Finally, on the fifth day, the trail was fresh; Osuna tracked the blue roan’s hoof-prints, and we began to search the surroundings. The tracks led us to a grove with some felled trees about a quarter of a league away, just at the western horizon, and so we concentrated our forces, refreshed by nightly rest, and cleared off in that direction, no longer at a gallop but a sprint, hoping, at least, that fatigued after riding almost five days straight, Troncoso had laid down to rest a while in the shady trees, protected from the blistering sun. When we entered the grove and had to slow our race to find a path without injuring ourselves among the trees, we did not see Troncoso immediately, but a clamor from the other side of the grove signaled his presence. Trying to stay quiet so as not to frighten our quarry, we set off down the path, still taking care to stay within the grove so as not to expose ourselves to whatever might be waiting on the other side. Just as we caught sight of the land outside from the grove’s inner edge, we were able to attend the most unexpected exchange, and even I could say, the most surprising scene I have witnessed in my long life — and it is easy to imagine that due to my profession, there has been scarcely a single day that does not put me in the presence of something unusual.
Troncoso stood haranguing a semicircle of mounted Indians who were listening to him, motionless and fascinated. As soon as we glimpsed them, I realized the scene must have been going on for hours. Not far from there, the blue roan, tied by the reins to a clump of grass, munched calmly as could be, apparently indifferent to its rider’s imperial designs; if, like Caligula, it ever occurred to Troncoso to appoint his horse minister, it seemed quite likely that the roan would have disdainfully refused that so-called honor. The horse’s indifference contrasted with the profound attention that the Indians paid Troncoso; he, however, did not even look at them, but paced back and forth in the same straight line parallel to the diameter of the semicircle, with an attitude similar to the one he would adopt each morning to apostrophize the rising sun. The Indian in the middle of the semicircle of riders carried a violin strapped across his back, and I recognized him immediately by the instrument of his hazy legend, and also because, of all those garish and ragged Indians, the attention reflected in their faces was profoundest in that of Josesito, who, as it happens, projected a rare intelligence and thoughtfulness, elbow resting on his horse’s neck, cheek in the palm of his hand. In the five days of his frenzied flight, Troncoso’s aspect had deteriorated further, and the only thing that still shone in his body, blackened by sun, dust, and grime, were his bright and bulging eyes, blazing enormously wide in a face almost entirely consumed by his dirty, matted hair and beard, which gave him the look of a wild animal, as if with the loss of his reason he was losing all his human attributes as well. From being put to immoderate use by its owner, his voice seemed to have gone hoarse, and as the meaning of his words did not reach us, from a distance it resembled barking or howling or the deep gutturals that preceded any known language. There was also a kind of alarm in the Indians’ attention, and I understood its significance almost immediately when Troncoso veered abruptly from his straight line, turned, and approached the half-circle of riders, stretching out his arms and running toward them; this caused a general stampede among the Indians, who galloped away in a frightened clamor. Having covered a few meters they stopped, and, observing Troncoso from a distance — he had also stopped but kept up his blustering — returned to form their half-circle with the chief in the middle. Troncoso recommenced his back-and-forth on an imaginary line, straight and parallel to the diameter of the Indians’ semicircle, causing them to stiffen up and begin again to listen to him with profound attention; the interest his words seemed to awaken in them had not yet erased all the terror Troncoso had etched upon their faces in the moment he had tried to approach them. They remained still once more, as Troncoso went back and forth, tracing the imaginary line with his steps in the grass, and his hoarse voice sounded in the silent morning air like the final dispatch from the world of incoherent creatures, hopeless and mortal, to the unfathomable and capricious law that had, one day, for whatever reason, set that world in motion.
The Indians were well armed and had slightly greater numbers, but, had we wanted a fight, our surprise attack would have doubtless been decisive, as they were absorbed, listening to Troncoso with some sort of poorly-disguised emotion, a mix of fascination and dread. That wild beast, hardened without and within by sun and insanity, rambling about and howling a hoarse, indecipherable harangue, weakened and gesticulating, seemed to hold for them the fascination of those mysterious things whose existence enriches thought and imagination, but whose contact, even briefly, withers and destroys with its lethal singularity. Hidden among the trees, irresolute and paralyzed by the surprise of what we beheld, we were able to watch the same scene repeat itself three or four times, or namely, that Troncoso, turning abruptly from his imaginary line, would open his arms and make as if to run at the Indians, slightly raising his hoarsened voice, and the Indians would race off to disperse in a terrified clamor, but a few meters farther out, when they realized that Troncoso had stopped and began to make a new line as the back-and-forth of his strides crushed the plains-grass, not moving forward, they returned to form up in a half-circle and, still slightly shaken by emotion and from dashing off, again drew near to the pacing and, keeping a safe distance, again stopped to listen to him with dread and devotion, and even with reverence.
Both Osuna and I wanted to avoid a scuffle, not for lack of courage but because, if we lost, such a blow could lead to disaster for the entire caravan. I was also restrained by several scruples, primarily of a moral order but also of a legal one, for it seemed to me that, firstly, it does not fall to civilized persons to take an eye for an eye, and secondly, there was nothing to indicate Josesito and his men were responsible for the very real slaughter we had found, and as such a surprise attack would have been tantamount to execution without proof of guilt. These scruples mattered little to Osuna; like Sirirí, he had made up his mind, and despite the conflicting rumors that circulated about the chief, Osuna thought Josesito a cruel and cowardly murderer, though with characteristic good sense, he felt our objective was to arrive safe and sound at Las Tres Acacias and that the chief and his men were a matter for the authorities, in whose efficacy he, for his part, did not believe. And so we decided the following: Osuna and the soldiers would remain hidden among the trees, ready to strike, and I would go alone to collect Troncoso in the hope that, as he had been obedient until the moment of flight, even cursing and against his will, that in a last glimmer of conscience, he would obey once more. I brought a straitjacket with me but trusted it would not be necessary to fall back on, for I would prevail on Troncoso by my authority alone.
Once the soldiers were spread among the trees ready to intervene if needed, I set out at a trot into open country and made for Troncoso, keeping watch on the Indians as I did, so that eventual violence on their part would not take me by surprise. But just as the Indians ignored me, so did Troncoso. On hearing my horse’s hooves, a few Indians had glanced in my direction, but almost immediately — and without the slightest gesture to show they had noticed my presence, as if I had gone transparent — they went back to immersing themselves in rapt contemplation of Troncoso, who did not even seem to have seen me, though I cannot confirm this because experience has shown me many times how difficult it is to know the precise sense that the mad have of reality, which explains, as I believe I have said, that for many people madness and pretending are nearly synonymous. The fact is that when I arrived some thirty meters away, curbing my horse and trying to hear Troncoso’s hoarse and lengthy discourse, I could not manage to make out a single intelligible word in that endless, animal noise, thinking that what was incomprehensible to me had to be yet more so for the Indians, who were returning, inexplicably, to their trance. After a few minutes, Troncoso deigned to notice me and, forgetting the Indians, came toward me with his rigid strides, very much like those of an automaton I had seen once in Paris, and stopped two or three meters away to launch his guttural harangue at me, angled slightly and not looking at me directly, but I could see by his round, wet, bulging eyes that he was already completely gone from this world. Having confirmed this vacancy, and faced with the fascination of the circle of motionless horsemen that contemplated him, it struck me that the Indians’ interest was focused less on Troncoso’s spectacular agitation in the apparently real world we shared with him, than in the report he brought us, stranded as we were in our gray, monotonous place, of the new and distant world that he alone inhabited.