So his determination crystallized, and he stopped thinking about the affairs of his mother-country. The necessities of existence in a foreign land whose language he was beginning to pick up made him think only of himself. The turbulent and adventurous life of these new nations compelled him to most absurd expedients and varied occupations. Yet he felt himself strong with an audacity and self-reliance which he never had in the old world. “I am equal to everything,” he said, “if they only give me time to prove it!” Although he had fled from his country in order not to take up arms, he even led a soldier’s life for a brief period in his adopted land, receiving a wound in one of the many hostilities between the whites and reds in the unsettled districts.
In Buenos Aires, he again worked as a woodcarver. The city was beginning to expand, breaking its shell as a large village. Desnoyers spent many years ornamenting salons and facades. It was a laborious existence, sedentary and remunerative. But one day he became tired of this slow saving which could only bring him a mediocre fortune after a long time. He had gone to the new world to become rich like so many others. And at twenty-seven, he started forth again, a full-fledged adventurer, avoiding the cities, wishing to snatch money from untapped, natural sources. He worked farms in the forests of the North, but the locusts obliterated his crops in a few hours. He was a cattle-driver, with the aid of only two peons, driving a herd of oxen and mules over the snowy solitudes of the Andes to Bolivia and Chile. In this life, making journeys of many months’ duration, across interminable plains, he lost exact account of time and space. Just as he thought himself on the verge of winning a fortune, he lost it all by an unfortunate speculation. And in a moment of failure and despair, being now thirty years old, he became an employee of Julio Madariaga.
He knew of this rustic millionaire through his purchases of flocks—a Spaniard who had come to the country when very young, adapting himself very easily to its customs, and living like a cowboy after he had acquired enormous properties. The country folk, wishing to put a title of respect before his name, called him Don Madariaga.
“Comrade,” he said to Desnoyers one day when he happened to be in a good humor—a very rare thing for him—“you must have passed through many ups and downs. Your lack of silver may be smelled a long ways off. Why lead such a dog’s life? Trust in me, Frenchy, and remain here! I am growing old, and I need a man.”
After the Frenchman had arranged to stay with Madariaga, every landed proprietor living within fifteen or twenty leagues of the ranch, stopped the new employee on the road to prophesy all sorts of misfortune.
“You will not stay long. Nobody can get along with Don Madariaga. We have lost count of his overseers. He is a man who must be killed or deserted. Soon you will go, too!”
Desnoyers did not doubt but that there was some truth in all this. Madariaga was an impossible character, but feeling a certain sympathy with the Frenchman, had tried not to annoy him with his irritability.
“He’s a regular pearl, this Frenchy,” said the plainsman as though trying to excuse himself for his considerate treatment of his latest acquisition. “I like him because he is very serious. … That is the way I like a man.”
Desnoyers did not know exactly what this much-admired seriousness could be, but he felt a secret pride in seeing him aggressive with everybody else, even his family, whilst he took with him a tone of paternal bluffness.
The family consisted of his wife Misia Petrona (whom he always called the China) and two grown daughters who had gone to school in Buenos Aires, but on returning to the ranch had reverted somewhat to their original rusticity.
Madariaga’s fortune was enormous. He had lived in the field since his arrival in America, when the white race had not dared to settle outside the towns for fear of the Indians. He had gained his first money as a fearless trader, taking merchandise in a cart from fort to fort. He had killed Indians, was twice wounded by them, and for a while had lived as a captive with an Indian chief whom he finally succeeded in making his staunch friend. With his earnings, he had bought land, much land, almost worthless because of its insecurity, devoting it to the raising of cattle that he had to defend, gun in hand, from the pirates of the plains.
Then he had married his China, a young half-breed who was running around barefoot, but owned many of her forefathers’ fields. They had lived in an almost savage poverty on their property which would have taken many a day’s journey to go around. Afterwards, when the government was pushing the Indians towards the frontiers, and offering the abandoned lands for sale, considering it a patriotic sacrifice on the part of any one wishing to acquire them, Madariaga bought and bought at the lowest figure and longest terms. To get possession of vast tracts and populate it with blooded stock became the mission of his life. At times, galloping with Desnoyers through his boundless fields, he was not able to repress his pride.
“Tell me something, Frenchy! They say that further up the country, there are some nations about the size of my ranches. Is that so?” …
The Frenchman agreed. … The lands of Madariaga were indeed greater than many principalities. This put the old plainsman in rare good humor and he exclaimed in the cowboy vernacular which had become second nature to him—“Then it wouldn’t be absurd to proclaim myself king some day? Just imagine it, Frenchy;—Don Madariaga, the First. … The worst of it all is that I would also be the last, for the China will not give me a son. … She is a weak cow!”
The fame of his vast territories and his wealth in stock reached even to Buenos Aires. Every one knew of Madariaga by name, although very few had seen him. When he went to the Capital, he passed unnoticed because of his country aspect—the same leggings that he was used to wearing in the fields, his poncho wrapped around him like a muffler above which rose the aggressive points of a necktie, a tormenting ornament imposed by his daughters, who in vain arranged it with loving hands that he might look a little more respectable.
One day he entered the office of the richest merchant of the capital.
“Sir, I know that you need some young bulls for the European market, and I have come to sell you a few.”
The man of affairs looked haughtily at the poor cowboy. He might explain his errand to one of the employees, he could not waste his time on such small matters. But the malicious grin on the rustic’s face awoke his curiosity.
“And how many are you able to sell, my good man?”
“About thirty thousand, sir.”
It was not necessary to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from his desk, and obsequiously offered him a seat.
“You can be no other than Don Madariaga.”
“At the service of God and yourself, sir,” he responded in the manner of a Spanish countryman.
That was the most glorious moment of his existence.
In the outer office of the Directors of the Bank, the clerks offered him a seat until the personage the other side of the door should deign to receive him. But scarcely was his name announced than that same director ran to admit him, and the employee was stupefied to hear the ranchman say, by way of greeting, “I have come to draw out three hundred thousand dollars. I have abundant pasturage, and I wish to buy a ranch or two in order to stock them.”
His arbitrary and contradictory character weighed upon the inhabitants of his lands with both cruel and good-natured tyranny. No vagabond ever passed by the ranch without being rudely assailed by its owner from the outset.
“Don’t tell me any of your hard-luck stories, friend,” he would yell as if he were going to beat him. “Under the shed is a skinned beast; cut and eat as much as you wish and so help yourself to continue your journey. … But no more of your yarns!”
And he would turn his back upon the tramp, after giving him a few dollars.