My Elder Brother Occasionally Accompanied Us On Our Egg-Hunting Visits
To The Lagoons, And He Also Joined Us In Our Rides To The Two Or Three
Streams Where We Used To Go To Bathe And Fish; But He Took No Part In
Our Games And Pastimes With The Gaucho Boys:
They were beneath him.
We
ran races on our ponies, and when there were race-meetings in our
neighbourhood my father would give us a little money to go and enter
our ponies in a boys' race. We rarely won when there were any stakes,
as the native boys were too clever on horseback for us, and had all
sorts of tricks to prevent us from winning, even when our ponies were
better than theirs. We also went tinamou, or partridge, catching, and
sometimes we had sham fights with lances, or long canes with which we
supplied the others. These games were very rough, and one day when we
were armed, not with canes but long straight pliant green poplar
boughs we had cut for the purpose, we were having a running fight,
when one of the boys got in a rage with me for some reason and,
dropping behind, then coming quietly up, gave me a blow on the face
and head with his stick which sent me flying off my pony. They all
dashed on, leaving me there to pick myself tip, and mounting my pony I
went home crying with pain and rage. The blow had fallen on my head,
but the pliant stick had come down over my face from the forehead to
the chin, taking the skin off. On my way back I met our shepherd and
told him my story, and said I would go to the boy's parents to tell
them. He advised me not to do so; he said I must learn to take my own
part, and if any one injured me and I wanted him punished I must do
the punishing myself. If I made any fuss and complaint about it I
should only get laughed at, and he would go scot free. What, then, was
I to do? I asked, seeing that he was older and stronger than myself,
and had his heavy whip and knife to defend himself against attack.
"Oh, don't be in a hurry to do it," he returned. "Wait for an
opportunity, even if you have to wait for days; and when it comes, do
to him just what he did to you. Don't warn him, but simply knock him
off his horse, and then you will be quits."
Now this shepherd was a good man, much respected by every one, and I
was glad that in his wisdom and sympathy he had put such a simple,
easy plan into my head, and I dried my tears and went home and washed
the blood from my face, and when asked how I had got that awful wound
that disfigured me I made light of it. Two days later my enemy
appeared on the scene. I heard his voice outside the gate calling to
some one, and peering out I saw him sitting on his horse. His guilty
conscience made him afraid to dismount, but he was anxious to find out
what was going to be done about his treatment of me, also, if he could
see me, to discover my state of mind after two days.
I went out to the timber pile and selected a bamboo cane about twenty
feet long, not too heavy to be handled easily, and holding it up like
a lance I marched to the gate and started swinging it round as I
approached him, and showing a cheerful countenance. "What are you
going to do with that cane?" he shouted, a little apprehensively.
"Wait and see," I returned. "Something to make you laugh." Then, after
whirling it round half a dozen times more, I suddenly brought it down
on his head with all my force, and did exactly what I had been
counselled to do by the wise shepherd - knocked him clean off his
horse. But he was not stunned, and starting up in a screeching fury,
he pulled out his knife to kill me. And I, for strategic reasons,
retreated, rather hastily. But his wild cries quickly brought several
persons on the scene, and, recovering courage, I went back and said
triumphantly, "Now we are quits!" Then my father was called and asked
to judge between us, and after hearing both sides he smiled and said
his judgment was not needed, that we had already settled it all
ourselves, and there was nothing now between us. I laughed, and he
glared at me, and mounting his horse, rode off without another word.
It was, however, only because he was suffering from the blow on his
head; when I met him we were good friends again.
More than once during my life, when recalling that episode, I have
asked myself if I did right in taking the shepherd's advice? Would it
have been better, when I went out to him with the bamboo cane, and he
asked me what I was going to do with it, if I had gone up to him and
shown him my face with that broad band across it from the chin to the
temple, where the skin had come off and a black crust had formed, and
had said to him: "This is the mark of the blow you gave me the day
before yesterday, when you knocked me off my horse; you see it is on
the right side of my face and head; now take the cane and give me
another blow on the left side"? Tolstoy (my favourite author, by the
way) would have answered: "Yes, certainly it would have been better
for you - better for your soul." Nevertheless, I still ask myself:
"Would it?" and if this incident should come before me half a second
before my final disappearance from earth, I should still be in doubt.
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