Day
de Trevelín
THE NIGHT OF THE DAY
This is a sad history. When
sitting down before the typewriter to give him it forms, they
appear to my mind the tragic moments that gave him life and I
feel that he anguishes me a tremendous pain, the same one that
that fatidical one 15 of September of 1966, darkened my soul and
that today I cannot still move away from me, although he makes
the impossible thing; to forget it.
Perhaps very few they realise the high price that I had to pay
to satisfy foreigners' yearnings that visited our Creole floor in
search of emotions caceriles, promoting an area that all estimate
as of the best in the world for the practice of the biggest hunt.
My dear floor of Rio Negro.
The narration takes, because, implicit, a deep sense of
conscience that he forces me to leave recorded in mold letters,
the actions that finished with the death of my best hunting dog,
the " Day " to who I surrender him this last homage
like my best recognition to its hunt work that nobody has been
able to equal until the moment.
AFTER THE WILD ANIMAL
It was the day 15 of September of 1966.
The hunt of the tremendous boar began; I remember it well, at the
two and quarter of the afternoon.
Soon I found the rake. We follow it,
checking that, after some turns, he moved away from the coast.
It was an enormous, truly impressive
rake. For a moment I doubted that it was the boar. More seemed
that of a calf.
I calculated that the size of the
beast should be enormous and, I admit it, I had some fear.
Exactly before the Yankees he played me to face similar bug.
The Dogos, disciplined as always,
entered and they left the mounts that surrounded us smelling the
floor in a perfectly coordinated work.
I studied the wind and I realised
that we should give a rodeo to locate us well. In silence we made
it.
PREMONITION OF ACTION
We stopped a while reviewing the actions
had in search to coordinate the work of all the present, taking
advantage of the moment to adjust the cinches of the horses.
My assistants opened up a dozen of
meters. We surround the groves, letting that the Dogos entered
among that entangled of the foliage looking for their prey
laboriously.
We revise the overgrowth slowly,
always advancing. Men, dogs and horses moved synchronicity.
In the air it seemed to scent an
action premonition. It felt it on my meat like something painful,
indefinite.
It happened unexpectedly, as always.
For more warned than we are always the crucial moment us taking
of surprise.
It was a single bark, sharp and
potent, and a deaf rumour of broken branches before the impulse
of bodies in career.
I untied my horse and with strong
screams I encouraged the dogs. I valued at the distance the
tremendous opponent that played me in luck and to all march I
faced right to the mount, in pursuit of the Dogos.
The screams of my assistants united
to mine and the place, silent until that instant, it trembled to
the impulse of the animals loosened in stampede.
I nailed the spurs in my mount,
discharging my whip on their flanks. It urged to run, to run
hopelessly, without keeping in mind the thorny undergrowth that
surrounded us.
To our side they happened, in
violent «relantiseur» the mounts. In a principle he listened to
my backs the screams of my companions that united to mine, but to
the while I noticed that it was alone. My horse had led to the
other ones.
To Read they speak to it detainee
the mounts, to which it was not habituated. After him Rickoff was
drained trying to reach me. Very separate, cameramen and
interpreters were «spread» and disoriented before the brutal of
the race.
They were guided with screams,
offering the crowd for the final action.
The boar didn't want to present
fight.
It was simple. Their fight with
«Devil», of the one that he found difficult to come off, he
speaks to him fact to feel respect for the white dogs.
He understood that of not being
reached the animal now it would disappear of the area, being very
strange that it returned to those homes. Their desperate career
indicated this way it.
It was evident that that desperation
would make it terrible in the event of it turns forced to present
fight.
Thinking arrives this way to a long
one clear that extended as three hundred meters before me. Too
less than fifty the hairy mass ran with its curled sows, trying
to arrive again to the thickness. He was a giant. It surprised me
their size and whitening of the long eyeteeth on their black
trumpet.
He had really never seen similar
beast. Neither lives neither dead. My poor Dogos appeared
minimised to their side.
FEROCIOUS FIGHT
He ran effortlessly apparent, although
the dogs were giving him reach. «Day» went stretching their
career, trying to take him on a side. «Pillan» had already
opened up and it harassed him for the other side.
In the middle of the clearing
«Day» rehearsed their first bite. Of a blow, given to the
career, the boar dismantled it easily. «Pillan» the same luck
ran. I noticed with desperation that the mount of the front
approached.
I hurried the horse that opened up
as 15 meters of the wild animal. There was not form of bringing
near it, since, fearful, it puffed mad, trying to escape in any
way. I punished with the arreador trying to come closer. He
needed it to all coasts.
«Dele» tried to light up of the
rooms of the wild animal. He was not able to, because this was
too big. They failed him their bites that slid on the sows of the
boar.
The mount was above. I halted my
mount to avoid the crash with the grove. The boar took out new
advantages, with the Dogos or his sides.
Suddenly, giving a strong snort, the
wild animal stopped almost to the same border of the grove. I
observed that «Dele», finally, had been able to be affirmed in
their bite. I never explained to myself how. The fact is that
there it was, stopping the boar that rotated in round, throwing
impressive snorts.
Each turn of the boar toward
rotating the dog for the air like a simple paper toy of the wind.
«Day» and «Pillan» tried to light up, but they were turned
without views every time that you/they came close to the wild
animal. I felt a groan of «Pillan» before a strong one knock
received.
That fight could not take a long
time a lot. He understood it. My dogs would be made pap if I
didn't decide to intervene.
I looked for to run over with the
horse that refused, of pure nervous, to respond to the
requirement of the spurs.
I released the arreador to the floor
and I took out my knife of long leaf thinking in «to disable»
to the boar hardly gave me a favourable opportunity.
I understood that if it descended of
the horse I was dead man. The wild animal, whose irritation grew
visibly, it attacked against me.
Suddenly everything threw.
DIALOGUING WITH THE
DEATH
The boar that seemed not to look at me
rotated on if and it attacked furiously against the horse, of
which you/they hardly separated it two meters.
The gross nobleman, scared in end,
hit a stampede as if suddenly has grown him wings. The boar
reached to play it in one of his yokels, where he left the mark
of a superb eyetooth.
I was discharged in the air, with
the knife in the hand. I fell as a lead on the floor, losing the
weapon in the face of the force of the impact.
What went by my mind in that instant
God and I only know it. Instinctively, without feeling pain, I
tried to rotate, shooting the wild animal.
The Dogos «Day» and «Pillan» had
taken advantage of the change of address of attack of the boar
and they fastened as ticks of their ears. The wild animal had
begun to make sound his eyeteeth, causing an atrocious noise that
bristled the hair. He was from rooms to me assisting the bite of
the dogs.
«Dele» looked for to be affirmed
better, evident sign that the fatigue began to be made it
presents. I thought of my knife. Go that is where it will have
stopped!
Desperate, aware of my only
possibility and feeling near the scream of the hunters that they
accompanied me, played my last letter. I lit up of the back paws
of the boar and next to «Dele» we tolerate the lunge. He had
never seen paws so thick neither so difficult of holding. They
moved with short blows and me he/she understood that my cramped
hands would tolerate very not very more.
The wild animal tried to rotate to
reach me. I could see their small selvage, of a murderous shine
that you/they looked for to locate me.
They sounded some shots. I made a
last effort and I rotated on myself three or four times.
It was alive!
I got up as impelled by a spring and
I prepared to shoot. He had the destroyed nerves, won by the most
horrendous panic that I have felt in my life.
I felt another shot and to three
meters of the action I looked again, cleaning with sleeve of the
shirt the blood of my face. The scene that was presented to my
view and really awful.
The boar fell kneeling before the
shots of Read and of Rickoff that, longing, they still maintained
his clever weapons. Behind mine felt the photographers and
interpreters that came closer to the gallop.
The Dogos continued biting the
depressed wild animal.
THE TRAGEDY
I came closer to «Day» that trembling
also looked me, extended on a great puddle of blood. The boar
also lay on a great red mantel that shone queerly in the sun.
«Day» separated and then, only
then, I reached to understand, feeling another time the terror of
the moment.
He didn't have forces to continue. I
looked like each other to be dreaming sunk in a strange
sleepiness that deformed the bodies that surrounded me. I thought
of the fall of the horse, in the minutes that he speaks state I
flow fighting with the boar by hand and I missed not to have any
broken bone. It trembled like a leaf and in my mouth the blood
that had penetrated began to have a very bitter flavour.
The Dogo tried to come closer to me.
I saw it come like among dreams, almost without to hear the
Yankees that conversed loudly. I checked that the throat of the
dog was reduced.
It arrived until me and as always it
looked for my lap. He made comfortable trembling and while he
licked my hands tenderly it nailed their look largely in my.
I screamed I don't know what things
and when I heard that a camera worked to my side I loosened in a
string of insults.
People retired and they left me with
my good friend in the lap dying. The other Dogos came closer,
also covered with blood, groaning their desperation and their
impotence.
The death came closer and all we
heard it arrive, without anything within our reach to stop it.
The chest of the good one «Day» it
was red of blood, as well as my hands and my throat.
Damned! I exclaimed. Damned all the
boars of the world!
Nobody responded anything.
And I cried. I cried loudly,
understanding that «Day» I gave way.
In a supreme effort it trapped my
hand stained by their own blood and it rehearsed to move the tail
in a last expression of affection.
Everything speaks missing for me.
There it was alone my best dog that died.
Doctors?... Sanatoriums?
Wonderful words, but useless at two
long hours of march...
I didn't want that «Day» died on
my vehicle: That made it among the grove in that he speaks lived,
far from people, only with me!...
It accommodates it better in my lap
and I saw as the life abandoned their wounded body slowly without
fail.
And in the silence of the mount I
poured the bitterest tears in my life, respected in silence by my
friends hunters
AMADEO
BILÓ
THE HERO
«Day of Trevelín» it has been in
the memory of who we constitute the links of that long chain
begun in the beginnings of the Palaeolithic superior as the
archetype of the dog that we would like to possess. To give the
life for their owner is the most glorious destination that we
could suppose him in the epic literature to our faithful partner.
He rushes described by Amadeo Biló it shocked to the public
opinion beyond the canine world and he gave cause to several
reports and social acts. «Day of Trevelín» it was homage
posthumously with a monument that he presided over during years
the main entrance of the facilities of the company Winchester.
With their geste it has contributed from an important way to the
creation of the legend of the «great white hunter» and it has
caused that the Argentine Dogo passes over opposite as exponent
of the most genuine virtues in his species.
