e how you go.
Look well to the ground before you, and keep your horses as far from the
holes as you can. Where there's two near together steer midways
between, giving both the widest berth possible. Every one of them's a
dangerous pitfall. _Caspita_! what am I prattling about? Let me give
you the lead, and you ride after, track for track."

So saying, he heads his horse in among the rubbish heaps, each with its
hole yawning adjacent: the others, as admonished, close following, and
keeping in his tracks.

They move onward at a creeping pace, every now and then forced to
advance circuitously, but taking no heed of the creatures upon whose
domain they have so unceremoniously intruded. In truth, they have no
thought about these, nor eyes for them. Enough if they can avoid
intrusion into their dwellings by a short cut downwards.

Nor do the _biscachas_ seem at all alarmed at the sight of such
formidable invaders. They are anything but shy creatures; instead, far
more given to curiosity; so much that they will sit squatted on their
hams, in an upright attitude, watching the traveller as he passes within
less than a score yards of them, the expression on their faces being
that of grave contemplation. Only, if he draw too familiarly near, and
they imagine him an enemy, there is a scamper off, their short fore-legs
giving them a gait also heightening their resemblance to rats.

As a matter of course, such confidence makes them an easy prey to the
_biscacha_ catcher; for there are men who follow taking them as a
profession. Their flesh is sweet and good to eat, while their skins are
a marketable commodity; of late years forming an article of export to
England, and other European countries.

Heeding neither the quadrupeds, nor the birds, their fellow-tenants of
the burrow--the latter perched upon the summits of the mounds, and one
after another flying off with a defiant screech as the horsemen drew
near--these, after an hour spent in a slow but diligent advance, at
length, and without accident, ride clear of the _biscachera_, and out
upon the smooth open plain beyond it.

Soon as feeling themselves on firm ground, every spur of the party is
plied; and they go off at a tearing pace, to make up for the lost time.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

A SHOULDER OUT OF JOINT.

When Gaspar, on first sighting the _biscachera_, poured forth vials of
wrath upon it, he little dreamt that another burrow of similar kind, and
almost