The Barbed Wire · II

Yes, yes, wire! Ah, me no savvy!...”

“Well! Look here, señor Zaninski: I want no trouble with neighbors, but please be careful for the very last time with your bull so it doesn’t get into my back wire; I’m going to put up new wire along the path.”

“Bull go by path! No back!”

“The thing is, now it’s not going to go by the path.”

“Go, bull! No barb, no nothing! Go all!”

“It’s not going to go.”

“What you put?”

“Barbwire... but it’s not going to go.”

“Barb no do nothing!”

“Well; do your best so it doesn’t get in, because if it crosses it’s going to hurt itself.”

The farmer left. It is, like the previous time, evident that the malignant Pole, laughing once more at the animal’s antics, pitied—if pity is at all possible—his neighbor who was about to build a fence insurmountable by his bull. Surely he rubbed his hands:

“Me they won’t be able to say nothing this time if bull eat all oats!”

The horses resumed the path that led them away from their farm, and a while later they arrived at the spot where Barigüí had accomplished his feat. The beast was still there, motionless in the middle of the road, staring with a solemn vacuity of thought from a quarter of an hour ago at a fixed point in the distance. Behind him, the cows dozed in the already warm sun, chewing their cud.

But when the poor horses passed along the road, they opened their eyes disdainfully:

“It’s the horses. They wanted to cross the fence. And they have a rope.”

“Barigüí did pass!”

“A single strand holds the horses.”

“They’re skinny.”

This seemed to sting the sorrel to the quick, and he turned his head:

“We aren’t skinny. You are. He’s not going to pass here anymore—he added, pointing to the fallen wires, the handiwork of Barigüí.”

“Barigüí passes always! Afterwards we pass. You don’t pass.”

“He’s not going to pass anymore. The man said so.”

“He ate the man’s oats. We pass afterwards.”

The horse, owing to a closer intimacy of treatment, is noticeably more affectionate towards man than the cow. Hence the blaze-faced horse and the sorrel had faith in the fence the man was going to build.

The pair continued on their way, and moments later, before the open field that stretched out before them, the two horses lowered their heads to eat, forgetting about the cows.

Late already, when the sun had just gone down, the two horses remembered the corn and began their return. They saw on the road the farmer replacing all the posts of his fence, and a blond man, stopped by his side on horseback, watching him work.

“I tell you he’s going to pass—said the passenger.”

“He won’t pass twice—replied the farmer.”

“You’ll see! This is child’s play for the Pole’s damned bull! He’s going to pass!”

“He won’t pass twice—the other repeated stubbornly.”

The horses went on, still hearing broken words:

“... laugh!”

“... we’ll see.”

Two minutes later the blond man was passing them at an English trot. The blaze-faced horse and the sorrel, somewhat surprised by that gait they did not know, watched the hurried man lose himself in the valley.

“Curious!” observed the blaze-faced horse after a long pause. “The horse trots and the man gallops.”

They proceeded. They occupied at that moment the crest of the hill, as they had that morning. Against the pale and cold sky, their silhouettes stood out in black, a meek and downcast pair, the blaze-faced horse in front, the sorrel behind. The atmosphere, blinded during the day by the excessive sunlight, acquired at that crepuscular hour an almost funereal transparency. The wind had ceased entirely, and with the calm of dusk, in which the thermometer began to drop swiftly, the frozen valley expanded its penetrating moisture, which condensed into a creeping fog in the gloomy depths of the slopes. Reviving in the already chilled earth was the winter smell of burnt grass; and when the path skirted the woods, the air, which suddenly felt colder and damper, became excessively heavy with the perfume of orange blossoms.

The horses entered through the gate of their farm, for the boy, who was rattling the little box of corn, heard their anxious, trembling whinny. The old sorrel earned the honor of being credited with the initiative of the adventure, finding himself rewarded with a rope, in case anything should happen.

But the following morning, quite late already owing to the dense fog, the horses repeated their escape, crossing the wild tobacco fields once more, treading with silent steps the frozen pasture, bypassing the still-open gate.

The morning, blazing with sunlight and already very high, reverberated with light, and the excessive heat promised a change in weather very soon. After topping the hill, the horses suddenly saw the cows stopped on the road, and the memory of the previous afternoon excited their ears and their pace: they wanted to see what the new fence was like.

But their disappointment upon arriving was great. On the new posts—dark and twisted—there were two simple barbed wires, thick perhaps, but only two.

Notwithstanding their meager daring, constant life on the farms had given the horses some experience with enclosures. They observed the thing attentively, especially the posts.

“They’re of hardwood,” observed the blaze-faced horse.

“Yes, burnt heartwood.”

And after another long, examining look, he noted:

“The wire passes through the middle, there are no staples.”

“They’re very close to one another.”

Close, the posts, yes, undoubtedly: three meters. But on the other hand, those two modest wires replacing the five strands of the previous fence disillusioned the horses. How was it possible that the man believed that calf fence would contain the terrible bull?

“The man said he wasn’t going to pass—ventured, nevertheless, the blaze-faced horse, who by virtue of being his master’s favorite ate more corn, for which reason he felt more faithful.”

But the cows had heard him.

“It’s the horses. Both have a rope. They don’t pass. Barigüí passed already.”

“Did he pass? Through here?” asked the blaze-faced horse, disheartened.

“Through the back. Through here he passes too. He ate the oats.”

Meanwhile, the talkative heifer had tried to pass her horns between the strands; and a sharp vibration, followed by a dry thud on her horns, left the horses in suspense.

“The wires are very tight,” said the sorrel after a long examination.

“Yes. Tighter they can’t be...”

And both, without taking their eyes off the strands, thought confusedly about how one could pass between the two wires.

The cows, meanwhile, were encouraging one another.

“He passed yesterday. He passes the barbed wire. Us afterwards.”

“Yesterday you didn’t pass. The cows say yes, and they don’t pass,” they heard the sorrel say.

“Here there’s barb, and Barigüí passes! There he comes!”

Skirting the backwoods on the inside, two hundred meters away still, the bull was advancing towards the oat field. The cows all positioned themselves facing the enclosure, following the invading beast intently with their eyes. The horses, motionless, raised their ears.

“He eats all oats! Afterwards he passes!”

“The wires are very tight...” observed the blaze-faced horse again, always trying to specify what would happen if...

“He ate the oats! The man is coming! The man is coming!” cried the talkative heifer.

Indeed, the man had just come out of the hut and was advancing towards the bull. He brought the stick in his hand, but he didn’t seem angry; he was indeed very serious and with his brow furrowed.

The animal waited for the man to reach him, and then began to bellow with bravadoes of goring. The man advanced further, and the bull began to back away, constantly bellowing and trampling the oats with its bestial capers. Until, ten meters from the road, it turned about with a final bellow of mocking defiance, and flung itself upon the fence.

“Barigüí is coming! He passes everything! He passes barbed wire!” the cows managed to cry out.

With the momentum of its heavy trot, the enormous bull lowered its head and sank its horns between the two strands. A sharp groan of wire was heard, a strident screech that spread from post to post all the way to the back, and the bull passed.

But from its back and belly, deeply gashed, channeled from chest to rump, rivers of blood rained down. The beast, seized with stupor, stood for an instant stunned and trembling. It then walked slowly away, drenching the pasture in blood, until some twenty yards off it lay down with a hoarse sigh.

At noon the Pole went to look for his bull, and wept in falsetto before the impassive tenant farmer. The animal had gotten up and could walk. But its owner, realizing that it would take a great deal of work to cure it—if that was even still possible—butchered it that afternoon, and the next day it fell to the lot of the blaze-faced horse to carry home, in the saddlebags, two kilos of meat from the dead bull.