Part 9

He did a roaring trade, despite the competition of a native Paraguayan, who had brought three demi-johns of Caña, for men prefer the imported article the whole world over, though it is vile, to native manufactures, even when cheap and good.

Just about twelve o’clock, when the sun almost burned a hole into one’s head, the band got ready in the church porch, playing upon old instruments, some of which may have survived from Jesuit times, or, at the least, been copied in the place, as the originals decayed.

Sackbuts and psalteries and shawms were there, with serpents, gigantic clarionets, and curiously twisted oboes, and drums, whose canvas all hung slack and gave a muffled sound when they were beaten, and little fifes, ear-piercing and devilish, were represented in that band. It banged and crashed “La Palomita,” that tune of evil-sounding omen, for to its strains prisoners were always ushered out to execution in the times of Lopez, and as it played the players slowly walked down the steps.

Behind them followed the alcalde, an aged Indian, dressed in long cotton drawers, that at the knees were split into a fringe that hung down to his ankles, a spotless shirt much pleated, and a red cloak of fine merino cloth. In his right hand he carried a long cane with a silver head—his badge of office. Walking up to the door of his own house, by which was set a table covered with glasses and with homemade cakes, he gave the signal for the running at the ring.

The Correntino gauchos, two or three Paraguayans, and a German married to a Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the sport. The band struck up, and a young Paraguayan started the first course. Gripping his stirrups tightly between his naked toes, and seated on an old “recao,” surmounted by a sheepskin, he spurred his horse, a wall-eyed skewbald, with his great iron spurs, tied to his bare insteps with thin strips of hide. The skewbald, only half-tamed, reared once or twice and bounded off, switching its ragged tail, which had been half-eaten off by cows. The people yelled, a “mosqueador!”—that is, a “fly-flapper,” a grave fault in a horse in the eyes of Spanish Americans—as the Paraguayan steered the skewbald with the reins held high in his left hand, carrying the other just above the level of his eyes, armed with a piece of cane about a foot in length.

As he approached the arch, in which the ring dangled from a string, his horse, either frightened by the shouting of the crowd or by the arch itself, swerved and plunged violently, carrying its rider through the thickest of the people, who separated like a flock of sheep when a dog runs through it, cursing him volubly. The German came the next, dressed in his Sunday clothes, a slop-made suit of shoddy cloth, riding a horse that all his spurring could not get into full speed. The rider’s round, fair face was burned a brick-dust colour, and as he spurred and plied his whip, made out of solid tapir hide, the sweat ran down in streams upon his coat. So intent was he on flogging, that as he neared the ring he dropped his piece of cane, and his horse, stopping suddenly just underneath the arch, would have unseated him had he not clasped it round the neck. Shouts of delight greeted this feat of horsemanship, and one tall Correntino, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, said to his fellow sitting next to him upon his horse, “The very animals themselves despise the gringos. See how that little white-nosed brute that he was riding knew that he was a ‘maturango,’ and nearly had him off.”

Next came Hijinio Rojas, a Paraguayan of the better classes, sallow and Indian looking, dressed in clothes bought in Asuncion, his trousers tucked into his riding-boots. His small black hat, with the brim flattened up against his head by the wind caused by the fury of the gallop of his active little roan with four white feet, was kept upon his head by a black ribbon knotted underneath his chin. As he neared the arch his horse stepped double several times and fly jumped; but that did not disturb him in the least, and, aiming well he touched the ring, making it fly into the air. A shout went up, partly in Spanish, partly in Guarani, from the assembled people, and Rojas, reining in his horse, stopped him in a few bounds, so sharply, that his unshod feet cut up the turf of the green plaza as a skate cuts the ice. He turned and trotted gently to the arch, and then, putting his horse to its top speed, stopped it again beside the other riders, amid the “Vivas” of the crowd. Then came the turn of the four Correntinos, who rode good horses from their native province, had silver horse-gear and huge silver spurs, that dangled from their heels. They were all gauchos, born, as the saying goes, “amongst the animals.” A dun with fiery eyes and a black stripe right down his back, and with black markings on both hocks, a chestnut skewbald, a “doradillo,” and a horse of that strange mealy bay with a fern-coloured muzzle, that the gauchos call a “Pangaré,” carried them just as if their will and that of those who rode them were identical. Without a signal, visible at least to any but themselves, their horses started at full speed, reaching occasionally at the bit, then dropping it again and bridling so easy that one could ride them with a thread drawn from a spider’s web. Their riders sat up easily, not riding as a European rides, with his eyes fixed upon each movement of his horse, but, as it were, divining them as soon as they were made. Each of them took the ring, and all of them checked their horses, as it were, by their volition, rather than the bit, making the silver horse-gear rattle and their great silver spurs jingle upon their feet. Each waited for the other at the far side of the arch, and then turning in a line they started with a shout, and as they passed right through the middle of the square at a wild gallop, they swung down sideways from their saddles and dragged their hands upon the ground. Swinging up, apparently without an effort, back into their seats, when they arrived at the point from where they had first started, they reined up suddenly, making their horses plunge and rear, and then by a light signal on the reins stand quietly in line, tossing the foam into the air. Hijinio Rojas and the four centaurs all received a prize, and the alcalde, pouring out wineglasses full of gin, handed them to the riders, who, with a compliment or two as to the order of their drinking, emptied them solemnly.

No other runners having come forward to compete, for in those days horses were scarce throughout the Paraguayan Missions, the sports were over, and the perspiring crowd went off to breakfast at tables spread under the long verandahs, and silence fell upon the square.

The long, hot hours during the middle of the day were passed in sleeping. Some lay face downwards in the shade. Others swung in white cotton hammocks, keeping them in perpetual motion, till they fell asleep, by pushing with a naked toe upon the ground. At last the sun, the enemy, as the Arabs call him, slowly declined, and white-robed women, with their “tupois” slipping half off their necks, began to come out into the verandahs, slack and perspiring after the midday struggle with the heat.

Then bands of girls sauntered down to the river, from whence soon came the sound of merry laughter as they splashed about and bathed.

The Correntinos rode down to a pool and washed their horses, throwing the water on them with their two hands, as the animals stood nervously shrinking from each splash, until they were quite wet through and running down, when they stood quietly, with their tails tucked in between their legs.

Night came on, as it does in those latitudes, no twilight intervening, and from the rows of houses came the faint lights of wicks burning in bowls of grease, whilst from beneath the orange trees was heard the tinkling of guitars.

Enormous bats soared about noiselessly, and white-dressed couples lingered about the corners of the streets, and men stood talking, pressed closely up against the wooden gratings of the windows, to women hidden inside the room. The air was heavy with the languorous murmur of the tropic night, and gradually the lights one by one were extinguished, and the tinkling of the guitars was stilled. The moon came out, serene and glorious, showing each stone upon the sandy trails as clearly as at midday. Saddling their horses, the four Correntinos silently struck the trail to Itapua, and bands of women moved off along the forest tracks towards their homes, walking in Indian file. Hijinio Rojas, who had saddled up to put the Correntinos on the right road, emerged into the moonlit plaza, his shadow outlined so sharply on the grass it seemed it had been drawn, and then, entering a side street, disappeared into the night. The shrill neighing of his horse appeared as if it bade farewell to its companions, now far away upon the Itapua trail. Noises that rise at night from forests in the tropics sound mysteriously, deep in the woods. It seemed as if a population silent by day was active and on foot, and from the underwood a thick white mist arose, shrouding the sleeping town.

Little by little, just as a rising tide covers a reef of rocks, it submerged everything in its white, clinging folds. The houses disappeared, leaving the plaza seething like a lake, and then the church was swallowed up, the towers struggling, as it were, a little, just as a wreath of seaweed on a rock appears to fight against the tide. Then they too disappeared, and the conquering mist enveloped everything. All that was left above the sea of billowing white were the two topmost tufts of the tall, feathery palms.

XV BOPICUÁ

THE great corral at Bopicuá was full of horses. Greys, browns, bays, blacks, duns, chestnuts, roans (both blue and red), skewbalds and piebalds, with claybanks, calicos, buckskins, and a hundred shades and markings, unknown in Europe, but each with its proper name in Uruguay and Argentina, jostled each other, forming a kaleidoscopic mass.

A thick dust rose from the corral and hung above their heads. Sometimes the horses stood all huddled up, gazing with wide distended eyes and nostrils towards a group of men that lounged about the gate. At other times that panic fear that seizes upon horses when they are crushed together in large numbers, set them a-galloping. Through the dust-cloud their footfalls sounded muffled, and they themselves appeared like phantoms in a mist. When they had circled round a little they stopped, and those outside the throng, craning their heads down nearly to the ground, snorted, and then ran back, arching their necks and carrying their tails like flags. Outside the great corral was set Parodi’s camp, below some China trees, and formed of corrugated iron and hides, stuck on short uprights, so that the hides and iron almost came down upon the ground, in gipsy fashion. Upon the branches of the trees were hung saddles, bridles, halters, hobbles, lazos, and boleadoras, and underneath were spread out saddle-cloths to dry. Pieces of meat swung from the low gables of the hut, and under the low eaves was placed a “catre,” the canvas scissor-bedstead of Spain and of her colonies in the New World. Upon the catre was a heap of ponchos, airing in the sun, their bright and startling colours looking almost dingy in the fierce light of a March afternoon in Uruguay. Close to the camp stood several bullock-carts, their poles supported on a crutch, and their reed-covered tilts giving them an air of huts on wheels. Men sat about on bullocks’ skulls, around a smouldering fire, whilst the “maté” circulated round from man to man, after the fashion of a loving-cup. Parodi, the stiff-jointed son of Italian parents, a gaucho as to clothes and speech, but still half-European in his lack of comprehension of the ways of a wild horse. Arena, the capataz from Entre-Rios, thin, slight, and nervous, a man who had, as he said, in his youth known how to read and even guide the pen; but now “things of this world had turned him quite unlettered, and made him more familiar with the lazo and the spurs.” The mulatto Pablo Suarez, active and cat-like, a great race-rider and horse-tamer, short and deep-chested, with eyes like those of a black cat, and toes, prehensile as a monkey’s, that clutched the stirrup when a wild colt began to buck, so that it could not touch its flanks. They and Miguel Paralelo, tall, dark, and handsome, the owner of some property, but drawn by the excitement of a cowboy’s life to work for wages, so that he could enjoy the risk of venturing his neck each day on a “baguál,” {187} with other peons as El Correntino and Venancio Baez, were grouped around the fire. With them were seated Martin el Madrileño, a Spanish horse-coper, who had experienced the charm of gaucho life, together with Silvestre Ayres, a Brazilian, slight and olive-coloured, well-educated, but better known as a dead pistol-shot than as man of books. They waited for their turn at maté, or ate great chunks of meat from a roast cooked upon a spit, over a fire of bones. Most of the men were tall and sinewy, with that air of taciturnity and self-equilibrium that their isolated lives and Indian blood so often stamp upon the faces of those centaurs of the plains. The camp, set on a little hill, dominated the country for miles on every side. Just underneath it, horses and more horses grazed. Towards the west it stretched out to the woods that fringe the Uruguay, which, with its countless islands, flowed between great tracks of forest, and formed the frontier with the Argentine.

Between the camp and the corrals smouldered a fire of bones and ñandubay, and by it, leaning up against a rail, were set the branding-irons that had turned the horses in the corral into the property of the British Government. All round the herd enclosed, ran horses neighing, seeking their companions, who were to graze no more at Bopicuá, but be sent off by train and ship to the battlefields of Europe to die and suffer, for they knew not what, leaving their pastures and their innocent comradeship with one another till the judgment day. Then, I am sure, for God must have some human feeling after all, things will be explained to them, light come into their semi-darkness, and they will feed in prairies where the grass fades not, and springs are never dry, freed from the saddle, and with no cruel spur to urge them on they know not where or why.

For weeks we had been choosing out the doomed five hundred. Riding, inspecting, and examining from dawn till evening, till it appeared that not a single equine imperfection could have escaped our eyes. The gauchos, who all think that they alone know anything about a horse, were all struck dumb with sheer amazement. It seemed to them astonishing to take such pains to select horses that for the most part would be killed in a few months. “These men,” they said, “certainly all are doctors at the job. They know even the least defect, can tell what a horse thinks about and why. Still, none of them can ride a horse if he but shakes his ears. In their bag surely there is a cat shut up of some kind or another. If not, why do they bother so much in the matter, when all that is required is something that can carry one into the thickest of the fight?”

The sun began to slant a little, and we had still three leagues to drive the horses to the pasture where they had to pass the night for the last time in freedom, before they were entrained. Our horses stood outside of the corral, tied to the posts, some saddled with the “recado,” {190} its heads adorned with silver, some with the English saddle, that out of England has such a strange, unserviceable look, much like a saucepan on a horse’s back. Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared, driving a point of horses, which, he said, “to leave would be a crime against the sacrament.” “These are all pingos,” he exclaimed, “fit for the saddle of the Lord on High, all of them are bitted in the Brazilian style, can turn upon a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can gallop round a bullock’s head upon the ground, so that the rider can keep his hand upon it all the time.” The speaker by his accent was a Brazilian. His face was olive-coloured, his hair had the suspicion of a kink. His horse, a cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was evidently only half-tamed, and snorted loudly as it bounded here and there, making its silver harness jingle and the rider’s poncho flutter in the air. Although time pressed, the man’s address was so persuasive, his appearance so much in character with his great silver spurs just hanging from his heel, his jacket turned up underneath his elbow by the handle of his knife, and, to speak truth, the horses looked so good and in such high condition that we determined to examine them, and told their owner to drive them into a corral.

Once again we commenced the work that we had done so many times of mounting and examining. Once more we fought, trying to explain the mysteries of red tape to unsophisticated minds, and once again our “domadores” sprang lightly, barebacked, upon the horses they had never seen before, with varying results. Some of the Brazilian’s horses bucked like antelopes, El Correntino and the others of our men sitting them barebacked as easily as an ordinary man rides over a small fence. To all our queries why they did not saddle up we got one answer, “To ride with the recado is but a pastime only fit for boys.” So they went on, pulling the horses up in three short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails and manes tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or two from the corral. Then, slipping off, gave their opinion that the particular “bayo,” “zaino,” or “gateao” was just the thing to mount a lancer on, and that the speaker thought he could account for a good tale of Boches if he were over there in the Great War. This same great war, which they called “barbarous,” taking a secret pleasure in the fact that it showed Europeans not a whit more civilised than they themselves, appeared to them something in the way of a great pastime from which they were debarred.

Most of them, when they sold a horse, looked at him and remarked, “Pobrecito, you will go to the Great War,” just as a man looks at his son who is about to go, with feelings of mixed admiration and regret.

After we had examined all the Brazilian’s “Tropilla” so carefully that he said, “By Satan’s death, your graces know far more about my horses than I myself, and all I wonder is that you do not ask me if all of them have not complied with all the duties of the Church,” we found that about twenty of them were fit for the Great War. Calling upon Parodi and the capataz of Bopicuá, who all the time had remained seated round the smouldering fire and drinking maté, to prepare the branding-irons, the peons led them off, our head man calling out “Artilleria” or “Caballeria,” according to their size. After the branding, either on the hip for cavalry and on the neck for the artillery, a peon cut their manes off, making them as ugly as a mule, as their late owner said, and we were once more ready for the road, after the payment had been made. This took a little time, either because the Brazilian could not count, or perhaps because of his great caution, for he would not take payment except horse by horse. So, driving out the horses one by one, we placed a roll of dollars in his hand as each one passed the gate. Even then each roll of dollars had to be counted separately, for time is what men have the most at their disposal in places such as Bopicuá.

Two hours of sunset still remained, with three long leagues to cover, for in those latitudes there is no twilight, night succeeding day, just as films follow one another in a cinematograph. At last it all was over, and we were free to mount. Such sort of drives are of the nature of a sport in South America, and so the Brazilian drove off the horses that we had rejected, half a mile away, leaving them with a negro boy to herd, remarking that the rejected were as good or better than those that we had bought, and after cinching up his horse, prepared to ride with us. Before we started, a young man rode up, dressed like an exaggerated gaucho, in loose black trousers, poncho, and a “golilla” {194a} round his neck, a lazo hanging from the saddle, a pair of boleadoras peeping beneath his “cojinillo,” {194b} and a long silver knife stuck in his belt. It seemed he was the son of an estanciero who was studying law in Buenos Aires, but had returned for his vacation, and hearing of our drive had come to ride with us and help us in our task. No one on such occasions is to be despised, so, thanking him for his good intentions, to which he answered that he was a “partizan of the Allies, lover of liberty and truth, and was well on in all his studies, especially in International Law,” we mounted, the gauchos floating almost imperceptibly, without an effort, to their seats, the European with that air of escalading a ship’s side that differentiates us from man less civilised.

During the operations with the Brazilian, the horses had been let out of the corral to feed, and now were being held back _en pastoreo_, as it is called in Uruguay, that is to say, watched at a little distance by mounted men. Nothing remained but to drive out of the corral the horses bought from the Brazilian, and let them join the larger herd. Out they came like a string of wild geese, neighing and looking round, and then instinctively made towards the others that were feeding, and were swallowed up amongst them. Slowly we rode towards the herd, sending on several well-mounted men upon its flanks, and with precaution—for of all living animals tame horses most easily take fright upon the march and separate—we got them into motion, on a well-marked trail that led towards the gate of Bopicuá.

At first they moved a little sullenly, and as if surprised. Then the contagion of emotion that spreads so rapidly amongst animals upon the march seemed to inspire them, and the whole herd broke into a light trot. That is the moment that a stampede may happen, and accordingly we pulled our horses to a walk, whilst the men riding on the flanks forged slowly to the front, ready for anything that might occur. Gradually the trot slowed down, and we saw as it were a sea of manes and tails in front of us, emerging from a cloud of dust, from which shrill neighings and loud snortings rose. They reached a hollow, in which were several pools, and stopped to drink, all crowding into the shallow water, where they stood pawing up the mud and drinking greedily. Time pressed, and as we knew that there was water in the pasture where they were to sleep, we drove them back upon the trail, the water dripping from their muzzles and their tails, and the black mud clinging to the hair upon their fetlocks, and in drops upon their backs. Again they broke into a trot, but this time, as they had got into control, we did not check them, for there was still a mile to reach the gate.