Last of all there is the lad who is growing to man's size in the officers' quarters of a frontier post, or in the general store of the frontier settlement. The desert calls to such boys every day as the sea calls to the children on Nantucket beach. They have lassoes and bolas as the Yankee boys have skates and baseballs. They are riding mustangs before the New York boy is trusted on a tricycle. Meantime the gaucho is ever before them with his swagger and dash, his hearty laugh, and his quick anger. Mothers may frighten their children when babes in arms by saying, "The gaucho will carry you off," and may tell the older boys that the gaucho is the personification of all that is ribald--the desperado of the plains--but as the leaders of the _courriers du bois_ of Canada were the sons of French gentlemen, so the chief men of the gauchos are of what is called good family. I saw one of that kind--an Englishman by birth. He wore on his shoulders a poncho--a small squaw-made blanket with a hole in the middle through which he could thrust his head. On his feet were potro boots, a sort of foot-gear made of the skin of the legs of a colt. About his waist was a belt that carried a knife, of which the handle was silver and the blood-stained blade a foot long. He was unshaved, unwashed, and ungroomed. But he had on a suit of fine silk underwear, "because, don't you know, I can't get used to the beastly scratching of furs and flannels." The outfit of the Patagonian gaucho is simple and not expensive. With one good horse and three dogs he can start, but a swell gaucho may have a score of horses and a dozen dogs. To these he must add a good saddle, with numerous saddle-cloths, which are usually nothing but small blankets woven by the Tehuelche squaws from guanaco hair and wool, purchased or stolen at the ranches. Equally necessary are the quillangos, the great fur robes made by sewing together the skins of young guanacos. With two or three of these the gaucho can pass the night comfortably in the lee of a bit of brush even when a blizzard is raging. The water-proof canvas sleeping-bag lined with fur would be warmer and lighter, but the gaucho will have none of it because his quillangos serve as overcoats by day.