Part 10

Passing some smaller mud-holes, the body of a horse lay near to one of them, horribly swollen, and with its stiff legs hoisted a little in the air by the distension of its flanks. The passing horses edged away from it in terror, and a young roan snorted and darted like an arrow from the herd. Quick as was the dart he made, quicker still El Correntino wheeled his horse on its hind legs and rushed to turn him back. With his whip whirling round his head he rode to head the truant, who, with tail floating in the air, had got a start of him of about fifty yards. We pressed instinctively upon the horses; but not so closely as to frighten them, though still enough to be able to stop another of them from cutting out. The Correntino on a half-tamed grey, which he rode with a raw-hide thong bound round its lower jaw, for it was still unbitted, swaying with every movement in his saddle, which he hardly seemed to grip, so perfect was his balance, rode at a slight angle to the runaway and gained at every stride. His hat blew back and kept in place by a black ribbon underneath his chin, framed his head like an aureole. The red silk handkerchief tied loosely round his neck fluttered beneath it, and as he dashed along, his lazo coiled upon his horse’s croup, rising and falling with each bound, his eyes fixed on the flying roan, he might have served a sculptor as the model for a centaur, so much did he and the wild colt he rode seem indivisible.

In a few seconds, which to us seemed minutes, for we feared the infection might have spread to the whole “caballada,” the Correntino headed and turned the roan, who came back at three-quarter speed, craning his neck out first to one side, then to the other, as if he still thought that a way lay open for escape.

By this time we had reached the gates of Bopicuá, and still seven miles lay between us and our camping-ground, with a fast-declining sun. As the horses passed the gate we counted them, an operation of some difficulty when time presses and the count is large. Nothing is easier than to miss animals, that is to say, for Europeans, however practised, but the lynx-eyed gauchos never are at fault. “Where is the little brown horse with a white face, and a bit broken out of his near forefoot?” they will say, and ten to one that horse is missing, for what they do not know about the appearance of a horse would not fill many books. Only a drove road lay between Bopicuá and the great pasture, at whose faraway extremity the horses were to sleep. When the last animal had passed and the great gates swung to, the young law student rode up to my side, and, looking at the “great tropilla,” as he called it, said, “_Morituri te salutant_. This is the last time they will feed in Bopicuá.” We turned a moment, and the falling sun lit up the undulating plain, gilding the cottony tufts of the long grasses, falling upon the dark-green leaves of the low trees around Parodi’s camp, glinting across the belt of wood that fringed the Uruguay, and striking full upon a white estancia house in Entre-Rios, making it appear quite close at hand, although four leagues away.

Two or three hundred yards from the great gateway stood a little native hut, as unsophisticated, but for a telephone, as were the gaucho’s huts in Uruguay, as I remember them full thirty years ago. A wooden barrel on a sledge for bringing water had been left close to the door, at which the occupant sat drinking maté, tapping with a long knife upon his boot. Under a straw-thatched shelter stood a saddled horse, and a small boy upon a pony slowly drove up a flock of sheep. A blue, fine smoke that rose from a few smouldering logs and bones, blended so completely with the air that one was not quite sure if it was really smoke or the reflection of the distant Uruguay against the atmosphere.

Not far off lay the bones of a dead horse, with bits of hide adhering to them, shrivelled into mere parchment by the sun. All this I saw as in a camera-lucida, seated a little sideways on my horse, and thinking sadly that I, too, had looked my last on Bopicuá. It is not given to all men after a break of years to come back to the scenes of youth, and still find in them the same zest as of old. To return again to all the cares of life called civilised, with all its littlenesses, its newspapers all full of nothing, its sordid aims disguised under high-sounding nicknames, its hideous riches and its sordid poverty, its want of human sympathy, and, above all, its barbarous war brought on it by the folly of its rulers, was not just at that moment an alluring thought, as I felt the little “malacara” {201} that I rode twitching his bridle, striving to be off. When I had touched him with the spur he bounded forward and soon overtook the caballada, and the place which for so many months’ had been part of my life sank out of sight, just as an island in the Tropics fades from view as the ship leaves it, as it were, hull down.

When we had passed into the great enclosure of La Pileta, and still four or five miles remained to go, we pressed the caballada into a long trot, certain that the danger of a stampede was past. Wonderful and sad it was to ride behind so many horses, trampling knee-high through the wild grasses of the Camp, snorting and biting at each other, and all unconscious that they would never more career across the plains. Strange and affecting, too, to see how those who had known each other all kept together in the midst of the great herd, resenting all attempts of their companions to separate them.

A “tropilla” {202} that we had bought from a Frenchman called Leon, composed of five brown horses, had ranged itself around its bell mare, a fine chestnut, like a bodyguard. They fought off any of the other horses who came near her, and seemed to look at her both with affection and with pride.

Two little bright bay horses, with white legs and noses, that were brothers, and what in Uruguay are known as “seguidores,” that is, one followed the other wherever it might go, ran on the outskirts of the herd. When either of them stopped to eat, its companion turned its head and neighed to it, when it came galloping up. Arena, our head man, riding beside me on a skewbald, looked at them, and, after dashing forward to turn a runaway, wheeled round his horse almost in the air and stopped it in a bound, so suddenly that for an instant they stood poised like an equestrian statue, looked at the “seguidores,” and remarked, “Patron, I hope one shell will kill them both in the Great War if they have got to die.” I did not answer, except to curse the Boches with all the intensity the Spanish tongue commands. The young law-student added his testimony, and we rode on in silence.

A passing sleeve of locusts almost obscured the declining sun. Some flew against our faces, reminding me of the fight Cortes had with the Indians not far from Vera Cruz, which, Bernal Diaz says, was obstructed for a moment by a flight of locusts that came so thickly that many lost their lives by the neglect to raise their bucklers against what they thought were locusts, and in reality were arrows that the Indians shot. The effect was curious as the insects flew against the horses, some clinging to their manes, and others making them bob up and down their heads, just as a man does in a driving shower of hail. We reached a narrow causeway that formed the passage through a marsh. On it the horses crowded, making us hold our breath for fear that they would push each other off into the mud, which had no bottom, upon either side. When we emerged and cantered up a little hill, a lake lay at the bottom of it, and beyond it was a wood, close to a railway siding. The evening now was closing in, but there was still a good half-hour of light. As often happens in South America just before sundown, the wind dropped to a dead calm, and passing little clouds of locusts, feeling the night approach, dropped into the long grass just as a flying-fish drops into the waves, with a harsh whirring of their gauzy wings.

The horses smelt the water at the bottom of the hill, and the whole five hundred broke into a gallop, manes flying, tails raised high, and we, feeling somehow the gallop was the last, raced madly by their side until within a hundred yards or so of the great lake. They rushed into the water and all drank greedily, the setting sun falling upon their many-coloured backs, and giving the whole herd the look of a vast tulip field. We kept away so as to let them drink their fill, and then, leading our horses to the margin of the lake, dismounted, and, taking out their bits, let them drink, with the air of one accomplishing a rite, no matter if they raised their heads a dozen times and then began again.

Slowly Arena, El Correntino, Paralelo, Suarez, and the rest drove out the herd to pasture in the deep lush grass. The rest of us rode up some rising ground towards the wood. There we drew up, and looking back towards the plain on which the horses seemed to have dwindled to the size of sheep in the half-light, some one, I think it was Arena, or perhaps Pablo Suarez, spoke their elegy: “Eat well,” he said; “there is no grass like that of La Pileta, to where you go across the sea. The grass in Europe all must smell of blood.”

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THE END

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_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

NOTES.

{22} _Porteño_, literally a man born in the port of Buenos Aires, but is also applied to any one born in the province of Buenos Aires.

{25} _Benbax ceiba_, a large tree with spongy, light wood, that has immense bunches of purple flowers.

{27} Pingo in Argentina is a good horse. Pucha is a euphemism for another word.

{28} Elbow of a river.

{114a} Lopez Cogulludo, _Historia de Yucatan_.

{114b} Era gran Escriturario.

{115} El sagrado misterio de la encarnacion de el eterno Verbo.

{116a} Los barbaros infideles.

{116b} Entendiendo que era animal de razon.

{118} Arrebatado de un furioso selo de la honra de Dios.

{187} Wild horse.

{190} Argentine saddle.

{194a} _Golilla_, which originally meant a ruff, is now used for a handkerchief round the neck.

{194b} _Cojinillo_, part of the recado.

{201} _Malacara_, literally Badface, is the name used for a white-faced horse. In old days in England such a horse was called Baldfaced.

{202} Little troop.