Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

off close to the shoulder for greater freedom in throwingthe lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side of lean darkyouths, marked by all the hardships of campaigning, withstrips of raw beef twined round the crowns of their hats,and huge iron spurs fastened to their naked heels. Thosethat in the passes of the mountain had lost their lances hadprovided themselves with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen:slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lotof loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They werearmed with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessnesscharacterized the expression of all these sun-blacked countenances;they glared down haughtily with their scorchedeyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently, pointedout to each other some particular head amongst the womenat the windows. When they had ridden into the Plaza andcaught sight of the equestrian statue of the King dazzlinglywhite in the sunshine, towering enormous and motionlessabove the surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture ofsaluting, a murmur of surprise ran through their ranks.‘What is that saint in the big hat?’ they asked each other.They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plainswith which Pedro Montero had helped so much the victoriouscareer of his brother the general. The influence whichthat man, brought up in coast towns, acquired in a shorttime over the plainsmen of the Republic can be ascribedonly to a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that itmust have appeared to those violent men but little removedfrom a state of utter savagery, as the perfection of sagacityand virtue. The popular lore of all nations testifies that