He thought of his father working so hard on their small piece of land, and of his sisters with their threadbare clothes. It was lucky that Mariannina was so beautiful that she had caught a husband despite her poverty and the unsettled times. But most of all he anguished over his mother, Maria Lombardo. Even as a child he had recognized her bitterness, her unhappiness. She had tasted the rich fruits of America and could no longer be happy in the poverty-stricken towns of Sicily. His father would tell the tales of those glorious days and his mother would burst into tears.

But he would change his family's fortune, Turi Guiliano thought. He would work hard and study hard and he would become as great a man as his godfather.

Suddenly they were passing through a stand of trees, a small forest, one of the few left in this part of Sicily, which now seemed to grow only the great white stones and marble quarries. On the other side of the mountain they would begin the descent into Montelepre and would have to be careful of the roving patrols of National Police, the carabinieri. But now they were coming to the Quattro Moline, the Four Crossroads, and it would pay to be a little careful here too. Guiliano pulled on the donkey's bridle and motioned Aspanu to halt. They stood there quietly. No strange sound could be heard, only the steady hum of the countless insects that swarmed over the ground, their whirring wings and legs buzzing like a far distant saw. They moved forward over the crossroads and then safely out of sight into another small forest. Turi Guiliano started to daydream again.

The trees widened out suddenly, as if they had been pushed back, and they were picking their way across a small clearing with a rough floor of tiny stones, cropped bamboo stalks, thin balding grass. The late afternoon sun was falling far away from them and looked pale and cold above the granite-studded mountains. Past this clearing the path would begin to drop in a long winding spiral to the town of Montelepre. Suddenly Guiliano came out of his dreams. A flash of light like the striking of a match lanced his left eye. He jerked the donkey to a halt and held up his hand to Aspanu.

Only thirty yards away, strange men stepped out from behind a thicket. There were three of them, and Turi Guiliano saw their stiff black military caps, the black uniforms with white piping. He felt a sick foolish feeling of despair, of shame, that he had been caught. The three men fanned out as they advanced, weapons at the ready. Two were quite young with ruddy shining faces and crusted military caps tilted almost comically to the backs of their heads. They seemed earnest yet gleeful as they pointed their machine pistols.

The carabiniere in the center was older and held a rifle. His face was pockmarked and scarred and his cap was pulled firmly over his eyes. He had sergeant's stripes on his sleeve. The flash of light Guiliano had seen was a sunbeam drawn by the steel rifle barrel. This man was smiling grimly, his rifle pointed unwaveringly at Guiliano's chest. Guiliano's despair turned to anger at that smile.

The Sergeant with the rifle stepped closer, his two fellow guards closing in from either side. Now Turi Guiliano was alert. The two young carabinieri with their machine pistols were not so much to be feared; they were carelessly approaching the donkey, not taking their prisoners seriously. They motioned Guiliano and Pisciotta away from the donkey and one of them let his pistol sway back on its sling as he stripped the camouflage bamboo from the donkey's back. When he saw the goods he let out a whistle of greedy delight. He didn't notice Aspanu edging closer to him but the Sergeant with the rifle did. He shouted, "You, with the mustache, move away," and Aspanu stepped back closer to Turi Guiliano.

The Sergeant moved a little closer. Guiliano watched him intently. The pockmarked face seemed to be fatigued; but the man's eyes gleamed when he said, "Well, young fellows, that's a nice bit of cheese. We could use it in our barracks to go with our macaroni. So just tell us the name of the farmer you got it from and we'll let you ride your donkey back home."

They did not answer him. He waited. Still they did not answer.

Finally, Guiliano said quietly, "I have a thousand lire as a gift, if you can let us go."

"You can wipe your ass with lire," the Sergeant said. "Now, your identity papers. If they're not in order I'll make you shit and wipe your ass with them too."

The insolence of the words, the insolence of those black-and-white piped uniforms, aroused an icy fury in Guiliano. At that moment he knew he would never allow himself to be arrested, never allow these men to rob him of his family's food.

Turi Guiliano took out his identity card and started to approach the Sergeant. He was hoping to get under the arc of the pointed rifle. He knew his physical coordination was faster than that of most men and he was willing to gamble on it. But the rifle motioned him back. The man said, "Throw it on the ground." Guiliano did so.

Pisciotta, five paces on Guiliano's left, and knowing what was in his friend's mind, knowing he carried the pistol under his shirt, tried to distract the Sergeant's attention. He said with studied insolence, his body thrust forward, hand on hip touching the knife he carried in a sheath strapped to his back, "Sergeant, if we give you the farmer's name, why do you need our identity cards? A bargain's a bargain." He paused for a moment and said sarcastically, "We know a carabiniere always keeps his word." He spat out the word "carabiniere" with hatred.

The rifleman sauntered a few steps toward Pisciotta. He stopped. He smiled and leveled his gun. He said, "And you, my little dandy, your card. Or do you have no papers, like your donkey, who has a better mustache than you?"

The two younger policemen laughed. Pisciotta's eyes glittered. He took a step toward the Sergeant. "No, I have no papers. And I know no farmer. We found these goods lying in the road."

The very foolhardiness of this defiance defeated its purpose. Pisciotta had wanted the rifleman to move closer within striking distance, but now the Sergeant took a few steps backward and smiled again. He said, "The bastinado will knock out some of your Sicilian insolence." He paused for a moment and then said. "Both of you, lie on the ground."

The bastinado was a term loosely used for a physical beating with whips and clubs. Guiliano knew some citizens of Montelepre who had been punished in the Bellampo Barracks. They had returned to their homes with broken knees, heads swollen as big as melons, their insides injured so that they could never work again. The carabinieri would never do that to him. Guiliano went to one knee as if he were going to lie down, put one hand on the ground and the other on his belt so that he could draw the pistol from beneath his shirt. The clearing was now bathed with the soft hazy light of beginning twilight, the sun far over the trees had dipped below the last mountain. He saw Pisciotta standing proudly, refusing the command. Surely they would not shoot him down over a piece of smuggled cheese. He could see the pistols trembling in the hands of the young guards.

At that moment there was the braying of mules and the clatter of hooves from behind and bursting into the clearing came the caravan of mules that Guiliano had spotted on the road behind him that afternoon. The man on horseback leading it carried a lupara slung over his shoulder and looked huge in a heavy leather jacket. He jumped down off his horse and took a great wad of lire notes from one of his pockets and said to the carabiniere with the rifle, "So, you've scooped up a few little sardines this time." They obviously knew each other. For the first time the rifleman relaxed his vigilance to accept the money offered to him. The two men were grinning at each other. The prisoners seemed to have been forgotten by everyone.