CRISTIANO: A HORSE 121 
until it would discharge itself in a resounding snort 
—the warning or alarm note of the wild horse. 
One day I remarked to my gaucho friend that 
his blue-eyed Cristiano amused me more than any 
other horse I knew. He was just like a child, and 
when tired of the monotony of standing tethered 
to the palenque he would start playing sentinel. 
He would imagine it was war-time or that an 
invasion of Indians was expected, and every cry 
of a lapwing or other alarm-giving bird, or the 
sight of a horseman in the distance would cause 
him to give a warning. But the other horses would 
not join in the game; they let him keep watch 
and wheel about this way and that, spying or 
pretending to spy something, and blowing his loud 
trumpet, without taking any notice. They simply 
dozed with heads down, occasionally switching off 
the flies with their tails or stamping a hoof to get 
them off their legs, or rubbing their tongues over 
the bits to make a rattling sound with the little 
iron rollers on the bridle-bar. 
He laughed and said I was mistaken, that 
Cristiano was not amusing himself with a game he 
had invented. He was born wild and belonged to 
a district not many leagues away but where there 
was an extensive marshy area impracticable for 
hunting on horseback. Here a band of wild horses, 
a small remnant of an immense troop that had 
formerly existed in that part, had been able to 
keep their freedom down to recent years. As they 
were frequently hunted in dry seasons when the 
