Now Barboza was a singer but not
a player on the guitar, so that an accompanist had to be called for. A
stranger at the meeting quickly responded to the call. Yes, he could
play to any man's singing - any tune he liked to call. He was a big,
loud-voiced, talkative man, not known to any person present; he was a
passer-by, and seeing a crowd at a rancho had ridden up and joined
them, ready to take a hand in whatever work or games might be going
on. Taking the guitar he settled down by Barboza's side and began
tuning the instrument and discussing the question of the air to be
played. And this was soon settled.
Here I must pause to remark that Barboza, although almost as famous
for his _decimas_ as for his sanguinary duels, was not what one would
call a musical person. His singing voice was inexpressibly harsh, like
that, for example, of the carrion crow when that bird is most vocal in
its love season and makes the woods resound with its prolonged grating
metallic calls. The interesting point was that his songs were his own
composition and were recitals of his strange adventures, mixed with
his thoughts and feelings about things in general - his philosophy of
life. Probably if I had these compositions before me now in manuscript
they would strike me as dreadfully crude stuff; nevertheless I am
sorry I did not write some of them down and that I can only recall a
few lines.
The _decima_ he now started to sing related to his early experiences,
and swaying his body from side to side and bending forward until his
beard was all over his knees he began in his raucous voice:
En el ano mil ochocientos y quarenta,
Quando citaron todos los enrolados,
which, roughly translated, means:
Eighteen hundred and forty was the year
When all the enrolled were cited to appear.
Thus far he had got when the guitarist, smiting angrily on the strings
with his palm, leaped to his feet, shouting, "No, no - no more of that!
What! do you sing to me of 1840 - that cursed year! I refuse to play to
you! Nor will I listen to you, nor will I allow any person to sing of
that year and that event in my presence."
Naturally every one was astonished, and the first thought was, What
will happen now? Blood would assuredly flow, and I was there to see -
and how my elder brothers would envy me!
Barboza rose scowling from his seat, and dropping his hand on the hilt
of his _facon_ said: "Who is this who forbids me, Basilio Barboza, to
sing of 1840?"
"I forbid you!" shouted the stranger in a rage and smiting his breast.
"Do you know what it is to me to hear that date - that fatal year?
