Beaten, inasmuch as he was yet alive.  For Cordova was ringing with the details of his intended assassination.  Such and such men were to have done the deed; at such a shop the pistol had been bought; at such a spot it was to have been fired;—­but the marvellous swiftness of the intended victim had ruined all.

Meanwhile, Quiroga sped onward more at ease toward Tucuman.  Arrived there, he speedily arranged the matters in dispute, and was entreated by the governors of that province and of Santiago to accept of an escort on his return; he was besought to avoid Cordova, to avoid Buenos Ayres; he was counselled to throw off the mask of subservience, and to rally his numerous adherents in La Rioja and San Juan;—­but remonstrance and advice were alike thrown away upon him.  In vain was the most circumstantial account of the preparations for his murder sent by friends from Cordova; he appeared as foolhardy now in February as in December he had been panic-stricken.  “To Cordova!” he shouted, as he entered his galera; and for Cordova the postilions steered.

At the little post-hut of Ojos del Agua, in the State of Cordova, Quiroga, with his secretary, Ortiz, halted one night on the homeward journey.  Shortly before reaching the place, a young man had mysteriously stopped the carriage, and had warned its hurrying inmates that at a spot called Barranca Yaco a partida, headed by one Santos Perez, was awaiting the arrival of Quiroga.  There the massacre was to take place.  The youth, who had formerly experienced kindness at the hands of Ortiz, begged him to avoid the danger.  The unhappy secretary was rendered almost insane with terror, but his master sternly rebuked his fears.—­“The man is not yet born,” he said, “who shall slay Facundo Quiroga!  At a word from me these fellows will put themselves at my command, and form my escort into Cordova!”

The night at Ojos del Agua was passed sleeplessly enough by the unhappy Ortiz, but Quiroga was not to be persuaded into ordinary precautions.  Confident in his mastery over the minds of men, he set out unguarded, on the 18th of February, at break of day.  The party consisted of the chieftain and his trembling secretary, a negro servant on horseback, two postilions,—­one of them a mere lad,—­and a couple of couriers who were travelling in the same direction.

Who that has been on the Pampas but can picture to himself this party as it left the little mud-hut on the plain?  The cumbrous, oscillating galera, with its shaggy, straggling four-in-hand,—­the caracoling Gaucho couriers,—­the negro pricking on behind,—­the tall grass rolling out on every side,—­the muddy pool that forms the watering-place for beasts and men scattered over a hundred miles of brookless plain,—­the great sun streaming up from the herbage just in front, awakening the voices of a million insects and the carols of unnumbered birds in the thickets here and there!  Look long, Quiroga, on that rising sun! listen to the