ENTRY 18- THE BAD GAUCHO

Languague 4 Entry Nª 18


The phantom of the bad “gaucho”

Many years ago in the recently founded “Los Perez”, when there was no television, no cars and no buses something violent happened. The place, my father told me, was founded by a pair of brothers sons of Russians immigrants whose surname was Peretz and for reasons of making the surname sound a little Spanish they lost the “t” and were called Perez. They had many hundreds and hundreds of hectares of land. Of course it was all covered by woods. The two brothers sold many portions to the first Spanish, Italian and Arabian immigrants. In a few years the woods were reduced to big portions of arable land with corn and sugar cane plantations.
There was only one storehouse where people could buy flour, sugar, salami, “mortadela”, candies, cookies with animal shapes, pasta, coffee, “yerba mate”, kerosene for the lamps, oil, cheese, tobacco and paper and of course wine. It was a very tall house made of bricks with a big wooden door and a wide wooden window which opened upwards as if it were a kind of roof. It was placed a few meters near the cemetery. A young couple with a young girl run the store. They were very nice but as at that time it was said that many “gauchos” were not peaceful, the man had a gun and a big knife, in case one of those renegades should try to brake into his store.
One evening two of these gauchos went to the store to buy something to eat and drink. Both of them were in dirty clothes, their hair was long and in a mess. One of them had many gold rings in his fingers. The owner knew that those rings had been taken from the people that man had killed. The owner sold them what they wanted but when they asked for a couple of glasses to drink there the man knowing that when these two brothers were drunk were very dangerous, he said he was sorry because his wife and little girl did not like seeing people drinking wine in the house. The two brothers paid, took their horses and rode to the path going north, leaving a thick cloud of dust in the air.
The owner of the store told his wife that he did not like those gauchos, that he had heard people talking bad things of them, that they had killed another man in another locality and that the sheriff was looking for them. He feared they would come that night for more wine so he prepared his shotgun near the door. When it was time to go to sleep, they blew off the last candle and went to bed.
People say that it was after midnight that the two renegades returned to the store.
“Knock, knock”. “we want more wine, open the door”.
The man and his wife woke up because of the noise at the door. The man did not answer.
The two brothers knocked harder this time
“Open! Open at this very mo,momet , I , I say “.
“They are drunk, they are dangerous, please do not open the door”
“I am not going to do that, I know they are drunk. Go to our daughter’s room and stay there”
“What are you going to do?”
“Pass me the torch, please. I want to look for the knife because I have the shotgun by my side, please go and comfort the little girl, she is crying”
The woman went to her daughter’s room in the half darkness and stayed there holding and comforting her.
“Knock, knock”, open you sun of a bitch. If you do not open we will crash the door, we will kill you and take your wife and your daughter with us.” This time the men turned violent and began to bump into the door.
“Go home, if you don’t I’ll kill you, I have a shotgun” The one with the gold rings said to the other:
“they must be scared , go to the back door, break the door, take the women. I will take care of this door.” Helped by the moonlight, the other man went to the back door and began to knock at it. The mother and the daughter were scared to death. Meanwhile the man at the front door took a big log and hit it with great force. The man inside the house was against the door holding it but with the force of the hit he stepped backwards with his gun in his hands. At the same time the back door was thrown down. The mother and her daughter were terrified in a corner of the room. They could not move, they could not help. The gaucho went in the dimness with long steps to help his brother who was struggling with the owner of the house. The man managed to put the shotgun on the gaucho’s belly and shot. At the same time the other brother stubbed the man with a knife in his back. When the killer saw his brother was dead and that the owner of the house was dead, he escaped in his horse.
When the sheriff came, he ordered to search for the fugitive. The two dead men were buried in the same cemetery. The man had a funeral ceremony with candles in the room where he was killed. He also had a coffin. The fingers of the gaucho had swollen so much that the coroner had to cut his fingers in order to take the gold rings off. He had been so cruel in his life that the sheriff ordered to bury him without a coffin. He was buried under a big “algarrobo” with a cross but without a memorial stone.
The widow and her daughter closed the store and left the locality. Nobody has heard from them again. But many people said that the poor man had been killed because the two women were so scared that they could not help him.
This was the end of the terrible renegade gaucho, who ended his days under a big tree and whose doomed devil soul turned into a white light called “the bad light”. When there is full moon this bad light goes up from the bottom of the big tree, raised through the branches of the tree and travels somewhere to a distant wooden place. People from the countryside say it is his soul that cannot find peace. They say that he is still a bad person because his bad light frightens everyone who has the bad chance to see it. The other brother, escaped but he was captured. He was found guilty of robbing cattle, murder of the owner of the store and he was sent to prison. He stayed in prison many years but when he left it, he formed a family and his surname which scared people just hearing it, for they knew that they were criminals and had no mercy with their victims, still exists. I do not include the surname because it is a well known one. But the story is true.