“And the spigot—”
“That is so,” he struck in, pleased with my ready intelligence; “the mouth is the spigot.”
“I should have thought the nose more like the spigot,” I replied.
“No,” he gravely returned. “You can make a loud noise with the nose when you snore or blow it in a handkerchief; but it has no door of communication with the brain. The things that are in the brain flow out by the mouth.”
“Very well,” said I, getting impatient, “call the mouth spigot, bunghole, or what you like, and the nose merely an ornament on the cask. The thing is this: Doña Demetria has entrusted you with some liquor to pass on to me; now pass it, thick or clear.”
“Not thick,” he answered stubbornly.
“Very well; clear then,” I shouted.
“To give it to you clear I must give it off and not on my horse, sitting still and not moving.”
Anxious to have it over without more beating about the bush, I reined up my horse, jumped off, and sat down on the grass without another word. He followed my example, and, after seating himself in a comfortable position, deliberately drew out his tobacco-pouch and began making a cigarette. I could not quarrel with him for this further delay, for without the soothing, stimulating cigarette an Oriental finds it difficult to collect his thoughts. Leaving him to carry out his instructions in his own laborious fashion, I vented my irritation on the grass, plucking it up by handfuls.
“Why do you do that?” he asked, with a grin.
“Pluck grass? What a question! When a person sits down on the grass, what is the first thing he does?”
“Makes a cigarette,” he returned.
“In my country he begins plucking up the grass,” I said.
“In the Banda Orientál we leave the grass for the cattle to eat,” said he.
I at once gave up pulling the grass, for it evidently distracted his mind, and, lighting a cigarette, began smoking as placidly as I could.
At length he began: “There is not in all the Banda Orientál a worse person to express things than myself.”
“You are speaking the truth,” I said.
“But what is to be done?” he continued, staring straight before him and giving as little heed to my interruption as a hunter riding at a stiff fence would pay to a remark about the weather. “When a man cannot get a knife, he breaks in two an old pair of sheep-shears, and with one of the blades makes himself an implement which has to serve him for a knife. This is how it is with Doña Demetria; she has no one but her poor Santos to speak for her. If she had asked me to expose my life in her service, that I could easily have done; but to speak for her to a man who can read the almanac and knows the names of all the stars in the sky, that kills me, señor. And who knows this better than my mistress, who has been intimate with me from her infancy, when I often carried her in my arms? I can only say this, señor; when I speak, remember my poverty and that my mistress has no instrument except my poor tongue to convey her wishes. Words has she told me to say to you, but my devil of a memory has lost them all. What am I to do in this case? If I wished to buy my neighbour’s horse, and went to him and said, ‘Sell me your horse, neighbour, for I have fallen in love with it and my heart is sick with desire, so that I must have it at any price,’ would that not be madness, señor? Yet I must be like that imprudent person. I come to you for something, and all her expressions, which were like rare flowers culled from a garden, have been lost by the way. Therefore I can only say this thing which my mistress desires, putting it in my own brute words, which are like wild flowers I have myself gathered on the plain, that have neither fragrance nor beauty to recommend them.”
This quaint exordium did not advance matters much, but it had the effect of rousing my attention and convincing me that the message entrusted to Santos was one of very grave import. He had finished his first cigarette and now began slowly making himself a second one; but I waited patiently for him to speak, my irritation had quite vanished, those “wild flowers” of his were not without beauty, and his love and devotion for his unhappy mistress made them smell very sweet.
Presently he resumed: “Señor, you have told my mistress that you are a poor man; that you look upon this country life as a free and happy one; that above all things you would like to possess an estancia where you could breed cattle and racehorses and hunt ostriches. All this she has revolved in her mind, and because it is in her power to offer you the things you desire does she now ask you to aid her in her trouble. And now, señor, let me tell you this. The Peralta property extends all the way to the Rocha waters; five leagues of land, and there is none better in this department. It was formerly well stocked. There were thousands of cattle and mares; for my master’s party then ruled in the country; the Colorados were shut up in Montevideo, and that cutthroat Frutos Rivera never came into this part. Of the cattle only a remnant remains, but the land is a fortune for any man, and, when my old master dies, Doña Demetria inherits all. Even now it is hers, since her father has lost his calabash, as you have seen. Now let me tell you what happened many years ago. Don Hilario was at first a peon—a poor boy the Colonel befriended. When he
