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At half past ten that night, three figures converged on the seldom-frequented place where the gate to Tadeu de Albuquerque's garden opened. They remained there for several minutes, arguing in low voices and accompanying their words with impatient gestures. One of them spoke whilst the other two listened without answering: it was Baltasar Coutinho. 'You must not remain near this gate,' Baltasar ordered the two servants. 'If the man were found dead here, suspicion would fall at once on me or my uncle.' He told them to separate, listen for the horse's hoofbeats and quicken their pace until they caught Simão far from the house.
'The shots must be fired far from here,' he concluded, thus fixing the place of the crime without needing to name its victim. One of the men objected that Simão might have come on horseback the previous night and appear on foot that evening. Baltasar replied that, in that case, he would signal them to follow Simão until they had him within range, always far from the garden. The other servant asked whether Simão might not leave his father's house and enter the garden before giving them time to act. 'I am certain he is not at his father's house; enough talk, and hide behind the church without falling asleep.' The group dispersed, and Baltasar remained leaning against the wall for a few moments, master of the operation he had just ordered.
At a quarter to eleven, as the clock chimed, he pressed his ear to the gate and recognised Teresa's footsteps in the rustle of dry leaves. He withdrew quickly, hugging the wall, and had scarcely vanished when another figure appeared from the opposite side at a rapid pace. The newcomer did not stop at the gate: he examined every place where a shadow might counterfeit a man. He circled the church, two hundred paces away, and saw two upright figures in the angle of the chancel beneath the tower's shadow. He studied them as he passed and grew suspicious, although he could not recognise them. The two men, however, identified him as soon as he disappeared: it was João da Cruz, the farrier, or the devil himself in his shape.
They asked each other what João could be doing there at that hour. One of them thought it impossible that he should be against them, for he had served Baltasar and opened his workshop with his former master's money. His companion nevertheless recalled that it was Domingos Botelho who had saved the farrier from the gallows. The first replied that the chief magistrate had nothing to do with their enterprise and did not even know that his son was in Viseu. That confidence did not convince the more anxious man, who called João a devil of a fellow; the other reminded him that bullets entered him as they did anyone else.
Their conjectures continued, but they contained one certainty: the figure really was João da Cruz. The farrier had gone some three hundred paces when Baltasar's servants heard the distant hoofbeats of a horse. As they left their hiding place, João appeared in front of the rider, Simão cocked his pistols and the muleteer readied a carbine. 'There is nothing new,' João said, 'but you might already be lying beneath your horse with four buckshot pellets in your chest.' The muleteer recognised his brother-in-law and asked, 'Is that you, João?' João replied that he had arrived first, and Simão held out his hand to him with emotion. 'Give me your hand; I want to feel the hand of an honourable man in mine.' 'It is in such moments that men reveal themselves,' the farrier replied, accepting the gratitude without dwelling on it.
João cut the conversation short, for there was no time for talk and the young gentleman had an armed reception waiting behind the church. Surprised, Simão asked who was waiting for him there. The farrier said that he had seen two men he did not recognise, but would swear they were Baltasar's servants. 'Get down from your horse, because there will be trouble; I told you not to come, but you did, and now you must face whatever comes.' Simão dismounted and declared that he did not tremble, to which João replied that he knew it, though he preferred to confirm it in the enemy's presence. The farrier took the reins, went back along the street and tied the horse to a ring in the wall of an inn. He then ordered Simão to follow the two brothers-in-law at a distance of twenty paces. If he saw them stop near Tadeu's garden, he was not to go beyond the point from which he could watch them.
The student tried to protest against a plan that humiliated him by placing him under the other two men's protection. João allowed no reply: 'Do as I tell you, sir.' The farrier and his brother-in-law, watching every corner, reached Teresa's garden and saw a figure vanish at the angle of the wall. João proposed that they pursue the men who had passed into the churchyard whilst Simão reached the gate and went inside. They would return afterwards to protect his departure, and with that purpose they moved quickly onwards. Simão walked towards the gate with his pistols cocked, alone only in appearance. In front of the wall lay a steep gravel slope that ended in a dark avenue. When the hoofbeats stopped, the servants recalled what Baltasar had ordered them to do if Simão proceeded on foot.
They chose a suitable place from which to attack him on his way out and entered the avenue as he reached the gate. They saw Simão enter and the gate close, but their confidence lasted only until they noticed two men coming straight towards them. The more frightened servant advised retreat, arguing that they were waiting for another man, not those strangers. He immediately went down the bank, and his bolder companion displayed the prudence common to hired killers and followed him. The rapid footsteps of their pursuers vindicated that prudent courage. As they rounded the corner of the garden, Baltasar confronted them and asked what those cowards were running from. Ashamed, the men stopped and cocked their blunderbusses. João and the muleteer appeared, and Baltasar advanced towards them, shouting for them to stop.
The farrier asked his brother-in-law to speak, for he did not wish to be recognised. 'Who is ordering us to stop?' the muleteer asked, and Baltasar replied that there were three carbines there. João whispered to his brother-in-law to delay them until Simão left the garden. The muleteer declared that they were already standing still and asked what those men wanted from them. Baltasar demanded to know what they were doing there and received the same question in reply. 'I do not permit questions; I want to know who you are,' the heir said, venturing a few unsteady steps forwards. João told his brother-in-law to warn Baltasar that one more step would be answered with a shot. The muleteer repeated the threat, and Baltasar stopped.
One of the servants drew his master aside to say that the silent man looked like João da Cruz. The farrier overheard the servant's aside and told his brother-in-law that they should leave because they had been recognised. They turned their backs on the group and walked along Tadeu's wall. Baltasar's servants received that retreat as a victory and hurried after the supposed fugitives. Baltasar still ordered them not to follow, but the men, cowards only moments before, now wished to pursue the enemy as eagerly as they had previously fled from him.
Inside the garden, Simão heard the quick steps of his protectors, and Teresa's anxiety compelled him to open the gate before he knew who was passing. João, now visible to the pursuers, asked with a mocking air whether the marriage had been arranged. He added that there was no room for delay, because danger left no space for lingering or conversation. Simão understood the danger, squeezed Teresa's hand convulsively and withdrew. The student wished to identify the two motionless figures in the distance, but João spoke with the authority of a man demanding obedience. 'Go back the way you came and do not look behind you.'
Simão reached his horse, mounted and waited for the two impassive guards who followed him slowly. João and his brother-in-law wondered at the sudden disappearance of Baltasar's servants and feared another ambush outside the town. The farrier knew a shortcut leading to the road and told Simão to gallop, promising that both men would catch up with him. Simão received that caution with annoyance, warning them not to value his courage so poorly. In defiance, he reined in the horse so that the men would not have to quicken their pace. 'Go as you please,' João replied, 'for we shall go off the road.' The two men climbed a slope among olive groves and then descended, crouching beneath the broom beside a wall parallel to the road.
João pointed out the bend in the ridge where the shortcut ended and the hollow where the road curved around a small hill. The attackers would fire from there, concealed by the cork oaks, and they had to arrive quickly. Moving now in the open and now bent beneath the vegetation, they reached a bank and heard the two men crossing the little bridge over a stream. 'We shall not be in time,' João said anxiously, for the horse still sounded far behind and the men were going to fire. His brother-in-law proposed shouting to Simão not to go on, but João replied that the warning would come too late. 'Whether they kill him or not, they are ours when they return,' the farrier concluded, turning defence into a sentence passed in advance.
João and his brother-in-law had crossed the bridge and were climbing the slope when they heard two shots. 'Quickly,' the farrier exclaimed, 'so that they do not reach the road if they have killed the young gentleman.' They reached the plateau breathless, with their carbines cocked, and discovered that Baltasar's servants were returning by the same shortcut. The attackers supposed that Simão's companions had gone ahead to inspect the places suited to an ambush, or else had fallen behind. The muleteer announced that they were coming, and João replied, sitting down behind the shelter of a mound, that he had no intention of chasing anyone. At a distance of ten paces, the killers saw the two figures rise before them and swerved in opposite directions. One climbed the terraces of a vineyard whilst the other threw himself into a patch of brambles. 'Shoot the one on the left,' João ordered his brother-in-law. The two shots rang out together, but only the farrier's aim was true, killing one man instantly. The muleteer's buckshot missed the other man, who had plunged into the thicket.
At that moment, Simão appeared on the crest where the men had fired at him and ran towards the place from which the second volley had come. João shouted to ask whether it was he and whether they had failed to kill him. Simão replied that it was he and that he believed he was not dead. The farrier called his brother-in-law a soulless wretch for letting the blackbird escape, whilst his own was still kicking in the vineyard. He descended three terraces, bent over the corpse and wished to see its face. 'You blockhead, if I had two carbines you would not be going to hell alone,' he told the dead man.
The muleteer called him back because Simão was wounded in one shoulder and blood was running down his arm. With the skill of an experienced surgeon, João bound his arm and shoulder with handkerchiefs. Simão explained that he had seen two heads peering over the top of a bank and had thought they were his protectors. He had stopped the horse and asked whether there was any news, but when no one answered he had begun to dismount. He still had one foot in the stirrup when the two men fired and wounded him. He had tried to climb the bank, but the scrub had stopped him, and only whilst seeking a longer way round had he noticed the wound. João called the wound a scratch and assured him, with professional authority, that he was accustomed to treating many such injuries. 'On donkeys, Master João?' Simão asked, smiling despite the pain. 'And on Christians too, young gentleman,' the farrier replied, refusing the boundary offered by the joke.
João recalled that there had once been a king of Portugal whose only doctor was a veterinary surgeon. He promised to show Simão his own body, a net of scars that had never driven him to seek a surgeon. With wax salve and vinegar, he said, he could resurrect the devil lying in the vineyard and listening to their conversation. At that moment a faint rustle was heard in the thicket into which the dead man's companion had fled. João raised his head like a keen-scented hound and asked whether the other man might still be there trembling with fear. The rustling continued, and soon a flock of birds burst from the foliage in a tumult of wings and cries. 'The man is there,' the farrier declared, asking Simão for a pistol before running towards the bushes. The broom and heather thrashed violently, and João exclaimed that the fugitive was crashing through the scrub like a wild boar. He ordered his brother-in-law to bombard the scrub with stones and force the wild boar from its lair.
On the other side of the rough ground lay a cultivated field, which Simão reached by circling the hedge and jumping over the stone of an irrigation channel. 'Take care, Master João; do not shoot me,' he shouted to the farrier. João marvelled that the young gentleman was already in the field and announced that the fugitive was now surrounded. He himself would play the ferret, for if that man escaped there would no longer be anything secure in the world. Baltasar's servant had twisted his knee and fallen dazed when he flung himself desperately into the thicket. The muleteer, who had fired at random, had not examined the effect of his shot and had naturally assumed that the fugitive remained unwounded. After recovering consciousness, the man had dragged himself to a stand of wild trees where the birds roosted at night. The blackbirds, alarmed by the intruder, betrayed him by taking flight, and he retreated into the scrub believing he would find protection there.
The stones thrown by the muleteer sometimes struck more accurately than the buckshot from his blunderbuss. João drew a pruning hook from his jacket pocket and began cutting the young oaks and tangled broom around the hiding place. Tired and dissatisfied with the scant result, he told his brother-in-law to fetch dry stubble so that they could set fire to the scrub. 'This thief shall be roasted alive,' he announced with a ferocity as practical as the plan. The threat of fire gave the hunted man the courage born of the greatest danger, and he broke through the vegetation to leap over the wall of the stubble field. The muleteer was gathering straw there, and Simão was awaiting the outcome of the hunt. Both ran towards the man, who, feeling himself overtaken, fell to his knees with his hands raised. He begged for mercy and declared that his master had forced him to take part in that disaster. The butt of the muleteer's blunderbuss was already descending towards his chest when Simão restrained the attacker's arm.
'You do not strike a defenceless man like that; get up,' Simão ordered. The servant replied that he could not rise because he had a broken leg and would be crippled for the rest of his life. João arrived at that moment, marvelled to find the rogue alive and rushed at him with the pruning hook. 'Do not kill the man, Master João,' said the chief magistrate's son. The farrier treated the order as military nonsense and asked whether Simão wished to repay the favour of his escort with the gallows. Simão asked why he was speaking of the gallows. João replied that a magistrate's son might escape danger, but a farrier would end up with a noose around his neck. If that man lived to tell the story, each man's social standing would also carry weight before the law.
Simão again asked him to let the servant go, because a single witness could not harm them. 'You may know a great deal, sir, but you know nothing of justice,' João replied, apologising for his boldness without withdrawing the insult. He explained that one eyewitness and four witnesses reporting hearsay were enough to guide a judicial inquiry. With Baltasar pulling strings, the gallows would be as certain as two and two making four. The wounded man promised to say nothing and never return to Castro Daire. 'Leave him here, João da Cruz; let us go,' Simão insisted. João grew angry at hearing his full name before the man, who was thus left in no doubt about the farrier's identity.
He could not understand why Simão wished to leave alive a wretch who had fired at him in order to kill him. Simão acknowledged that João had some reason, but said that he did not know how to punish helpless men who no longer resisted. 'And if he had killed you, would you punish him?' the farrier asked, reducing mercy to a problem of belated logic. Simão ended the argument and ordered them to leave, abandoning the defeated man there. João scratched his head, thought for a few moments and accepted with evident displeasure. 'He who spares his enemy dies by that enemy's hand,' he muttered, entrusting to a proverb the opposition Simão would not allow him to enact. They had already left the field, jumped over the wall and begun descending towards the road when João exclaimed that he had left his carbine against the hedge.
He told the others to go ahead and promised to return at once. The muleteer was leading the horse, which had grazed peacefully on the grass by the road, when Simão heard cries coming from the field. He immediately understood what was happening, and the brother-in-law confirmed that João was administering justice and knew what he was doing. João appeared shortly afterwards, wiping the bloodstained pruning hook with ferns. 'You are cruel, Master João,' Simão said. The farrier denied the cruelty and answered with his proverbs: if someone must die, let it be the father, who is older; killing two costs no more than killing one, nor kneading three bushels more than one. Works, he added, should be finished or never begun, and now his conscience was easy because the law would have to prove the crime without hearing the two men he had sent to the devil. For an instant Simão felt horror at the killer and regret at having allied himself with a man capable of turning loyalty into blood and blood into an easy conscience.