Here we were confronted by a nuisance in the non-arrival of the commissariat. The pack-mules, despatched two days in advance, had not turned up. It transpired that the men, loitering away the daylight, as is the custom in Andalucia (and elsewhere), had lost the way in the darkness, almost immediately after leaving the last vestiges of a track, and had bivouaced among the scrub awaiting the break of day. Our resources for the night were thus limited to the scanty contents of the _alforjas_ (saddle-bags). We had, however, each provided ourselves with a big sackful of chaff at the last outpost of the corn-lands--chaff, or rather broken straw, being the staple food of the Spanish horse; and these now formed our beds, though their softness decreased nightly by reason of the constant inroads on their substance made by our Rosinantes. Otherwise the naked stone-paved room was absolutely innocent of either furniture or food; yet we were happy enough, as, rolled in our _mantas_, we lay down to sleep on those long pokes.
Early in the morning the mountaineers began to assemble in the courtyard of the rancho. Light of build as a rule, sinewy, and bronzed to a copper hue, looking as if their very blood was parched and dried up by tobacco and the fierce southern sun, and with _narajas_ stuck in their scarlet waistbands, these wild men might each have served as a melodramatic desperado. Three brothers of our host had ridden up from a distant farm; there was old Christoval, the ready-witted squatter on the adjoining rancho, a cheery old fellow, carrying fun and laughter wherever he went; last came the Padre from the nearest hill-village (Paterna), whose sporting instinct had made light work of the long and early ride across the sierra to join our _batida_. Alonzo, the herdsman, who added to his pastoral knowledge an intimate acquaintance with the wild beasts of his native mountains, was placed in command of the beaters, a motley, picturesque group with their leathern accoutrements and scarlet _fajas_. Of dogs, we had four _podencos_, tall, stiff-built, wiry-haired "terrier-greyhounds," fleet of foot, trained to find and harass the boar, to force him to break covert, but yet so wary at feint and retreat as to avoid the sweep of his tusks. Then there was huge "_Moro_," Don Gaspár's half-mastiff, half-bloodhound, whose staunchness was tested of old, and others of lesser note.