But killing Horacio was not so easy. He was well aware that both the country highways and the city streets were dangerous places for him, and he seldom left his own plantation. When he did come into Ferradas or Tabocas, he was surrounded by a huge bodyguard, composed of men who were crack shots, and Braz almost always rode by his side. He did not return to Ilhéos for months, but instead Virgilio would come out to keep him in touch with things. For after a time Lawyer Genaro had succeeded in convincing Sinhô that he ought to institute legal proceedings against Horacio. Sinhô had agreed to this for reasons of his own. The police deputy at Ilhéos had thereupon begun an inquiry and had come to Tabocas to take the testimony of a number of witnesses, all of whom asserted that Juca’s assassin was a worker on Horacio’s plantation. And some fellow from the wharves with an imitation ring on his finger was quite emphatic in telling of a conversation he had had with the murderer on the eve of the crime, in a wine-shop kept by a certain Spaniard. The cabra had been very drunk, and the man with the imitation ring had led him on to talk. He had displayed a hundred-milreis note and had confided that he was “doing an important job for Colonel Horacio.” The prosecutor accepted this evidence, Sinhô brought pressure to bear upon the judge, and the best that Virgilio had been able to do had been to prevent Horacio’s being taken into custody. The judge on this point had excused himself to Sinhô by inquiring: “Who would dare go out to arrest Horacio on his own plantation? With all respect to the majesty of the law, it would be better if Horacio were arrested on the day of the trial.” And Virgilio had promised that his client would put in an appearance.
Lawyer Genaro had great hopes of being able to get a jury that would bring in a verdict of guilty against the colonel. After all, the Badarós were political bigwigs, and it was by no means impossible that the jurors would decree the maximum penalty. Sinhô, on the other hand, had hopes of his own—of being able to do away with his enemy before the case came to trial; or as a last resort (as he told João Magalhães) he would take care of Horacio when the latter came to court. For this reason he let them go ahead.
Horacio himself, however, did not devote a moment’s thought to the criminal proceedings. What he wanted, first of all, was news of how his own suit against Sinhô and Teodoro over the Sequeiro Grande property was coming along. As a result of all these legal bickerings the lawyers of the town grew rich, with their briefs, writs, petitions, and counter-petitions, as they diligently prepared their speeches to the jury.
Despite the difficulties in the way of Horacio’s assassination, his life was twice seriously endangered. The first time was when one of Teodoro’s men succeeded in getting as far as the guava tree beside the Big House. He waited there a number of hours until the colonel appeared on the veranda and, sitting down on a bench, began cutting up cane-stalks for a burro he had that was very tame. The bullet hit the animal, and Horacio dashed after the cabra who had fired the shot, but did not overtake him. The other time was when an old man attempted to kill him. This old fellow had previously appeared at the Badaró plantation, where he had made an offer to Sinhô to put Horacio out of the way. He wanted no pay for it; all he wanted was a weapon. He had an account to settle with the colonel, so he said. Sinhô had told them to give him a rifle, and the old man had tried to sneak up to the Big House one moonlit night. Someone afterwards recalled that he was the father of Joaquim, who once had owned a grove that now was in the possession of Horacio.
As a result of these attempts Horacio strengthened his bodyguard and rarely went out of the house; but, for all that, his men went on clearing the forest of Sequeiro Grande. It would not be long before his workmen and those of the Badarós met up. The jungle was thinning out all the time, and the storehouses on either plantation were filled with cacao shrubs to be planted where the giant trees had stood. When Horacio’s cabras and those of the Badarós did meet, there would certainly be a pitched battle and blood would flow in the highways.
13
But just as the men in the forest were hearing the sound of their adversaries’ axes on the other side of the river, Ilhéos was awakened one morning by a sensational piece of news brought by the telegraph. The federal government had decreed intervention in the state of Bahia, army troops had occupied the city, the Governor had resigned, and the opposition leader, who had come back from Rio on a warship, had taken over as interventor. This meant that Horacio was now the government party and Sinhô Badaró was in the opposition. There was also a telegram from the new interventor, dismissing the prefect of Ilhéos and appointing Dr. Jessé to take his place. On the first boat coming down from Bahia a new judge and a new prosecutor arrived, bringing with them the appointment of Braz as municipal police officer. The former judge was appointed to a small town in the backlands, but he refused to accept, preferring to retire. It was said that he was already a rich man and had no need of a magistracy in order to live. In honour of the occasion, A Folha de Ilhéos came out with a front page printed in two colours.
It was only then that Horacio appeared in Ilhéos, in response to a telegram from the interventor summoning him to Bahia for a conference. He was showered with congratulations from friends and political followers, and a large crowd followed him and Virgilio down to the wharf; for the attorney went with him.
“Doctor,” said Horacio, when they were aboard ship, “you may consider yourself a federal deputy.”
Sinhô Badaró also came into Ilhéos. That night he had a conference with Lawyer Genaro, the former judge, and Captain João Magalhães. Meanwhile he ordered his men to continue felling the forest. The next day, when he went back to the Sant’ Ana Plantation, he found Teodoro das Baraúnas waiting for him there.
14
Braz’s telegram snatched Horacio away from his political talks with the interventor, from the arms of the women in the cafés of Bahia, and from aperitifs with politicians in the more fashionable bars; he caught the first boat back. The Badarós’ men, it appeared, had fallen on his workmen while the latter were engaged in cutting timber and had wreaked a veritable carnage. What was more important, they had set fire to a large number of cacao groves. Throughout the whole of the struggle thus far the groves had been respected, as if by tacit agreement. Fire might devour registry offices, millet and manihot plantations, and warehouses full of dried cacao; men might be killed; but the cacao trees themselves were spared.
But Sinhô now knew that he had played his last card. The change in the political situation had robbed him of his best trumps. A proof of this was the disagreeable surprise that he met with when he went to sell his next season’s crop in advance to Zude Brothers and Company. That firm was quite uninterested. They spoke of how tight money was, and finally proposed buying his cacao, but only with a guaranteed lien upon it. Sinhô was furious. What! Ask a mortgage on his, Sinhô Badarós’, groves? He became so violently angry that Maximiliano feared a personal assault, but he nevertheless persisted in his refusal to buy the crop unless the guarantees he had asked for were given. “Those are orders,” was all he would say. The result was that Sinhô had to dispose of his cacao to a Swiss export house at a wretched figure. And so it was, in view of all this, that he had been led to give Teodoro carte blanche to do what he liked so far as the forest was concerned. The firing of Firmo’s and Jarde’s groves had then followed, and even a few of Horacio’s were burned. Carried by the wind, the conflagration lasted for days, as the snakes hissed and fled.
On the pier at Ilhéos the colonel’s friends were waiting to grasp his hand and sympathize with him over the Badarós’ barbarous conduct. Horacio, however, said nothing, but sought out Braz from among those present and went off with him for a long talk at police headquarters. He had promised the interventor that everything would be done legally; and if the jagunços were now given orders to assault the Badaró plantation and lay siege to the Big House, they found themselves in the newspaper columns transformed into “police troopers seeking to capture the incendiary, Teodoro das Baraúnas, who, a
s was well known, had taken refuge at the Sant’ Ana Plantation.”
This siege of the Badaró Big House marked the end of the struggle for the possession of the Sequeiro Grande tract. Teodoro had wanted to give himself up and thus deprive Horacio of his legal pretext. Sinhô, however, would not hear of this, but had him smuggled out and taken to Ilhéos, where friends put him aboard a ship bound for Rio de Janeiro. Later, word came back that he had taken up residence in Victoria do Espirito Santo, where he was attached to a commercial house. Horacio, it may be, had learned of Teodoro’s flight; but if he knew of it, he said nothing, but continued to surround the Sant’ Ana Big House just as though Teodoro was really in hiding there. The forest of Sequeiro Grande had been felled, and the burnt-over tracts in the wood were now indistinguishable from the burned groves, there being no longer any boundary lines between them. The jaguars and the monkeys had long since fled, and the ghosts as well; and the workers had come upon old Jeremias’s bones, which they had buried, with a cross to mark the site.
Sinhô Badaró and his cabras held out for four days and four nights; and when at last he fell wounded and, on Don’ Ana’s orders, was taken to Ilhéos, Horacio was then able for the first time to come near the house. Sinhô had been taken away one morning in a hammock borne by his men, and that night Captain João Magalhães had Olga and Don’ Ana mount and follow him. Raimunda went with them, the women being accompanied by five jagunços. They were to sleep that night at Teodoro’s plantation and catch the train for Ilhéos the next morning.
João Magalhães, with the men that he had left him, now entrenched himself on the river bank. At his side was Antonio Victor, who now and then would raise his rifle and fire. The captain, with eyes accustomed to the lights of the city, was unable to distinguish anything on this night without a moon. At whom could the mulatto be firing, anyway? But the answering shot proved that Antonio Victor was right; his eyes, used to the darkness of the groves, could make out perfectly the figures of the men who were drawing near. They were being surrounded and there was nothing to do but retreat to the highway, the majority of them falling into the hands of Horacio’s ruffians. Their number was being constantly diminished, until at last there were but four of them left. Antonio Victor then disappeared for a moment and came back with a burro already saddled.
“You must mount and go, captain. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
It was the truth. Horacio’s men, with Braz at the head of them, were now on the lawn of the Big House.
“And what about the rest of you?” said João Magalhães.
“We’ll go along to guard you.”
At the very moment they were leaving, Braz stepped onto the veranda of the seemingly deserted house. There was a dead silence that seemed to go with that moonless night. Horacio’s men were gathered on the lawn, ready to go in. In obedience to an order, one of them struck a match to light a lantern. From inside the house came a shot, putting out the light but, by a miracle, not killing the man. The others now threw themselves down and began crawling along over the ground in an effort to enter the house in that manner. Again someone fired from within, aiming at Horacio in the midst of his capangas.
“There’s still one left,” said Braz to the colonel.
They entered the house, weapons in hand, eyes on the alert. They were filled with hatred now; they wanted to do to these last defenders even more than they had done to those who had fallen on the river bank and on the highway, whose eyes they had gouged out and whose lips, ears, and testicles they had cut off. They overran the house without finding anyone. The shots had ceased.
“They’ve run out of ammunition,” Braz remarked.
He now took the lead, with a man on either side, and Horacio followed. The only place left was the attic. They clambered up the narrow stairs and Braz kicked the door in with his foot. Don’ Ana Badaró fired and a cabra fell. And then, seeing that this was her last bullet, she tossed the revolver down beside Horacio.
“Now, then, have them kill me, assassin!” And she took a step forward.
Braz opened his mouth wide in astonishment. Had he not just seen her fleeing down the road with Olga and Raimunda, guarded by a handful of men? He had let them pass within bullet-range without firing on them. How the devil had she managed to get back? Don’ Ana took another step forward, filling the attic doorway.
Horacio stepped aside. “You may go, my girl, I don’t kill women.”
Don’ Ana went down the stairs and crossed the parlour, glancing up at the chromo as she passed. A bullet had shattered the glass and had torn open the breast of the young shepherd lass who was dancing in the picture. Don’ Ana went on out onto the lawn. The men were silent.
“Hell of a brave woman!” one of them muttered.
Don’ Ana took one of the horses that were standing there saddled, and with a last look at the Big House she mounted, spurred the animal, and rode away into the night without a moon and without stars. Only then, after her figure had been lost to sight along the highway, did Horacio raise his arm and his voice at the same time, as he gave an order to his men to set fire to the Badaró homestead.
15
Lawyer Genaro, who was fond of aphorisms, was accustomed to remark years afterwards, when he had moved to Bahia in order to be able to give his children a better education: “All that tragedy was to end in a comedy.” He was alluding to the Sequeiro Grande affrays and to Horacio’s subsequent trial in Ilhéos.
Shortly before the trial started, the court had handed down an opinion in the suit brought by Horacio in defence of his rights to the Sequeiro Grande tract. This opinion recognized Colonel Horacio da Silveira and his associates as the rightful owners and directed the public prosecutor to proceed against Teodoro das Baraúnas for the burning of Venancio’s registry office in Tabocas. Action was also to be taken against Sinhô Badaró and Captain João Magalhães for having registered an illegal title to the property. This latter case, however, was dropped, for the reason that Horacio, on Virgilio’s advice, did not press the matter. Economically the Badaró family was in a very bad way; they owed money to the exporters, two of their crops had been sacrificed, and their holdings had by no means increased during this year of strife. On the contrary, not only had the Big House, the troughs, and the ovens been destroyed, but the young cacao shrubs in the warehouses had been burned and a large amount of damage had been done to a number of their groves. It would take many years for them to rebuild even a part of what had once been a great fortune. There were no adversaries for Horacio now.
As for the trial, it was no more than a justification of the colonel. He had surrendered the night before, and the best room in the municipal prefecture, which served also as court and prison, was transformed into a dormitory. Braz had stationed a number of police troopers as a guard, and he himself kept Horacio company. The room was filled with the colonel’s friends, and the “prisoner” kept up a lively conversation, sent out for whisky, and in general held open house until morning.
The trial began at nine a.m. the next day and lasted until three a.m. the following morning. The Badarós had brought down from Bahia a lawyer with a great reputation, one Dr. Fausto Aguiar, who with Dr. Genaro was to serve as an assistant prosecutor. For everybody was aware that the new public prosecutor would make a very weak plea, seeing that he belonged to the same political party as Horacio.
Clad in his black robe, the judge came into the room accompanied by his clerks and bailiffs and took his seat in the high-backed chair above which there hung a crucified Christ shedding blood of a deep-red hue. Beside the judge sat the prosecutor, and chairs were placed for Dr. Genaro and Dr. Fausto, the assistant prosecutors. On the defence side were Virgilio and Lawyer Ruy. The judge uttered the regulation words and the trial was opened. The courtroom was packed and the crowd overflowed into the corridors outside. And a small lad, who years afterwards was to write the stories of this land, was then summoned by a bailiff to dra
w from an urn the names of the citizens who were to constitute the jury. He drew out a card, the judge read the name, a man rose, crossed the room, and took his seat on one of the chairs reserved for the seven jurors. Another card was drawn, and the judge read: “Manuel Dantas.” Colonel Maneca Dantas had risen when Lawyer Genaro’s voice rang out: “I refuse to accept him.”
“Refused by the prosecution,” announced the judge.
Maneca sat down, and the lad continued to draw the cards. From time to time a name would be objected to by the prosecution or the defence, until the jury was finally selected.
Meanwhile, the courtroom was buzzing:
“Unanimous for acquittal.”
“I don’t know—there are a couple of doubtful ones.” And names were whispered.
“Maybe three,” said someone else. “José Faria is no great friend of Horacio’s, he isn’t. He may vote against it.”
“Lawyer Ruy was down at his house today. He’ll vote for acquittal.”