noon
`` Leave it all to me , '' I said ; then we separated , he to return to his mistress , who was no doubt anxiously waiting to know the result of our conversation , I to get through the next fifteen hours in the best way I could . After leaving Santos I rode on to a belt of wood about two miles east of the road , and , passing through it , surveyed the country lying beyond . The only habitation near it was a shepherd 's lonely _ rancho _ , standing on an open plain of yellow grass , over which a scattered flock of sheep and a few horses were grazing . I determined to remain in the wood till near noon , then proceed to the _ rancho _ to get breakfast , and commence my search for a horse and side-saddle in the neighbourhood . After unsaddling my horse and tying him to a tree , where there were some pickings of grass and herbage about the roots , I lit a cigar and made myself comfortable on my rugs in the shade . Presently I had some visitors in a flock of _ urracas _ , or magpies , as they are called in the vernacular , or Guira cuckoos ; a graceful , loquacious bird resembling a magpie , only with a longer tail and a bold , red beak . These ill-mannered birds skulked about in the branches over me all the time I remained in the wood , scolding me so incessantly in their intolerably loud , angry , rattling notes , varied occasionally with shrill whistlings and groans , that I could scarcely even hear myself think .