Backlands (49 page)

Meanwhile General Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães arrived in Juetê for the night with his headquarters staff and a scouting detachment of cavalry. At this time, General Barbosa was on his way with the First and Third brigades to the ranch called Rosário, about three miles down the road. The commander in chief arrived there the next morning. Later on the rest of the division arrived, making it necessary to grade the banks of the Rosário river so the artillery could make it across.

The enemy once again put in a quick, furtive appearance. It was just a scouting party to snipe at the troops. Pajehú was in charge. The notorious bandit was mainly interested in gathering information. He also had another intelligent goal in mind. He wanted to create panic among the troops with his invisible fire. This would incite the troops to accelerate their pace, as the previous expedition had done, causing them great harm. He inflicted rapid running fire on the troops from the side as they made their way through the
caatinga
. He disappeared. Then he sprang up again, farther on. He pounced on the vanguard with lively fire. This happened to be the Ninth Infantry. Once again he sped off with a few sharpshooters. It was impossible to make out the attackers. They would run off after firing a few shots. One Indian boy of twelve or fourteen was wounded and taken prisoner. Nothing was learned from questioning him.

The troops pitched camp at the Rosário farm without further incident.

All the fighting units were there except for the Third Brigade, which had gone on to the Baixas farm, four miles ahead.

The commander in chief sent a message to General Savaget, reminding him of their agreement to meet on the twenty-seventh in the vicinity of Canudos. On the twenty-sixth they struck camp and went on to Vicar’s Farm, eleven miles away, after a short stop in Baixas.

They were now about fifty miles from Monte Santo, in the most dangerous zone. The brief attack the night before was a forecast of similar encounters to come. Perhaps with information from their reconnoitering expedition, the
jagunços
were getting ready for more serious engagements. Their lurking presence, as always, was betrayed by the formation of the earth itself. Here the terrain becomes more rugged. It bristles with bare hills as far as Baixas, where the Rosário Range rises up with is hard flanks and sparse vegetation.

The troops were going to scale the southern countermure that surrounds Canudos. They advanced with caution. The bugles were silent. The quickly formed battalions marched to the highlands. They scaled them. Then they spread out as they made their way down the ravine that divides the mountains from Vicar’s Farm.

The entire column then broke up into a number of small divisions. The advance guard reached the farmhouse late in the afternoon. The light artillery, leaving the heavy 32 to the engineers, was crossing the first foothills and slowly climbing the slope on the other side, following the sappers who were ahead clearing the road. Night fell and with it torrential rains and high winds. The enemy, who had the advantage of knowing the terrain well, could have easily attacked. They did not do so. As we will see, they had other plans. They did not touch the supply train, which was at the rear, near the Juetê highway. The animals had been unharnessed. The entire load of fifty-three carts and seven large ox-drawn wagons was divided up and placed on the backs of the strong
sertanejos
of the Fifth Police Battalion.

The night passed peacefully. The next day, the twenty-seventh, was the date that had been set for the dangerous meeting of the two columns. They expected to be soon walking triumphantly over the ruins of the besieged settlement. Everything was put into motion for the final encounter. In all the commotion, accented by impatience and anxiety, as well as the energetic enthusiasm typical of preparations for battle, no one remembered the comrades who had been left behind.

The brigades set off, completely forgetting the supply train behind them, which was entirely unguarded. The soldiers assigned to protect it were either carrying supplies or busy tending to mules that were loaded with supplies. They were in no shape to engage in even the smallest skirmish. The brigades, however, continued on. At the head of the column was Colonel Gouveia’s, with two pieces of ordnance; in the center, Colonel Olympio da Silveira’s brigade and the cavalry. Then came the detachments led by Colonels Thompson Flores and Medeiros. They crossed the Angico, a small stream, on light pontoon bridges and then advanced in a line six miles long. The march was broken by the Twenty-fifth Battalion, flanked by two useless platoons that were barely able to hack away the vegetation that slowed their progress.

The
jagunços
launched a surprise attack at noon before they reached Angico. It was a more serious skirmish, although it could not be called a battle, which it later was. Pajehú had gathered his scouts, who had been positioned all the way from here to Canudos, and they now all fired on the column from the side. The troops were at a clearing on the slope, and because of their elevation, they were a good target for the
sertanejos
, who could hardly be seen in the weeds below. Nevertheless, the soldiers resisted the attack but had two casualties: one dead and one wounded. They continued in good order, at the same pace, until they came upon the memorable Pitombas farm where Moreira César had encountered the fanatics for the first time.

It was a depressing place.

The men were deeply affected by the cruel reminders of the terrible events here: Bleached shreds of uniforms swayed on the dead branches. Old saddles and fragments of military capes and coats were littered over the ground along with bone fragments. On the left of the road, on a tree branch that served as a clothing rack from which a weather-beaten uniform hung, was the decapitated body of Colonel Tamarindo, its arms dangling, the skeleton hands covered in black gloves. At the feet of the corpse lay the skull and the colonel’s boots.

In the weeds at the side of the road, the soldiers found remains of the other victims. Skeletons in filthy rags lay in tragic formation or draped over shrubs, which bending in the wind made the corpses dance like ghosts. This had been purposefully staged by the
jagunços
, who had not taken anything away from the scene except for the weapons and ammunition. A soldier of the Twenty-fifth Battalion found a kerchief around the lower leg bone of one of the corpses, containing a packet of banknotes amounting to more than four
contos de réis
, or about two thousand dollars. The enemy had no interest in the money or other articles of value.

The spooked troops had no time to linger over the scene. The enemy continued to snipe at them from the flanks. Pushed back in the previous encounter, after being outflanked on the right by a company of the Twenty-fifth under Captain Trogyllio de Oliveira, the
sertanejos
had lost ground but they kept up a running fire. The Twenty-fifth, accompanied by the Twenty-seventh under Major Henrique Severiano da Silva, turned and pursued them as far as Angico.

It was now noon and battle was imminent. Scattered shots were heard at various places along the flanks and in the front lines. The commander in chief prepared to confront the enemy. It seemed that they were about to surround them and attack. Cavalry scouts, led by Sublieutenant Marques da Rocha of headquarters, were deployed to search the brush on the left, without results. The march continued.

Two hours later, as they crossed a hill, the attack suddenly came again. It was met with rounds from the Krupp cannon. A cavalry sergeant and a few men dove bravely into the
caatinga
but again came up with nothing. The troops meanwhile continued on. The Twenty-fifth was in front, preceded by scouts and followed by the Twenty-seventh and the Sixteenth. These detachments answered the enemy’s sparse fire, encouraging the assault.

Night was falling. The advance guard was struggling to climb the last steep inclines of the Umburanas road. They were panting but did not waver in their march. They kept fighting off side attacks. Then the mountain loomed in front of them. In the last stage of their climb they arrived at an inclined plain between two large elevations with a few bare hills obstructing the way ahead. They had reached the top of Mount Favela.

At this point the legendary hill is really a valley. As one climbs it, the unexpected impression is of arriving in lowland.

It feels like a descent. The exhausted traveler is painfully disappointed after the difficult ascent. His view is obstructed by many irregular features in the landscape. Instead of a row of peaks he finds a thalweg, which is a leg of the Rosário highway, in the form of a long furrow like a huge trench about a thousand feet long, walled off by a hill at its far end.

There is a view of the slopes at the top of the hill. These are striated by deep ditches, which drain the mountain of its torrential streams. The road descends unevenly to the right through a narrow passage between almost vertical ramps that are like ancient tunnels. On the left is another dip, which ends in the gentle slope of Mario’s Hill. This extends in a north-south direction and to the north is closed off by another hill, which blocks the view of the town. On the other side it drops into a deep ravine leading to the Umburanas riverbed. In front, on a lower terrace, is the Old Ranch House. The small Bald Headlands continue down to the Vaza-Barris below. In all four directions—on the east to the Macambira valley, on this side of the Cocorobó range and the Jeremoabo highway traversing it; to the north over the vast rolling plain; to the west, where two small streams, the Umburanas and the Mucuim, follow the end of the Cambaio road—in all directions, and from all sides, the sloping landscape has the appearance of a series of hills crowding each other in a jumble of peaks and valleys. The image is of a storm-beaten mountain that is slowly crumbling apart. The gorges formed by the torrential rains deepen each year. With no vegetation to protect it from the searing summer heat and flood erosion, it is a barren landscape.

Mount Favela does not have even the barbaric vegetation of the
caatinga
to cover its naked ruggedness. A few leafless shrubs, a rare cactus, a bromeliad here or there are the few plants one can find in the hard soil. At the summit, the crevices in the schist rock, visible in stratigraphic planes, lack even the faintest covering of a surface layer and reveal the inner structure of the earth. Though it is completely devoid of shrubbery, the view from the southern peak does not reveal the settlement to the north. One has to descend the slope into the fold of the mountain that is like a saddle between two parallel peaks.

At nightfall the head of the column entered this fold with a Krupp battery. It was followed by the rest of the Second Brigade and the Third. The First and most of the troops were still held up at the rear. They did not get much farther. The intermittent fire that had accompanied the expedition now escalated in a continuous crescendo as they made the ascent. At the top it turned into a furious fusillade.

An engagement of the most unique and cruel sort now began.

The enemy was nowhere to be seen. He was burrowed in caves, bunkered in the trenches that covered the side slopes. The first shadows of night gave him additional protection.

The two companies of the Twenty-fifth Battalion handled the attack sturdily. They broke up into sharpshooting detachments and charged through, firing randomly, as the two brigades in front of them opened ranks to let the battery through. It was thrust violently forward, dragged by hand instead of by the exhausted and frightened mules, at a quickened pace and with a great rumble. Climbing the hill at the far end of the great trough, it assumed battle position at the top. The national flag was unfurled, and Canudos was given a salvo of twenty-one rounds.

General Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães, mounted on horseback next to the cannons, gazed for the first time, through the dazzling moonlight, at the mysterious backlands city. He had the briefest moment of triumph on this promontory where he was so rashly exposed to a direct line of fire.

The situation really was desperate. Under attack from all sides, surrounded by the enemy positioned above them, his troops were trapped in a narrow depression in the mountain, which gave them no room to maneuver. If all the troops had been together, there might have been one solution: to complete the dangerous mountain crossing and join General Savaget’s forces. He had now stopped two miles ahead after a march punctuated by intermittent skirmishes. The First Brigade, however, was not there. It had stayed behind to guard the rapid-fire battery and the 32. What was more serious was that the supply train was five miles behind them at Angico.

The campaign plan had resulted in the only possible outcome. According to this plan, the expedition was supposed to operate as a unit. Under one command and dependent on one supply train, it could not break up into smaller units. However, at the very moment that conflict broke out it was forced to separate, whether it wanted to or not. The opening salvo over Canudos was the most meaningless of victories. The commander in chief later referred to it as a brilliant engagement, forcing the enemy to concede its position to the troops. The fact is that subsequent events showed that the men wanted to abandon their position and the
jagunços
did everything they could to prevent them from doing so.

It was a very clever trap. Anyone who later explored the slopes of Mount Favela could see this. The slopes were mined. At every few steps was a circular hole, its top even with the ground and a protecting ridge of stone. This showed where the trenches had been dug. There were countless numbers of them. All of them opened lines of fire at the same level as the ground. This had been deliberately done in anticipation of the troops’ attempt to cross the mountain.

This also explained the relatively minor skirmishes with the
sertanejos
along the road from Angico on. The
jagunços’
intention was to keep up harmless fire as they ran through the brush, so that they could lead the expedition in a direction away from the settlement. Their plan worked. Goaded on by an enemy that kept scattering and disappearing as they advanced, the troops had thoughtlessly entered a region they had no knowledge of. They were lured in without being aware of it by a capable scout they had not counted on—the sly Pajehú.