After a long silence, for I was anxious not to irritate him with too much questioning, I ventured to remark:
“Well, they will not set the dogs on me, will they?”
He grinned, and said that it was an establishment without dogs.
I paid him for his information with a cigarette, which he took very readily, and seemed to think smoking a pleasant relief after his disentangling labours.
“An estancia without dogs, and where the master has nothing to say—that sounds strange,” I remarked tentatively, but he puffed on in silence.
“What is the name of the house?” I said, after remounting my horse.
“It is a house without a name,” he replied; and after this rather unsatisfactory interview I left him and slowly went on to the estancia.
On approaching the house I saw that there had formerly been a large plantation behind it, of which only a few dead stumps now remained, the ditches that had enclosed them being now nearly obliterated. The place was ruinous and overgrown with weeds. Dismounting, I led my horse along a narrow path through a perfect wilderness of wild sunflowers, horehound, red-weed, and thorn-apple, up to some poplar trees where there had once been a gate, of which only two or three broken posts remained standing in the ground. From the old gate the path ran on, still through weeds, to the door of the house, which was partly of stone and partly of red brick, with a very steep, sloping, tiled roof. Beside the ruined gate, leaning against a post, with the hot afternoon sun shining on her uncovered head, stood a woman in a rusty-black dress. She was about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, and had an unutterably weary, desponding expression on her face, which was colourless as marble, except for the purple stains under her large, dark eyes. She did not move when I approached her, but raised her sorrowful eyes to my face, apparently feeling little interest in my arrival.
I took off my hat to salute her, and said:
“Señora, my horse is tired, and I am seeking for a resting-place; can I have shelter under your roof?”