Chapter Twenty Six.
Castizo’s Idyllic Home in the Cordilleras—Preparing for winter—catching and Breaking Wild Horses.
So long had we lazed on the Pampas and on the borders of the Cordilleras, that summer had almost fled before we reached Castizo’s mountain home. It is probably doing ourselves injustice, however, to talk of lazing on the Pampas. The time was well spent, for if there be any happiness of a solid nature on earth, I think it had been ours during those all-too-short summer months. If you were to ask me for an analysis of this happiness, I think I should reply that it resulted from that perfect freedom from all care which only a true nomad ever enjoys, from the constant chain of adventures and incidents that surrounded us, from the strange scenery weird and wild, from the beauty of the sky night and morning, and, above all, from the perfect, the bounding health we enjoyed, health that made us laugh at danger and consider troubles, in whatever shape they came, trifles light as air.
Castizo had told us often about his estancia in the hills. For many years he had gone back and fore to it from Santa Cruz. It was simply a craze of his, he said; a mere whim or fad. He dearly loved loneliness, and in his own little Highlands he enjoyed it to the fullest extent. He was never afraid of the Indians. Not that he considered them immaculate as to virtue, and the soul of honour; but because his person, intact and safe and sound, represented to them so much property. He never paid them wholly until they had returned with him to the little station on the eastern coast, and then great indeed was their reward.
But all independently of this, I am convinced that these poor Indians dearly loved their white cacique, and that apart from any financial consideration, any one of them would have fought for him until he fell and died on the Pampa.
Yes, Castizo had spoken much to us of his life and adventures in the mountains, but he had not described his little village. Therefore we were not prepared for what we saw.
First, then, we had to cross a wide, extended, open plain or pampa, so great in extent indeed that we began to think the wilderness had commenced again.
In the very centre of this plain was a broad lagoon, but how fed or dried we could not tell, for no stream ran into nor out of it. There it was, nevertheless, and all round its borders bushes grew, and a rank, rushy kind of vegetation with tall flowers, crimson, blue, and bright yellow. We noticed with pleasure, too, that there were both ducks and geese on it. On the plain, moreover, we shot several birds of the grouse species, though quite different from any I had ever seen before.
After we had ridden about an hour longer, a purple mist that had hitherto hidden the hills was lifted up like a veil by some slight change of wind, and there revealed in all its beauty was one of the loveliest little glens ever met with in a long summer’s ramble. And near the top, closely shut in and sheltered from the cold west winds by wooded hills, was our mountain home. Primitive enough, in all conscience, was this estancia, consisting of a mere collection of log huts, well thatched and cosy enough in appearance, but only one having any pretension to display. This last was plastered as to its walls, had a little garden in front, and flowers growing up over it.
Before we reached this tiny village we came upon the Indian camp, and here children and women and old men ran out to meet us, with joyful shouts that were re-echoed from the hills and rocks on every side.
Even before the wives embraced their husbands or the children their fathers, they all gathered round Castizo, the welcome they gave him bringing tears to his eyes.
“Yank! Yank! Yank!” they shouted a hundred times o’er. (Father! father! father!) Had he possessed a score of hands they would have shaken them all, while the pretty children who could not reach high enough must catch and kiss the border of his guanaco robe.
They took away his horse. He must walk the rest of the way. He must be in their midst and tell them all his adventures. Their Yank must speak to his children, and tell them too what he had brought them.
The girls had culled wild flowers, and these they hung round the necks of all our horses, so that the welcome was a general one.
No, we had not expected this. Neither had we expected that the inside of the principal cottage would be so well furnished. Everything was rough and homely, to be sure, but everything was comfortable and cosy. Viewed externally, it was difficult at first to see whence the smoke could issue, but as soon as we entered we noticed a very ample fireplace indeed, the smoke being conveyed away by a copper chimney issuing from the back of the house, and thus protected from the baffling winds of winter and spring.
We admired all we saw, and Peter at once ensconced himself in one of the easy chairs, and confessed that he felt happier and hungrier than he had done for many a long day.
Pedro had the toldo erected at some distance from the house, and proceeded forthwith to cook dinner.
After this meal Castizo went down to the Indian camp, accompanied by Lawlor, carrying a huge bundle containing the presents and pretty things brought to the old men and women and children all the way from Valparaiso. There were pipes and cards (Spanish) and dice-boxes of curious shapes for the former, trinkets and dolls and toys and sweets for the children, and for the ladies strings of beads, necklaces, bracelets, and lockets that made them almost scream with delight and admiration. As gewgaw after gewgaw was taken out the constant shout by these impulsive young ladies was—
“Heen careechi? Heen careechi?” (Who gets that?) followed by a grateful—
“O nareemo nachee!” (Many thanks!) from the lucky recipient.
Only one old man asked for rum. But Castizo shook his head and replied in Spanish, which this Indian understood—
“Never more, Goonok, never again. When last I brought rum to the camp, thinking you would but taste and put it away, hé aqui! you and your people drank all. All at once! You quarrelled and fought. There was much bloodshed, Goonok. You know the green grave at the corner of the wood yonder. There your brave son sleeps. He was killed that night, Goonok, by his own cousin’s hand. Never more, Goonok, never again.”
“Maté yerba?”
“Yes, plenty of that. As much maté as will last the camp all the livelong winter.”
“Hé!” cried the old man. “Is, then, our white cacique to stay with us through the winter?”
“Yes.”
“And his young men and all his followers?”
“All, Goonok, every one of us.”
“Then is Goonok indeed happy, and to-night, old as he is, Goonok will dance.”
It was only natural that a ball should follow the home-coming of the white father, as Castizo was sometimes called.
A special toldo was erected for the purpose by the Indians by making three kaus into one, and to the music of horrid drums and still more horrid pipes, very pretty dances were gone through indeed. It seemed to me a pity, however, that the men daubed their faces with paint or clay, as it gave them a grotesque appearance which bordered on the hideous.
At a sign from Castizo, and during a lull in the proceedings, Peter brought out his clarionet. He had hardly played a note ere a silence deep as death fell upon the assembled Indians. At first some of them ran away, as if frightened, but all soon returned and stood or sat listening entranced. How very deeply the music had affected them was proved by the sighs they gave vent to immediately after Peter had finished. There must be something genuinely good in the heart of those wild Tehuelches, or they could not love music so much.
We all slept well and soundly that night, there being nothing to disturb us save the occasional shrill scream of the Indian on sentry. This startled Jill and I at first, but as the sound died away in mournful cadence, instinct told us what it meant, and we slept all the better after it.
Though it was yet early in autumn, we took the advice of our own cacique and set about at once preparing for the long winter that was before us. For storms in these regions come on suddenly, sometimes, long before autumn is over.
Our people were divided into two parties, one to hunt, another to work at home and in the woods.
The former brought in the flesh of the guanaco, the ostrich, the armadillo, and even the skunk. Skunk meat certainly sounds offensive, but it is very delicious eating, nevertheless. This meat was carefully salted and stored in huge earthenware jars.
One way of storing meat was very strange to me, but, as I afterwards discovered, most effectual. It was first salted with pampas salt from the Salinas, it was then buried in a grave lined with salt-sprinkled leaves, and well packed down. Meat was also sun-dried and partially smoked.
Fish were caught in abundance, especially a sort of perch, and these were smoked with a peculiar kind of wood and stored away for winter use.
Firewood was also to be had in abundance, simply for the gathering. Much of this was dug up out of the boggy land, and was found to be “as fat as fir,” to use an expression of Ritchie’s.
There were many kinds of fruit in the forests, principally of the hardier species, and bushels of these were dried in the sun or by fire, and during the winter they made a valuable adjunct to our diet. Nuts too were plentiful.
But, after all, the most important item of food, not only for ourselves but for our horses, was a kind of tuberous root, which grew in any quantity in the glens and even on the banks out in the open plain. For two whole weeks we had fully a score of Indians, to say nothing of their children, digging and storing these roots. The mice were in millions all round our estancia, so the only safe way of preserving our roots and thereby preventing a famine was to dig graves and bury them. Even these had to be watched, so numerous were the mice.
Hay we stored in large quantities in stacks; also the tender herbage of several trees of which, when green, the horses ate with great relish.
We soon discovered that the armadillos were on the scent of our buried flesh food. So stakes were driven in the ground, and to these dogs were fastened every night in the immediate vicinity of our buried treasure. We did not intend, however, that these poor animals should be on sentry all night long exposed to the wind and rain, the sleet or the snow. We therefore built them shelters, so that they were cosy and happy.
We had our reward, for even on the second night of his watch one dog made an immensely large armadillo prisoner. I happened to be first about that morning, and seeing how eagerly the faithful canine sentry looked towards me, I went up to pat him, when he pointed to a huge ball-looking thing.
“That’s the robber,” the dog seemed to say; “I can’t get him to unroll himself, or I should soon let the stuffing out of him. Will you oblige me?”
I did not oblige the dog, as I object to take life in a cold-blooded manner. But an Indian did, and we had the ’dillo for dinner. Though somewhat peculiar in flavour, the flesh was as tender as that of a stewed rabbit.
So much fodder had we collected, that we determined to add to our stock of horses, feeling sure that some accident would befall a few of them before the winter was over.
Jill and Ritchie joined the expedition to go over the plain in search of wild horses. Peter preferred to stay at home. He had no desire, he said, to raise his bumps again. I stayed with Peter to keep him company.
Jill and Ritchie were gone for three days, and I was getting uneasy when the whole cavalcade reappeared.
“Terribly wild work,” said Ritchie as he entered the log-house. “Ain’t I tired just?”
“Oh, I’m not a bit,” said Jill, coming in behind him.
Jill looked flushed and excited, and confessed to being delightfully hungry. He proved his words, too, when we all sat down to dinner.
The Indians had brought in with them five poor, dejected-looking animals that had been thrown with the lasso, and altogether used far more cruelly than I care to describe.
But these horses soon took to their food; then the breaking-in process was commenced. After being tormented until perfectly wild, and their strength almost quite expended with kicking and plunging, they were forcibly bitted and bridled. An Indian then waiting his chance would spring boldly on the bare-back of a steed, and the battle ’twixt man and beast commenced in downright earnest. The way the Indian breaker stuck to his horse, despite his rearing, plunging, and buck-jumping, was truly marvellous. If he was thrown, which he sometimes was, he sprang to his feet again, those around jeering and laughing at him, and though bruised and bleeding, vaulted once more on the horse’s back.
The battle had but one ending: total exhaustion of the horse, and victory of the Indian.
Only one poor animal escaped thorough subjection. This steed reared too far, fell backwards, and his skull coming against a piece of rock with a sickening thud, he never moved a leg again.
We had that horse for dinner.
Jeeka, seeing the accident, touched me on the shoulder.
“Poor horse!” he said, “good horse! He go there now. So, so?”
He pointed solemnly upwards with his whole arm as he spoke.
What could I answer? This was my convert to Christianity, the religion of love. I had read to him of horses in both the Bible and New Testament. Could I now say to him, “No, Jeeka, a horse has no hereafter?” Had I done so, I would not have been speaking my mind, as I do most sincerely believe that no creature God ever made is born to perish. So I nodded and smiled and said—
“So, so, Jeeka; so, so.”