“Will he live?” I asked.
“How can I tell?” he answered indifferently. “I only know that now he will be able to carry me home; if he dies afterwards, what will it matter?”
We then mounted and rode quietly home. Of course, we were chaffed without mercy, especially by the old negress, who had foreseen all along, she told us, just how it would be. One would have imagined, to hear this old black creature talk, that she looked on milk-drinking as one of the greatest moral offences man could be guilty of, and that in this case Providence had miraculously interposed to prevent us from gratifying our depraved appetites.
Eyebrows took it all very coolly.
“Do not notice them,” he said to me. “The lasso was not ours, the horse was not ours, what does it matter what they say?”
The owner of the lasso, who had good-naturedly lent it to us, roused himself on hearing this. He was a very big, rough-looking man, his face covered with an immense shaggy black beard. I had taken him for a good-humoured specimen of the giant kind before, but I now changed my opinion of him when his angry passions began to rise. Blas, or Barbudo, as we called the giant, was seated on a log sipping maté.
“Perhaps you take me for a sheep, sirs, because you see me wrapped in skins,” he observed; “but let me tell you this, the lasso I lent you must be returned to me.”
“These words are not for us,” remarked Eyebrows, addressing me, “but for the cow that carried away his lasso on her horns—curse them for being so sharp!”
“No, sir,” returned Barbudo, “do not deceive yourself; they are not for the cow, but for the fool that lassoed the cow. And I promise you, Epifanio, that if it is not restored to me, this thatch over our heads will not be broad enough to shelter us both.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” said the other, “for we are short of seats; and when you leave us, the one you now encumber with your carcass will be occupied by some more meritorious person.”
“You can say what you like, for no one has yet put a padlock on your lips,” said Barbudo, raising his voice to a shout; “but you are not going to plunder me; and if my lasso is not restored to me, then I swear I will make myself a new one out of a human hide.”
“Then,” said Eyebrows, “the sooner you provide yourself with a hide for the purpose, the better, for I will never return the lasso to you; for who am I to fight against Providence, that took it out of my hands?”
To this Barbudo replied furiously:
“Then I will have it from this miserable starved foreigner, who comes here to learn to eat meat and put himself on an equality with men. Evidently he was weaned too soon; but if the starveling hungers for infant’s food, let him in future milk the cats that warm themselves beside the fire, and can be caught without a lasso, even by a Frenchman!”
I could not endure the brute’s insults, and sprang up from my seat. I happened to have a large knife in my hand, for we were just preparing to make an assault on the roasted ribs of a cow, and my first impulse was to throw down the knife and give him a blow with my fist. Had I attempted it I should most probably have paid dearly for my rashness. The instant I rose Barbudo was on me, knife in hand. He aimed a furious blow, which luckily missed me, and at the same moment I struck him, and he reeled back with a dreadful gash on his face. It was all done in a second of time, and before the others could interpose; in another moment they disarmed us, and set about bathing the barbarian’s wound. During the operation, which I daresay was very painful, for the old negress insisted on having the wound bathed with rum instead of water, the brute blasphemed outrageously, vowing that he would cut out my heart and eat it stewed with onions and seasoned with cumin seed and various other condiments.
I have often since thought of that sublime culinary conception of Blas the barbarian. There must have been a spark of wild Oriental genius in his bovine brains.
When the exhaustion caused by rage, pain, and loss of blood had at length reduced him to silence, the old negress turned on him, exclaiming that he had been rightly punished, for had he not, in spite of her timely warnings, lent his lasso to enable these two heretics (for that is what she called us) to capture a cow? Well, his lasso was lost; then his friends, with the gratitude only to be expected from milk-drinkers, had turned round and well-nigh killed him.
After supper the capatas got me alone, and with excessive friendliness of manner, and an abundance of circumlocutory phrases, advised me to
