STAMPEDING CATTLE 129 



estancia where as many as fifty dogs were kept to 

 assist the horsemen in keeping their cattle within 

 bounds. Even so, they were never wholly successful, 

 especially in excessively dry seasons, when the wind 

 would blow to them intelligence of water and better 

 pasturage to dry districts where the grass was failing; 

 and they would follow up the scent for twenty or 

 thirty or forty miles from home. At such seasons, 

 on the spots where there was water and better grass, 

 the vast level plain swarming with an incredible 

 multitude of animals presented an astonishing scene. 

 It was all, in the gaucho language, cattle and sky, or 

 literally cows and sky — vacas y cielo. 



These cattle migrations gave the cattlemen a good 

 deal of work, but did not entail serious losses; the 

 losses were when there was a panic and stampede, 

 a common phenomenon on the frontier, and in many 

 instances it preceded and gave warning of an Indian 

 invasion — the cattle smelt the coming enemy. The 

 Indians of the pampas have a very strong smell; 

 with a wind blowing from a camp one is conscious 

 of it at a distance of a mile, more or less, and it is 

 like the familiar homely smell of a rag-and-bone shop 

 in a city slum. These savages do not wash nor dust-, 

 they anoint their whole bodies instead with the 

 rancid fat of the horses used as food. With the wind 

 blowing from the desert country, this stampede would 

 begin a day or even longer before the enemy appeared 

 on the scene, usually in peaceable times when no one 

 dreamt of such things. The panic would extend along 

 the frontier line for a distance of thirty to sixty miles. 



