In the midst of this perplexity intelligence was received of a disagreement between the governments of Salta, Tucuman, and Santiago, provinces of the interior, which threatened to expand into warlike proceedings.  Rosas sent for Quiroga.  No one but the hero of La Rioja, he insinuated, had sufficient influence to bring about a settlement of these disputes; no one but he had power to prevent a war; would he not, therefore, hasten to Tucuman, and obviate so dire a calamity?  Quiroga hesitated, refused, consented, wavered, and again declined the task.  With a vacillation to which he had hitherto been a stranger, he remained for many days undecided; a suspicion of deceit appears to have presented itself to his mind; but at length he resolved to accept the commission.  His hesitation, meanwhile, had completed his ruin; it had given time for the maturing of deadly plans.

In midsummer, 1835, (December 18th,) the Gaucho chieftain commenced his fateful journey.  As he entered the carriage which was to be his home for many days, and bade farewell to the adherents who were assembled to witness his departure, he turned toward the city with a wild expression and words that were remembered afterwards. Si salgo bien, he said, te volevre a ver; si no, adios para siempre! “If I succeed, I shall see thee again; if not, farewell forever!” Was it a presentiment of the truth which came upon him, like that which clouded the great mind of the first Napoleon as he left the Tuileries when the Hundred Days were running out?

One hour before his departure, a mounted messenger had been dispatched from Buenos Ayres in the same direction as that he was about to follow; and the city was scarcely out of sight when Quiroga manifested the most feverish anxiety to overtake this man.  His travelling companions were his secretary, Dr. Ortiz, and a young man of his acquaintance, bound for Cordova, to whom he had given a seat in his vehicle.  The postilions were incessantly admonished to make haste.  At a shallow stream which they forded, in the mud of which the wheels became imbedded, resisting every effort for their release, Quiroga actually hooked the postmaster of the district, who had hastened to the spot, to the carriage, and made him join his exertions to those of the horses until the vehicle was extricated, when he sped onward with fearful velocity, asking at every post-station, “When did the chasqui from Buenos Ayres pass?  An hour ago!  Forward, then!” and the carriage swept onward, on unceasingly, across the lonely Pampa,—­racing, as it afterwards proved, with Death.

At last, Cordova, nearly six hundred miles from his starting-point, was reached, just one hour after the arrival of the hunted courier.  Quiroga was besought by the cringing magistracy to spend the night in their city.  His only answer was, “Give me horses!” and two hours before midnight he rolled out of Cordova, having beaten in the grisly race.