Face to face with Don Segundo Sombra.

• Author: Guiraldez, Ricardo
• Position: Latitudes

Don Pedro frowned, as if trying to concentrate on some half-forgotten memory. "Tell me, was he very dark?"

"I think so--yes sir. And strong!"

As though talking of something extraordinary, the saloonkeeper muttered, "Who knows if it isn't Don Segundo Sombra!"

"It is!" I said, without knowing why, and I felt the same thrill as when at nightfall I had stood motionless before the portentous vision of that gaucho stamped black on the horizon.

"You know him?" Don Pedro asked the half-breed, paying no attention to my exclamation.

"Only what I've heard tell of him. The devil, I reckon, ain't as fierce as he's painted. How about serving me another drink?"

"Hm," went on Don Pedro. "I've seen him more than once. He used to come in here, afternoons. He's a man you want to watch your step with. He's from San Pedro. Had a run in, they say, with the police some time ago."

"I suppose he butchered somebody else's steer."

"Yes. But if I remember rightly, the steer was a Christian."

Burgos kept his stolid eyes on the glass, and a frown wrinkled his narrow forehead of a pampas Indian half-breed. The fame of another man seemed to lessen his own as an expert with the knife.

We heard a gallop stop short at the door, then the soft hiss with which the country folk quiet a horse, and Don Segundo's silent figure stood framed in the doorway.

"Good evening," came the high-pitched voice, and it was easy to recognize. "How's Don Pedro?"

"Good. And you, Don Segundo?"

"I can't complain, thank God."

As they greeted each other with the customary courtesies, I looked the man over. He was not really so big. What made him seem so, as he appears to me even today, was the sense of power flowing from his body. His chest was enormous and his joints big-boned like those of a horse. His feet were short and high-arched; his hands thick and leathery like the scales of an armadillo. His skin was copper-hued and his eyes slanted slightly toward his temples. To talk more at ease he pushed his narrow-brimmed hat back from his forehead showing bangs cut like a horse's, level with his eyebrows. His attire was that of a poor gaucho. A plain pigskin belt girded his waist. The short blouse was caught up by the bone-handled knife from which swung a rough, plaited quirt, dark with use.

His chiripa was long and coarse, and a plain black kerchief was knotted around his neck with the ends across his shoulders. He had split his alpargatas at the instep to make room for the fleshy foot.

When I had...