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By Root 2187 0

does not lie in these blows of his head that are like a battering ram but in the knife blade protruding like an extension of one of his hands. And, in fact, as his hands find and grip the man’s wrists he hears his pants ripping and feels a sharp knife blade run down his thigh. As he, too, butts with his head, bites, and hurls insults, Queluz fights with all his strength to hold back, to push away, to twist this hand where the danger is. He has no idea how many seconds or minutes or hours it takes, but all of a sudden he realizes that the traitor is attacking him less fiercely, is losing heart, that the arm that he is clutching is beginning to go limp in his grip. “You’re fucked,” Queluz spits at him. “You’re already dead, traitor.” Yes, though he is still biting, kicking, butting, the jagunço is wearing out, giving up. Queluz feels his hands free at last. He leaps to his feet, grabs his rifle, raises it in the air, and is about to plunge the bayonet into the traitor’s belly and fling himself on top of him when he sees—it is no longer dark but first light—the swollen face with a hideous scar all the way across it. With his rifle poised in the air, he thinks: “Pajeú.” Blinking, panting for breath, his chest about to burst with excitement, he cries: “Pajeú? Are you Pajeú?” He is not dead, his eyes are open, he is looking at him. “Pajeú?” he shouts, beside himself with joy. “Does this mean you’re my prisoner, Pajeú?” Though he continues to look at him, the jagunço pays no attention to what he is saying. He is trying to raise his knife. “Do you still want to fight?” Queluz says mockingly, stamping on his chest. No, he is paying no attention to him, as he tries to…“Or maybe you want to kill yourself, Pajeú,” Queluz laughs, kicking the knife out of the limp hand. “That’s not up to you, traitor—it’s up to us.”

Capturing Pajeú alive is an even more heroic deed than having killed him. Queluz contemplates the caboclo’s face: swollen, scratched, bitten. But he also has a bullet wound in the leg, for his trousers are completely blood-soaked. Queluz can’t believe that he is lying there at his feet. He looks around for the other jagunço, and just as he spies him, sprawled on the ground clutching his belly, perhaps not dead yet, he notices several soldiers approaching. He gestures frantically to them: “It’s Pajeú! Pajeú! I’ve caught Pajeú!”

When, after having touched him, sniffed him, looked him over from head to foot, touched him again—and having given him a couple of kicks, but not many, since all of them agree that it’s best to bring him in alive to Colonel Medeiros—the soldiers drag Pajeú to the camp, Queluz receives a welcome that is an apotheosis. The news that he has killed one of the bandits who have attacked them and has captured Pajeú soon makes the rounds, and everyone comes out to have a look at him, to congratulate him, to pat him on the back and embrace him. They box his ears affectionately, hand him canteens, and a lieutenant lights his cigarette. He mumbles that he feels sad about Leopoldinho, but he’s really weeping with emotion at this moment of glory.

Colonel Medeiros wants to see him. As he walks to the command post, as if in a trance, Queluz does not remember the raging fury that Colonel Medeiros had been in the day before—a fury that took the form of punishments, threats, and reprimands that did not spare even the majors and captains—because of his frustration at the fact that the First Brigade had not participated in the attack at dawn, which everyone thought would be the final push that would enable the patriots to capture all the positions still occupied by the traitors. The rumor had even gone round that Colonel Medeiros had had a run-in with General Oscar because the latter had not allowed the First Brigade to charge, and that when he learned that Colonel Gouveia’s Second Brigade had taken the fanatics’ trenches in the cemetery, Colonel Medeiros had thrown his cup of coffee onto the ground and smashed it to bits. Rumor also had it that, at nightfall, when the General Staff halted the attack in view of the heavy