But his backside was agony, despite the padded bombachas and the famously smooth gait of the Pasos. Paz had not been wrong. The first week he was sore, but he’d expected that. He’d assumed it would get better, though, as his body became acclimatized to long hours in the saddle. But as he approached the middle of his third week in Argentina, riding for up to five or six hours a day sometimes, his bum had gone on strike. It was Marty – Jocelyn’s nephew – who suggesting padded biking shorts under the gaucho trousers.

‘Go get a bunch of them in town. It’ll change your life,’ Marty had told him. ‘I always wear them if I haven’t been in the saddle for a while.’ Finch had done so a couple of days ago, and was relieved at the difference it made – although the raw patches of skin still chafed miserably.

Initially Marty had seemed quiet and shy. Wiry, with untidy light-brown hair and an almost bruised look in his grey eyes, his passion was horses. His father, Jocelyn’s brother, owned a stud back in Wisconsin. But get him on a horse, and Marty came to life.

They had bonded over the thrilling gallops they’d taken together over the grey-brown winter hills, without the constraint of the more plodding guests to look after. Marty was confident enough to join the gauchos like a pro in the dusty, crazy, yelling-and-shouting mayhem of the round-up of cattle from the pampas. Finch was in awe. The American even rode like them, jamming his whole boot into the stirrup, tilting his heels up instead of just toeing the stirrup, and holding both reins in his left hand so his right was free for a rope or a gun. He’d earned the respect of the gauchos, big-time. Not an easy thing to do.

Finch, on the other hand, although in love with the Pasos, and considering himself, at the start of his visit, to be a pretty competent horseman, found the gauchos intimidating. Dressed at all times in sweaty shirts and dirty jeans, mostly unshaven, the men with their huge brown eyes and floppy boinas, their heavily accented Spanish, treated Finch with offhand suspicion at first. He was just another foreigner playing at doing their incredibly skilful job. But Finch’s dogged perseverance impressed them and now he’d become friendly with one in particular – a young guy named José.

‘You come with us today?’ he said, one morning, to Finch.

‘Sure he will,’ Marty had answered for him, whacking him on the shoulder as they sat on their horses about to go out.

They spent the morning riding hell for leather as they chased hundreds of cattle into the valley where they began to separate off the young bullocks.

‘Why are they doing that?’ Finch asked Marty, as he drew up alongside.

‘No idea,’ replied the American, frowning. ‘Helluva ride, no?’