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and legs, naked and half-naked bodies, trousers and high-buttoned tunics in tatters. A recently arrived doctor in a white smock is inspecting the wounded, followed by a male nurse carrying a medical kit. There is a sharp contrast between the doctor’s healthy, urbane appearance and the soldiers’ dejected faces and hair matted down with sweat. At the far end of the shack, an anguished voice is asking about confession.
    “Didn’t you post sentinels? Didn’t it occur to you that they might surprise you, Lieutenant?”
    “There were four sentinels, Senhor Commissioner,” Pires Ferreira answers, holding up four emphatic fingers. “They didn’t surprise us. When we heard the whistles, every man in the entire company rose to his feet and prepared for combat.” He lowers his voice. “But what we saw coming toward us was not the enemy but a procession.”
    From one corner of the hospital shack the little camp on the shore of the river, where boats loaded with watermelon ply back and forth, can be seen: the rest of the company, lying in the shade of some trees, rifles stacked up in groups of four, field tents. A flock of screeching parrots flies by.
    “A religious procession, Lieutenant?” an intrusive, high-pitched, nasal voice asks in surprise.
    The officer casts a quick glance at the person who has spoken and nods. “They came from the direction of Canudos,” he explains, still addressing the commissioner. “There were five hundred, six hundred, perhaps a thousand of them.”
    The commissioner throws up his hands and his equally incredulous aide shakes his head. It is quite obvious that they are people from the city. They have arrived in Juazeiro that morning on the train from Salvador and are still dazed and battered from the jolting and jerking, uncomfortable in their jackets with wide sleeves, their baggy trousers and boots that have already gotten dirty, stifling from the heat, of a certainty annoyed at being there, surrounded by wounded flesh, by disease, and at having to investigate a defeat. As they talk with Lieutenant Pires Ferreira they proceed from hammock to hammock and the commissioner, a stern-faced man, leans over every so often to give one of the wounded a clap on the back. He is the only one who is listening to what the lieutenant is saying, but his aide takes notes, as does the other man who has just arrived, the one with the nasal voice who seems to have a head cold, the one who keeps constantly sneezing.
    “Five hundred, a thousand?” the commissioner says sarcastically. “The Baron de Canabrava’s deposition came to my office and I am acquainted with it, Lieutenant. Those who invaded Canudos numbered two hundred, including the women and children. The baron ought to know—he’s the owner of the estate.”
    “There were a thousand of them, thousands,” the wounded man in the nearest hammock murmurs, a light-skinned, kinky-haired mulatto with a bandaged shoulder. “I swear to it, sir.”
    Lieutenant Pires Ferreira shuts him up with such a brusque gesture that his arm brushes against the leg of the wounded man behind him, who bellows in pain. The lieutenant is young, on the short side, with a little clipped mustache like those of the dandies who congregate, back in Salvador, in the pastry shops of the Rua Chile at teatime. But due to fatigue, frustration, nerves, this little French mustache is now set off by dark circles under his eyes, an ashen skin, and a grimace. The lieutenant is unshaven, his hair is badly mussed, his uniform is torn, and his right arm is in a sling. At the far end of the shack, the incoherent voice babbles on about confession and holy oils.
    Pires Ferreira turns to the commissioner. “As a child, I lived on a cattle ranch and learned to size up the number of heads in a herd at a glance,” he murmurs. “I’m not exaggerating. There were more than five hundred of them, and perhaps a thousand.”
    “They were carrying a wooden cross, an enormous one, and a banner of