The Wild Man.
The two brothers descended upon that other and slew him. Then they made off with the lady to the wilder districts. There they quarrelled about her. Ascensio waited until his brother happened to be away tracking horses in a particularly wild part, and then he rounded up the remainder of the stock, and he and the lady fled yet deeper into the interior. For a space they covered their tracks and escaped the brother.
In the course of time the lady left her lover, as ladies will, and he, his brain turned by some strange passion, went mad.
When we strike his trail again he was known as the "Wild Man of Santa Cruz."
He began to steal horses, found the sport to his liking, and stole more. Unable to use or keep them, he merely drove them to some sleepy hollow, where he killed them in hundreds. (We once counted eighty-three of these skeletons in one place.) He dressed in the skins of pumas from head to foot. His saddle was of puma-skin, and armed only with boleadores he ranged the land stealing. His career was a long one, and he became such a Gaucho as has never been known. To-day he might be heard of as lifting a dozen horses on the Santa Cruz River; a week later he was spiriting away tropillas in Chubut.
He had the run of 300,000 square miles, the whole of Patagonia was his farm, his stock what he could steal.
You may remember that I described a meeting with Indians, a tribe who lived in tents of guanaco-skins on the River Mayo. The Wild Man paid them a visit, and stole a hundred mares; and they, discovering it, rode down his trail and caught him. They took him alive and haled him as a prisoner to the nearest settlement, where he was put in gaol.
He escaped, made straight back, and lifted another big batch of the Mayo Indians' horses.