Our escort was made up of sixteen soldiers, with Sergeant Lucero to command them, and the Indian, Sirirí, a docile Mocoví whose two primary traits, I would say, were prudishness and hatred for Chief Josesito; the mere mention of him in Sirirí’s presence darkened his face. The more unreasonable demands of the Catholic Church, which at that time were not taken seriously even in Rome, seemed to have found in Sirirí the proper soil to take root and flourish to the point of caricature. He did not drink, smoke, curse, nor swear in vain, and it suited him to cross himself on any pretext and kiss a little gold medallion that hung around his neck. Sergeant Lucero, who valued him because he was in fact a trusty guide as well as an interpreter, said — when Sirirí was not around, of course — that as a boy he had swallowed a catechism and had yet to finish digesting it. When he spoke of Chief Josesito, Sirirí’s hateful expression became so disturbing that one began to feel kind toward the musical murderer, who, by contrast, at least displayed a certain humanity when he was drunk or set to playing the violin. Sirirí’s principles, strict as they were, suffered many grueling tests over the trip, during which there was not only prostitution, alcohol, and violence to weaken his moral foundations, but also the addition of madness to dash the walls of the doorless, windowless building in which religion had caged his wild and fateful soul. Osuna, who was like two different people depending on whether he was drunk or sober, respected him by day for of his knowledge of the desert and loathed him by night.
We were a diverse and colorful convoy: One part of the escort went before us and the other brought up the rear. My carriage came at the head, and those of the five patients followed behind, then the Basque’s warehouse, and finally the women’s wagon. Of the carrt-dwellers, only Troncoso and I traveled by horse, he on his tall and skittish blue roan, so tense and lively it was nearly always reined in and ready to break into a gallop at any moment. It seemed also to have contracted its rider’s strange ailment, held in a state of exaggerated activity, morbid and unceasing. The escort soldiers did not wear uniforms, but dressed more capriciously, and though several tattered, faded military garments had made it into that ragged assemblage, the diversity of the rest ultimately caused it to lose all unity. From that haphazard motley, diametrically opposed to the careful design implied by the uniform, which seeks repetition, order, and symmetry, no doubt gave off an equally lively effect, especially from the colors and designs on the ponchos — solid, striped, dark or light, fringed or unfringed — that, in the desert’s empty space, seemed to take on additional clarity, especially in those early days, when they swelled in the icy southerly wind or fluttered over the backs of their owners. The wagons shone dimly at first, too, as they had been cleaned, oiled, and partially repainted with the company colors by their own cart-men on their arrival from Paraguay. Following the last of the soldiers, a herd of fresh horses went meekly, driven by the horsemen who would take turns at the task. And, finally, ten or twelve stray dogs followed us with the same stubbornness, need, and eagerness as seagulls trailing a ship’s wake in search of sustenance.
As a doctor, my primary responsibility was, of course, to busy myself with my patients, but as Osuna hinted, and I came to understand, the posture of a leader or master was expected of me, so I locked myself in my carriage to ponder how I might display that posture more clearly, concluding that the best way was to underline the fact that it was I who paid the expenses for our expedition, though I later realized that those ragged mercenaries we called our escort — some of whom barely understood a word of Castilian because they came from Corrientes and Asunción and their mother tongue was the native language, Guaraní—expected me to make the necessary decisions about the direction of our unusual caravan. As it was impossible for me to carry out that duty without Osuna and the sergeant, I decided to adopt a distant and thoughtful attitude, delaying my response to their proposals and pretending rather to weigh the pro and contra of each before making a firm decision. I must say my farce yielded a far better result than expected, since the one who seemed to have the most doubts about my abilities, which is to say Osuna himself, turned out to be the most gullible of all. Many years later, he would still speak of me as a man of the plains, though never in my presence. In reality, I do not know if my authority prevailed because the wages were paid in the promised amounts and terms, or thanks to my professional reputation, for I was able to treat all the maladies those rustics endured over the long month of our trip with my little valet case of medical instruments and emergency remedies. Colds, diarrhea, scrapes, boils, insect stings, fever, back pain or hemorrhoids, or else old complaints, already bound to the bodies of their victims, flared up with the bustle of the trip, and not a single day went by in which one of those gauchos—thirty years later I use this word cautiously, although I know it has lost the somewhat insulting sense it had in those days — did not come to my carriage, embarrassed but helpless, to consult me.