The vaqueros are a peculiar race of men, whose ways and manners are quite distinct from the customs known in Europe. Those of San Lucar may serve as a type. Born on the Indian frontiers they have contracted sanguinary habits, and their disregard of life is remarkable. Inveterate gamblers, the cards are never out of their hands; and play is a fruitful source of quarrels, in which the knife is constantly called into requisition. Careless of the future, little heedful of present trouble, and enduring physical suffering hardily, they look upon death with as much contempt as on life, and recoil before no danger.
These men—who often abandon their families in order to live a life of greater license among the savage hordes of the desert; who, in shear wantonness, spill the blood of their fellow creatures; who are implacable in their hate—these men are capable of ardent friendship, and of extraordinary devotedness and self-denial. Their character presents a curious mixture of good and evil, of unbridled vice and sterling qualities. They are at one and the same time idle, gamblers, quarrelsome, drunkards, ferocious, brave to rashness and devoted heart and soul to a friend, or the patron of their choice. From infancy blood runs like water from their hands during the period of the matanza del ganado (slaughtering the cattle); and this familiarity with the crimson stains hardens them to the sight of human gore. Lastly, their jokes are as coarse as their habits, the threat of using the knife on quite frivolous occasions being the most delicate and the most common.
While the vaqueros, reseated at the table in the pulquería, were pouring libations to their reconciliation, and drowning the remembrance of the petty incident in floods of pulque and mezcal (a coarse kind of brandy), a man entered, muffled in the folds of a thick cloak, and with the wide brim of his hat pulled over his eyes. Approaching the table without uttering a word, he cast a look of seeming indifference around, lighted a cigarette at the brazier, and struck three blows upon it with a large piastre he held between his fingers.
The noise, which appeared to be a signal, startled the three vaqueros. They dropped the noisy conversation they were engaged in, as if suddenly struck by an electric shock, and became as still as death. Pablito and Carlocho began to tremble, seeking all the while to discover the features of the new arrival under the folds of his cloak; while the verado turned his head on one side to hide his crafty smiles.
The stranger cast his half-consumed cigar into the brazier, and retired from the filthy room in the same silence in which he came.
An instant later, Pablito, who was stanching his bleeding cheek, and Carlocho, making a pretence of important business, quitted the pulquería. The verado glided along the wall to the door, and followed at their heels.
"Holloa!" muttered the pulquero, "Here are three pícaros (villains), who seem to be concocting some devil's job, in which more broken heads than duros (dollars) are to be gained. ¡Caray! That is their lookout."
The remaining vaqueros, completely absorbed in a game at monte, and bending over their cards, appeared scarcely to have noticed the departure of their comrades.
At some little distance from the pulquería the stranger looked back. The two vaqueros were walking close behind him, talking carelessly, as if they were two idlers strolling along. The verado was not to be seen.
The stranger went on his way again, after making a scarcely perceptible sign to the two men, and pursued a road which, in a gentle curve, gradually retired from the river, and led, little by little, into the fields. At the exit from the pueblo this road took a sharp angle, and narrowed suddenly into a path, which lost itself in the plain among many more.