But as yet he is only Comandante de Campana, escorting the rebel Aldao into San Luis.  He took no pains to conceal his discontent with the government of Ocampo, nor was Aldao slow in noticing or availing himself of his disaffection.  He offered Quiroga a hundred men, if he chose to overturn the government and seize upon La Rioja.  Quiroga eagerly accepted, marched upon the city, took it by surprise, threw the Ocampos and their subordinates into prison, and sent them confessors, with the order to prepare for death.  The remainder of Aldao’s force was subsequently induced to join his cause, and, on the intercession of some of its leaders, the incarcerated Ocampos were suffered to escape with their lives.

Their banished enemy, Don Nicolas Davila, was called from Tucuman to the nominal governorship of La Rioja, while Quiroga retained, with his old title, the actual rule of the province.  But Davila was not long content with this mere semblance of authority.  During the temporary absence of Quiroga, he concerted with Araya, one of the men of Aldao, a plan for the capture of their master.  Quiroga heard of it,—­he heard of everything,—­ and his answer was the assassination of Captain Araya!  Summoned by the government which he himself had created to answer the accusation of instigated murder, he advanced upon the Davilas with his Llanista horsemen.  Miguel and Nicolas Davila hastily assembled a body of troops, and prepared for a final struggle.  While the two armies were in presence of each other, a commissioner from Mendoza endeavored to effect a peaceable arrangement between their chiefs.  Passing from one camp to the other with propositions and conditions, he inspired the soldiers of the Davilas with a fatal security.  Quiroga, falling suddenly upon them in the midst of the negotiations, routed them with ease, and slew their general, who, with a small body of devoted followers, made a fierce onslaught upon him personally, and succeeded in inflicting upon him a severe wound before he was shot down.  Thenceforth,—­from the year 1823,—­Quiroga was despot of La Rioja.

His government was simple enough.  His two engrossing objects—­if objects, indeed, he may be said to have possessed—­were extortion and the uprooting of the last vestiges of civilization and law; his instruments, the dagger and the lash; his amusement, the torture of unwitting offenders; his serious occupation, the shuffling of cards.  For gambling the man had an insatiable thirst; he played once for forty hours without intermission; it was death to refuse a game with him; no one might cease playing without his express commands; no one durst win the stakes; and as a consequence, he accumulated at cards in a few years almost all the coined money then existing in the province.[2] Not content with this source of revenue, he became a farmer of the diezmo or tithes, appropriated to himself the mostrenco or unbranded cattle, by which means he speedily became proprietor of many thousand head, even established a monopoly of beef in his own favor,—­and woe to the luckless fool who should dare to infringe upon the terrible barbarian’s prerogative!