The Gallego knew this story, however, from having read it in books and newspapers. Juan Ort was that archduke of Austria who, a victim of the poetic melancholy hereditary in his family, gave up his rank in the navy, and his position at court, to sail the seas in a luxurious yacht on which was everything to delight the sense, rare and delicate foods, exquisite music, beautiful women.
One day the news came that this yacht with its entire crew had been lost off Cape Horn. But Juan Ort had not perished. This shipwreck, real or feigned, was going to serve his purposes, allowing him to descend lower in the social scale, to live with those who were struggling in life’s lowest depths.
“I knew him,” muttered one of the other old inhabitants of La Presa. “And he was nothing more, and nothing less than either you or I. He was a man just like any other who comes along with his pack on his back looking for work. But this gringo was a tall, red-bearded man, glum-like, and fond of drinking alone. He didn’t say he was Juan Ort. He didn’t have to. We knew it. Besides, he carried in his bag a little silver cup with the shield of the royal family on it, and he liked to drink from it when he was on his bit of a ranch. It was the cup he drank from when he was going to school, he said....”
But one day this romantic vagabond disappeared. Some supposed him in hiding in the dives of Buenos Aires, others asserted that they had met him playing the part of a strolling photographer in Paysandu. No one knew where he had died.
“Macanás!” exclaimed the sceptics when such tales were told, “all the gringos who come around here and who don’t want to work make out that they’re Juan Orts so that fools will gape at them.”
But Gonzalez, insatiable reader of many-volumed novels that he was, believed in Juan Ort, and in other equally interesting characters who came to end their days in a land where no one was ever asked to tell what his past had been. Just so long as his customers didn’t try to sneak out without paying their bills, the bolichero was inclined to attribute an interesting past to all of them, and look upon them all as possible sons or nephews of an emperor, restless noblemen dissatisfied with their origin and eager to change their manner of life.
Others of the members of the tertulia, those of more prosperous aspect, were preoccupied with the future of this incipient city. Its destiny was closely bound up with that of Gonzalez, who went about with his hairy chest bared to the sky, his hair uncombed, his face streaked with dust and sweat, and elastic bands supporting his shirt sleeves, so that his hands might be free. Unquestionably the servant presented a better appearance than the master. But the “Gallego” had several thousand pesos saved up in the Banco Español of Bahía Blanca; moreover he owned a thousand acres of land near the town. The only thing in the world that troubled him was the wretched ignorance and lack of manners of his patrons who persisted in calling his place “boliche,” as in the first days of its existence, without seeming to appreciate the important improvements accomplished by its proprietor, nor to understand the sign saying “Almacén” which occupied such an important position above the door.
But what was his prosperity actually worth compared with the millions of pesos that were going to fall into La Presa some day, when, from a mere workmen’s camp, it would change into an important town and its “almacén” would become a handsome establishment like those in Buenos Aires, and the dusty lands that he had bought in small lots scattered through all the fields that were to be irrigated, would be purchased from him for substantial sums by Spanish and Italian colonists? Then he would return to his native land to set himself up in Madrid, going about in its streets and drives in the most luxurious and largest automobile to be found; and the people at home, pleased by the presents he would bring them, would perhaps make him deputy or senator, and then one of the cabinet ministers would present him to the king of Spain, whose portrait, in colors, was nailed to the wooden part of one of the partitions of his boliche, directly under one of the crocodiles. Why, who knows? They might even make him a viscount, or a marqués, like so many other bolicheros who had grown rich in America! But he cut these ambitious dreams short to return to the reality in which he was still living. With the patrons who were interested in the irrigation of this region, he was describing its present aspect in order to provide a more startling contrast for its future prosperity.
“What is there here now besides the folks living at the dam? Ostriches maybe, and a puma ... not a single thing else.”
His hearers laughed at the memory of the bands of ostriches who made excursions now and then from the plateau to the river basin, astonished no doubt by the novelty of the works that were being constructed along the water’s edge. The señorita from the Rojas ranch for instance always had a good time pursuing these flocks that moved about on stilts, and that always managed to escape by opening wide their compass-like legs; though now and then one of them was overtaken by the young lady’s swift lassoo.