormous, deadly, a thundering steel dragon that vomits fire, if it frightens as brave a man as old Macambira. The Evil One, the Dragon, the Dog is really tremendously powerful, with endless resources, since he can keep hurling more and more enemies, better and better armed, into the battle against Canudos. For how long a time would the Father continue to test the faith of the believers of Belo Monte? Hadn’t they suffered enough? Hadn’t they endured enough hunger, death, privation, sorrow? No, not yet. The Counselor has told them as much: our penance will be as great as our sins. Since João’s burden of sin is heavier than that of the others, he will doubtless have to pay more. But it is a great consolation to be fighting for the right cause, on St. George’s side, not the Dragon’s.

By the time he gets back to the trench, dawn has begun to break; the sentinels have climbed up to their posts on the rocks, but all the rest of the men, lying on the ground on the slope, are still sleeping. Big João curls up in a ball and feels himself beginning to drowse when the sound of hoofbeats causes him to leap to his feet. Enveloped in a cloud of dust, eight or ten horsemen are approaching. Scouts, the vanguard of troops come to protect the convoy? In the still-dim light a rain of arrows, stones, lances descends upon the patrol from the hillsides and he hears shots from the bog where Macambira is. The horsemen wheel their mounts around and gallop toward A Favela. Yes, he is certain now that the troops reinforcing the convoy will be appearing at any moment, countless numbers of them, too many to be held off by men whose only remaining weapons are hunting crossbows, bayonets, and knives, and Big João prays to the Father that Abbot João will have time to carry out his plan.

They appear an hour later. By this time the Catholic Guard has so thoroughly blockaded the ravine with the carcasses of horses and mules and the dead bodies of soldiers, and with flat rocks, bushes, and cacti that they roll down from the slopes, that two companies of engineers are obliged to move up to clear the trail again. It is not an easy task for them, since in addition to the curtain of fire laid down by Joaquim Macambira and his band with their very last ammunition, which forces them to fall back several times just as the engineers have started clearing the obstacles away with dynamite, Big João and some hundred men crawl over to them on their hands and knees and engage them in hand-to-hand combat. Before more soldiers appear, João and his men wound and kill a number of them and also manage to make off with several rifles and some of their precious knapsacks full of cartridges. By the time Big João gives a blast on his whistle and shouts out the order to fall back, several jagunços are lying on the trail, dead or dying. Once back on the slope above, protected by the stone-slab parapet against the hail of bullets from below, the former slave has time to see if he’s been wounded, and finds himself unharmed. Spattered with blood, yes, but it is not his blood; he scrubs it off with fine sand. Is it the hand of Divine Providence that in three days of fighting he has not received so much as a scratch? Lying on his belly on the ground, panting for breath, he sees that the soldiers are now marching four abreast along the trail, cleared at last, headed toward the spot where Abbot João has posted himself. They go past by the dozens, by the hundreds. They’re no doubt on their way to protect the convoy, since despite all the harassment from the Catholic Guard and from Macambira and his men, they are not even bothering to climb up the slopes or venture into the bog. They merely rake the