Turi Guiliano and Aspanu Pisciotta were up before the dawn, before the first light, for though it was unlikely, the carabinieri might start in darkness to surprise them with the morning sun. They had seen the armored car from Palermo arrive in the Bellampo Barracks late the evening before with two jeeploads of reinforcements. During the night Guiliano made scouting patrols down the side of the mountain and listened for any sounds that would be made by anyone approaching their cliff -- a precaution Pisciotta ridiculed. "When we were children we would have been such daredevils," he told Guiliano, "but do you think those lazy carabinieri will risk their lives in darkness, or even miss a good night's sleep in soft beds?"

"We have to train ourselves into good habits," Turi Guiliano said. He knew that someday there would be better enemies.

Turi and Aspanu worked hard laying out guns on a blanket and checking them in every detail. Then they ate some of La Venera's bread cake, washed down with a flask of wine Hector Adonis had left them. The cake, with its heat and spices, lay glowingly in their stomachs. It gave them the energy to construct a screen of saplings and boulders on the edge of the cliff. Behind this screen, they watched the town and the mountain paths with their binoculars. Guiliano loaded the guns and put boxes of ammunition into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket while Pisciotta kept watch. Guiliano did his job carefully and slowly. He even buried all the supplies and covered the ground with huge rocks himself. He was never to trust anyone to check these details. So it was Pisciotta who spotted the armored car leaving the Bellampo Barracks.

"You're right," Pisciotta said. "The car is going down the Castellammare plain away from us."

In an hour the carabinieri would send a detachment up the sides to Monte d'Ora in a frontal attack to flush them out. It helped that the police thought of them as wild youths, simple outlaws. The scarlet and gold flag of Sicily that they flew from the cliff edge confirmed their careless impudence, or so the police would think.

An hour later, a troop van and a jeep carrying the Maresciallo Roccofino left through the gates of the Bellampo Barracks. The two vehicles traveled leisurely to the foot of Monte d'Ora and stopped to unload. Twelve carabinieri armed with rifles deployed on the tiny paths that led up the slope. Maresciallo Roccofino took off his braided cap and pointed it toward the scarlet and gold flag flying over the cliff above them.

They grinned at each other. Guiliano felt a quiet elation. Fighting the police would not be so difficult after all. It was a child's game with a child's cunning. The armored car would disappear around a curve of the road and then circle back and come into the mountains to the rear of their cliff. The authorities must know about the tunnel and expect them to use it to escape and run right into the armored car. And its machine guns.

Pisciotta laughed. "We always hated going home, remember? But I have to admit, this is more fun. Shall we kill a few of them?"

Turi Guiliano was watching through the binoculars from behind the screen of saplings. For a moment he worried about the armored car on the other side of the mountain. Would they have sent some men up the opposite slope? But those men would take hours to climb, they could not be close. He put them out of his mind and said to Pisciotta, "Aspanu, if we're not as clever as we think, we won't be going home to our mothers and a plate of spaghetti this night, as we used to do when we were children."

They waited patiently for an hour. Then Guiliano pushed his shotgun through the screen of saplings and fired twice. It was amazing how that straight confident line of men scattered so quickly, like darting ants disappearing into the grass. Pisciotta fired his rifle four times. Smoke puffs appeared in different parts of the slope as the carabinieri fired back.

"No," Guiliano said. "Fire over their heads." He thought about how Pisciotta disobeyed him two nights before. He said, "Aspanu, obey me. There's no point in killing them. It can't serve any purpose this time."

Guiliano put down his shotgun and took up the binoculars. He could see the Maresciallo and his Sergeant working a radio communications set. They would be contacting the armored car on the other side of the mountain, warning them that the outlaws would be on their way. He picked up his shotgun again and fired twice, then said to Pisciotta, "It's time to leave."

The carabinieri were still firing up at the cliff, not realizing the two outlaws were now on their flanks. Guiliano led the way down a tiny, hidden path through massive boulders and entered a little forest. They rested for a few minutes and then they both started running down the path swiftly and silently. In less than an hour they emerged onto the plain that separated the mountains from the town of Montelepre, but they had circled around to the far side of the town; it lay between them and the troop-carrying van. They hid their weapons under their jackets and walked across the plain, looking like two peasants on their way to work in the fields. They entered Montelepre at the top of the Via Bella, only a hundred yards from the Bellampo Barracks.

The two of them crawled to the far side of the cliff out of view of the advancing carabinieri, then slid down the boulder-strewn slope, rolling for fifty yards before they came to their feet, weapons ready. Crouched low, they ran down the hill stopping only for Guiliano to observe the attackers through his binoculars.

Hector Adonis had followed Guiliano's instructions perfectly. At the top of the Via Bella was a painted cart, the ancient legends covering every inch, inside and out. Even the spokes of the wheels and the rims were painted with tiny armored figures so that when the wheels rolled they cleverly gave the illusion of men whirling in combat. The shafts too were colored in bright red curlicues with silver dots.

At that same moment the Maresciallo Roccofino ordered his men to continue climbing the slopes toward the flag on the edge of the cliff. There had been no answering fire for the last hour and he was sure the two outlaws had fled through their tunnel and were now going down the other side of the mountain toward the armored car. He wanted to close the trap. It took his men another hour to reach the cliff edge and tear down the flag. Maresciallo Roccofino went into the cave and had the boulders pushed aside to open up the tunnel. He sent his men down that stone corridor and down the other side of the mountain to rendezvous with the armored car. He was astounded when he found that his quarry had escaped him. He broke up his men into searching and scouting parties, sure they would flush the fugitives from their holes.

Pisciotta gave a little salute, serious yet mocking, buttoned his jacket over his pistol, and started walking toward the gates of the Bellampo Barracks. As he walked he glanced down the road that led to Castellammare, just to make sure there was no armored car on its way back from the mountains.

The cart looked like a man with tattoos that covered every inch of his body. Between the shafts stood a sleepy white mule. Guiliano jumped into the empty driver's seat and looked into the cart. It was packed with huge jugs of wine cradled into bamboo baskets. There were at least twenty of them. Guiliano slipped his shotgun behind a row of jugs. He gave a quick look toward the mountains; there was nothing to be seen, except the flag still flying. He grinned down at Pisciotta. "Everything is in place," he said. "Go and do your little dance."

High up on the cart seat, Turi Guiliano watched Pisciotta walk slowly across the open field and onto the stone path that led to the gate. Then he looked down the Via Bella. He could see his house, but there was nobody standing in front of it. He had hoped he might catch a glimpse of his mother. Some men were sitting in front of one of the houses, their table and wine bottles shaded by an overhanging balcony. Suddenly he remembered the binoculars around his neck and he undipped the strap and threw them into the back of the cart.

The guard only saw a scruffy peasant who dared to grow a mustache more elegant than he deserved. He said roughly, "You there, you lump, where do you think you're going?" He did not unsling his rifle. Pisciotta could have cut his throat in a second.

Instead he tried to look obsequious, tried to suppress his mirth at this child's arrogance. He said, "If you please, I wish to see the Maresciallo. I have some valuable information."

"You can give it to me," the guard said.

A young carabiniere stood guard at the gate, a boy no more than eighteen. His rosy cheeks and hairless face proclaimed his birth in the northern provinces of Italy; his black uniform with white piping, baggy and untailored, and his braided, fiercely military cap gave him the look of some puppet or clown. Against regulations he had a cigarette in his adolescent, cupid's bow mouth. Approaching on foot, Pisciotta felt a surge of amused contempt. Even after what had happened in the last few days the man did not have his rifle ready.

Pisciotta could not help himself. He said scornfully, "And can you pay me too?"

The guard was astounded by this impudence. Then he said contemptuously but a little warily, "I wouldn't pay you a lira if you told me Jesus had come again."

Pisciotta grinned. "Better than that. I know where Turi Guiliano has come again, the man who bloodied your noses."

The guard looked at Pisciotta with a more friendly interest. It was true that many Sicilians became policemen. It was a road out of poverty, it was a small piece of power. It was a well-known national joke that Sicilians became either criminals or policemen and that they did equal damage on both sides. Meanwhile Pisciotta was laughing inwardly at the thought that he would ever become a carabiniere. Pisciotta was a dandy; he owned a silk shirt made in Palermo. Only a fool would preen in that white-piped black uniform and that ridiculous braided stiff billed cap.

The guard said suspiciously, "Since when does a Sicilian help the law in this damned country?"

Pisciotta moved a little closer. "But I have ambitions," he said. "I've put in an application to become a carabiniere. Next month I go to Palermo for my examination. Who knows, both of us might soon be wearing the same uniform."

Pisciotta said gaily, "We'll teach them some manners with the bastinado. " Then, with a confidential air, as if they were already brothers in arms, he said, "Have you a cigarette for me?"

"You'd better think twice," the guard said, not wanting everybody to be in on a good thing. "The pay is small and we'd all starve if we didn't take bribes from smugglers. And just this week two of the men of our barracks, good friends of mine, were killed by that damned Guiliano. And every day the insolence of your peasants who won't even give you directions to the barber in town."

To Pisciotta's delight, the moment of good will fled. The guard was outraged. "A cigarette for you?" he said incredulously. "Why in Christ's name should I give a piece of Sicilian dung a cigarette?" And now finally the guard unslung his rifle.

For a moment Pisciotta felt the savage urge to throw himself forward and slit the guard's throat. "Because I can tell you where to find Guiliano," Pisciotta said. "Your comrades searching the mountains are too stupid to find even a gecko."

The guard looked bewildered. The insolence had him confused; the information offered made him realize he had better consult his superior. He had a feeling that this man was too slippery and could get him into trouble of some kind. He opened the gate and motioned Pisciotta with his rifle to enter the grounds of the Bellampo Barracks. His back was to the street. At that moment, Guiliano, a hundred yards away, kicked the mule awake and started his cart onto the stone pathway to the gate.

The grounds of the Bellampo Barracks consisted of four acres. On the land was the large administration building with an L-shaped wing that held the jail cells. Behind it was the living barracks for the carabinieri themselves, large enough to hold a hundred men with a specially partitioned section that served as a private apartment for the Maresciallo. Off to the right side was a garage for vehicles that was really a barn and still served partially as such since the detachment supported a troop of mules and donkeys for mountain travel where mechanical vehicles were useless.

Far in the rear were a munitions shed and a supply shed, both made of corrugated steel. Surrounding the whole area was a seven-foot barbed wire fence with two high towers for sentries, but these had not been used for many months. The barracks had been built by the Mussolini regime and then enlarged during the war on the Mafia.

When Pisciotta went through the gate he checked for danger signals. The towers were empty, there were no roaming armed guards. It looked like some peaceful deserted farm. There were no vehicles in the garage; in fact there were no vehicles in sight anywhere, which surprised him, and made him worry that one would be returning soon. He could not conceive of the Maresciallo being so stupid as to leave his garrison without a vehicle. He would have to warn Turi that they might get unexpected visitors.

Shepherded by the young guard, Pisciotta entered the wide doors of the administration building. This was a huge room with ceiling fans which did little to dispel the heat. There was a large raised desk dominating the room, and on the sides were railings which enclosed smaller desks for clerks; around the room were wooden benches. These were all empty except for the raised desk. Seated at this was a carabinieri corporal who was an altogether different proposition from the young guard. An ornate gold nameplate on the desk read corporal Canio Silvestro. The upper part of his body was massive -- great shoulders and thick columnar neck crowned by a huge boulder of a head. A pink scar, a slab of shiny dead tissue, seemed pasted from his ear down to the end of his rocklike jaw. A long bushy handlebar mustache flew out like two black wings over his mouth.

He wore the stripes of a corporal on his sleeve, a huge pistol at his belt and worst of all he regarded Pisciotta with the utmost suspicion and distrust as the guard recited his story. When Corporal Silvestro spoke his accent revealed him to be a Sicilian. "You are a lying piece of shit," he said to Pisciotta. But before he could go any further, Guiliano's voice could be heard shouting inside the gate.

The Corporal growled with exasperation, "What in Christ's name is that fellow bellowing about?" and with great strides was out the door. The guard and Pisciotta followed him.

Pisciotta admired the style of Guiliano's voice; the tone coarse, the dialect so thick it was almost unintelligible except to natives of this province, the choice of words arrogantly typical of the well-to-do peasant.

The painted cart and its white mule were outside the gate. Bare to the waist, his broad chest streaming with sweat, Turi Guiliano was swinging a jug of wine. There was a huge idiotic grin on his face; his whole body seemed oafishly askew. His appearance disarmed suspicion. There could be no weapon concealed on his person, he was drunk and the accent was that of the most loutish dialect in all of Sicily. The Corporal's hand dropped from his pistol, the guard lowered his rifle. Pisciotta took a step backward ready to draw his own gun from beneath his jacket.

"Hey there, carabiniere, do you want your wine or not? Yes or no?"

"Who ordered this wine?" the Corporal asked. But he was walking down to the gate and Guiliano knew he would open it wide to let the wagon through.

Again the Corporal felt a twinge of doubt. Some instinct warned him. Realizing this, Guiliano climbed down from the wagon in such a way that he could easily snatch the lupara from its hiding place. But first he lifted up a jug of wine in its bamboo case and said, "I have twenty of these beauties for you."

"I have a wagonload of wine for you," Guiliano bawled out again. He blew his nose with his fingers and snapped the mucus off into the gate.

Guiliano said, "Not by myself, I don't."

"My father told me to bring it for the Maresciallo," Guiliano said with a wink.

The Corporal was staring at Guiliano. The wine was undoubtedly a gift for letting some farmer do a bit of smuggling. The Corporal thought uneasily that as a true Sicilian the father would have brought the wine himself to be more closely associated with the gift. But then he shrugged. "Unload the goods and bring them into the barracks."

Now with the three guards immobilized, their arms full of jugs, Guiliano surveyed the scene. It was exactly as he had wished. Pisciotta was directly behind the Corporal, the only soldier with his arms free. Guiliano scanned the slopes; there was no sign of any of the searching party returning. He checked the road to Castellammare; there was no sign of the armored car. Down the Via Bella the children were still playing. He reached into the wagon and pulled out the lupara and pointed it at the astonished Corporal. At the same time Pisciotta pulled the pistol from beneath his shirt. He pressed it against the Corporal's back. "Don't move an inch," Pisciotta said, "or I'll barber that great mustache of yours with lead."

The Corporal roared out a command toward the quarters barracks and two young carabinieri came running out; their jackets were unbuttoned and they wore no caps. Neither did they bear weapons. Guiliano standing on top of his cart thrust jugs of wine into their arms. He gave a jug to the guard with the rifle, who tried to refuse. Guiliano said with rough good humor, "You'll certainly help drink it, so work."

The Corporal turned to Guiliano and said, "My boy, run away and become an actor, you're very fine. Don't go on with this, you'll never escape. The Maresciallo and his men will be back before nightfall and will hunt you to the ends of the earth. Think it over, my young fellow, what it is to be an outlaw with a price on your head. I'll be hunting for you myself and I never forget a face. I'll find out your name and dig you out if you hide yourself in hell."

Guiliano kept the lupara on the other three frightened guards. He said, "Keep those jugs in your arms and everybody go into the building." The armed guard hugging the jug let his rifle drop to the ground. Pisciotta picked it up as they moved inside. In the office, Guiliano picked up the name plaque and admired it. "Corporal Canio Silvestro. Your keys, please. All of them."

The Corporal's hand rested on his pistol and he glared at Guiliano. Pisciotta knocked his hand forward and plucked out his weapon. The Corporal turned and gave him a cold examining stare that was deadly. Pisciotta smiled and said, "Excuse me."

The Corporal put his hand to his side for the pistol Pisciotta had already removed. Guiliano liked the man more for that instinctive reaction. He had courage and a sense of duty. The other guards were terrified. This was the Salvatore Guiliano who had already killed three of their comrades. There was no reason to think that he would leave them alive.

The Corporal looked at him scornfully. "And you'll tell me, like an idiot?"

Guiliano smiled at him. For some reason he liked the man. He said, "But if you want to know my name, why don't you ask?"

Guiliano said, "I never lie. My name is Guiliano."

The Corporal studied Guiliano's face, memorizing it, then, moving slowly and carefully, took a huge ring of keys from a desk drawer. He did so because Guiliano had the shotgun pressed tightly against his back. Guiliano took the keys from him and tossed them to Pisciotta.

"Release those prisoners," he said.

In the prison wing of the administration building, in a large caged area, were ten citizens of Montelepre who had been arrested the night of Guiliano's escape. In one of the separate small cells were the two locally famous bandits, Passatempo and Terranova. Pisciotta unlocked their cell doors and they gleefully followed him into the other room.

The arrested citizens of Montelepre, all neighbors of Guiliano, flooded into the office and crowded around Guiliano to embrace him with gratitude. Guiliano permitted this but was always alert, his eyes on the captive carabinieri. His neighbors were in a delighted good humor at Guiliano's exploit; he had humiliated the hated police, he was their champion. They told him that the Maresciallo had ordered them to be bastinadoed but the Corporal had effectively stopped this punishment from being carried out by the sheer force of his character and his argument that such an action would create so much ill will that it would affect the safety of the barracks. Instead, the next morning they were to have been transported to Palermo to appear before a magistrate for interrogation.

Guiliano held his lupara muzzle down to the floor, afraid that an accidental shot would go into the crowd around him. These men were all older, neighbors he had known as a child. He was careful to speak to them as he had always spoken to them. "You are welcome to come with me to the mountains," he said. "Or you can go visit relatives in other parts of Sicily until the authorities come to their senses." He waited but there was only silence. The two bandits, Passatempo and Terranova, stood aside from the others. They were extremely alert, as if poised to spring. Passatempo was a short, squat ugly man with a gross face marked by childhood smallpox, his mouth thick and unshaped. The peasants in the countryside called him "The Brute." Terranova was small and built like a ferret. Yet his small features were pleasant, his lips molded into a natural smile. Passatempo had been the typical greedy Sicilian bandit who simply stole livestock and killed for money. Terranova had been a hard-working farmer and had started his career as an outlaw when two tax collectors came to confiscate his prize pig. He had killed both of them, slaughtered his pig for his family and relatives to eat and then fled to the mountains. The two men had joined forces but had been betrayed and captured when they were hiding in a deserted warehouse in the grain fields of Corleone.

Guiliano said to them, "You two have no choice. We will go to the mountains together and then if you like you can stay under my command or go off on your own. But for today I need your help and you do owe me a small service." He smiled at them, trying to soften the demand that they submit to his orders.

Before the two bandits could answer, the Corporal of the carabinieri committed an insane act of defiance. Perhaps it was out of some injured Sicilian pride, perhaps out of some inborn animal ferocity, or simply that the fact that the noted bandits in his custody were about to escape enraged him. He was standing only a few paces from Guiliano and with a surprising quickness he took a long step forward.

At the same time he drew a small pistol concealed inside his shirt. Guiliano swung the lupara up to fire but he was too late. The Corporal thrust the pistol to within two feet of Guiliano's head. The bullet would smash directly into Guiliano's face.

Everyone was frozen with shock. Guiliano saw the pistol pointed at his head. Behind it the red raging face of the Corporal was contorting its muscles like the body of a snake. But the pistol seemed to be coming very slowly. It was like falling in a nightmare, falling forever and yet knowing it was only a dream and that he would never hit the bottom. In the fraction of a second before the Corporal pulled the trigger, Guiliano felt an enormous serenity and no fear. His eyes did not blink when the Corporal pulled the trigger, indeed he took a step forward. There was a loud metallic click as the hammer hit the defective ammunition in the barrel. A fraction of a second afterward, he was swarmed over by Pisciotta, Terranova and Passatempo, and the Corporal was falling under the weight of bodies. Terranova had grasped the pistol and was twisting it away, Passatempo had the Corporal by the hair of his head and was trying to gouge out his eyes, Pisciotta had his knife out and ready to plunge it into the Corporal's throat. Guiliano caught it just in time.

Guiliano said quietly, "Don't kill him." And pulled them off the Corporal's now prone and defenseless body. He looked down and was dismayed to see the damage that had been done in that flashing moment of mob fury. The Corporal's ear was half-ripped off his skull and was bleeding great gouts of blood. His right arm hung grotesquely twisted at his side. One of his eyes was spouting blood, a great flap of skin hung over it.

The man was still not afraid. He lay there awaiting death, and Guiliano felt an overwhelming wave of tenderness for him. This was the man who had put him to the test, and who had confirmed his own immortality; this was the man who had certified the impotence of death. Guiliano pulled him to his feet and to the astonishment of all the others gave him a quick embrace. Then he pretended that he was merely helping the Corporal to stand erect.

Terranova was examining the pistol. "You are a very fortunate man," he said to Guiliano. "Only one bullet is defective."

Guiliano held out his hand for the gun. Terranova hesitated for a moment, then gave it to him. Guiliano turned to the Corporal. "Behave yourself," he said in a friendly tone, "and nothing will happen to you or your men. I guarantee it."

Passatempo whispered to Pisciotta, "Hand me your knife and I'll finish him off."

Pisciotta said, "Guiliano gives the orders here and everybody obeys." Pisciotta said it matter-of-factly so as not to alert Passatempo that he was ready to kill him in an instant.

The Montelepre citizens who had been prisoners left hastily. They did not want to be witnesses to a massacre of carabinieri. Guiliano shepherded the Corporal and his fellow guards to the prison wing and locked them in the communal cell together. Then he led Pisciotta, Terranova and Passatempo on a search through the other buildings of the Bellampo Barracks. In the weapons shed they found rifles, pistols and machine pistols, with boxes of ammunition. They draped the weapons over their bodies and loaded the boxes of ammunition into the cart. From the living quarters they took some blankets and sleeping bags and Pisciotta threw two carabinieri uniforms into the cart just for good luck. Then, with Guiliano in the driver's seat, the can brimming over the top with looted goods, the other three men, walking with weapons ready, spread out to protect against any attack. They moved quickly down the road toward Castellammare. It took them over an hour to make their way to the house of the farmer who had loaned Hector Adonis the cart and to bury their loot in his pigpen. Then they helped the farmer cover his can with olive green paint stolen from an American Army supply depot.

The Corporal, still too dazed and weak from his injuries to reply, did not even seem to understand what was being said.

Newspapers all over Italy gave the story great prominence. Just three days before, the killing of the two other carabinieri had also been front-page news, but then Guiliano had just been another desperate Sicilian bandit whose only claim to fame was ferocity. This exploit was another matter. He had won a battle of wits and tactics against the National Police. He had freed his friends and neighbors from what was obviously an unjust imprisonment. Journalists from Palermo, Naples, Rome and Milan descended on the town of Montelepre, interviewing Turi Guiliano's family and friends. His mother was photographed holding up Turi's guitar which she claimed he played like an angel. (This was not true; he was only beginning to play well enough to make his tune recognizable.) His former schoolmates confessed that Turi was such a great reader of books that he had been nicknamed "The Professor." The newspapers seized upon this with delight. A Sicilian bandit who could actually read. They mentioned his cousin Aspanu Pisciotta, who had joined him in his outlawry out of sheer friendship, and wondered at a man who could inspire such loyalty.

Maresciallo Roccofino returned with his search party in time for dinner; the sun was falling out of the sky and it had never burned so brightly that day as the Maresciallo's rage burned at the sight of his men imprisoned in their own cages. The Maresciallo sent his armored car screaming down all the roads for a trace of the outlaws, but by that time Guiliano was deep in the sanctuary of his mountains.

The newspapers only deplored the fact that Guiliano had chosen to free two such villains as Terranova and Passatempo, implying that two such evil companions might tarnish the image of this knight in shining armor.

That an old photograph taken of him when he was seventeen showed him to be incredibly handsome in a Mediterranean manly fashion made the whole story irresistible. But perhaps what appealed to the Italian people most of all was Guiliano's act of mercy in sparing the Corporal who had tried to kill him. It was better than opera -- it was more like the puppet shows so popular in Sicily, where the wooden figures never lost blood or had their flesh torn and mangled by bullets.

Only the Milan newspaper pointed out that Salvatore "Turi" Guiliano had already killed three members of the National Police, and suggested that special measures should be taken for his apprehension, that a murderer should not be excused his crimes merely because he was handsome, well-read and could play the guitar.