Long we sat talking, waiting for the advent of the boy, till at last, seeing he would not come that night, and a thick mist rising up from the river having warned us that the night was wearing on, we spread our saddles on the floor, and went to sleep. At daybreak, cold and miserable, the boy appeared, bringing the caña in a demijohn, and to our questions said he had passed the river, hit the “rincon,” and heard the dogs bark in the mist; but after trying for an hour could never find the house. Then, thinking that his horse might know the way, laid down the reins, and the horse took him straight to the other horses, who, being startled at the sudden apparition of their friend saddled and mounted in the dead of night, vanished like spectres into the thickest of the fog. Then tired of riding, after an hour or two, took off his saddle, and had passed the night, as it appeared at daybreak, not a quarter of a mile away.
Between the town and Don Guillermo’s house there ran a river called the Yi; just at the pass a “balsa” plied, drawn over by stout ropes. On either side the “pass” stood pulperias, that is camp-stores, where gin and sardines, Vino Carlon, Yerba, and all the necessaries of frontier life could be procured. Horses and cattle, mules and troops of sheep passed all the day, and gamblers plied their trade, whilst in some huts girls, known as “Chinas,” watched the passers-by, loitering in deshabille before their mare’s hide doors, singing “cielitos,” or the “gato,” to the accompaniment of a guitar, or merely shouting to the stranger, “Che, si quieres cosa buena vente por acá.” A half-Arcadian, half-Corinthian place the crossing was; fights there were frequent, and a “Guapeton,” that is, a pretty handler of his knife, once kept things lively for a month or two, challenging all the passers-by to fight, till luckily a Brazilian, going to the town, put things in order with an iron-handled whip.
The owner of the “balsa,” one Eduardo Peña, cherished a half-romantic, half-antagonistic friendship for Don Guillermo, speaking of him as “muy Catolico,” admiring his fine seat upon a horse, and yet not understanding in the least the qualities which made him a man of mark in all the “pagos” from the Porongos to the Arazati. “Catolico,” with Peña, was but a matter of pure faith, and going to mass a work of supererogation; and conduct such as the eschewal of the China ladies at the pass, with abstinence from all excess in square-faced gin, dislike to monté, even with “Sota en la puerta,” and the adversary with all his money staked upon another card, seemed to him bigotry; for bigotry is after all not so much mere excess of faith or want of tolerance, but a neglect to fall into the vices of our friends. So, mounted on our two “agenos,” one a jibber, the other a kicker at the stirrup, and extremely hard to mount, we scoured the land. Gauchos, Brazilians, negroes, troperos, cattle-farmers, each man in the whole “pago” had at least a horse to sell. Singly, driven, led, pulled unwillingly along in raw-hide ropes, and sitting back like lapdogs walking in the park, the horses came. We bought them all after much bargaining, and then began to hunt about at farms, estancias, and potreros, and to inquire on every side where horses could be got. All the “dead beats,” “sancochos,” buck-jumpers, wall-eyed and broken-backed, we passed in a review. An English sailor rode up to the place, dressed as a Gaucho, speaking but little English, with a west-country twang. He, too, had horses, which we bought, and the deal over, launched into the story of his life.
It seemed that he had left a man-of-war some fifteen years ago, married a native girl and settled down, and for ten years had never met an Englishman. In English, still a sailor, but in Spanish, a gentleman, courteous and civil, and fit to take his place with any one; full of fine compliments, and yet a horse-coper; selling us three good horses, and one, that the first time I mounted him kicked like a zebra, although our friend had warranted him quite free from vice, well bitted, and the one horse he had which he reserved in general for the saddle of his wife.
In a few days we had collected sixty or seventy, and to make all complete, a man arrived, saying that specially on our account, thirteen wild horses, or horses that had run wild, had been enclosed. He offered them on special terms, and we, saddling at once, rode twelve or thirteen leagues to see them; and after crossing a river, wading through a swamp, and winding in and out through a thick wood for several miles, we reached his house. There, in a strong corral, the horses were, wild-eyed and furious, tails sweeping to the ground, manes to their knees, sweating with fear, and trembling if any one came near. One was a piebald dun, about eight years of age, curly all over like a poodle; one Pampa, that is, black with a head as if it had been painted white to the ears; behind them, coal-black down to his feet, which, curiously enough, were all four white. A third, Overo Azulejo, slate-coloured and white; he was of special interest, for he had twisted in his mane a large iron spur, and underneath a lump as large as an apple, where the spur had bumped upon his neck for years during his gallop through the woods and plains. Each horse had some peculiarity, most had been tame at one time, and were therefore more to be dreaded than if they had been never mounted in their lives.
As it was late when we arrived we tied our horses up and found a ball in progress at the house. Braulio Islas was the owner’s name, a man of some position in the land, young and unmarried, and having passed some years of his life in Monte Video, where, as is usual, he had become a doctor either of law or medicine; but the life had not allured him, and he had drifted back to the country, where he lived, half as a Gaucho, half as a “Dotorcito,” riding a wild horse as he were part of him, and yet having a few old books, quoting dog Latin, and in the interim studying international law, after the fashion of the semi-educated in the River Plate. Fastening our horses to long twisted green-hide ropes, we passed into the house. “Carne con cuero” (meat cooked with the hide) was roasting near the front-door on a great fire of bones. Around it men sat drinking maté, smoking and talking, whilst tame ostriches peered into the fire and snapped up anything within their reach; dogs without hair, looking like pigs, ran to and fro, horses were tied to every post, fire-flies darted about the trees; and, above all, the notes, sung in a high falsetto voice of a most lamentable Paraguayan “triste,” quavered in the night air and set the dogs a-barking, when all the company at stated intervals took up the refrain, and chanted hoarsely or shrilly of the hardships passed by Lopez in his great camp at Pirayú.
Under the straw-thatched sheds whole cows and sheep were hung up; and every one, when he felt hungry, cut a collop off and cooked it in the embers, for in those days meat had no price, and if you came up hungry to a house a man would say: “There is a lazo, and the cattle are feeding in a hollow half a league away.”
A harp, two cracked guitars, the strings repaired with strips of hide, and an accordion, comprised the band. The girls sat in a row, upon rush-seated chairs, and on the walls were ranged either great bowls of grease in which wicks floated, or homemade candles fixed on to nails, which left them free to gutter on the dancers’ heads. The men lounged at the door, booted and spurred, and now and then one walked up to the girls, selected one, and silently began to dance a Spanish valse, slowly and scarcely moving from the place, the hands stretched out in front, and the girl with her head upon his shoulder, eyes fast closed and looking like a person in a trance. And as they danced the musicians broke into a harsh, wild song, the dancers’ spurs rattled and jingled on the floor, and through the unglazed and open windows a shrill fierce neigh floated into the room from the wild horses shut in the corral. “Dulces,” that is, those sweetmeats made from the yolk of eggs, from almonds, and from nuts, and flavoured with cinnamon and caraways brought by the Moors to Spain, and taken by the Spaniards to the Indies, with sticky cakes, and vino seco circulated amongst the female guests. The men drank gin, ate bread (a delicacy in the far-off “camp”), or sipped their maté, which, in its little gourds and silver tube, gave them the appearance of smoking some strange kind of pipe.
“Que bailen los Ingleses,” and we had to acquit ourselves as best we could, dancing a “pericon,” as we imagined it, waving our handkerchiefs about to the delight of all the lookers-on. Fashion decreed that, the dance over, the “cavalier” presented his handkerchief to the girl with whom he danced. I having a bad cold saw with regret my new silk handkerchief pass to the hand of a mulatto girl, and having asked her for her own as a remembrance of her beauty and herself, received a home-made cotton cloth, stiff as a piece of leather, and with meshes like a sack.
Leaving the dance, as Braulio Islas said, as more “conformable” to Gauchos than to serious men we started bargaining. After much talking we agreed to take the horses for three dollars each, upon condition that in the morning Islas and all his men should help us drive a league or two upon the road. This settled, and the money duly paid, we went to bed, that is, lay down upon our saddles under the “galpon.” To early morning the guitars went on, and rising just about day-break we found the revellers saddling their horses to depart in peace. We learned with pleasure there had been no fight, and then after a maté walked down to the corral. Knowing it was impossible to drive the horses singly, after much labour we coupled them in twos. I mounted one of them, and to my surprise, he did not buck, but after three or four plunges went quietly, and we let the others out. The bars were scarcely down when they all scattered, and made off into the woods. Luckily all the drivers were at hand, and after three or four hours’ hard galloping we got them back, all except one who never reappeared; and late in the evening reached Don Guillermo’s house and let our horses into a paddock fenced with strong posts of ñandubay or Tala and bound together with pieces of raw hide.