At twenty-one he is in his glory.  Then we must look for him in the pulperias, the bar-rooms of the Pampas, whither he repairs on Sundays and fiestas, to get drunk on aguardiente or on Paraguay rum.  There you may see him seated, listening open-mouthed to the cantor, or Gaucho troubadour, as he sings the marvellous deeds of some desert hero, persecuted, unfortunately, by the myrmidons of justice for the numerous misfortunes (Anglice, murders) upon his head,—­or narrates in impassioned strain, to the accompaniment of his guitar, the circumstances of one in which he has borne a part himself,—­or chants the frightful end of the Gaucho Attila, Quiroga, and the punishment that overtook his murderer, the daring Santos Perez.  When the song is over, the cards are dealt.  Seated upon a dried bull’s-hide, each man with his unsheathed knife placed ostentatiously at his side, the jolly Gauchos commence their game.  Suddenly Manuel exclaims, that Pedro or Estanislao or Antonio is playing false.  Down fly the cards; up flash the blades; a ring is formed.  Manuel, to tell the truth, has accused his friend Pedro only for the sake of a little sport; he has never marked a man yet, and thinks it high time that that honor were attained.  So the sparks fly from the flashing blades, and Pedro’s nose has got another gash in it, and Manuel is bleeding in a dozen places, but he will not give in just yet.  Unfortunate Gaucho!  Pedro the next moment slips in a sticky pool of his own blood, and Manuel’s knife is buried in his heart!  “He is killed!  Manuel has had a misfortune!” exclaim the ring; “fly, Manuel, fly!” In another minute, and just as the vigilantes are throwing themselves upon their horses to pursue him, he has galloped out of sight.

Twenty miles from the pulperia he draws rein, dismounts, wipes his bloody knife on the grass, and slices off a collop of charque, which he munches composedly for his supper.  Very likely this misfortune will make him a Gaucho malo.  The Gaucho malo is an outlaw, at home only in the desert, intangible as the wind, sanguinary, remorseless, swift.  His brethren of the estancia pronounce his name occasionally, but in lowered tones, and with a mixture of terror and respect; he is looked up to by them as a sort of higher being.  His home is a movable point upon an area of twenty thousand square miles; his horse, the finest steed that he can find upon the Pampas between Buenos Ayres and the Andes, between the Gran Chaco and Cape Horn; his food, the first beef that he captures with his lasso; his dainties, the tongues of cows which he kills, and abandons, when he has stripped them of his favorite titbit, to the birds of prey.  Sometimes he dashes into a village, drinks a gourdful of aguardiente with the admiring guests at the pulperia, and spurs away again into obscurity, until at length the increasing number of his desgracias tempts the mounted