Horses Of This Colour Have The Ears Edged And Tipped With
Black, The Muzzle, Fetlocks, Mane, And Tail Also Black.
I do not know
if he ever succeeded in breeding a tortoiseshell.
Gandara's pride in the horses he rode himself - the rare blooms
selected from his equine garden - showed itself in the way in which he
decorated them with silver headstalls and bit and the whole gear
sparkling with silver, while he was careless of his own dress, going
about in an old rusty hat, unpolished boots, and a frayed old Indian
poncho or cloak over his gaucho garments. Probably the most glorious
moment of his life was when he rode to a race-meeting or cattle-
marking or other gathering of the gaucho population of the district,
when all eyes would be turned to him on his arrival. Dismounting, he
would hobble his horse, tie the glittering reins to the back of the
saddle, and leave him proudly champing his big native bit and tossing
his decorated head, while the people gathered round to admire the
strangely-coloured animal as if it had been a Pegasus just alighted
from the skies to stand for a while exhibiting itself among the horses
of the earth.
My latest recollections of La Tapera are concerned more with Demetria
than the piebalds. She was not an elegant figure, as was natural in a
daughter of the grotesque Don Gregorio, but her countenance, as I have
said, was attractive on account of its colour and gentle wistful
expression, and being the daughter of a man rich in horses she did not
want for lovers. In those far-off days the idle, gay, well-dressed
young gambler was always a girl's first and often most successful
wooer, but at La Tapera the young lovers had to reckon with one who,
incredible as it seemed in a gaucho, hated gambling and kept a hostile
and rather terrifying eye on their approaches. Eventually Demetria
became engaged to a young stranger from a distance who had succeeded
in persuading the father that he was an eligible person and able to
provide for a wife.
Now it happened that the nearest priest in our part of the country
lived a long distance away, and to get to him and his little thatched
chapel one had to cross a swamp two miles wide in which one's horse
would sink belly-deep in miry holes at least a dozen times before one
could get through. In these circumstances the Gandara family could not
go to the priest, but managed to persuade him to come to them, and as
La Tapera was not considered a good enough place in which to hold so
important a ceremony, my parents invited them to have the marriage in
our house. The priest arrived on horseback about noon on a sultry day,
hot and tired and well splashed with dried mud, and in a rather bad
temper. It must also have gone against him to unite these young people
in the house of heretics who were doomed to a dreadful future after
their rebellious lives had ended.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 93 of 186
Words from 49218 to 49738
of 98444
