However indeterminate Como No may have been in his mental attitude, his dogs were definitely good ones. He owned a big brindled dog, a small black one and a couple of yellow pups. Como No had a habit of riding far ahead of the general troop of men and horses, his figure making a far-off outline etched in black against the cold blue horizon of the pampa. Sometimes, when he lost sight of us for any length of time, he would burn a bush to give us our direction by the smoke, and we would follow on, driving the pack-horses and those free ones which were not being used either for riding or cargo at the time. Presently, perhaps, when rounding a low thicket, we would come suddenly upon him, squatted on his haunches beside a dead ostrich, from which he had stripped the feathers. These feathers, though far inferior to those of the African ostrich, or of Rhea americana, are worth anything from two to four dollars.
As he rode forward again, his dogs would range on either side of him. By-and-by they would again start an ostrich or a guanaco, and pull it down within 500 or 600 yards. Whereupon Como No would ride up, drive them off, kill and cut up the quarry, giving the hounds the liver, strip the feathers if it happened to be an ostrich, and then mount and ride on once more. This performance would be repeated over and over again during the course of the march, until, before we saw the last of him, his saddle had become an enormous bunch of feathers, from out of which his body and shoulders protruded in a quaint manner.
At night these dogs, however, were a terrible nuisance. They would forage about the camp for food, and pull down the meat we had placed on bushes and devour it. Such was eventually the fate of the last remnants of the mutton we had with us, and the loss was all the harder as we knew that the stolen mutton was the last we were destined to taste for months. After that we lived on lean guanaco.
By this date we had gradually climbed to some 1200 feet above the sea-level, and the temperature was extremely cold. Our reindeer-beds became a great comfort.
The 5th began with an hour of welcome sun, but it passed only too soon, and the wind rose more piercingly cold than ever. It penetrated to one's very bones. We, however, made seven leagues, and reached the River Genguel, which here makes a great curve. We camped in a narrow shute, strewn with big stones and giving upon the river, the cañadon being very wide and devoid of shelter. The water was broken into small sharp waves by the wind, and we were glad to collect what firewood was obtainable—bushes being scarce at that spot—and make a fire. The Indian burned a bush and warmed himself. His dogs had, unaided by him, killed a small guanaco and a fox (Canis griseus). We lay by the fire and the wind came down bitterly chill from the Sierra Nevada, while Jones cooked, and we learnt the delights which, in a cold climate, are to be found in mutton fat! After food to bed, and then a cold sleet set in. It was a nasty night, but in our reindeer bags we were, of course, untouched by the cold.
Next day nine leagues were achieved. Very long marches these, but we were pressing on to reach Lake Buenos Aires. Cañadon and pampa and high ground succeeded each other as we rode along, sometimes bare, sometimes sandy, sometimes thorn-covered, often stony and strewn with fragments of basalt. Generally overhead a pallid blue sky, and below wind, wind, perpetual wind. So we toiled on past little chill lagoons, ruffled with the keen breeze, until in the afternoon I came up with Burbury and the Indian on a rise, and there lay our goal before us—a great stretch of water wonderfully blue and cold-looking beneath the Sierra Nevada, whose summits were crowned with snow above their dusky purple.
The Tostado kicked off his cargo during the day, and among the scattered contents of Jones' kit I picked up a broken looking-glass. I had not seen myself since leaving Colohuapi, and confess I found no cause for vanity in the sight of a distinctly dirty-looking pirate with smoke-reddened eyes, a peeling face and nose, and with enough beard to put a finishing-touch to the horrid spectacle.
ONAS STALKING GUANACO