XV
BOPICUÁ
The great corral at Bopicuá was full of horses. Greys, browns, bays, blacks, duns, chestnuts, roans (both blue and red), skewbalds and piebalds, with claybanks, calicos, buckskins, and a hundred shades and markings, unknown in Europe, but each with its proper name in Uruguay and Argentina, jostled each other, forming a kaleidoscopic mass.
A thick dust rose from the corral and hung above their heads. Sometimes the horses stood all huddled up, gazing with wide distended eyes and nostrils towards a group of men that lounged about the gate. At other times that panic fear that seizes upon horses when they are crushed together in large numbers, set them a-galloping. Through the dust-cloud their footfalls sounded muffled, and they themselves appeared like phantoms in a mist. When they had circled round a little they stopped, and those outside the throng, craning their heads down nearly to the ground, snorted, and then ran back, arching their necks and carrying their tails like flags. Outside the great corral was set Parodi’s camp, below some China trees, and formed of corrugated iron and hides, stuck on short uprights, so that the hides and iron almost came down upon the ground, in gipsy fashion. Upon the branches of the trees were hung saddles, bridles, halters, hobbles, lazos, and boleadoras, and underneath were spread out saddle-cloths to dry. Pieces of meat swung from the low gables of the hut, and under the low eaves was placed a “catre,” the canvas scissor-bedstead of Spain and of her colonies in the New World. Upon the catre was a heap of ponchos, airing in the sun, their bright and startling colours looking almost dingy in the fierce light of a March afternoon in Uruguay. Close to the camp stood several bullock-carts, their poles supported on a crutch, and their reed-covered tilts giving them an air of huts on wheels. Men sat about on bullocks’ skulls, around a smouldering fire, whilst the “maté” circulated round from man to man, after the fashion of a loving-cup. Parodi, the stiff-jointed son of Italian parents, a gaucho as to clothes and speech, but still half-European in his lack of comprehension of the ways of a wild horse. Arena, the capataz from Entre-Rios, thin, slight, and nervous, a man who had, as he said, in his youth known how to read and even guide the pen; but now “things of this world had turned him quite unlettered, and made him more familiar with the lazo and the spurs.” The mulatto Pablo Suarez, active and cat-like, a great race-rider and horse-tamer, short and deep-chested, with eyes like those of a black cat, and toes, prehensile as a monkey’s, that clutched the stirrup when a wild colt began to buck, so that it could not touch its flanks. They and Miguel Paralelo, tall, dark, and handsome, the owner of some property, but drawn by the excitement of a cowboy’s life to work for wages, so that he could enjoy the risk of venturing his neck each day on a “baguál,” [187] with other peons as El Correntino and Venancio Baez, were grouped around the fire. With them were seated Martin el Madrileño, a Spanish horse-coper, who had experienced the charm of gaucho life, together with Silvestre Ayres, a Brazilian, slight and olive-coloured, well-educated, but better known as a dead pistol-shot than as man of books. They waited for their turn at maté, or ate great chunks of meat from a roast cooked upon a spit, over a fire of bones. Most of the men were tall and sinewy, with that air of taciturnity and self-equilibrium that their isolated lives and Indian blood so often stamp upon the faces of those centaurs of the plains. The camp, set on a little hill, dominated the country for miles on every side. Just underneath it, horses and more horses grazed. Towards the west it stretched out to the woods that fringe the Uruguay, which, with its countless islands, flowed between great tracks of forest, and formed the frontier with the Argentine.
Between the camp and the corrals smouldered a fire of bones and ñandubay, and by it, leaning up against a rail, were set the branding-irons that had turned the horses in the corral into the property of the British Government. All round the herd enclosed, ran horses neighing, seeking their companions, who were to graze no more at Bopicuá, but be sent off by train and ship to the battlefields of Europe to die and suffer, for they knew not what, leaving their pastures and their innocent comradeship with one another till the judgment day. Then, I am sure, for God must have some human feeling after all, things will be explained to them, light come into their semi-darkness, and they will feed in prairies where the grass fades not, and springs are never dry, freed from the saddle, and with no cruel spur to urge them on they know not where or why.
For weeks we had been choosing out the doomed five hundred. Riding, inspecting, and examining from dawn till evening, till it appeared that not a single equine imperfection could have escaped our eyes. The gauchos, who all think that they alone know anything about a horse, were all struck dumb with sheer amazement. It seemed to them astonishing to take such pains to select horses that for the most part would be killed in a few months. “These men,” they said, “certainly all are doctors at the job. They know even the least defect, can tell what a horse thinks about and why. Still, none of them can ride a horse if he but shakes his ears. In their bag surely there is a cat shut up of some kind or another. If not, why do they bother so much in the matter, when all that is required is something that can carry one into the thickest of the fight?”
The sun began to slant a little, and we had still three leagues to drive the horses to the pasture where they had to pass the night for the last time in freedom, before they were entrained. Our horses stood outside of the corral, tied to the posts, some saddled with the “recado,” [190] its heads adorned with silver, some with the English saddle, that out of England has such a strange, unserviceable look, much like a saucepan on a horse’s back. Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared, driving a point of horses, which, he said, “to leave would be a crime against the sacrament.” “These are all pingos,” he exclaimed, “fit for the saddle of the Lord on High, all of them are bitted in the Brazilian style, can turn upon a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can gallop round a bullock’s head upon the ground, so that the rider can keep his hand upon it all the time.” The speaker by his accent was a Brazilian. His face was olive-coloured, his hair had the suspicion of a kink. His horse, a cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was evidently only half-tamed, and snorted loudly as it bounded here and there, making its silver harness jingle and the rider’s poncho flutter in the air. Although time pressed, the man’s address was so persuasive, his appearance so much in character with his great silver spurs just hanging from his heel, his jacket turned up underneath his elbow by the handle of his knife, and, to speak truth, the horses looked so good and in such high condition that we determined to examine them, and told their owner to drive them into a corral.
Once again we commenced the work that we had done so many times of mounting and examining. Once more we fought, trying to explain the mysteries of red tape to unsophisticated minds, and once again our “domadores” sprang lightly, barebacked, upon the horses they had never seen before, with varying results. Some of the Brazilian’s horses bucked like antelopes, El Correntino and the others of our men sitting them barebacked as easily as an ordinary man rides over a small fence. To all our queries why they did not saddle up we got one answer, “To ride with the recado is but a pastime only fit for boys.” So they went on, pulling the horses up in three short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails and manes tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or two from the corral. Then, slipping off, gave their opinion that the particular “bayo,” “zaino,” or “gateao” was just the thing to mount a lancer on, and that the speaker thought he could account for a good tale of Boches if he were over there in the Great War. This same great war, which they called “barbarous,” taking a secret pleasure in the fact that it showed Europeans not a whit more civilised than they themselves, appeared to them something in the way of a great pastime from which they were debarred.
Most of them, when they sold a horse, looked at him and remarked, “Pobrecito, you will go to the Great War,” just as a man looks at his son who is about to go, with feelings of mixed admiration and regret.
After we had examined all the Brazilian’s “Tropilla” so carefully that he said, “By Satan’s death, your graces know far more about my horses than I myself, and all I wonder is that you do not ask me if all of them have not complied with all the duties of the Church,” we found that about twenty of them were fit for the Great War. Calling upon Parodi and the capataz of Bopicuá, who all the time had remained seated round the smouldering fire and drinking maté, to prepare the branding-irons, the peons led them off, our head man calling out “Artilleria” or “Caballeria,” according to their size. After the branding, either on the hip for cavalry and on the neck for the artillery, a peon cut their manes off, making them as ugly as a mule, as their late owner said, and we were once more ready for the road, after the payment had been made. This took a little time, either because the Brazilian could not count, or perhaps because of his great caution, for he would not take payment except horse by horse. So, driving out the horses one by one, we placed a roll of dollars in his hand as each one passed the gate. Even then each roll of dollars had to be counted separately, for time is what men have the most at their disposal in places such as Bopicuá.
Two hours of sunset still remained, with three long leagues to cover, for in those latitudes there is no twilight, night succeeding day, just as films follow one another in a cinematograph. At last it all was over, and we were free to mount. Such sort of drives are of the nature of a sport in South America, and so the Brazilian drove off the horses that we had rejected, half a mile away, leaving them with a negro boy to herd, remarking that the rejected were as good or better than those that we had bought, and after cinching up his horse, prepared to ride with us. Before we started, a young man rode up, dressed like an exaggerated gaucho, in loose black trousers, poncho, and a “golilla” [194a] round his neck, a lazo hanging from the saddle, a pair of boleadoras peeping beneath his “cojinillo,” [194b] and a long silver knife stuck in his belt. It seemed he was the son of an estanciero who was studying law in Buenos Aires, but had returned for his vacation, and hearing of our drive had come to ride with us and help us in our task. No one on such occasions is to be despised, so, thanking him for his good intentions, to which he answered that he was a “partizan of the Allies, lover of liberty and truth, and was well on in all his studies, especially in International Law,” we mounted, the gauchos floating almost imperceptibly, without an effort, to their seats, the European with that air of escalading a ship’s side that differentiates us from man less civilised.