Oh, the subject! Any one
might guess what that would be. The words mattered more than the air.
For here we had before us not a small sweet singer, a goldfinch in a
cage, but a cock - a fighting cock with well-trimmed comb and tail and
a pair of sharp spurs to its feet. Listen, friends, he is now about to
flap his wings and crow.
I was leaning against the table on which he sat and began to think it
was a dangerous place for me, since I was certain that every word was
distinctly heard by Barboza; yet he made no sign, but went on swaying
from side to side as if no mocking word had reached him, then launched
out in one of his most atrocious _decimas_, autobiographical and
philosophical. In the first stanza he mentions that he had slain
eleven men, but using a poet's license he states the fact in a
roundabout way, saying that he slew six men, and then five more,
making eleven in all:
Seis muertes e hecho y cinco son once.
which may be paraphrased thus:
Six men had I sent to hades or heaven,
Then added five more to make them eleven.
The stanza ended, Marcos resumed his comments. What I desire to know,
said he, is, why eleven? It is not the proper number in this case. One
more is wanted to make the full dozen. He who rests at eleven has not
completed his task and should not boast of what he has done. Here am I
at his service: here is a life worth nothing to any one waiting to be
taken if he is willing and has the power to take it.
This was a challenge direct enough, yet strange to say no sudden
furious action followed, no flashing of steel and blood splashed on
table and benches; nor was there the faintest sign of emotion in the
singer's face, or any tremor or change in his voice when he resumed
his singing. And so it went on to the end - boastful stanza and
insulting remarks from Marcos; and by the time the _decima_ ended a
dozen or twenty men had forced themselves in between the two so that
there could be no fight on this occasion.
Among those present was an old gaucho who took a peculiar interest in
me on account of my bird lore and who used to talk and expound gaucho
philosophy to me in a fatherly way. Meeting him a day or two later I
remarked I did not think Barboza deserving of his fame as a fighter. I
thought him a coward. No, he said, he was not a coward. He could have
killed Marcos, but he considered that it would be a mistake, since it
would add nothing to his reputation and would probably make him
disliked in the district. That was all very well, I replied, but how
could any one who was not a poltroon endure to be publicly insulted
and challenged without flying into a rage and going for his enemy?
He smiled and answered that I was an ignorant boy and would understand
these things better some day, after knowing a good many fighters.
There were some, he said, who were men of fiery temper, who would fly
at and kill any one for the slightest cause - an idle or imprudent word
perhaps. There were others of a cool temper whose ambition it was to
be great fighters, who fought and killed people not because they hated
or were in a rage with them, but for the sake of the fame it would
give them. Barboza was one of this cool kind, who when he fought
killed, and he was not to be drawn into a fight by any ordinary person
or any fool who thought proper to challenge him.
Thus spoke my mentor and did not wholly remove my doubts. But I must
now go back to the earlier date, when this strange family were newly
come to our neighbourhood.
All of the family appeared proud of their strangeness and of the
reputation of their fighting brother, their protector and chief. No
doubt he was an unspeakable ruffian, and although I was accustomed to
ruffians even as a child and did not find that they differed much from
other men, this one with his fierce piercing eyes and cloud of black
beard and hair, somehow made me uncomfortable, and I accordingly
avoided Los Alamos. I disliked the whole tribe, except a little girl
of about eight, a child, it was said, of one of the unmarried sisters.
I never discovered which of her aunts, as she called all these tall,
white-faced heavy-browed women, was her mother. I used to see her
almost every day, for though a child she was out on horseback early
and late, riding barebacked and boy fashion, flying about the plain,
now to drive in the horses, now to turn back the flock when it was
getting too far afield, then the cattle, and finally to ride on
errands to neighbours' houses or to buy groceries at the store. I can
see her now at full gallop on the plain, bare-footed and bare-legged,
in her thin old cotton frock, her raven-black hair flying loose
behind. The strangest thing in her was her whiteness: her beautifully
chiselled face was like alabaster, without a freckle or trace of
colour in spite of the burning hot sun and wind she was constantly
exposed to. She was also extremely lean, and strangely serious for a
little girl: she never laughed and rarely smiled.
