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Well, he takes a notion that he'd better get legal title to the land he was using, though in those days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a grant of land.
"It is a land grant, made by Governor Facundo Megares, of New Mexico, which territory was then a province of Spain, to Don Fernando Valdés, in consideration of services rendered the Spanish crown against the Indians." Dick shook his head. "You've got me, sir. If I ever heard of it the thing has plumb slipped my mind. Ought I to know about it?" "Have you ever heard of the Moreño grant?"
His herds grew mighty; and he asked of Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, a grant of land upon which to pasture them. These herds were for his people; but they were in his name and belonged to him. Why should he not have been given land for them, since his was the sword that had won the land against the Apaches?" "You ain't heard me say he shouldn't have had it"
No sooner was Facundo set at liberty, than he snatched the bolt of the prison-gate, from the very hand which had just withdrawn it to set him free, crushed the Spaniard's skull with the heavy iron, and swung it right and left, until, according to his own statement, made at a later date, no less than fourteen corpses were stiffening on the ground.
He is already a perfect Gaucho; can wield the lasso, and the bolas, and the knife; is a fearless ginete, a consummate horseman. One day at school, the master, irritated beyond endurance, exhibits a new rod, bought expressly, so he says, "for flogging Facundo." When the boy is called up to recite, he blunders, stammers, hesitates, on purpose.
He chooses the most toilsome, the most unintellectual, but, at the same time, the most remunerative handicraft, that of the tapiador, or builder of mud walls. At San Juan, in the orchard of the Godoys, at Fiambalá, in La Rioja, in the city of Mendoza, they will show you walls which the hands of General Facundo Quiroga, Comandante de Campaña, etc., etc., put together.
Badly printed and barbarously bound, this "Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga" is nevertheless replete with the evidence of genius, and bears the stamp of a generously-cultivated mind. Its author, indeed, the poet-patriot- philosopher, Don Domingo F. Sarmiento, may be called the Lamartine of South America, whose eventful career may some day invite us to an examination.
The character of the people is Oriental; their appearance actually recalls, as we are told, that of the ancient dwellers about Jerusalem; their very customs have rather an Arabic than a Spanish tinge. He called him Juan Facundo. For the first few years of his existence, we may safely believe, the future general was scarcely distinguishable from a common baby.
The answer was conveyed to him in 1852; and the sentence serves as epigraph to the present life of his associate and victim, Facundo Quiroga. In this extraordinary character we see the quintessence of that desert- life some types of which we have endeavored to delineate.
In this period of anarchy we catch another glimpse of Juan Facundo. He has worked his way down to Buenos Ayres, nine hundred miles from home, and enlists in the regiment of Arribeños, raised by his countryman, General Ocampo, to take part in the liberation of Chile.
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