That Family Likeness In The Voice Was Brought Home To Us In A Curious
Way Just About This Time, When I Was In My Tenth Year.
My brother went
one day to Buenos Ayres, and arriving at the stable where our horses
were always put up, long after dark, he left his horse, and on going
out called to the stableman, giving him some direction.
As soon as he
had spoken, a feeble voice was heard from the open door of a dark room
near the gate, calling, "That's a Hudson that spoke! Father or son -
who is it?"
My brother turned back and groped his way into the dark room, and
replied: "Yes, I'm a Hudson - Edwin's my name. Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm glad you're here! I'm your old friend Jack," returned the
other, and it was a happy meeting between the boy in his sixteenth
year and the grey-headed old battered vagabond and fighter, known far
and wide in our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other
dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there
alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had
given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad
at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by
chance found him there and had been able to give him help.
Jack the Killer was one of those strange Englishmen frequently to be
met with in those days, who had taken to the gaucho's manner of life,
when the gaucho had more liberty and was a more lawless being than he
is now or can ever be again, unless that vast level area of the pampas
should at some future time become dispeopled and go back to what it
was down to half a century ago.
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