"And what does that matter to us?" said Venceslao.
"Nothing, until they come to our country; but if they come here, then it is our duty to help the Spaniards to turn them out."
"It may be, but I don't see why. If they only come to fight the Spaniards, why should we meddle? Let them fight themselves alone."
"But if the English beat the Spaniards then they will take our country for themselves."
"In every way that may not be. They would put laws after their fashion, and we should have to talk their Castilian, I could never accustom myself to that."
Beyond the Guardia Chascomus, which was at that time a frontier town held by a small garrison of Spanish troops, there stretches a chain of lakes, running in a southerly direction till they join the Rio Salado. In some places the land around these lakes slopes gently down to the water's edge, so that when they overflow during heavy rains, their waters spread themselves for a considerable distance over the plain. At other places the surrounding land rises abruptly, forming perpendicular cliffs, which are called "barrancas"; probably the highest of these barrancas is not more than forty feet above the general level of the lake; but forty feet is a considerable elevation where the chief feature of the country is one uniform flatness. About half-way between the Guardia and the Rio Salado, the east side of this chain of lakes was for nearly two leagues one continuous line of barrancas; all the land about there, contiguous to the lakes and stretching far inland, was the property of Don Gregorio Lopez the younger, who had inherited it from his mother whom he had never seen. He had placed there an estancia called "Las Barrancas," where he and his father had immense herds of cattle and troops of mares, and a few flocks of long-legged sheep.
The estancia itself consisted of a group of ranchos, in front of which two ombues shaded the palenque, where horses were tied. Behind them was an enclosure of considerable size, part of which was planted with trees, and the rest carefully cultivated by slaves. Some slaves were also employed as herdsmen, but the majority of these mounted peons were freemen, who worked hard for small wages, and who mostly lived in ranchos of their own on different parts of the estate, at great distances from each other. All these freemen provided their own horses, and were skilled from their earliest youth in the use of the lasso and bolas. They almost lived on horseback, and had the greatest dislike to any labour which could only be performed on foot, deeming such work below the dignity of a man, and only fit for slaves.
Many other estancias similarly organised lay scattered about the Pampa, within a day's gallop of the Estancia de Las Barrancas. The limits of these different estancias were ill defined, their title-deeds being merely a grant of some certain number of leagues of land from the Viceregal Government of Buenos Aires or of Peru. There was yet much land not allotted at all, so that any of these freemen who worked on the estancias, who could get together a few cows and horses, and wished to settle down quietly, could easily find land on which to build himself a rancho and to pasture his animals. These freemen were of a roving nature, seldom working more than a few months at a time on one estancia; but hundreds of them had thus made homes for themselves; to some of them at times government gave grants of the land on which they had settled, and they became proprietors. They were a hardy, simple race of yeomen, who held the dwellers in cities in great contempt, and considered that man's first necessity in life was a good horse. Their amusements consisted of feats of horsemanship, in which horse-racing naturally held a prominent place, in hunting deer and ostrich with their boleadores, or in listening to the long monotonous songs of some "cantor" of their own class, who generally invented his songs for himself, and not unfrequently improvised a fresh one when some incident of the day provided him with a subject. Government was to them a mysterious power, which gave grants of land and imposed taxes. Religion to them consisted in the baptism of children, and in the burial of the dead in consecrated ground; yet they had an unwritten law among them which they observed most strictly, and they had a sort of natural religion, which told them that there was a God and a life beyond the grave.
Among these men, peons or small proprietors, Don Gregorio Lopez proposed to raise a squadron of cavalry, and Marcelino Ponce de Leon proposed to help him in his work by instilling into them the first principles of patriotism.
Don Gregorio met with very fair success, his recruits being left at liberty all the week and meeting every Sunday at the Estancia de Las Barrancas for drill, which to them was a novel amusement. Their chief did not purpose to embody them permanently until the near approach of the English should render their services necessary, but contented himself for the present with selecting his officers and instructing them in their duties, in all which he showed considerable skill. But his nephew instead of being any assistance to him was rather a hindrance.