His image stampèd is on every grass.
My comrades, anxious to get through the Cuchilla, were already on horseback, shouting to me to mount. One more lingering glance over that wide prospect—wide, yet how small a portion of the Banda’s twenty thousand miles of everlasting verdure, watered by innumerable beautiful streams? Again the thought of Dolores swept like a moaning wind over my heart. For this rich prize, her beautiful country, how weakly and with what feeble hands had we striven! Where now was her hero, the glorious deliverer Perseus? Lying, perhaps, stark and stained with blood on yon darkening moor. Not yet was the Colorado monster overcome. “Rest on thy rock, Andromeda!” I sadly murmured, then, leaping into the saddle, galloped away after my retreating comrades, already half a mile away down in the shadowy mountain pass.
XIX
Tales of the Purple Land
Before it had been long dark, we had crossed the range and into the department of Minas. Nothing happened till towards midnight, when our horses began to be greatly distressed. My companions hoped to reach before morning an estancia, still many leagues distant, where they were known and would be allowed to lie in concealment for a few days till the storm blew over; for usually shortly after an outbreak has been put down an indulto, or proclamation of pardon, is issued, after which it is safe for all those who have taken arms against the constituted government to return to their homes. For the time we were, of course, outlaws, and liable to have our throats cut at any moment. Our poor horses at last became incapable even of a trot, and, dismounting, we walked on, leading them by the bridles.
About midnight we approached a watercourse, the upper part of the Rio Barriga Negra—Black Belly River—and on coming near it the tinkling of a bell attracted our attention. It is the usual thing for every man in the Banda Orientál to have one mare, called madrina, in his tropilla, or herd of geldings; the madrina always carries a bell attached to her neck, and at night her forefeet are usually hobbled to prevent her wandering far from home; for the horses are always very much attached to her and will not leave her.
After listening for a few moments, we concluded that the sound came from the bell of a madrina, and that her forefeet were bound, for the tinkle came in violent jerks, as from an animal laboriously hopping along. Proceeding to the spot, we found a tropilla of eleven or twelve dun-coloured horses feeding near the river. Driving them very gently towards the bank, where a sharp bend in the stream enabled us to corner them, we set to work catching fresh horses. Fortunately they were not very shy of strangers, and after we had caught and secured the madrina, they gathered whinnying round her, and we were not very long in selecting the five best-looking duns in the herd.
“My friends, I call this stealing,” I said, though at that very moment I was engaged in hastily transferring my saddle to the animal I had secured.
“That is very interesting information,” said one of my comrades.
“A stolen horse will always carry you well,” said another.
“If you cannot steal a horse without compunction, you have not been properly brought up,” cried the third.
“In the Banda Orientál,” said the fourth, “you are not looked upon as an honest man unless you steal.”
We then crossed the river and broke into a swift gallop, which we kept up till morning, reaching our destination a little while before sunrise. There was here a fine plantation of trees not far from the house, surrounded by a deep ditch and a cactus hedge, and after we had taken maté and then breakfast at the house, where the people received us very kindly, we proceeded to conceal our horses and ourselves in the plantation. We found a comfortable little grassy hollow, partly shaded with the surrounding trees, and here we spread our rugs, and, fatigued with our exertions, soon dropped into a deep sleep which lasted pretty well all day. It was a pleasant day for me, for I had waking intervals during which I experienced that sensation of absolute rest of mind and body which is so exceedingly sweet after a long period of toil and anxiety. During my waking intervals I smoked cigarettes and listened to the querulous pipings of a flock of young black-headed siskins flying about from tree to tree after their parents and asking to be fed.
Occasionally the long, clear cry of the venteveo, a lemon-coloured bird with black head and long beak like a kingfisher, rang through the foliage; or a flock of pecho amarillos, olive-brown birds with bright yellow vests, would visit the trees and utter their confused chorus of gay notes.
I did not think very much about Santa Coloma. Probably he had escaped, and was once more a wanderer disguised in the humble garments of a peasant; but that would be no new experience to him. The bitter bread of expatriation had apparently been his usual food, and his periodical descents upon the country had so far always ended in disaster: he had still an object to live for. But when I remembered Dolores lamenting her lost cause and vanished peace of mind, then, in spite of the bright sunshine flecking the grass, the soft, warm wind fanning my face and whispering in the foliage overhead, and the merry-throated birds that came to visit me, a pang was in my heart, and tears came to my eyes.
When evening came we were all wide awake, and sat till a very late hour round the fire we had made in the hollow, sipping maté and conversing. We were all in a talkative mood that evening, and after the ordinary subjects of
