d like a march of soldiers. Every morning
they set out on the road at five o'clock, halted at nine, set out again
at five o'clock in the evening, and halted again at ten. The _peones_
rode on horseback, and stimulated the oxen with long goads. The boy
lighted the fire for the roasting, gave the beasts their fodder,
polished up the lanterns, and brought water for drinking.

The landscape passed before him like an indistinct vision: vast groves
of little brown trees; villages consisting of a few scattered houses,
with red and battlemented facades; very vast tracts, possibly the
ancient beds of great salt lakes, which gleamed white with salt as far
as the eye could reach; and on every hand, and always, the prairie,
solitude, silence. On very rare occasions they encountered two or three
travellers on horseback, followed by a herd of picked horses, who passed
them at a gallop, like a whirlwind. The days were all alike, as at sea,
wearisome and interminable; but the weather was fine. But the _peones_
became more and more exacting every day, as though the lad were their
bond slave; some of them treated him brutally, with threats; all forced
him to serve them without mercy: they made him carry enormous bundles of
forage; they sent him to get water at great distances; and he, broken
with fatigue, could not even sleep at night, continually tossed about as
he was by the violent jolts of the wagon, and the deafening groaning of
the wheels and wooden axles. And in addition to this, the wind having
risen, a fine, reddish, greasy dust, which enveloped everything,
penetrated the wagon, made its way under the covers, filled his eyes and
mouth, robbed him of sight and breath, constantly, oppressively,
insupportably. Worn out with toil and lack of sleep, reduced to rags
and dirt, reproached and ill treated from morning till night, the poor
boy grew every day more dejected, and would have lost heart entirely if
the _capataz_ had not addressed a kind word to him now and then. He
often wept, unseen, in a corner of the wagon, with his face against his
bag, which no longer contained anything but rags. Every morning he rose
weaker and more discouraged, and as he looked out over the country, and
beheld always the same boundless and implacable plain, like a
terrestrial ocean, he said to himself: "Ah, I shall not hold out until
to-night! I shall not hold out until to-night! To-day I shall die on the
road!" And his toil increased, his ill treatment