For some time, Francisco had been feeling pangs of hunger. His hurried _café_ had not been sufficient nourishment for the long hot ride, and now his hunger was aroused by odours that came to his nostrils like pleasant messengers; yet, he could not see anything cooking.
"Uncle, shall we eat out here with the _gauchos_?" he asked, wild-eyed.
"Very near them anyhow, but not exactly _with_ them. Manuel came ahead of us to prepare our _almuerzo_, which is in process of cooking over yonder behind that clump of willows. Before we eat you shall see the _gauchos_ eat, but I warn you it is not a prepossessing sight.
"Here, Don Carlos, have the men go to their breakfast now, the lad wants to see their table manners."
Don Carlos rode into the corral, spoke a few words and the branding ceased. Each man mounted his own pony, for an Argentine cowboy never walks, be his journey ever so short. With cheers and shouts they galloped toward the mud huts near-by.
Francisco and the Colonel followed at a more dignified pace. They found the men gathered about in groups, squatting on the ground or sitting on ox skulls.
The beef had been quartered and roasted on a spit over a charcoal fire, outside one of the huts. Each man, without ceremony, had "fallen to" and helped himself, by cutting great chunks of the meat from the large piece on the fire.
Holding one end with his teeth and the other with his hand, each man would sever the bite about two inches from his mouth with one of his silver-handled belt knives.
"You see how superfluous are knives, forks and plates," said the Colonel in an undertone to Francisco as they watched this primitive process.
"And now for our own breakfast. I am as hollow as is the wild pumpkin at the end of summer," and he gave a sharp blow to his horse, another to Barboza, and they were off towards their own waiting meal in the shadow of the willows.
Manuel had killed a small kid soon after reaching the corral, and had roasted it on a spit in its skin over a fire of dry thistles and charcoal. He was basting it with salt water, which he had brought in a bottle. In the coals below were sweet potatoes roasting in their jackets. So tempting were the combined odours of lamb and sweet potatoes that Francisco ran to the little stream to wash himself, in order that he might begin to appease his appetite at once.