Now She, Dona Pascuala, Was Going To Find Out How _He_
Liked It.
There, with his head in the water, he would have to hang in
the well until the weather changed.
Four years later, in my tenth year, Dona Pascuala moved away and was
succeeded at Los Alamos by a family named Barboza: strange people!
Half a dozen brothers and sisters, one or two married, and one, the
head and leader of the tribe, or family, a big man aged about forty
with fierce eagle-like eyes under bushy black eyebrows that looked
like tufts of feathers. But his chief glory was an immense crow-black
beard, of which he appeared to be excessively proud and was usually
seen stroking it in a slow deliberate manner, now with one hand, then
with both, pulling it out, dividing it, then spreading it over his
chest to display its full magnificence. He wore at his waist, in
front, a knife or _facon,_ with a sword-shaped hilt and a long curved
blade about two-thirds the length of a sword.
He was a great fighter: at all events he came to our neighbourhood
with that reputation, and I at that time, at the age of nine, like my
elder brothers had come to take a keen interest in the fighting
gaucho. A duel between two men with knives, their ponchas wrapped
round their left arms and used as shields, was a thrilling spectacle
to us; I had already witnessed several encounters of this kind; but
these were fights of ordinary or small men and were very small affairs
compared with the encounters of the famous fighters, about which we
had news from time to time.
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