"So many officers are martinets," the soldiers will say, "and at best it is a dog's life in the barracks. Let us be wolves instead." The soldier turns gaucho, sometimes without waiting for the formality of a discharge.
Last of all there is the lad who is growing to man's size in the officers' quarters of a frontier post, or in the general store of the frontier settlement. The desert calls to such boys every day as the sea calls to the children on Nantucket beach. They have lassoes and bolas as the Yankee boys have skates and baseballs. They are riding mustangs before the New York boy is trusted on a tricycle. Meantime the gaucho is ever before them with his swagger and dash, his hearty laugh, and his quick anger. Mothers may frighten their children when babes in arms by saying, "The gaucho will carry you off," and may tell the older boys that the gaucho is the personification of all that is ribald—the desperado of the plains—but as the leaders of the courriers du bois of Canada were the sons of French gentlemen, so the chief men of the gauchos are of what is called good family. I saw one of that kind—an Englishman by birth. He wore on his shoulders a poncho—a small squaw-made blanket with a hole in the middle through which he could thrust his head. On his feet were potro boots, a sort of foot-gear made of the skin of the legs of a colt. About his waist was a belt that carried a knife, of which the handle was silver and the blood-stained blade a foot long. He was unshaved, unwashed, and ungroomed. But he had on a suit of fine silk underwear, "because, don't you know, I can't get used to the beastly scratching of furs and flannels."
The outfit of the Patagonian gaucho is simple and not expensive. With one good horse and three dogs he can start, but a swell gaucho may have a score of horses and a dozen dogs. To these he must add a good saddle, with numerous saddle-cloths, which are usually nothing but small blankets woven by the Tehuelche squaws from guanaco hair and wool, purchased or stolen at the ranches. Equally necessary are the quillangos, the great fur robes made by sewing together the skins of young guanacos. With two or three of these the gaucho can pass the night comfortably in the lee of a bit of brush even when a blizzard is raging. The water-proof canvas sleeping-bag lined with fur would be warmer and lighter, but the gaucho will have none of it because his quillangos serve as overcoats by day.
The weapons of the gaucho are simple, and with one exception inexpensive. They are the lasso, the bolas, and the knife. The last, having a carved silver handle, may cost as much as $25 gold. The lasso is a horsehair rope. The bolas have been described by every writer who has visited the River Plate, but it may be worth telling here that the reader can make them for himself by taking either two or three round balls of iron an inch and a quarter in diameter, or two or three round stones of two and a quarter inches in diameter, and securing to each the end of a stout cord three feet long. Then tie together the other ends of the cords, making a good big knot in doing so. To use the bolas, grasp this big knot and one of the bolas, and then after whirling the free bola or bolas about the head to give them speed, hurl the whole outfit at any target handy. If the novice does not crack his skull in his earlier efforts to master the bolas, they quickly become an effective weapon with a range of twenty yards. After considerable practice a healthy man can achieve a range of thirty yards, while fifty or sixty yards may be covered by the man of exceptional skill. The gauchos tell of ranges up to 100 yards, with a two-ball outfit made of iron. It may be so.
Having these weapons, the gaucho commonly scorns all others.
"I am astonished to learn that you do not carry a good revolver," said I to a gaucho who talked English fluently.
"And I am astonished to hear people like yourself think one of any use to us," he replied.
"But I have heard that you gentlemen of the plains have misunderstandings with each other, and that you then fight to kill."