From beneath the left side of the coronas, close by the peak of the saddle, peeped the three balls, the well-known boliadores (called in most works of travel bolas), with which the gaucho secures game while upon the road.
Hanging from the fiador was a pair of manes, or shackles, for the horse’s fore feet, which serve the same purpose as a pair of handcuffs. If the rider wishes to leave his horse in the street, where many travellers are passing, he places the manes upon the animal’s fore legs, and it is only with great difficulty that the beast can slowly move about. Lastly, the bridle, a magnificent article, formed of leather, and thickly studded with silver plates, and the horse was equipped. McGill was dressed in the gala costume of a Buenos Ayrean gaucho, with drawers of the finest needlework, and the chiropá, that covered his loins, of costly silk. From this description the reader can gain some idea of a fast man among the gauchos, for such was the guest of Don Guillermo.
In this connection I may devote a few lines to a character well known throughout the Provinces of La Plata—the rastreador, or trailer.
While the mill was in operation one afternoon, I had occasion to leave the building, in order to let on more water from the acquia. While attending to the flood-gate, I saw an old man slowly approaching the mill, with his eyes bent upon the ground. He frequently stopped to inspect the soil; then, continuing his course, he passed the mill, and crossed the rude bridge that spanned the canal. Continuing along the travesia in the district of Anjuco, he was soon lost among the thorn trees and thickets of mata-gusano. I thought no more of the old man, supposing that he had probably lost some article, and was searching for it. An hour later he returned to the mill, and said a few words to Don Guillermo and several gauchos, who were waiting for their respective turns at the hopper. In an instant the loom was vacated; the party dispersed along the road, and as they occasionally came together near the mill, I could see the old man giving some advice, upon which the gauchos again dispersed. The party returned about eight o’clock, and from the peons I learned that the old man was a trailer. He had been walking along the road, and had noticed a footprint that struck him as “deceitful.” He said that a man had passed the mill about three o’clock, and that the man was a robber. “For he was dressed,” said the trailer, “in woman’s clothes. There are places along his trail that prove he held the dress up with his hands; in others it trailed along the ground. He wore a woman’s shoe, which did not fit him; his foot was broad, the shoe long and narrow. He walked in some places, and ran through the thickets. No man dresses in woman’s garb without some bad intent.”
“He is somewhere among the ranches of Anjuco.”
Wonderful to state, news came from town the next day that several men had dressed themselves in female attire, and in that disguise had visited the stores in the Calle Ancho, or Broadway, where they had purloined many articles, which the rogues had hidden beneath their dresses. It was the trail of one of these dresses that the old rastreador had struck.
The patriot Sarmiento, a San Juanino by birth, says of the characteristics of these men, the trailers,—
“Once, as I was crossing a path that led into the Buenos Ayres road, the muleteer that conducted me cast his eyes upon the ground, as was his custom, and said a very good black mule passed here yesterday; she had an easy gait, and was saddled; she belongs to the troop of Don ——. This man was coming from the sierra of San Luis; the troop was returning from Buenos Ayres.
“A year had passed since he had seen the black mule, the track of which was confused with those of a whole troop, in a path not more than two feet wide. But this keenness of perception, so apparently incredible, is a faculty common to every gaucho; this man was a mere muleteer, and not a professional trailer.”
He also describes another trailer in La Vida de Juan, Facundo Quiroga, as follows:—