The Point of No Return
This situation made Moreira so angry that he swore that he would stab Sardetti for every single peso he had lost. Moreira fulfilled his oath when he killed Mr. Sardetti in a facon duel at Sardetti's grocery store. Returning home after a night of wandering, he found Don Francisco and four other soldiers waiting to arrest him. He resisted, and during the fight, Don Francisco and two soldiers were killed.
There began the unhappy part of Moreira's life. Extremely able in knifefights, Moreira won them all, even against more than one person. He gained such fame for this that men looked for him and picked fights with him to gain the glory of defeating him, but he never lost. He avoided fights whenever he could, and only killed after repeated provocation and in self-defense. Eventually, he served as a bodyguard for powerful politicians who promised to clean Moreira's reputation, but they never did so.
It is said that Moreira never took the saddle off his horse, just in case he had to make a quick escape. He spent much of this part of his life wandering through different towns and cities of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, including Navarro, Las Heras, Lobos, Veinticinco de Mayo and the lands of the Indian Cacique Coliqueo.
Read more about this topic: Juan Moreira
Famous quotes containing the words point and/or return:
“An accent mark, perhaps, instead of a whole western accenta point of punctuation rather than a uniform twang. That is how it should be worn: as a quiet point of character reference, an apt phrase of sartorial allusionmacho, sotto voce.”
—Phil Patton (b. 1953)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)