The roads were terribly rough; there were no railways here in those days. The roads were rough and the roads were long, but they found themselves at last on the very confines of civilisation. And here they spent some months, most pleasantly, too, though their adventures were not without danger. They found the new settlers at war with the Indians, the latter being a most treacherous race, possessing all the cunning, though hardly so much of the extreme cruelty, which forms so marked a characteristic of the Red men of the American wilderness.
Both Douglas and Leonard soon became adepts in riding the half-wild horses over the plains, and in hunting the emu and llama, in throwing the lasso and the bolas.
“It seems to me,” said Douglas, one day, “that I would like to live in this wild land for ever and a day.”
“It seems to me,” replied Leonard, “that I have been here all my life.”
Everything was so new in this country, and as they happened to be favoured with fine weather, some brief but terrible storms excepted, everything was so lovely. They were the guests of a rich Spaniard, whose house was a kind of shooting-box in the midst of most charming and wild scenery. It was a house of logs, but most artistically designed and built, with terraces around it, and porticoes and verandahs, over which trailed flowers of most beautiful colour, shape, and perfume. It was well surrounded—as indeed it needed to be—by a rampart and a ditch, and more than once it had to stand a siege. Sometimes the Indians made a raid down that way and drove away the horses. But Señor Cabelas had many well-armed servants, and they took a delight in following up and fighting Los Indianos, and returning triumphantly, which they invariably did, with the re-captured animals, or most of them.
Our heroes were always on the hunting path very early in the morning. They went prepared to shoot or fight anything. Wolves there were in plenty, but they gave the horsemen a wide berth, nor were they really worth powder and shot. But far away among the wild hills, those long-haired wolves are really a source of very great danger.
But there were panthers or pumas, and a few jaguars, and although none of these attacked, still once or twice, when at bay, they made a terrible resistance. In a case like this, if a man does not keep cool, or if he allows any nervousness to interfere with his aim, it is ten to one that the jaguar will have the best of the battle, and the huntsman be left dead or terribly wounded.
When the day’s sport or hunting in the pampas was over and done, when the dinner in Señor Cabelas’ tall-ceiled room had been discussed, how pleasant it was to get out and sit under the verandah in the cool of a summer’s evening, and tell tales, and think and talk of home.
How pleasantly tired and drowsy Leonard and Douglas used to be by bedtime, and how soon they were wrapped in dreamless slumber when their limbs were stretched in bed, their heads upon the downy pillows!
