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But occasionally some poor gaucho with only a few animals would refuse to part with a piebald mare, either out of pride, or "cussedness" as an American would say, or because he was attached to it, and this would stir Gandara's soul to its deepest depth and bring up all the blackness in him to the surface.
Gandara's horses were strangely coloured by nature aided by artificial selection, and I remember that as a boy I thought them very beautiful. Sometimes it was a black- or brown- or bay-and-white, or a chestnut- or silver-grey- or strawberry-red-and-white, but the main point was the pleasing arrangement and shading of the dark colour.
Gandara's pride in the horses he rode himself the rare blooms selected from his equine garden showed itself in the way in which he decorated them with silver headstalls and bit and the whole gear sparkling with silver, while he was careless of his own dress, going about in an old rusty hat, unpolished boots, and a frayed old Indian poncho or cloak over his gaucho garments.
The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.
La Tapera, a native estancia Don Gregorio Gandara His grotesque appearance and strange laugh Gandara's wife and her habits and pets My dislike of hairless dogs Gandara's daughters A pet ostrich In the peach orchard Gandara's herds of piebald brood mares His masterful temper His own saddle-horses Creating a sensation at gaucho gatherings The younger daughter's lovers Her marriage at our house The priest and the wedding breakfast Demetria forsaken by her husband.
Gandara's great business was horse-breeding, and as a rule he kept about a thousand brood mares, so that the herds usually numbered about three thousand head. Strange to say, they were nearly all piebalds. The gaucho, from the poorest worker on horseback to the largest owner of lands and cattle, has, or had in those days, a fancy for having all his riding-horses of one colour.
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