Tales of the Pampas

Tales of the Pampas
El Ombú and Other Stories
W. H. Hudson
1902
Contents
El Ombú
Story of a Piebald Horse
Pelino Viera's Confessions
Niño Diablo
Marta Riquelme
Tecla and the Little Men
Appendix to El Ombú

El Ombú
i
THIS history of a house that had been was told in the shade, one
summer's day, by Nicandro, that old man to whom we all loved to listen,
since he could remember and properly narrate the life of every person
he had known in his native place, near to the lake of Chascomus, on the
southern pampas of Buenos Ayres.

IN ALL THIS DISTRICT, though you should go twenty leagues to this
way and that, you will not find a tree as big as this ombú, standing
solitary, where there is no house; therefore it is known to all as "the
ombú," as if but one existed; and the name of all this estate, which is
now ownerless and ruined, is El Ombú. From one of the higher
branches, if you can climb, you will see the lake of Chascomus, two
thirds of a league away, from shore to shore, and the village on its
banks. Even smaller things will you see on a clear day; perhaps a red
line moving across the water--a flock of flamingos flying in their usual
way. A great tree standing alone, with no house near it; only the old
brick foundations of a house, so overgrown with grass and weeds that
you have to look closely to find them. When I am out with my flock in
the summer time, I often come here to sit in the shade. It is near the
main road; travellers, droves of cattle, the diligence, and bullock-carts
pass in sight. Sometimes, at noon, I find a traveller resting in the shade,
and if he is not sleeping we talk and he tells me the news of that great
world my eyes have never seen.
They say that sorrow and at last ruin comes upon the house on whose
roof the shadow of the ombú tree falls; and on that house which now is
not, the shadow of this tree came every summer day when the sun was
low. They say, too, that those who sit much in the ombú shade become
crazed. Perhaps, sir, the bone of my skull is thicker than in most men,
since I have been accustomed to sit here all my life, and though now an
old man I have not yet lost my reason. It is true that evil fortune came
to the old house in the end; but into every door sorrow must
enter--sorrow and death that comes to all men; and every house must
fall at last.
Do you hear the mangangá, the carpenter bee, in the foliage over our
heads? Look at him, like a ball of shining gold among the green leaves,
suspended in one place, humming loudly! Ah, sefior, the years that are
gone, the people that have lived and died, speak to me thus audibly
when I am sitting here by myself. These are memories; but there are
other things that come back to us from the past; I mean ghosts.
Sometimes, at midnight, the whole tree, from its great roots to its
topmost leaves, is seen from a distance shining like white fire. What is

that fire, seen of so many, which does not scorch the leaves? And,
sometimes, when a traveller lies down here to sleep the siesta, he hears
sounds of footsteps coming and going, and noises of dogs and fowls,
and of children shouting and laughing, and voices of people talking; but
when he starts up and listens, the sounds grow faint, and seem at last to
pass away into the tree with a low murmur as of wind among the
leaves.
As a small boy, from the time when I was able, at the age of about six
years, to climb on to a pony and ride, I knew this tree. It was then what
it is now; five men with their arms stretched to their utmost length
could hardly encircle it. And the house stood there, where you see a bed
of nettles--a long, low house, built of bricks, when there were few brick
houses in this district, with a thatched roof.
The last owner was just touching on old age. Not that he looked aged;
on the contrary, he looked what he was, a man among men, a head
taller than most, with the strength of an ox; but the wind had blown a
little sprinkling of white ashes into his great beard and his hair, which
grew to his shoulders like the mane of a black horse. That was Don
Santos Ugarte, known to all men in this district as