This Was A Well-Stretched, Dried
Horse-Hide, With A Lasso Attached At One End To The Head Or Fore-Part
Of The Hide And The Other End To The Gaucho's Horse, As A Rule To The
Surcingle.
A stool or cushion was placed in the centre of the big hide
for the lady to sit on,
And when she had established herself on it the
man would whip up his horse and away he would gallop, dragging the
strange conveyance after him - a sight which filled the foreigner with
amazement.
Our intimate happy relations with the Royd family continued till about
my twelfth year, then came rather suddenly to an end. Mr. Royd, who
had always seemed one of the brightest, happiest men we knew, all at
once fell into a state of profound melancholy. No one could guess the
cause, as he was quite well and appeared to be prosperous. He was at
length persuaded by his friends to go to Buenos Ayres to consult a
doctor, and went alone and stayed in the house of an Anglo-Argentine
family who were also friends of ours. By-and-by the dreadful news came
that he had committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. His
wife and daughters then left the Casa Antigua, and not long afterwards
Dona Mercedes wrote to my mother that they were left penniless; that
their flocks and other possessions at the estancia were to be sold for
the benefit of their creditors, and that she and her daughters were
living on the charity of some of her relations who were not well off.
Her only hope was that her two daughters, being good-looking girls,
would find husbands and be in a position to keep her from want. Her
one word about her dead husband, the lovable, easy-going George Royd,
the bright handsome English boy who had wooed and won her so many
years before, was that she looked upon her meeting with him in
girlhood as the great calamity of her life, that in killing himself
and leaving his wife and daughters to poverty and suffering, he had
committed an unpardonable crime.
So ends the story of our nearest English neighbour.
CHAPTER XI
A BREEDER OF PIEBALDS
La Tapera, a native estancia - Don Gregorio Gandara - His grotesque
appearance and strange laugh - Gandara's wife and her habits and pets -
My dislike of hairless dogs - Gandara's daughters - A pet ostrich - In
the peach orchard - Gandara's herds of piebald brood mares - His
masterful temper - His own saddle-horses - Creating a sensation at
gaucho gatherings - The younger daughter's lovers - Her marriage at our
house - The priest and the wedding breakfast - Demetria forsaken by her
husband.
When, standing by the front gate of our home, we looked out to the
north over the level plain and let our eyes rove west from the tall
Lombardy poplars of Casa Antigua, they presently rested on another
pile or island of trees, blue in the distance, marking the site of
another estancia house.
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