“Tchu! ’stá-te!” cried Josefa,[22] straightening up from her work and looking severely at a small brown rogue who had climbed up to the little shelf over the corner fireplace. The adobe floor was spattered with big drops of water, to lay the dust; and Josefa, bent half double to reach it with the short wisp of broom corn which serves in New Mexican homes, was sweeping toward the door the fine gray powder that works up daily from the compact clay.
“Give me that little stone, nana,” begged the boy. “The one tata carries in his pouch when he goes to hunt.”
“Get away, quick, for that is the charm of the Magic Deer! Much care! For if ever thou touch that, thy grandfather will see to thee!”
Anastácio clambered down reluctantly from the old chair, and went outside to play with the burro. But the stone weighed on his mind. It was a very ordinary-looking pebble, gray, light, porous, and without any particular shape—looking, in fact, like one of the pieces of pumice which were so common in the mountains. But somehow it had a fascination for Anastácio. And that evening, when we all sat by the crackling fire, he climbed on his grandfather’s knee and said:
“Go, tata, tell me what is this stone of the Magic Deer, that I may not play with it.”
“To play with that?” exclaimed Don José, in a tone of horror. “Child! That little stone is very precious. For no other hunter in New Mexico has the like; and if it were lost or broken, we should be ruined, since only with it is it possible to kill the deer which are enchanted, as are many. And to get that stone I passed a sad time.”
“How? Where? When? With the Enchanted Deer? Tell me, tatita!”
“Yes, with the Venado Encantado, and in many ways.” And Don José, the luckiest hunter in Rio Arriba, a gray-headed but sharp-eyed Mexican—whom I count a staunch friend and a brave man, even if he does believe some things I do not—nodded to me, as if for permission to tell the story. I had often heard of the Witch Deer, and knew that a very large proportion of the natives of New Mexico believe firmly in this and in many other forms of witchcraft. I knew, too, that Don José was a scrupulously truthful man. The years of our acquaintance had proved that beyond doubt. Whatever in his story might be supernatural would have to be charged to his faith, and not to any intention of deceiving.
“You must know, Don Carlos,” said he, “that while there are many witches here, there is one kind that delights most to vex hunters. Without doubt you also will have seen the Enchanted Deer, as much as you hunt.”
“No,” I answered. “I have never seen one, but I have heard of them all over New Mexico these five years.”
“Sure! For there are many; and many have lost their lives thereby, for the Witch Deer is more dangerous than bear or mountain lion. Only when one has the stone which they wear in the first fork of their horns is it possible to conquer them, for that makes one not to be seen.”
“But I can see you, Don José,” I interrupted, smiling, as he held up the magic stone.
“But, friend, that is different! For it is only in its use. Now I want you to see me; but when I carry this no deer in the sierra has eyes for me, and I could walk even up to them, taking care only that they scented me not.”
It is worse than useless to argue against these beliefs. Don José would never be convinced, and the incredulity of a friend could only hurt his feelings, and, besides being ill-mannered, further caviling would lose me a story, so I said, simply:
“All right, compadre, tell us all about it.”
“Well, then, thus it was, and you shall see I am right. It makes many years now, for it was long before I married me with Josefa, in the year of ’67. Her father was Alcalde of Abiquiu[23]; and there lived my parents also. When I was a young man, already grown, strong—as you may yet see—and well taught in the ways of hunting, I came often to these mountains for game; and our house was never without dried meat in plenty. There was one that hunted with me, and they always called him Cabezudo, because of his strong head; but in truth he was Luís Delgado, a cousin of me. In heart we were as brothers, and either would give his life for the other. Often the old men of Abiquiu told us of the Witch Deer, which could never be killed unless by a hunter unseen; and Luís answered always: ‘Aha! When there is a deer too strong for this rifle, let him eat me.’ For, you see, he believed not in witches. This was the only thing we ever quarreled about—that he was without faith.
“It came that in October of the year ’60 we were together camped in the Valles, and with much care, since the Navajos were bad. We had a house of logs, very strong, and in it already was a wonder of dried meat of deer and bear. We went forth always together, for fear of the Indians, but by good luck they molested us not. As for game, I think there was never such a year.
“One day, when the first snow was three hours old, we came to a round mesa that stood on the plateau, and near the foot of it were tracks of a deer. But alas! I knew then that it was no true deer, for its footprints were great as those of a horse. ‘It will be the Venado Encantado,’ said I to Luís. ‘Let us go the other way!’ But he said: ‘What Enchanted Deer, nor yet what mouse-traps? Get out! I thought thee a man! Thou that only yesterday didst kill, with dagger alone, the great she-bear, and now wouldst run from a deer track!’ And it was true; for since the bear, well wounded, was upon us before there was room to reload, I had the luck to compose her with my hunting-knife.
“Wrong of me it was, but I had shame at the words of Luís, and followed him. ‘Truly this is grandfather of all the deer!’ he cried. ‘For never have I seen such tracks. And his horns we will take to Abiquiu, though they shall weigh like a tree. Come on!’
“With that we pursued the tracks, wondering always at their greatness. They went a little around the foot of the mesa, and then up a steep way to its top. When we came to the top, where was a cleft in the rocks, so that one could get up, we found a large level place, round, and with a rim of cliffs below, so that nowhere else was it possible to reach the summit. The trail went away among the junipers, and we followed it cautiously, knowing that the deer must be here, since no tracks led down. And of a sudden, crawling around a clump of trees, we stood before him. Ay, señor! How great he was! Great as a tall horse, and upon his head the keys [horns] were as the branches of a blasted cedar. There he stood, a thing of fifty yards away, looking at us with his head high, as if mocking. My heart forgot its count; for truly he was no thing of this earth—that beast with a look so cunning and so terrible.
“‘What a beast!’ Luís whispered. ‘At the throat, to break his neck. But save thou thy fire, for in case’—and putting his rifle firm as a rock, he fired. But as the smoke blew by, there stood the deer, wagging himself the head scornfully, for the bullet had rebounded from him. So it is with these beasts that are witches, for when they see you, no ball will enter their hide. And then, putting down his head till that the horns lacked but a foot from the ground, he came like a large rock leaping down the mountain.
“Now I knew well that he was no mortal thing, and that I had no right to shoot. But for sake of Luís, who was pouring new powder in his rifle, I cared not even if I should be accursed; and when the beast was very close I sprang to one side and gave him the ball, of an ounce weight, squarely upon the side. But it could not enter him. Luís jumped, too, and the brute passed between us like a strong wind. In a moment he turned and charged us again, and I am sure I saw smoke come from his nose. As for his eyes, they were pure fire. ‘Run for yourself!’ cried Luís, and he made for the tree, while I took the other way. Turning a juniper, I ran for the edge of the cliff; but just as I came there, there was a scream, and looking across my shoulder, I saw the deer making with his horns as one does with his spade upon hard ground.
“After that I could go no more to our camp, but came straightway to Abiquiu. When they heard what had been, all the town mourned—for Luís was well beloved. But none were surprised, for they said: ‘Always we told him of the Venado Encantado, but he would not believe. And now it has come true. Poor headstrong Luís!’
“As for me, I sickened, and was much time in bed. And always I saw the deer leaping upon Luís and tearing him, until it was not to be borne. When at last I was cured, I could think only to kill the Witch Deer, and avenge my poor compañero. I asked of all the old men if there was how to do it; but all said, ‘Beware, lest he trample thee also!’ And Josefa prayed me to think no more of it, for she would never marry one who put himself against the witches. I know not how, Don Carlos, for I too feared, but Luís would not let me rest.
“Twice I went alone to the mesa, for no one would companion me. There was always the deer; but I kept under the rocks, where he could not reach me, and waited my turn. Once, when my aim was true upon his heart, the rifle only snapped; and when I went to prime with double care, the flint was all in cracks, so that it would not strike a spark. And again, when I shot him between the very eyes, from near, it did him nothing. So I saw it was useless.
“From then all went ill. Even the wild turkeys had no fear of me, for I could shoot nothing. And in Abiquiu I was mocked, for the young men had been jealous that formerly I had killed more game than any, and now they taunted me for ‘the starved hunter.’
“At the last I thought me of one who lived in the cañon of Juan Tafoya—a witch, they say, very wise in such things—and to him I went. When he had heard my story, he said: ‘But, man! knowest thou not that this is the Venado Encantado? How dost thou think to kill him? For he has in his horns a stone of great power, having the which he cannot be harmed. There is only one way in which it could be done, and that is to shoot him when he sees thee not. But that, even the best hunter cannot do, for the animal is very wise and of sharp sight. Only having an invisible stone could one do it.’
“‘And have other deer this stone?’ I asked; and he replied: ‘There are some, for this is not the only Witch Deer. But none of them canst thou kill if they see thee.’
“After that they saw me little in Abiquiu, for I was always hunting. For many months I pursued the trail of every buck deer, killing many. And at last, shooting from ambush one that passed me unsuspecting, I found in the first fork of its horns a stone like this, but not the half of it in size. This I proved in many ways, and clear it was that now my luck had changed.
“Being satisfied of this, then, I loaded my rifle with great pains, and went one evening in search of the Venado Encantado. Coming to the mesa by night, I camped among the rocks, without a fire, and in the morning, before the sun, climbed up without a little noise. In my pouch was the stone, and my rifle was well ready. When I came through the cleft at the top, there stood the deer, looking straight at me, not twenty yards distant, and I threw my rifle to my shoulder, giving myself up for lost. But he moved not, and watching him, I perceived that he did not see me at all—the which is proof that the stone makes one to be invisible. At this I took heart, and with a true aim on his throat, fired. He leaped thus high in the air and fell dead; and coming to him, I found that the ball had broken his neck.
“His meat I did not touch, for besides being accursed, he had killed my Luís, whose bones I brought away to Christian ground in Abiquiu. But in the first fork of the horns, which were taller than my head, I found this stone which you see. Since I have that, I kill whatsoever deer with ease, because they cannot see me. What think you, then?”
We sat for a few moments silent, watching the flames that licked and twisted about the cedar sticks in the fireplace. Anastácio was voiceless, with an awe too strong even for his boyish excitement; and as for me, the story of Luís’s death had brought back some vivid and uncanny memories. But Don José, who really cared enough for me to wish to lead me out of the darkness of error, followed the matter up.
“Do you not see, Don Carlos, that there are Witch Deer? For look at his fierceness, and that he could not be hurt until I had a charm-stone like his own. And you know that I tell you truth.”
“Yes, old fellow, I know you tell me the truth as you see it. But it is nothing strange for a buck to be bravo in the fall—that I myself have suffered by. And I fancy you could have killed him before, if you had not felt so sure that you couldn’t.” Then I was rather ashamed to have said even so much, and as gently as it could be said, for I do not admire the always-superior person. But the old man understood, and was not offended; only he shook his head with real sadness, and said:
“Ah, that way was Luís. God keep you from being taught as he was!”
Felipe’s Sugaring-off.
Felipe’s Sugaring-off.
The great water-wheel was trundling as fast as ever the white impulse from the old stone aqueduct could kick it along. The wheel, indeed, grumbled at so much hard work; but the water only laughed and danced as the big iron jaws of the trapiche[24] chewed up the yellow culms of sugar cane and spat to one side the useless pith, while the sweet, dark sap crept sluggishly down the iron conduit toward the sugar-house. In front was a very mountain of cane brought from the fields by bullock carts; and half a dozen sinewy negroes were feeding it, an armful at a time, between the rolls of the mill. Behind it others with wooden forks were spreading the crushed cane to dry for a day, after which it would be used as fuel to boil its own plundered juice. Off beyond the sugar building gleamed the white Moorish walls of the tile-roofed chapel and manor house, built three hundred years ago, when Peru was the richest crown jewel of Spain. Everywhere else stretched the great fields of cane—to the very foot of the sandhills of the encroaching desert, to the very rim of the blue Pacific. What an immensity of sugar it all meant!
The same thought struck the grizzled administrador[25] this morning as he stood on a pier of the aqueduct—just where its stream pounced upon the lazy wheel—and swept the scene with those watchful old eyes. “Of a truth,” he was saying to himself, “the world must be very large, as they say, and many must eat nothing else, for here we make every day forty thousand pounds of sugar, three hundred days of the year, and there are many other sugar haciendas in Peru, though maybe none so big as Villa. Truly, I know not where it all goes. Hola! Always that fellow!” and, springing to the ground as lightly as a boy, in two bounds he was at the mill.
There four of the negro laborers were in sudden struggle with a newcomer from the quarters—a huge black fellow, whose brutish face was now distorted by drunken rage. He was naked to the waist, and his dark hide bulged with tremendous muscles, as he swayed his four grapplers to and fro, trying to free his right hand, which clasped a heavy machete. This murderous combination of sword and cleaver, which lopped the stubborn cane at a blow, had found worse employment now, for a red stain ran down its broad blade, and on the ground lay a man clenching a stump of arm. Old Melito paused for no questions, but, plucking up a heavy bar of algarroba, smote so strongly upon the desperado’s woolly pate that the ironwood broke. The black giant reeled and fell, and one of the men wrenched away the machete and flung it into the pool below the wheel.
“He came very drunk, and only because Roque brushed against him with an armful of cane he wanted to kill him,” said the men as they knotted their grimy handkerchiefs upon the wrists and ankles of the stunned black.
“You did well to hold him,” replied the admimistrador. “Bring now the irons and we will put him in the calaboz till to-morrow. Then he shall go to Lima to the prison, for we can have no fighting here, nor men of trouble.”
A slender, big-eyed Spanish boy coming out a few moments later from the great castle arch of the manor house saw four peons lugging away between them the long bulk of the prisoner, and stopped to ask the trouble.
“Ah! That bad Coco. That he may never come back from Lima,” said the young Spaniard earnestly. “He is a terror to all, and now I fear he will kill Don Melito, for Coco never forgets. I shall ask my father to see the prefect, that they keep him away. And the sugar?”
Felipe never tired of following all the processes with a grave air, as if it all rested upon his small shoulders. A boy who never felt that he was “helping”—if such a very helpless boy ever existed—has lost one of the best things in all boyhood, and Felipe could not have understood such a boy at all. He went on now and joined Don Melito, and the two stood together watching the vat with professional eyes while two negroes plied their plashing hoes. It was very hot work even to watch it, but a good administrador would never trust this to the laborers.
“Now you watch it a little,” said Don Melito suddenly, with roguish gravity, looking at the boy’s preoccupied face. “As for me, I must see how are the pailas,” and he climbed the steps to the platform where the caldrons were hissing with their new supply of sap.
Felipe, thus left alone with the heaviest responsibility he had ever borne, knit his smooth brows very hard and peered into the vat as if the fate of nations hung on his eyes. For the first time he began to doubt them. He wondered if it were not worked enough—if he had not better stop the hoes and get the molders to work. If only Don Melito would come back and decide for him!
But Don Melito was not here, and there were no signs of his coming. Perhaps he was leaving Felipe to find out the difference between knowing how some one else does a thing and how to do it one’s self. The boy fidgeted up and down and looked at the vat first from one end and then from the other, and grew more doubtful the more he looked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t know,” he cried to himself. “But sure it is that I must do something, for he left me in charge and perhaps is busy with other matters, thinking I would not let it be spoiled. Put it in the molds!”
The men leaned their candied hoes against the wall. The molders began ladling their buckets full, and, in turn, filling the shallow molds. The color there darkened again as sudden crystallization set in; but Felipe felt a great load lifted off his shoulders. He was very sure now that it was a good color—not a hint of the hateful underdone black, but a soft, rich brown, shading to gold at the thin edges.
Now he was free—the laborers could attend to the rest, as usual—and he would go and hunt for Don Melito. He ran up the steps and along the platform—and half way stopped short, as if he had run against a wall.
The rusty irons should never have been trusted with that giant’s strength! They might do for common men, but for Coco—as soon as consciousness came back to him, and with it the old rage, he had snapped them, and, wrenching out the iron bars from the window of the calaboz, had come for his revenge. Even now he was shaking his wrists, one still hooped with the iron band, before the old administrador’s face, and hissing: “You! You did me this! And now I will boil you!”
Don Melito stood still and gray as a stone, looking up into Coco’s eyes. His hat was in his hand on account of the heat; but now he put it on as if scorning to stand uncovered before the fellow—put it steadily upon the curling gray hair that reached barely to the level of those great naked chest muscles.
“I did strike you down and ordered you to be ironed, Coco,” he said quietly, “and I would do so again. Now I am going to send you to Lima. There is no place at Villa for people like you.”
But Coco leaped upon him like the black jaguar, and clutched him with those long, knotted arms. Melito was sinewy and lithe as a cat, but he was no match for this huge foe. He fought for life, but Coco with the equal desperation of hate. Struggle as he would, he was borne back and back until his legs cringed from the glow of the paila. At this he made so wild a lunge that it bore them back a few feet; but it was only for a moment. Inch by inch the negro urged him toward that bubbling roar which seemed to drown all other sounds. And even now, with a wild chuckle, the giant doubled him backward against the edge of the paila, with a black, resistless palm under his chin.
Only an instant had Felipe stopped, frozen, at sight of Coco; in another he had sprung to the rail, shrieking to the men below: “Juan! Sancho! Quico! Come!” And then, rushing at the struggle, he flung himself as ferociously upon Coco as Coco had attacked Don Melito. But it seemed as if he were back in some dreadful dream. He hammered with futile fists upon that bare and mighty back, and caught a fierce hold about one of those gnarled legs and tugged to trip it, and kicked it with crazy feet. But it was all with the nightmare sense that he was doing nothing by all his efforts. Indeed, it is half doubtful if the infuriated Coco knew at all of this attack in the rear. What to him were the peckings of a twelve-year-old boy?
Would the men never come? Felipe redoubled his kicks and blows, but with a sickening fear. Don Melito was weakening—already his head was thrust back over the steam of the paila. Only for his arms locked about the giant’s waist, he would go in. And now Coco’s huge hand came behind him and wrenched at the old man’s slender ones, tearing open finger by finger resistlessly. In another moment it would be too late to think.
Aha, Mr. Coco! The boy sprang to the second paila and snatched the long-handled skimmer that leaned against it, and, dipping it full from the caldron, flung the molten sugar squarely upon Coco’s back. Howling, the negro whirled about, dropping the half-senseless administrador from him, and sprang at Felipe. But the boy stood stiff and very white, holding the ladle back aloft. “This time in the eyes!” he cried, hoarsely. “If you touch Don Melito again, or me, I will throw it in your face!”
Even Coco hesitated at this. He was not too drunk with rage to know what boiling sugar meant. Plainly, this little fool had the advantage. He must be tricked—and then——. But just then a wan smile flitted across Felipe’s face, and, as Coco half turned his head to see what pleasing thing could be behind him, he got a glimpse of Pancho, the horse-breaker, and something dark and wavy in the air. He ducked forward, but a rope settled upon his broad shoulders, tightening like iron, and he was jerked backward to the ground, and a dozen men were upon him.
Coco made no more trouble on the hacienda of Villa. At Lima he found the prompt justice which sometimes happens in Peru. Don Melito was in bed several days, for he had been roughly handled in body and in nerves. The first day on which he could sit up a little, Felipe brought him a cake of chancaca.
“Thank you,” said the old man, laying it on the coverlet. Sugar was an old story to him.
“But you must taste this, my administrador, and see if it is all right.”
“It is good,” answered Melito, munching submissively. And then, with a sudden light: “It is very good—as good as I could have made myself. Quite right. And I think you sent it to the molds at just the right time!”
Andrés, the Arriero.
Andrés, the Arriero.[26]
I.
“Hupa mula! Que família!”
The command was right enough, for the beast barely moved, and any one who ever had to do with mules may very likely have cried out, with Andrés, “What a family!” But no one but Andrés, I am sure, would have said it here. By the time you get up to 16,000 feet in the Andes, if you are not dead altogether, you certainly have no breath to spare—not even so much as to say, “This mouth is mine.” As for exhorting a pack-mule to “get up” or trying to make it ashamed of its blood relations, why, you couldn’t if you would. If some one were to stand at the head of the pass offering you a dollar a word for remarks, the chances are a hundred to one that you would find yourself without either the ambition or the lungs to earn a nickel. It is a very strange thing, as well as a very frightful one, how these great altitudes clutch you by the windpipe, and turn your heart’s strong beat to the last flutter of a wounded bird, and fill your eyes with strange red threads and your ears with a dull tap! tap! tap! so that you can count your pulse simply by listening. Worse still, how there seems to have been turned somewhere a sly faucet which has let the last drop of strength drip away before you knew it. But very lucky indeed are you if that is all. Many more than escape with these unpleasant symptoms have worse. There is a horrible nausea, as much beyond seasickness as that is beyond a plain stomach-ache, and nearly every one gets it above a certain height. Then come sudden hemorrhages from nose, mouth, ears, eyes, finger-tips, and so on to the last. These symptoms and any of them mean, “Get down stairs instanter.” If you cannot get down fast enough you will be carried down—too late to do you any good. I have seen great, powerful men fall there as an ox falls when the ax is laid to its head, and never rise again nor again be conscious. At less elevations I have seen robust men go dead in twenty-four hours with no disease on earth but the altitude. Only recently an acquaintance of mine visiting a town but 12,500 feet above the sea went to bed in perfect health and—“woke up dead in the morning,” as a Celtic mutual friend related in all sincerity.
Still, the only certain thing about it is that if you go high enough you will pay the penalty; but no one can tell you how high that is, nor can you yourself learn finally, even by experiment. You may start out with a party from one of the inland towns of Peru, say at an elevation of 7,000 to 8,000 feet—and even there many are greatly affected by the altitude. One of the party, and perhaps the most robust looking, may become so dangerously sick at 10,000 feet that he will have to be sent back at once. The rest may go on safely to 12,000 feet, and there another succumb, and so on. And you may (though it is very unlikely) toil on even up to 17,000 or 18,000 feet without serious symptoms, and then a few days later be so terribly affected at 10,000 feet that only the most rapid removal to lower levels will save your life. Myself, I have never felt the mountain sickness. But then, my constitution is a most extraordinarily pig-headed one, which seems to butt against almost any wall with impunity. I have climbed and worked hard at considerably over 19,000 feet, and for a long time lived from 12,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea, and never felt anything worse than room for an extra pair of lungs, there where is really precious little air to breathe. But warning was all around, so that I never felt quite sure my turn would not come next.
There is much in habit, of course. You all remember the Irishman’s horse which learned to live on shavings—though unfortunately it died just as it was becoming accustomed to this economical diet. And lungs, too, can get used to living on such shavings as the upper air—that is, if there are lungs enough and you give them long enough. Many die in the learning, but in centuries a type is fixed. So with Andrés. His fathers for a thousand years had breathed no heavier air than that of the great Bolivian plateau. He had been born on one of the “little hills” beside Lake Titi-caca, and brought up there. Leadville is the highest considerable town in North America, and it is too elevated for a great many people; but Andrés had never in his life got so low as 11,000 feet. If he were suddenly set down in New York his lungs would be almost as much embarrassed as would yours if you were so suddenly snatched up to his skyward home. He might almost call for an ax to break that thick air up into breathing chunks! And you, sitting with bloodshot eyes and open mouth, would be wondering what skim-milk atmosphere was this, that in ten minutes’ gasping you could not get as fair a fill to your lungs as you now get with every breath you draw.
The mule was a well-seasoned mule, born in Puno and never any nearer sea level than that 12,500-foot town. True, it was now some 4,000 feet nearer the sky, and barely crawling up the pass. At every half-dozen or dozen paces it paused to groan despairingly, panting full five minutes before it could go another step. But that was a good mule. If you wished to see what an ordinary mule did in the pass, you had only to look at either side of the trail almost anywhere. There were hundreds of bleached skeletons lying just where they had fallen, but white as the snows upon the peaks above. Here and there were even the bones of the llama[27]—the highest-dwelling quadruped on earth. As for horses, their usefulness ceases long before reaching such altitudes as that of the Quimca-chata. I have seen people who had an air of feeling that the mule ought always to be begging pardon for being alive, and that nature was in pretty small business when she made him. But that, of course, is a notion of very uninformed folk. In fact, as all know who have stirred out a little, the mule is the most broadly useful animal in the service of man. The horse can run faster, the elephant carry heavier loads, the llama climb higher above the clouds; but no other beast can carry so much so far, so fast, so low and so high as this unpretentious and maligned big-ears; and wherever civilized man has had to conquer the wilderness this has been his best friend.
Something of this was in the thought of the traveler sprawled beside the apacheta at the head of the pass—watching now the gasping saddle-mule near him, and now the rest of his small caravan as it crept upward. He was breathing with open mouth, but otherwise showed no traces of the hour’s climb since he left Andrés and the pack-beast, and tramped on, driving his own mule ahead rather than ride the distressed beast.
“Yes,” he was saying (but to himself, which called for no expenditure of breath), “old Tom Moore, Crook’s chief packer, was right when he used to say, ‘God made mules a-purpose!’ How they have been the right hand of the pioneer in both Americas. Bien, Andrés—so you got him up at last.”
Andrés took off his frowsy hat, leaving upon his head the long-peaked knit cap of vicuña[28] wool, removed from his mouth the quid of coca leaves he had been chewing, and flung the wad against the rough, upright stone, which was already pimpled all over with similar offerings. No mountain Indian of Bolivia would any more think of passing such a monument at the crest of a pass without making this sacrifice than you would think of going into church with your hat on.
“Si, viracocha,” he answered, with a slow, good-natured smile; and went on in his stumbling mixture of Spanish and Aymará. “You ought to bite the coca, ps, viracocha, that the sorojchi catch you not. For so do we of the mountains, and by it we get our strength. Take”—and he drew from his left-hand pouch a pinch of the dried leaves and a bit of lime.
The American shook his head, with a smile, as much as to say: “Thanks, but I need it not.” Then he rose, with a significant glance at the clouds, and made a gesture of haste, pointing to the trail which from their feet dipped far downward to the east.
Andrés cinched up the sagging chipas on the pack-mule, setting his bare foot against its ribs and hauling at the hair rope with main strength. The traveler likewise tightened his saddle-girth and swung up. Half an hour more, and they were some miles down the slope, descending at a gait which was decidedly smart compared with the snail’s pace of the last few hours. Through gaps in the foothills ahead came now and then wondrous outlooks across the upper Bolivian plateau. Off to the left was the glorious blue of Titi-caca, highest great lake in the world; behind it, and stretching far to the right, the still more glorious white of the great Andes of Bolivia.
“There, mps, is Mururata, the Beheaded,” said the arriero, pointing to a flat-topped peak far lower than the rest, but still tall enough to wear eternal snow. “The gods cut off its head long ago, to punish pride, and set it over yonder, where you will soon see it smoke—for now it is a fire mountain.” Andrés trotted along, pointing, chattering, smiling, as if breath were quite the cheapest thing on earth.
Just then the traveler found a little, too—but not for the lost head of Mururata. He was staring across a saddle in the hills with very much such a face of incredulity and bewilderment as one might wear at sight of a ghost.
“Seest thou?” he demanded of the arriero. “Confuse me, but I thought there was no such thing as a wheel in the country, except the Chililaya stage.”
“Oh, si, viracocha—in La Paz are five or six carriages! And yonder will be the Jaúregui going to their chacra.”[29]
A top buggy of most ancient pattern was creeping up around the turn at the heels of four tired mules. In a few moments the travelers were not far apart; and now Andrés’s employer broke out afresh, but in a lower tone:
“Oyez! But where is the feast to which these maromeros go?”
They did look clown-like enough, to be sure. The driver was clearly an Aymará Indian, and showed nothing more peculiar than the quaint garb of his people. But at his left sat two tall and surprising figures in long linen dusters and white peaked caps. The latter were shaped something like fools’ caps; but instead of ending at the ears came down upon the shoulders, over the whole head. Eye and mouth holes and a woven nose gave them a finish as uncanny as it was strange.
“Á Diós, caballero!” cried a muffled voice in clearly well-bred Spanish; and the Indian driver pulled the willing mules to a halt. One of the masks leaned from the carriage, and from behind the white yarn a pair of keen, black eyes stared first at the pack-mule and then at the American.
“Pardon the molesting, but you carry a machine of the photograph, is it not?”
The tripod stretching along the pack-beast from ears to tail, and the square, leather boxes in the chipas were clear enough, and the traveler replied politely:
“As you see, sir.”
“Good! And how much is worth a picture? Come, we will occupy you.”
“Infinite thanks, cavaliers, but I do not sell. And pardon, for I am in haste.”
“How not?” There was an incredulous flash in the ambushed eyes, and the voice had lost the edge of its courtesy. “We have money in hand, and we wish to take out our pictures.”
“I lament it, sirs; but you ask the impossible. The government of Bolivia has entered my materials free of duty, seeing that I come on a scientific mission; and in return, that your native artists shall not have whereof to complain, I am pledged to sell no pictures. It often pains me, knowing how one feels for a picture here where artists are few. But in any event, I make vistas only for the one purpose, and need all the plates we brought.”
The maskers evidently did not credit any such absurd story. The gringo—he was a gringo, of course, in spite of his comfortable Spanish—pues, he knew them for rich and was holding off for a big offer.
“Well, we will give fifty bolivianos.[30] Get in and we will carry you to the chacra. There is your home. You shall stay so much as you will; and there is much hunting and such views of Illimani as you have not seen. Also, there are strange monuments of the ancients. Eh? Then one hundred bolivianos!”
“I give you the most expressive thanks, gentlemen, and would willingly see your chacra. But I am bound for Tiahuanaco. And, in any event, you must know that I talk not lumber, but truth. I cannot make your pictures.”
“Listen, then,” muttered the Bolivian angrily, turning to his fellow-mask, “how hard-headed are these gringos! Come,” addressing the traveler again, “you are too dear. But we will say two hundred bolivianos,” and he held up a huge roll of small red bank bills.
By now there was a considerable wrinkle in the traveler’s brow. “God give you good evening, cavaliers,” he said, curtly. “I am of one yes and one no. If you want retratos I know no place nearer than La Paz where you can get them. Adios.”
He set spurs to his mule and rode off down hill. The two maskers looked blankly at one another a moment, and then their mules began to plod up the slope amid a volley of Spanish expletives. Andrés had prodded the pack-beast to a lurching trot, and ran easily at its heels.
“Mps, viracocha,” he said, in a loud whisper, taking off his hat again as he drew alongside the traveler. “But those are the Jaúregui, and it would be better to please them. They are most powerful, and very hard-headed, too.”
“Then let them butt against a harder head. I can’t—hola! Vicuñas, no?”
The frown had smoothed out, and he was snatching the rifle from its holster strapped along the saddle. Away over on an opposite slope a little brown cloud was drifting.
“Si! But they go!” cried Andrés.
The cloud was, indeed, breaking up in a score of wee brown dots that scudded like so many shadows.
“Too far! And I wanted some pelts for a little girl I know. To try, anyhow!” The traveler jerked the rifle to his shoulder and fired. “Nothing,” he sighed. “Of course not—it was a shot thrown away.” But Andrés cried: “You touched! See yonder, how he makes lame!”
“Your eyes for it—mine don’t reach so far. But one does look to have fallen behind. Too bad! Now it is to run him down—a man even in a hurry can’t leave the poor wounded brute to be gouged piecemeal by the condors. Go on thy best with the pack-beast, Andrés, and I’ll catch thee at the tambo, or sooner.”
The arriero ambled on, with now and then a reminding cudgel to his charge. A funny man, this—no? But then, no doubt all gringos were a little wrong in the head. To refuse two hundred bolivianos for a picture, and then go ramping off to kill a wounded vicuña! Smart are the Yanquis, yes—but of reason, not much. As if the condors were to blame if they could catch a thing injured! And it can be that they will have mule as well as vicuña for supper. The viracocha evidently forgets that he is on the ground of the mountain sickness. Pity if it should catch him—since he is very good, unbrained though he be.
But at a turn in the trail Andrés found other matters to be thought of than the general follies and occasional virtues of the Yanquis. Other ears than his had heard the rifle, and other eyes noted the traveler’s tangent; and now the young Indian gave a start very like one of fear at the rattle of wheels behind him and an imperious call of “Alto!”
II.
Andrés glanced over his shoulder and faced about in his tracks. It was only for an instant that he thought of running. He might make a break down the rough hillside, where the carriage could not follow, yes. But the pack-mule, sagging under those boxes, of which the viracocha was so tender! The boy’s thick lips drew tight across his large, white teeth. He would stay. The instant he ceased to beset its heels the fagged beast stopped too, and there they stood like two shabby statues, while the carriage drew alongside.
“So the gringo hunts, eh?” spoke one of the maskers, briskly, stepping down from the buggy. “But he is very high priced, it seems—as much as unamiable. Come, tell us how much he does get—for in truth I thought we offered enough.”
“Who knows, your excellency?” stammered Andrés. “It is a month that I am with him as arriero, and until now he pictures only the monuments. And even of those I have not yet seen the retratos, for he says he is to finish them when we shall reach La Paz. Of people he always refuses—as your excellency saw. Except that once, in Copacabana, he pictured an ancient beggar at the gate, taking no money.”
“Ay, but these gringos are many sorts of fools—and this one all sorts. Come, then, these vistas he has made, they will be in the chipas. To see them!”
The speaker’s air and tone were plainly those of one who has no dream of not being obeyed, and he fairly stiffened with astonishment when the arriero, rather pale and very much embarrassed, stammered:
“P-pero, excellency, I—I—cannot!”
“Mira! Another who ‘cannot!’ It is contagious, then, this ‘no puedo!’ Oyez!” and now the command was sharp and stern, “Open me those boxes!”
Andrés backed off a step. His brown cheeks were unmistakably gray, and his voice faltered as he replied, humbly, but stolidly: “Do not shame me, Excellency. This viracocha hires me, treating me kindly. For arriero, yes—but even more, he has me to guard the machine when he is not beside it. For so many wish to peep in, and he has things in little flat boxes which he opens only at night in a room without candles, and not even smoking his cigarro. He says that to let in a so-little of light would destroy all. For that I am promised, that no one shall open them nor touch them. Do not ask me, then, excellency.”
“Ask thee, cannibal! A Jaúregui asking thee? Vaya! I order thee. And between winks, too, lest thou taste the quirt!” He snatched from his driver the short, leaden-butted bull whip.
Andrés backed away still farther, till he ran up against the pack of his dejected mule, which stood as if petrified there.
“No puedo, taita!” he repeated, with an appealing glance. Then, as the man reached forth to pluck the knot of the cinch rope, Andrés extended his arm as a barrier, crying, “Haniwa! Your excellency must not!”
At this actual obstruction the personage in the white hood clearly lost an already ruffled temper. He drew the quirt whistling around those sturdy, bare calves, and a blue welt stood up there. Another cut, and another. The stolid face changed little, but the legs shifted uneasily.
“Haniwa, is it?” The ambushed eyes seemed fairly outside the mask now, so angrily they shone. “Then we will see! To beat a little more manners into that thick skull.” He shifted the quirt in his hand, clubbing the loaded end over Andrés’s head. The arriero flung up his hands. He was a sinewy young man, very probably much more powerful than his tall assailant. Nor was he thinking of the odds of those two more in the carriage. It was tradition, not cowardice, that stayed his hands—how could this arriero and son of arrieros think to strike a don? For he was born and bred in a country where there is still such a thing as respect—sometimes misapplied, as now; but broadly so honorable that I wish some reciprocity treaty might enable us to import some of it for northern use.
The leaden butt fell across his guard, and one hand dropped to his side. The other he drew before his eyes.
“Come! Will thou open, or shall I crack that foolish squash-head?”
Andrés did not move. “Haniwa!” he muttered in the same slow, stupid way, shutting his eyes as the club rose again. But just then a voice called from the carriage:
“To what use, brother? They are no more than clods. Beat one to death, and you shall not change him. Let Pepe tie him and then we can verify the boxes.”
The one with the quirt hesitated a moment. His blood was hot, and the brute in him ached to beat away at this maddening stupid. His hand dropped reluctantly, and he growled:
“As thou wilt. Rope him then, Pepe.”
But if the arriero had stood dumb under the lash of his superior, it was another page in the almanac when a brown fellow of his own blood and station caught him by the arms and started to pass a reata around him. Andrés doubled forward at the waist, clumsily but resistlessly. His tousled head struck Pepe on the mouth, and that too-ready henchman rolled heavily in the road. Andrés sprang upon him and flung fistfuls of dust in his face, shaking him as a terrier does a rat.
“Pig! Who lent thee a candle in this funeral? Thy master I could not fight. But thou, barbarian——”
“Socorro!” bawled Pepe, quite helpless in the clutch of his exasperated rider. “Take him off!”
“I’ll take him off!” growled the master, and he ran forward, swinging the club about his head. Woe is me for thy skull, Andresito, if that ounce of lead befall it squarely from behind!
III.
When the “gringo” and his laboring mule pitched down the side of a very considerable barranca, their quarry was plainly visible four or five hundred yards up the opposite hill. The rest of the flock had long ago disappeared, and by now was miles away—for they run almost like antelope, these airy beauties of the Andes, the tiniest camels in the world, and the only graceful ones. But when mule and rider struggled up the farther bank, the wounded vicuña was nowhere to be seen.
“Plague! But I must not kill thee, in trying to be merciful to him,” muttered the rider, and he sprang to the ground. It was high time. The mule stood gasping in his tracks, head down, chin hanging and knees quaking violently. The traveler looked up and down him, remorsefully but critically.
“With a rest, thou’rt all right. But I ought to beg thy pardon for giving thee a fool for a rider! Now, my legs for it—and rest thou here.”
The involuntary object of all this trouble was certainly inconsiderate. Having been so foolish as to go and get wounded, he should have waited at least for the Samaritan to come up and give him the blow of mercy. But, instead, he hobbled bleating on in pursuit of his fellows, even long after they had vanished. It was astonishing how this delicate, fawn-like creature could run so far with a broken leg, and his well-meaning pursuer began to find it more than astonishing. Plague take the little imbecile—he was bound to make it as hard as possible to do him a good turn! It is odd how our minds can contradict themselves—how we sometimes start out on a thoroughly praiseworthy errand, and fall into very unamiable moods by the way.
The pursuer was by now decidedly angry—which is a very unwise luxury to be indulged in, at least among the Andes. His temper was by no means calculated to soothe the stampeding gallop of his heart; and to see him gasping up yonder cumbre, with a purpling face and protruding tongue, and a scowl on his brow, probably no stranger would have dreamed that he was really on a generous errand.
“Belike the condors will have to have thee!” he groaned inwardly—since not for his life, now, could he have articulated the words: “I’m done up! This one more ridge and it must end.”
But as he reached the top of that last ridge, there was a tremendous swoosh of wings past him, and then, from the hollow beyond, a scream almost human in its agony. At that he plucked new vigor, and went racing down the slope in a surprising spurt. The truth was that, once started, he had no longer the strength to stop on that stiff pitch, and must keep on till he should fall or fetch up against some obstacle. His sight was blurred, his head roaring, his legs numb, and where his heart should be, a strange, suffocating emptiness seemed to have come—and still he spun on. Then, in a reeling way, he swung the six-shooter thrice, firing as fast as finger could pull the trigger; in the same second, sprawling headlong in a confusion of bleats and silken fur and beating wings. A tremendous blow from one of the latter cut his scalp clear across the occiput. The revolver blazed again, and, after a wild thrashing, all was still.
It was some minutes before the hunter sat up, gazing about him in a dazed way. The rest and the chilly air and the loss of blood were beginning to counteract the effects of his imprudent chase.
“Well! The next time I shoot before I think, I won’t shoot!” he informed himself without expense of breath, and with the ghost of a smile. “Wonder I hadn’t killed myself with such a race, up here. But if you start, finish!” and he looked complacently down at the little dead vicuña against which he leaned; and not a rod away the huge vulture sprawled upon its back, its wings outstretched a full dozen feet, its feet clenched in the empty air.
“He got only one swipe at thee, it seems. It’s all right, so that I came in time to give thee a more merciful death. So we won’t grudge the breath it cost me. But the least thanks thou canst give me is that precious pelt.” Drawing his knife, the hunter soon removed that very softest and most exquisite of all furs. Then with an uneasy glance at the clouds he turned away, walking as briskly as his protesting lungs would allow.
Good! There was the mule all right. It had not budged a foot; and now, though still in an attitude of utter dejection, was clearly out of danger. Directly, master and mule were jogging off toward the trail at a most doleful gait—which doubtless would have been mended, if they could have seen through the rounded hill just ahead. But the hill was opaque, as hills and circumstances ahead are so prone to be; and they pottered along lazily, until, at a turn over the ridge, the spurs went drumming such an unexpected tattoo upon his echoing ribs that the mule quite forgot himself, and went pitching down the hill at a pace he had not taken in a month.
IV.
Away down yonder, a superannuated buggy and its team stood in the trail. A few rods ahead of it, and just at the heels of a wilted pack-mule, two men were scuffling in the dust; and over them a hooded figure was bringing down a heavy club. At that instant the pack beast wakened enough to turn his head interrogatively, cocking one ear forward and the other back. Even as he did so, his nigh hind leg could be seen to gather itself and suddenly lunge out behind. A long, linen-shrouded form, white capped at one end, thereupon doubled in half, and rose in the air and went whirling like a boomerang. It fell a full rod away and did not rise. Then a similar figure sprang from the buggy and rushed at the wrestlers; but midway went down all at once in a loose heap, as if struck by a bullet. No wonder the stranger up yonder drummed with his heels, and jockeyed, and whooped; and, finding his charger still too slow, leaped from its back and came bounding down the hillside like a loosened rock.
Andrés was sitting placidly astride his prostrate foe, breathing rather hard, but looking stupidly good-natured as ever. One of his fingers was broken, and blood from a gash on his forehead trickled down his nose.
“Mps, viracocha,” he answered to the breathless traveler’s glance of inquiry, “the caballeros were set to see the inside of your boxes, and because I refused they went to beat me. But when this cannibal here came upon me, then it was to fight. The blows of a gentleman, yes—but not of a chuncho.[31] So I measured him, thus. And when the gentleman went to crack me the squash with his quirt, then did Big-Ears here, forgetting respect to the powerful, set heel to his stomach and lift him until over yonder.”
“And this? I saw him fall as he ran at you,” the viracocha mustered breath to say.
“He? Mps, but it will be the sorojchi—see you not how the blood falls from his mouth? And you see, viracocha, how strong is the coca! Because I sacrificed at the apacheta, as one should, to the spirits of the high places, it has all come as the mouth would ask. Without that, then, the gentlemen would have left me here, of no more use to your grace, and the magic boxes would be emptied in the light.”
When night came down on the Quimca-chata, a gusty snowstorm, with howling intervals of hail, beset the pass. It roared at the hills, it swooped down the cañons as if in search of some living thing it might turn to ice before morning. But inside the low, dirty tambo, they only laughed at its rage. The bald stone hut in a little nook under the shoulder of a hill had neither window nor chimney; and a heavy poncho of llama hair was the temporary door. It was a fair type of the tambos of the Andes—those tenantless, cheerless wayside shelters that save the traveler in those bleak lands from perishing. On the sooty hearth a faint blaze of taqui wavered, and the smoke wandered out as best it could or made itself at home in the bare room. Upon the rough stone bench along the walls sat five men, and in the farther corner six mules nosed wistfully in a rubbish heap for casual straws. Of the men two were Indians, and both wore bandaged heads. The third guest of this inn without a landlord appeared to be an American, and he also had a handkerchief bound about his skull. The two others were handsome, swarthy men in costly vicuña ponchos. They sat on linen dusters, from the pockets of which peeped the tasseled ends of two white caps.
One member of the party cast now and then a sly glance at these. So, instead of clowns going to some feast, these were two wealthy Bolivians. And those astonishing head masks which had so mystified him were merely to save their faces from that trying mountain air—so Andrés had informed him, with an evident effort not to pity his ignorance. And looking at those coffee complexions he had serious work to keep from smiling at the thought of trying to keep them from sunburn.
“Pues, it is as well the tambo was near, for none of us were in shape to go much farther to-night, even forgetting the storm. Ea! But how it howls, as if disappointed!”
It was the American who broke the silence, though he spoke, of course, in Spanish—the only common possession of the five tongues.
“You have reason, caballero,” answered the taller of the two dons, courteously. “And even more am I glad that we make ourselves pardoned. Of a truth, we were most ignorant that to open your cases would spoil all; nor could we have thought to take the liberty, but that we believed you a—a seller baiting us for higher pay. But we were well answered. Your so obstinate arriero made me forget myself, and I give you a caballero’s apology. But that mule—ay de mi! I thought Illampu itself had tumbled upon me!”
“Verily, señor! I saw it from the hill, and it was so prettily done as I never could have believed. Why, señor, he shut you at the waist like a knife with a strong spring!”
The cavalier smiled a trifle weakly at the description, but he said frankly:
“He did but justice. I have shame to think how I lost a gentleman’s temper. And so little more and I could have broken your man’s head. But since you have the fineness to hold no malice, it is well.”
“Oh, I know curiosity and temper both. Only that it is Andrés’s head and not mine. But his need not be too sore—for you have caused me to double his wages from to-day. An arriero that will stand a broken head to guard the amo’s load—well, I haven’t found him very abundant in Bolivia, nor anywhere else.”
“You have reason always. And—er—understood that—pues, you know that Don Juan de Jaúregui cannot say to an arriero, ‘pardon’! But in purity of truth, he is faithful, and I would be glad to give him a well paid position on the chacra.”
“Eh, Andrés? The cavalier offers justly. What sayest thou?”
Andrés’s face beamed simply, and he twisted his skull cap as he rose with a clumsy bow.
“I shall be glad,” he stammered. “But only if—until—when that the viracocha shall have no more need of an arriero. For while the magic boxes have to ride on the ribs of a mule, it is safer that I be driver—since the viracocha has shown me, and I know how they must be treated. ‘Gently! Gently! And for the life of you, let no light come into them!’”