He was not a bad-looking young man and was
well-dressed in the gaucho costume, but he was strangely silent and
ill at ease the whole time and did not win our regard. I never saw him
again. It soon came out that he was a gambler and had nothing but his
skill with a pack of cards to live by, and Don Gregorio in a rage told
him to go back to his native place. And go he did very soon, leaving
poor Demetria on her parents' hands.
Shortly after this unhappy experience Don Gregorio bought a house in
Buenos Ayres for his wife and daughters, so that they could go and
spend a month or two when they wanted a change, and I saw them on one
or two occasions when in town. He himself would have been out of his
element in such a place, shut up in a close room or painfully waddling
over the rough boulder-stones of the narrow streets on his bow legs.
Life for him was to be on the back of a piebald horse on the wide
green plain, looking after his beloved animals.
CHAPTER XII
THE HEAD OF A DECAYED HOUSE
The Estancia Canada Seca - Low lands and floods - Don Anastacio, a
gaucho exquisite - A greatly respected man - Poor relations - Don
Anastacio a pig-fancier - Narrow escape from a pig - Charm of the low
green lands - The flower called _macachina_ - A sweet-tasting bulb -
Beauty of the green flower-sprinkled turf - A haunt of the golden
plover - The _Bolas_ - My plover-hunting experience - Rebuked by a
gaucho - A green spot, our playground in summer and lake in winter - The
venomous toad-like Caratophrys - Vocal performance of the toad-like
creature - We make war on them - The great lake battle and its results.
In this chapter I wish to introduce the reader to the last but one of
the half a dozen of our nearest neighbours, selected as typical of the
smaller estancieros - a class of landowners and cattle-breeders then in
their decay and probably now fast vanishing. This was Don Anastacio
Buenavida, who was an original person too in his little way. He was
one of our very nearest neighbours, his estancia house being no more
than two short miles from us on the south side. Like most of these old
establishments, it was a long low building with a thatched roof,
enclosures for cattle and sheep close by, and an old grove or
plantation of shade-trees bordered with rows of tall Lombardy poplars.
The whole place had a decayed and neglected appearance, the grounds
being weedy and littered with bleached bones and other rubbish:
