Several months went by however and don Roque was still not mollified. “That’s all very well, Gallego; but I don’t want to have any more such doings....” Whereupon the bolichero redoubled in generosity and a horse race was announced for the following Sunday.
When this celebration came to a peaceful end, Gonzalez triumphed over the comisario.
“You see! This town is getting civilized. You can trust it to be decent now. What happened before was just an accident.”
Nevertheless the tavern-keeper, by way of avoiding trouble, extended his generosity in the direction of Manos Duras, in the belief that he would be invaluable as a means of maintaining the peace, inasmuch as he inspired a wholesome fear in all those who were not his particular friends and subject for that reason to his bidding.
One Saturday, at nightfall, Robledo came down the main street on his way back from the irrigation works. As he rode by Pirovani’s house he looked away and hurried his horse along, fearful lest Elena should open a window and call to him to stop. Several days had passed since he had last called on her. On that afternoon he felt the vague uneasiness that foretells the presence of danger without giving any clue at to what quarter to expect it from.
The settlement at the dam seemed to him entirely changed from what it had been two months earlier. It looked the same; but the life of the community had been transformed in a disquieting, and alarming way. The gentle monotony, the rather coarse-grained self-confidence that had once distinguished it, the mutual trust felt by most of its inhabitants in one another, were fast disappearing.
The demon of the pampas, the terrible Gualicho, he who had been driven out with the native Indians from the lands which had once been theirs, seemed to have returned, and to be claiming his own, to be fighting for it tooth and nail. Half-amused, half-fearful, Robledo recalled the method employed by the Indians to uproot the spirit of evil when they noted his presence among them. When their cattle-thieving expeditions or their attempts to ambush neighboring tribes failed, when sickness increased among their tents, when famine threatened, all the horsemen would arm themselves as for a pitched battle and gallop out into the fields to put the accursed Gualicho to flight. With their lances and macanas or battle axes they fought with him, they hurled against him their boleadoras, formed of pieces of leather tied at the ends around two smooth stones, so as to wind tightly around the victim; and they accompanied their shots and gashes and blows with shrill howls while the women and children, in procession, took part in this united offensive, adding their blows and imprecations to the general onslaught. Surely some one of these countless strokes of knife and dart must reach the evil spirit and make him flee for his life; and when at last the whole tribe fell to the ground exhausted, peace and quiet returned to them once more, for they were convinced that the enemy had betaken himself out of their camp.
And now Robledo the Spaniard thought he noticed the presence of Gualicho, the pampas demon, the malign one, the poisonous busybody. It was he who was stirring up these men, setting one against the other. How frequent hostile glances were among them now, as though when they looked they saw someone different from the friend they had known so long! Would it perhaps become necessary for the whole community to join hands and put the enemy to flight with a combined offensive?
He was debating this problem when suddenly his horse started and stopped so abruptly that Robledo almost took a header. At the same moment he heard shots and saw the glass from one of the tavern windows, and then from the door, splinter and fly through the air.
Through these openings came all manner of projectiles; bottles, glasses, and even a horse skull. Then came some gauchos, friends of Manos Duras, who backed away from the tavern firing revolvers at it. Several men from the camp plunged through the doorway; they too were shooting; and those of them who had no more cartridges advanced knife in hand.