enlists in the regiment of _Arribeños_, raised by his countryman, General
Ocampo, to take part in the liberation of Chile. But even the
infinitesimal degree of discipline to which his fellow-soldiers had been
reduced was too much for his wild spirit; already he feels that command,
and not obedience, is his birthright; there is soon a vacancy in the
ranks.

With three companions Quiroga took to the desert. He was followed and
overtaken by an armed detachment, or _partida_; summoned to surrender; the
odds are overpowering. But this man bids defiance to the world; he is yet,
in this very region, to rout well-appointed and disciplined armies with a
handful of men; and he engages the _partida_. A sanguinary conflict is the
result, in which Quiroga, slaying four or five of his assailants, comes
off victorious, and pursues his journey in the teeth of other bands which
are ordered to arrest him. He reaches his native plains, and, after a
flying visit to his parents, we again lose sight of the _Gaucho malo_.
Blurred rumors of his actions have, indeed, been preserved; accounts of
brutality toward his gray-haired father, of burnings of the dwelling in
which he first saw the light, of endless gaming, and plentiful shedding of
blood; but we hear nothing positive concerning him until the year 1818.
Somewhere in that year he determines to join the band of freebooters under
Ramirez, which was then devastating the eastern provinces. And here--O
deep designs of Fate!--the very means intended to check his mad career
serve only to accelerate its development. Dupuis, governor of San Luis,
through which province he is passing on his way to join Ramirez, arrests
the _Gaucho malo_, and throws him into the common jail, there to rot or
starve as Fortune may direct.

But she had other things in store for him. A number of Spanish officers,
captured by San Martin in Chile, were confined within the same walls.