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 _pulpería_ 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 _pulpería_, and spurs away again into
obscurity, until at length the increasing number of his _desgracias_
tempts the mounted emissaries of justice to pursue him, in the hope of
extra reward. If suddenly beset by seven or eight of these desert police,
the _Gaucho malo_ slashes right and left with his redoubted knife,--kills
one, maims another, wounds them all. Perhaps he reaches his horse and is