Pietro laughed heartily, and a number of the men near at hand joined in. For all could understand English, and speak a little, while Pietro, Pepito, and a few others could converse fluently. They gathered the meaning of their young leader instantly, and liked the plain way in which he put this last matter.
"The señor is right, as he has been before," laughed Pietro. "If he had not been here we should have had no warning, some of our number would have been killed, and then we should have galloped for the house, leaving the cattle to themselves. Now we see that there is another course. The señor can rely on us, for we would do much to break up these enemies, and check them thoroughly. Does the señor know what happens should a gaucho be captured?"
"Something unpleasant, I imagine," smiled Dudley.
"I will not say. But it is bad. They are brutes, and treat prisoners with frightful cruelty. But we are four miles from the herd. What shall we do next?"
"Eat and smoke, if you can get into some little hollow," was the prompt answer. "When are these fellows asleep?"
"By midnight they will be gorged and drowsy. By two in the morning they will be almost helpless. Their sense of hearing will be dulled, and for the most part they will be fast asleep."
"And the dawn breaks at about four-thirty. Good!" exclaimed Dudley. "Well, what about the meal?"
"The señor thinks of the comfort of his men always. There is a dip in the pampas beyond the next rise; there we can light fires and eat and rest."
The wide sweeping pampas ran on in a long succession of rolls, which were hardly distinguishable to those riding over them. But they were there for all that, and often enough a party of horsemen situated in one depression would be out of sight of a second in a depression running parallel. Dudley and his men took advantage of this fact, and very soon had hobbled their horses, had slipped the bits behind the chins, so that the animals might graze, and had gathered bundles of thistles. These were set fire to beneath an awning of blankets, for otherwise the glare might have been seen in the sky. Cuts of juicy meat were skewered on sticks or on ramrods, and very soon there was a fizzle about the flames, and an odor which made a hungry man sniff and grow fidgety. Pipes were taken from saddle bags, filled with rank weed which would try the stomach even of an army recruit, and carefully lit at the embers.