ck. With a buyer like Madariaga, all the
tricks and sharp practice of the drovers came to naught.

His serenity before trouble was also admirable. A drought suddenly
strewed his plains with dead cattle, making the land seem like an
abandoned battlefield. Everywhere great black hulks. In the air, great
spirals of crows coming from leagues away. At other times, it was the
cold; an unexpected drop in the thermometer would cover the ground with
dead bodies. Ten thousand animals, fifteen thousand, perhaps more, all
perished!

"WHAT a knock-out!" Madariaga would exclaim with resignation. "Without
such troubles, this earth would be a paradise. . . . Now, the thing to
do is to save the skins!"

And he would rail against the false pride of the emigrants, against the
new customs among the poor which prevented his securing enough hands to
strip the victims quickly, so that thousands of hides had to be lost.
Their bones whitened the earth like heaps of snow. The peoncitos (little
peons) went around putting the skulls of cows with crumpled horns on
the posts of the wire fences--a rustic decoration which suggested a
procession of Grecian lyres.

"It is lucky that the land is left, anyway!" added the ranchman.

He loved to race around his immense fields when they were beginning to
turn green in the late rains. He had been among the first to convert
these virgin wastes into rich meadow-lands, supplementing the natural
pasturage with alfalfa. Where one beast had found sustenance before, he
now had three. "The table is set," he would chuckle, "we must now go
in search of the guests." And he kept on buying, at ridiculous prices,
herds dying of hunger in others' uncultivated fields, constantly
increasing his opulent lands and stock.

One morning Desnoyers saved his life. The old ranchman had raised his
lash against a recently arrived peon who returned the attack, knife in
hand. Madariaga was defending himself as best he could, convinced
from one minute to another that he was going to receive the deadly
knife-thrust--when Desnoyers arrived and, drawing his revolver, overcame
and disarmed the adversary.

"Thanks, Frenchy," said the ranchman, much touched. "You are an
all-round man, and I am going to reward you. From this day I shall speak
to you as I do to my family."

Desnoyers did not know just what this familiar talk might amount to,
for his employer was so peculiar. Certain personal favors, nevertheless,
immediately began to im