Over the previous months Guiliano had lived up to his agreement with Rome. He had torn down all the posters of rival parties, had raided the headquarters of left-wing groups and broken up their meetings in Corleone, Montelepre, Castellammare, Partinico, Piani dei Greci, San Giuseppe Jato and the great city of Monreale. His bandits had put posters in all these cities that proclaimed in great black letters, death to the communists, and he had burned some of the community houses established by the Socialist Workers groups. But his campaign had started too late to affect the regional elections, and he had been reluctant to use the ultimate terror of assassination. Messages flew between Don Croce, Minister Trezza, the Cardinal of Palermo and Turi Guiliano. Reproaches were made. Guiliano was urged to step up his campaign so that the situation could be reversed for the national elections. Guiliano saved all these messages for his Testament.

The 1948 April elections of the Sicilian legislature were a disaster for the Christian Democratic party in Rome. The "People's Bloc," the combination of Communist Socialist left-wing parties, polled 600,000 votes, to the Christian Democratic 330,000. Another 500.000 votes were split between the Monarchist and two other splinter parties. Panic reigned in Rome. Something drastic had to be done before the national election or Sicily, the most backward region of the country, would be decisive in turning all of Italy into a Socialist country.

The two most left-wing and generally rebellious towns in Sicily were Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato. For many years, even under Mussolini, they had celebrated the first of May as the day of revolution. Since May first was also the name day of Saint Rosalia, their celebration would be disguised as a religious festival not forbidden by the Fascist authorities. But now their May Day parades were bold with red flags and inflammatory speeches. The coming May Day in a week's time was to be the greatest in history. As was the custom, the two towns would combine to celebrate and envoys from all over Sicily would bring their families to rejoice over their recent victory. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, a renowned and fiery orator, would give the main speech. It was to be the official celebration of the Left of their recent stunning victory in the elections.

A great stroke was needed, and it was the fertile brain of Don Croce that conceived it. He sent a message to Guiliano through Stefano Andolini.

Don Croce's plan was that this celebration was to be attacked by Guiliano's band and broken up. They would mount machine guns and fire over the heads of the crowd to disperse them. It was to be the first step in a campaign of intimidation, a paternal warning, a soft advisory hand of admonishment. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, would learn that his election to Parliament did not give him license in Sicily or make sacred his person. Guiliano agreed to the plan and ordered his chiefs, Pisciotta, Terranova, Passatempo, Silvestro and Stefano Andolini to stand by to carry it out.

For the last three years the celebration had always been held on a mountain plain between Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato, sheltered by the twin peaks of Monte Pizzuta and Monte Cumeta. The people of the towns would climb up to the plain on wildly curving roads that joined near the top, so that the populations of the two towns would meet and become a single procession. They would enter the plain through a narrow pass, and then spread out to celebrate their holiday. This pass was called the Portella della Ginestra.

The villages of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato were poor, their houses ancient, their agriculture archaic. They believed in the ancient codes of honor; the women sitting outside their houses had to sit in profile to keep their good reputations. But the two villages were home to the most rebellious people on the island of Sicily.

The villages were so old that most of the houses were built of stone, and some had no windows but only small apertures covered with iron discs. Many families housed their animals in the rooms in which they lived. The town bakeries kept goats and young lambs huddled by their ovens, and if a freshly baked loaf dropped to the floor it would usually hit a pile of dung.

The Cardinal of Palermo also was vexed. He had made a special trip to say a Mass in the two villages and had warned them not to vote for the Communists. He had blessed their children and even baptized them, and still they had turned on their Church. He summoned the village priests to Palermo and warned them that they must increase their efforts for the national elections. Not only in the political interests of the Church but to save ignorant souls from hell.

But in the regional election of April 1948 they had treacherously voted overwhelmingly for the Communist or Socialist parties. This had enraged Don Croce who thought that the local Mafia chief controlled the area. But the Don declared that it was the disrespect to the Catholic Church that saddened him. How could devout Sicilians have so deceived the holy sisters who with Christian charity put bread into the mouths of their children?

The village men hired themselves out as laborers to wealthy landowners for a dollar a day and sometimes even less, not enough to feed their families. So when the nuns and priests, "Black Crows," came with their packets of macaroni and charity clothes, the villagers swore the necessary oaths: to vote for the Christian Democrats.

Minister Trezza was not so surprised. He was Sicilian and knew the island's history. The people of the two villages had always been proud and ferocious fighters against the rich in Sicily and the tyranny of Rome. They had been the first to join Garibaldi, and before that they had fought the French and Moorish rulers of the island. In Piani dei Greci the villagers descended from Greeks who had fled to Sicily to escape Turkish invaders. These villagers still retained their Greek customs, spoke the language and observed the Greek holidays by wearing ancient costumes. But it had been a stronghold of the Mafia which had always fostered rebellion. So Minister Trezza was disappointed by Don Croce's performance, his inability to educate them. But he also knew that the vote in the villages and the whole surrounding countryside had been engineered by one man, a Socialist party organizer named Silvio Ferra.

Silvio Ferra was a highly decorated soldier in the Italian Army of World War II. He had won his medals in the African campaign and then had been captured by the American Army. He had been an inmate of a prisoner of war camp in the United States where he had attended educational courses designed to make prisoners understand the democratic process. He had not quite believed them until he had been given permission to work outside the camp for a baker in the local town. He had been amazed at the freedom of American life, the ease with which hard work could be turned into a lasting prosperity, the upward mobility of the lower classes. In Sicily the hardest-working peasant could only hope to provide food and shelter for his children; there could be no provision for the future.

In four years he had done what the agitators from the north of Italy could not do. He had translated the Red Revolution and Socialist doctrine into Sicilian terms. He convinced them that a vote for the Socialist party meant getting a piece of land. He preached that the great estates of the nobles should be broken up since the nobles left them uncultivated. Land that could grow wheat for their children. He convinced them that under a Socialist government the corruption of Sicilian society could be wiped out. There would be no bribing of officials for preference, no one would have to give a priest a pair of eggs to read a letter from America, the village postman would not have to be given a token lira to ensure delivery of mail, men would not have to auction off the labor of their bodies at a pittance to work the fields of dukes and barons. There would be an end to starvation wages, and the officials of the government would be servants of the people, as it was in America. Silvio Ferra quoted chapter and verse to show that the official Catholic Church propped up the debased capitalistic system, yet he never attacked the Virgin Mary, the diversified useful saints, or a belief in Jesus. On Easter mornings he greeted his neighbors with the traditional, "Christ is risen." On Sundays he went to Mass. His wife and children were strictly supervised in true Sicilian style for he was a believer in all the old values, the son's absolute devotion for his mother, respect for his father, the sense of obligation for his most obscure cousins.

When he was returned to his native Sicily, Silvio Ferra became an ardent advocate of America. But he soon saw that the Christian Democratic party was a tool of the rich and so joined a Socialist Workers' study group in Palermo. He had a thirst for education and a passion for books. Soon he had gobbled up all the theories of Marx and Engels and then joined the Socialist party. He was given the assignment of organizing the party club in San Giuseppe Jato.

When the Mafia cosc h e in San Giuseppe Jato warned him that he was going too far, he smiled and intimated that in the future he would welcome their friendship, though in his heart he knew that the last and greatest battle would be against the Mafia. When Don Croce sent special messengers to try to make an accommodation, he put them off. Such was his reputation for bravery in the war, the respect in which he was held in the village and his indication that he would be judicious with the Friends of the Friends that Don Croce decided to be patient, especially since he was sure the election was won anyway.

But most of all Silvio Ferra had a sympathy for his fellow man, a rare quality in the Sicilian peasant. If a neighbor became ill he brought food for his family, he did chores for ailing old widows who lived alone, he cheered all those men who eked out a bare living and were fearful of their futures. He proclaimed a new dawn of hope under the Socialist party. When he gave political speeches he used the southern rhetoric so dearly loved by Sicilians. He did not explain the economic theories of Marx but spoke with fire of the vengeance owed to those who had oppressed the peasants for centuries. "As bread is sweet to us," he said, "so is the blood of the poor to the rich who drink it."

It was Silvio Ferra who organized a cooperative of laboring men who refused to submit to the labor auction where the lowest wage got the work. He established a set wage per day, and the nobility was forced to meet it at harvesting or watch their olives, grapes and grain rot. And so Silvio Ferra was a marked man.

What saved him was that he was under the protection of Turi Guiliano. That had been one of the considerations that had persuaded Don Croce to stay his hand. Silvio Ferra had been born in Montelepre. Even as a youth his qualities had been evident. Turi Guiliano had admired him extravagantly, though they had not been close friends because of the difference in their ages -- Guiliano was four years younger -- and because Silvio had gone off to war. Silvio had returned a much decorated hero. He met a girl from San Giuseppe Jato and moved there to marry her. And as the political fame of Ferra grew, Guiliano let it be known the man was his friend though their politics were different. Thus when Guiliano began his program to "educate" the voters of Sicily, he gave orders that no action was to be taken against the village of San Giuseppe Jato or the person of Silvio Ferra.

Turi Guiliano and his parents and La Venera were drinking coffee and asked the girl if she would like a cup. She refused. Only La Venera noticed how pretty the girl was and was aware of her fascination. Guiliano did not recognize her as the little girl whom he had once met crying in the road and given lire to. Guiliano said to her, "Give your brother my thanks for his offer and tell him not to worry about his mother and father, they will always be under my protection." Justina quickly left the house and dashed back to her parents. From that time on she dreamed of Turi Guiliano as her lover. And she was proud of the affection he had for her brother.

Ferra had heard of this and was clever enough to send a message to Guiliano thanking him and saying he would be of service to Guiliano at his command. The message was sent via Ferra's parents who still lived in Montelepre with their other children. One of the children was a young girl named Justina, only fifteen, who carried the note to the Guiliano home to deliver it to his mother. It so happened that Guiliano was visiting at the time and was there to receive the message personally. At fifteen most Sicilian girls are already women, and she fell in love with Turi Guiliano, as how could she not? His physical power, his feline grace fascinated her so that she stared at him almost rudely.

On May Day of 1948 the populace of the two towns of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato rose early to start on their long march up mountain trails to the plain beyond the Portella della Ginestra. They were led by bands of musicians from Palermo especially hired for the occasion. Silvio Ferra, flanked by his wife and two children, was in the vanguard of the San Giuseppe Jato procession, proudly carrying one of the huge red flags. Dazzlingly painted carts, with their horses in special red plumes and colorful tasseled blankets, were loaded with cooking pots, huge wooden boxes of spaghetti, enormous wooden bowls for salads. There was a special cart for the jugs of wine. Another cart fitted with blocks of ice carried wheels of cheese, great salami logs and the dough and ovens to bake fresh bread.

And so when Guiliano agreed to suppress the festival at the Portella della Ginestra, he sent a friendly warning to Silvio Ferra that he should not take part in the May Day meeting. He assured him that none of the villagers of San Giuseppe Jato would be harmed but that there might be some danger he could not protect him from if he persisted in his Socialist party activities. Not that he, Guiliano, would ever do anything to harm him, but the Friends of the Friends were determined to crush the Socialist party in Sicily and Ferra would certainly be one of their targets.

When Silvio Ferra received this note he assumed it was another attempt to frighten him off, instigated by Don Croce. It did not matter. The Socialist party was on the march to victory and he would not miss one of its great celebrations of the victory they had already won.

Children danced and kicked soccer balls along the column. Men on horseback tested their steeds for the sprint races that were to be a highlight of the afternoon games.

As Silvio Ferra led his townspeople toward the narrow mountain pass called the Portella della Ginestra, the people of Piani dei Greci converged from the other road, holding their red flags and Socialist party standards high. The two crowds mixed, exchanging exuberant greetings as they walked on, gossiping about the latest scandals in their villages and speculating on what their victory in the election would bring, what dangers lay ahead. Despite rumors that there would be trouble on this May Day they were by no means afraid. Rome they despised, the Mafia they feared, but not to submission. After all they had defied both in the last election and nothing had happened.

By noontime more than three thousand people had spread out over the plain. The women started the portable ovens to boil water for pasta, the children were flying kites over which flew the tiny red hawks of Sicily. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, was going over his notes for the speech he was to deliver; a group of men led by Silvio Ferra was putting together the wooden platform which would hold him and prominent citizens of the two towns. The men helping him were also advising him to keep his introduction of the Senator short -- the children were getting hungry.

On that same morning but much earlier, indeed before the smokey Sicilian sun had risen, two squads of twelve men each had made the march from Guiliano's headquarters in the mountains above Montelepre down to the mountain range which held the Portella della Ginestra. One squad was commanded by Passatempo and the other by Terranova. Each squad carried a heavy machine gun. Passatempo led his men high up on the slopes of Monte Cumeta and carefully supervised the emplacement of his machine gun. Four men were detailed to service and fire it. The remaining men were spread out on the slope with their rifles and lupare to protect them from any attack.

At that moment there were light popping sounds in the mountain air. Some of the children must have brought firecrackers, Silvio Ferra thought. He turned to look.

Terranova and his men occupied the slopes of Monte Pizzuta on the other side of the Portella della Ginestra. From this vantage point, the arid plain and the villages below were under the barrels of his machine gun and the rifles of his men. This was to prevent any surprise by the carabinieri if they should venture out from their barracks.

Guiliano had planned to go with this expedition and command it personally, but seven days before May Day, Aspanu Pisciotta's weak chest had finally succumbed to a hemorrhage. He had been running up the side of the mountain to the band's headquarters when blood spurted out of his mouth and he collapsed to the ground. His body started rolling downhill. Guiliano, climbing behind him, thought it was one of his cousin's pranks. He stopped the body with his foot and then saw the front of Pisciotta's shirt covered with blood. At first he thought Aspanu had been hit by a sniper and he had missed the sound of the shot. He took Pisciotta in his arms and carried him uphill. Pisciotta was still conscious and kept murmuring, "Put me down, put me down." And Guiliano knew it could not be a bullet. The voice betrayed the weariness of an inner breakage, not the savage trauma of a body violated by metal.

From both mountain slopes men of the Guiliano band watched the townspeople from Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato make their long marches to the tabletop plain. A few of the men had relatives in these processions, but they felt no twinge of conscience. For Guiliano's instructions had been explicit. The machine guns were to be fired over the heads of crowds until they dispersed and fled back to their villages. Nobody was to be hurt.

The next day the doctor told him that Pisciotta needed a drug called streptomycin that could only be obtained in the United States. Guiliano thought about this. He would ask his father and Stefano Andolini to write Don Corleone in America and ask that some be sent. He told the doctor this and asked if Pisciotta could be released from the hospital. The doctor said yes, but only if he rested in bed for several weeks.

The doctor brought Pisciotta to the Monreale hospital for further tests and asked Guiliano to remain to wait for the results.

Pisciotta was put on a stretcher and Guiliano led a band of ten men to a doctor in Monreale. The doctor was often used by the band to treat gunshot wounds and could be counted on to keep secrets. But this doctor reported Pisciotta's illness to Don Croce as he had all the other transactions with Guiliano. For the doctor hoped to be appointed head of a Palermo hospital and he knew this would be impossible without Don Croce's blessing.

"I'll come back in the morning," Guiliano told the doctor. He detailed four of his men to guard Pisciotta in the hospital and with his other men he went to the home of one of his band to hide.

When Silvio Ferra turned to the sound of the firecrackers, three things registered simultaneously on his mind. The first was the sight of a small boy holding up his arm in astonishment. At the end of it, instead of a hand holding a kite, was a bloody horrible stump, the kite sailing off to the sky above the slopes of Monte Cumeta. The second was his shock of recognition -- the firecrackers were machine-gun fire. The third was a great black horse plunging wildly through the crowd, riderless, its flanks streaming blood. Then Silvio Ferra was running through the crowd, searching for his wife and children.

So it was that Guiliano was in Monreale taking care of Pisciotta, arranging a house for him to recuperate in, as the attack was made at the Portella della Ginestra.

On the slopes of Monte Pizzuta, Terranova watched the scene through his field glasses. At first he thought people were falling to the ground out of terror, and then he saw motionless bodies sprawled with that peculiar abandon of death and he struck the machine gunner away from his weapon. But as his machine gun fell silent, he could still hear the gun on Monte Cumeta chattering. Terranova thought Passatempo had not yet seen that the gunfire had been aimed too low and people were being massacred. After a few minutes the other gun stopped and an awful stillness filled the Portella della Ginestra. Then floating up to the twin mountain peaks came the wails of the living, the shrieks of the wounded and the dying. Terranova signaled his men to gather close, had them dismantle the machine gun, and then led them away around the other side of the mountain to make their escape. As they did so he was pondering whether he should return to Guiliano to report this tragedy. He was afraid Guiliano might execute him and his men out of hand. Yet he was sure Guiliano would give him a fair hearing, and he and his men could truly swear that they had elevated their fire. He would return to headquarters and report. He wondered if Passatempo would do the same.

By the time Silvio Ferra found his wife and children, the machine guns had stopped. His family was unhurt and were starting to rise from the ground. He flung them down again and made them stay prone for another fifteen minutes. He saw a man on a horse galloping toward Piani dei Greci to get help from the carabinieri barracks, and when the man was not shot off his horse he knew the attack was over. He got up.

From the tabletop of the plain that crowned the Portella della Ginestra, thousands of people were streaming back to their villages at the bottom of the mountains. And on the ground were the dead and wounded, their families crouched over them weeping. The proud banners they had carried that morning were lying in the dust, their dark golds, brilliant greens and solitary reds startlingly bright in the noon sun. Silvio Ferra left his family to help the wounded. He stopped some of the fleeing men and made them serve as stretcher bearers. He saw with horror that some of the dead were children, and some were women. He felt the tears come to his eyes. All his teachers were wrong, those believers in political action. Voters would never change Sicily. It was all foolishness. They would have to murder to get their rights.

Passatempo and Terranova had never seen such fury in Guiliano before. They stood rigid, not daring to move as Guiliano interrogated them. They swore their guns had been elevated to fire over the heads of the crowd, and when they had observed the people being hit, they had halted the guns.

It was Hector Adonis who brought the news to Guiliano at Pisciotta's bedside. Guiliano immediately went to his mountain headquarters, leaving Pisciotta to recover without his personal protection.

There on the cliffs above Montelepre, he summoned Passatempo and Terranova.

Guiliano next questioned the men in the squads and the men on the machine guns. He pieced the scene together. Terranova's machine gun had fired about five minutes before being halted. Passatempo's about ten minutes. The gunners swore they had fired above the heads of the crowds. None of them would admit they had possibly made an error or depressed the angle of the guns in any way.

"Let me warn you before you speak," Guiliano began. "Whoever is responsible will be found out no matter how long it takes. And the longer it takes the more severe the punishment. If it was an honest mistake, confess now and I promise you won't suffer death."

After he dismissed them, Guiliano sat alone. He felt, for the first time since he had become a bandit, a sense of intolerable shame. In more than four years as an outlaw he could boast that he had never harmed the poor. That boast was no longer true. He had massacred them. In his innermost heart he could no longer think of himself as a hero. Then he thought over the possibilities. It could have been a mistake: His band was fine with lupare, but the heavy machine guns were not too familiar to them. Firing downward, it was possible they had misjudged the angle. He could not believe that Terranova or Passatempo had played him false, but there was always the awful possibility that one or both had been bribed to commit the massacre. Also, it had occurred to him the moment he heard the news that there might have been a third ambush party.

But surely, if it had been deliberate, more people would have been shot. Surely it would have been a far more terrible slaughter. Unless, Guiliano thought, the aim of the massacre had been to disgrace the name of Guiliano. And whose idea had it been, the attack on the Portella della Ginestra? The coincidence was too much for him to swallow.

The inevitable and humiliating truth was that he had been outwitted by Don Croce.