“Felicita, where is this Senor?”
“Ah, Dios mio! safe enough, in the sala. But for thee—nina Sa’pona, how scared I’ve been! And they called thee queen, thou who art our queen indeed, beautiful, brave one! But thou shouldst not do this—not for so ugly a senor—my beautiful nina!”
With the great door closed, and the noise from the peons growing fainter in the distance, the stern dignity of the Indian girl vanished before the simple talk of her old nurse. Queen of the Indians, as the peons called her, this girl might be—although why they called her so they would find it difficult to tell—but for the faithful creature, with her eager caresses and affectionate words, royalty, real or imaginary, scarcely counted.
“There you are, foolish Felicita, always scared at something! Danger? What danger? Only a greeting from those who are as fond of me as thou art. Now, to thy work. I must speak with this troublesome Yankee. Many a day it is since I have seen him here. And then—Felicita, I am dying of hunger.”
Shaking her head at her mistress’s lack of caution, the old nurse hobbled down the gloomy corridor and into the sunny patio, fragrant with jasmine and sweet rose, where two Indian girls, seated upon the flags surrounding the opening of a central cistern, were crushing corn in the primitive stone hand mills of their race.
Resuming something of her stateliness of mien, the youthful “Reina de los Indios” turned to the right along a passage-way leading off from the main corridor into the sala, or principal living room of the house. This was more scantily furnished than such apartments usually are in Bogota. All that it had was of the plainest—half a dozen cheap rocking chairs, a straight-backed cane settee, a tall pier-glass, ornamented at the top and sides with meaningless gilt stucco work, and a dark walnut cabinet, carved in elaborate hunting design, with massive spiral pillars supporting the heavily panelled sides and front—the only object in the room giving evidence either of taste or wealth. Even the tiled floors were bare, save for a few well worn petates (Indian mats) which failed to supply that feeling of comfort provided in this chilly climate by the thick woollen rugs and carpets generally in use.
Awaiting her entrance stood the Yankee whom she had rescued from the emboladores. Confronted by his ragged assailants he had shown an admirable coolness; in the presence of this young girl his manner lacked that air of confidence he had so readily assumed in the face of danger. He was ill at ease; his glance shifted from one object to another in the room, his sombrero was tightly clenched in his hand, he avoided the steady gaze of his rescuer. Yet there was in his attitude toward her an indefinable homage, due, perhaps, to the queenly rank that others accorded her, or else to the rare feminine loveliness, the subtle power of which few could escape.
“Senorita, you have done me a great service,” he said. “I was on my way to see you when I had that brush with the peons. That is my excuse for taking refuge in your house and exposing you to danger. Will you forgive me? Will you——”
“Ah, my good Don Raoul!” she interrupted. “What questions! And from you! Of course, if I was of service to you just now, I am glad.”
“It is good to hear you say that, Senorita,” he replied with evident relief. “I was afraid things might be different between us. You see, you disappeared so completely. You have not been in Bogota for months, for years, Senorita. And then, to-day—at last—I heard of your arrival. I wanted to see you. I have not forgotten you in all this long time, you may be sure, Sajipona!”
A faint flush overspread the girl’s delicate features; a strange look kindled within her dark eyes.
“It is well, Don Raoul,” she said in a low voice.
“And here you are, still the Queen—beautiful, mysterious!” he exclaimed.
“You know I am not a queen,” she murmured.
“Why, even now they called you so. Those jackals felt your power—just as I do, beautiful Sajipona!”
“Enough, Senor! Titles and flatteries I neither care for nor deserve are a mockery in my own house.”
“The title is yours by tradition, if not by right. As for flatteries——”
“We do not live by traditions,” she interrupted.
“To me, at least, you are La Reina de los Indios.”
“Ah, well, Senor,” she said with a low laugh; “every queen, I fancy, should have at least one subject. And now—supposing that I am this queen you talk of—what is it you want of me?”
“We always used to be friends, Sajipona. Can we not be friends still?”
“There’s another strange question! But—surely you did not come here to ask me that? There is something else, Don Raoul,” she added, regarding him intently.
“It is that, first of all. And then—I had it in mind to tell you that my friend is returning to Bogota—David Meudon.”
“David Meudon,” she repeated, as if pondering the name, looking steadily at Raoul the while.
“But then—what is that to me, Senor?” she asked.
“You remember him?”
“Yes, of course I remember him. He has been away a long time, hasn’t he?” Then, after a pause: “Why does he come back?”
“To solve a mystery—so he writes me.”
“A mystery?”
“He calls it a mystery,” laughed the other. “You see, when we were living here together he disappeared for three months. We thought he had been killed by a dynamite explosion. Surely, you have heard of it, Senorita?”
“Yes—I think everyone has heard of it. And then, at the time, there were rumors. For instance, I heard—I heard who exploded the dynamite.”
“Sure enough, there were all kinds of rumors. But, of course, the whole thing was an accident, a horrible accident, that nearly cost David his life. He didn’t heed the signal in time—or something went wrong—the signal or the dynamite. Anyway, he wasn’t seen or heard of again for three months. We all thought he must have been blown to bits. Then, a curious thing happened. One morning I found him in my house, in a sort of trance.”
“Well?”
“When he came out of the trance, he declared he could remember nothing of what he had been through. Those three months were a blank in his memory.”
“And then——?”
“He left Bogota, declaring he would never come back. That was just three years ago.”
“But——”
“Yes, now he is coming back—with some friends—to solve this mystery, so he says.”
“What mystery, Senor?”
“Why,” replied Raoul slowly, looking at her intently; “the mystery of those three months when he was supposed to have been in a trance.”
“What is a trance, Don Raoul?” asked the girl innocently.
Raoul laughed.
“Ah, that would be hard to explain to a queen of the Indians,” he said. “A trance is not exactly a sleep, for a man may talk and travel and do things, just like other men, when he’s in a trance. But when he is himself again, he remembers nothing of all that happened when he was in the trance.”
“Then you think he was in a trance during those three months when he disappeared from Bogota?”
“Yes.”
“And that he has forgotten all that happened to him in that time?”
“Perhaps.”
“Could he ever remember?”
“There is only one way in which he could.”
“How is that?”
“If he could return to the same scenes and conditions through which he passed during those three months.”
“But for that you would have to know, of course, what those scenes and conditions were?”
“Exactly, Senorita.”
“Really, it is all very interesting,” she said dreamily. “I have heard something like it in fairy tales, I think; but not in real life. And now—why do you tell all this to me, Senor?” she asked, as if struck by a novel idea.
“Ah, Sajipona,” he replied with a smile; “I have told you merely in answer to your own questions. You have shown that—for some reason or other—you are interested.”
“Interested? Why, of course I am interested—if for no other reason, simply because you are. This David Meudon, you say, left Bogota three years ago? Strange that he should leave so suddenly—and with his work in this country unfinished!”
“I can’t tell how much you know of David,” he said musingly. “But there is every reason why you, more than anyone else, should be interested in the man who attempts to solve the secret of Guatavita—Sajipona.”
There was no mistaking the emphasis placed on the girl’s name; nor was there any disguising the effect its peculiar pronunciation had upon her. Sajipona looked at Raoul in alarm, then turned from him in manifest confusion. Presently, she gave a low laugh and her eyes sought his again.
“Ah, you Yankees are strange people,” she said. “Some say, you are only money makers. But, it appears, you are more than that; for you listen to foolish legends, like the rest of us—and you believe them.”
“Yes, I believe this one, Sajipona.”
“Does the man who so strangely lost his memory by your dynamite explosion believe this one?” she asked laughing.
“I don’t know. Perhaps he never heard it.”
“Well, it’s very interesting, anyway—I mean, about the trance and the dynamite. I want to hear the end of it. You will surely come again, won’t you? And tell me when your friend arrives in Bogota,” she added, giving him her hand.
“You are ever the queen; you dismiss me from your presence,” he complained, taking her hand, nevertheless, and kissing it.
“The streets are safe for you now, Senor,” she said.
“Thanks to you, La Reina!”
“Ah, I would do much more for you than that, as you know, Don Raoul!” she exclaimed, an arch smile giving to her beautiful features a rare flash of piquancy. “And now—Adios, Senor!”
“Surely, not ‘Adios,’ but—until the next time, Sajipona,” he replied, as he bowed himself from the sala.
Raoul’s belief in the legend involved in Sajipona’s name marked a radical change which he had undergone since he arrived in Bogota. To his keen, logical mind the proposal to enlist in a quest for the long lost El Dorado seemed, at first, far too quixotic to be taken seriously. But he humored the idea, originating in David’s fondness for studies touching the borderlands of romance, in the hope that he would divert a purely fanciful project into more profitable channels. Later on, however, he was himself caught by the practical possibilities lurking in the old Chibcha legend. Hence, it followed that while David was enjoying the picturesque life of the little mountain capital, Raoul was delving in musty records, running down old traditions, and studying the topography of the Bogota tableland with a degree of patience as to details that the subject had rarely received. For days at a time he burrowed in the crumbling archives of the Museo Nacional, an unpretentious little edifice, not far from the palace of San Carlos, in which were stored, pell-mell, practically every evidence that remained of Colombia’s prehistoric civilization. Here, with only the grey, shrivelled mummies of two ancient kings of the Chibchas to watch him, he had reconstructed, as best he could, the past of this vanished race of people, had convinced himself of their wealth, scarcely any of which had fallen into the hands of the Spanish, and had laid his plans for discovering a treasure which had balked every explorer before him.
Combined with these studies in the National Museum and in the vicinity of Lake Guatavita, Raoul had busied himself with the peons of the neighborhood. From these primitive people he learned enough to corroborate the main features in the Chibcha tradition as handed down by Castellanos, Pedro Simon, Piedrahita, and other chroniclers of the Spanish Conquest. In addition, he unearthed the curious legend that the Sacred Lake would never yield up its treasure except to one in whose veins flowed the blood of the Chibcha kings. This bit of prophetic romance had come, it was said, from father to son through the four centuries following the martyrdom of the last of the zipas. He was told, also—and it added to the fantastic character of the prophecy—that a secret, known only to the zipas and their direct descendants, attached to Lake Guatavita, and that by means of this secret the treasure hidden beneath its waters would be discovered.
Raoul at first paid little heed to this part of the legend. It had too strong a flavor of latter-day romance to go for more than a recent addition to the main story of the wealth of the Chibcha kings and their peculiar religious customs. The persistence of the idea, however, the belief in its truth on the part of those repeating it, gradually excited his interest and led him into all kinds of theories as to the existence and recovery of the Guatavita treasure.
That so fanciful a legend could have won even the partial belief of so ingrained a skeptic as Raoul seems at first absurd on the face of it. But most of us can recall instances enough of similar lapses from the hypercritical to the over-superstitious to make this one not altogether incredible. As often happens, also, in such cases—as with those otherwise reasonable persons who believe in fortune-telling, omens, apparitions, etc.,—this bit of superstition, having once lodged itself in Raoul’s mind, increased in importance, opening up an absorbing field for his love of psychological novelties, until it finally became a monomania, an obsession, as the scientists call it.
These ancient zipas, he argued, were the chieftains of a superior race of people. In the annual tribute from the royal treasury to the national god, who was supposed to live at the bottom of Lake Guatavita, they catered to the credulity of their subjects while, in reality, laughing in their sleeves at them, so to speak, all the time. Men of their intelligence were not apt literally to throw away wealth they had themselves amassed, and which they must consider as belonging to them and to their descendants. But as they—apparently—did throw it away, it was more than likely that they used some kind of hocus-pocus, known only to themselves, by means of which the God Chibchacum—in whose existence they did not believe—was cheated of his annual tribute. How they practiced this deception they must surely have told their children. The coming of the Spaniards, however, and the overthrow of the ancient dynasty, had made of the whole affair a greater secret than ever. It would be handed down from one generation to another so long as there were descendants of the zipas; but these survivors of the royal line would find it increasingly difficult, owing to the presence of the Spaniards, to take the steps needed to recover their ancestral treasure.
There was some plausibility in Raoul’s reasoning, enough, perhaps, to excite the romancer’s interest, but scarcely that of the practical man of affairs to whom are broached the details of a mining venture. Conviction grew, however, with Raoul, whose investigations were confined thenceforward less to the archæological aspects of the problem and more to the task of discovering the whereabouts of the living descendants of the zipas.
These speculations and the singular inquiry into which they had drawn his companion excited only a mild interest in David. The latter, strangely enough, enchanted with the picturesque novelty of the cloud-city in which he found himself, felt less of the antiquarian’s zeal than when Bogota was a remote geographical possibility. Perhaps it was the stimulus of mountain air, a bracing climate, that got him out of his habitual bookishness. Here, at any rate, there was neither the warmth nor the color of the tropics to entice him to the indolent dreaming that one of his temperament might easily yield to in the lowlands of Colombia. The peculiar lustre of the grey-green Bogota tableland, the cool crystalline atmosphere, invited him to continual physical exercise. For days at a time he went on long horseback rides. Then, tiring of this, and feeling something of the restraint experienced by the stranger who exerts himself abnormally in the rarefied air of the higher Andes, he fell into the easy habits of the pleasure-loving Bogotano. Muffled warmly in a ruana, he strolled comfortably about the streets of the city, amused by the chaffering of peons in the market place, enchanted by the quaint and varied architecture of the houses and public buildings, the grotesque paintings and bas-reliefs in the churches; or else he would sit by the hour in the open window of some cafe on the Cathedral Esplanade, watching the gay throng of idlers and politicians for whom this is a favorite rendezvous. The dust and cobwebs of the Museo did not attract this former dabbler in antiquities, who abandoned himself eagerly to the fleeting impressions gathered from an altogether pleasing environment. And Raoul, naturally secretive, gave him the vaguest outline only of the course and the result of his studies.
The discovery that made the deepest impression on Raoul took place under circumstances which intensified his superstitious feeling in regard to everything connected with the buried treasure. He was on one of numerous trips to Lake Guatavita. Riding alone, he reached the gloomy body of water toward nightfall. Tethering his horse near the trail at the edge of the plain over which he had ridden, he approached the lake on foot, his mind penetrated by the absolute silence of the place. He had come for no specific purpose except to examine further the old Spanish cutting that gashes the great hill which originally rose, a solid wall of rock, above the unknown depths of the waters. Through this narrow cleft, on the instant that it was completed three centuries ago, a mighty torrent had hurled itself into the valley beyond. As this torrent subsided and the lake shrank to its present compass, a wide margin of precipitous shore was left bare to the scrutiny of treasure seekers. Even after the lapse of centuries this portion of the lake’s basin still shows the ravages wrought by the Spaniards. It remains a gaunt, jagged surface of rock and flinty gravel, unclothed by tree or shrub—an ancient sanctuary whose violation defies the repairs of time.
Raoul smiled contemptuously at these evidences of the rude labors of the early Spaniards. With modern science to back him he would not attack the problem in this way. He would pierce this ancient secret to its heart by subtlety, not brute force. For the hundredth time he went over the system of lines and levels by which he and David planned to tunnel their way to the coveted prize, indicating to himself the various points from which they proposed to start their work, and noting and comparing the obstacles they would encounter by each route.
Thus occupied, Raoul slowly circled the lake, following the precarious path that still remained along the edge of the old high-water mark—the path upon which had marched the gaily vestured Chibcha devotees in the pomp of their semi-annual festival, when the dancing waves radiating from the heavily laden rafts of the Gilded Man and his court, washed over their sandalled feet, and all was sunshine and joyous laughter, glitter of gold and emerald offerings ready poised to be hurled, with shouts of triumph, to the insatiable God in his crystalline caverns below.
Scenes from the old legend flashed across the prosaic details of Raoul’s mining schemes, as he stood in the shadow of the majestic hill that lifted its huge shoulders behind him. Not a ripple scarred the surface of the sombre waters. The ancient God, it would seem, waiting in vain the tribute that once was his, had grown angry and made of his Sacred Lake a shrunken circle of dark and sinister meaning.
Into its silent depths, fascinated by the desolation surrounding him, Raoul gazed intently. He would revive the old ceremony. He would bring an offering to this hidden God—an offering bearing a menace, a demand for the treasure that he felt already in his grasp. He seized a stone from the many that were strewn at his feet. It was smooth, worn by the streams through which it had chafed its way hither; he paused as he weighed it thoughtfully in his outstretched hand. Then he threw it high in air, over the center of the pool. The sound of the falling missile plunging through the waters echoed sullenly along the towering walls of granite. The weird effect delighted him, and again and again he cast stones into the water, dislodging some of the more unwieldy rocks from their resting-places and watching them bound and ricochet, with a thunderous noise, down the precipice after the others.
In the midst of this fantastic play he was arrested by the cry of a human voice. High, clear and sibilant it came; a word of command, as it seemed, out of the empty space above:
“Silence!”
He thought it might be the rustle of the wind that had just sprung up and was stirring the gnarled branches of the trees fringing the brow of the hill upon whose precipitous slope he was standing. Carefully he scanned the rocky pinnacles rising on either side of him. If it was not the wind, the invisible being whose voice he had heard might be hidden in one of the many clefts that furrowed the face of the hill behind him.
Again he heard the command. Silvery, unmistakably human; the peremptory voice came from some one near at hand, a few hundred yards, it might be, from where he stood:
“Silence!”
The tall, slim figure of a woman, clad in flowing white robe, with dazzling arm stretched downward, flashed in sharp outline against the dark hillside. She stood just above him, on a projecting shelf of rock. Her eyes, calm and stern, were not turned toward Raoul, but fixed intently on the lake, as if beholding—or expecting to behold—something there that was hidden from all others.
Involuntarily Raoul bent his head to this singular apparition, scarcely knowing whether it was a creature of his imagination, conjured out of the strange fancies awakened by the lonely scene, or a real woman, statuesque, beautiful.
Why was she here? Whence had she come? How address her? Vague questions crowded upon him, giving place finally to the conviction that he was an intruder and had unwittingly offended one whose rights here were supreme. And then he yielded to a feeling of shame at being caught in senseless boy’s play.
“Pardon, Senorita,” he murmured lamely.
“Ah,” she sighed, a trace of irony in her voice; “it is I, a stranger here, who must ask pardon for daring to interrupt you.”
“Again—pardon,” he said, moved by the seriousness, the bitterness in her tone. “Surely, you are not a stranger to Guatavita, to Bogota?” he added, not concealing his astonishment.
“My home is far from here,” she said simply. “Four days ago I left it for the first time to go to Bogota.”
“And you visit the Sacred Lake on your way to the city!”
“My fathers sacrificed here,” she said proudly. “I am an Indian, the daughter of those who once poured their treasure into the lake which you have defiled with stones.”
“Sajipona!” called a harsh guttural voice from the trail that followed the cutting made by the Spaniards in the mountain’s side.
“Si, padre mio,” she answered, slowly descending to the path upon which Raoul was standing.
In the gathering darkness Raoul saw, just emerging from the cleft in the rocks, the huge figure of a man, dressed, as all travelers are in the mountains, in wide sombrero, capacious ruana, great hair-covered leggings reaching to the waist, his spurred heels clattering on the stones as he walked towards them. Two mules followed closely, the bridle of the foremost held in his hand; behind these came a burro, loaded with mountainous baggage which swayed from side to side as the patient little animal picked his way along the treacherous path.
“Good evening, senor,” said the man suavely, as if Raoul were some old acquaintance whom he expected to meet. “It grows dark quickly. Moreover, it is far to the city and the beasts are tired. We stop for the night at La Granja. And you, Senor?”
“My horse is fresh, I will ride to Bogota.”
“A stranger?” queried the man.
“An American.”
“Ah!” Then, as if to atone for his surprise: “Bueno, in Bogota my house is yours.”
Only the sure-footed mules of the Andes could have threaded this handsbreadth of a path in safety, and only a horsewoman of the lithe grace and dexterity of this daughter of the mountains could have swung herself with such slight assistance into the high, clumsy saddle as did this girl addressed as Sajipona.
“Watch your burro, Senor,” warned Raoul, viewing with some anxiety that much encumbered animal wavering disconsolately on the brink of the precipice. “He will slip into the lake.”
“Eh, Senor!” grunted the man, vaulting heavily to the back of his mule, at the same time spurring and then checking him with the reins. “He knows his business, the canaille! Besides,” he added, chuckling to himself, “we carry no treasure for Guatavita. Since the days of Sajipa, men pay no tribute here—they look for it instead.”
“That is true,” murmured Raoul. Then, addressing the departing travelers: “May you have a pleasant ride, Senorita! And you, Senor; I may see you in Bogota?”
“In the Calle de Las Flores, Senor,” called the other briskly. “Ask for Rafael Segurra; always—remember!—at your service.”
Sajipa—Sajipona! The two names persisted in Raoul’s thoughts as he rode home that evening. Over and over again he passed in review the details of his strange encounter with this mysterious girl who, in spite of the exquisite fairness of her complexion, called herself an Indian and claimed these old worshipers of the Lake God for her ancestors. Who was she? Could it be that his search for the descendant of that almost mythical line of monarchs had been so unexpectedly, completely rewarded? He could hardly wait for the morning to make the inquiries that he planned.
“Ah, yes,” he was assured; “this Rafael Segurra is quite a man in his way—a ‘politico,’ strong with the government. He lives far from here—on a hacienda—no one knows where. And his daughter—he brings her to Bogota? That is strange! The beautiful Sajipona! Who knows if she really is Don Rafael’s daughter! There is a mystery, a tradition about her. Yes, some say that she has in her veins the blood of that poor old zipa that the Spaniards roasted alive because he wouldn’t tell where he had hidden his treasure. Still, how can that be if Don Rafael is her father? Ah, no one can be sure, Senor—their home is so far away. But—she is very beautiful. And there are many, many lovers—so they say.”
The information, picked up from various sources, strengthened Raoul’s first impression, and from that time, he became a constant visitor in the little house on the Calle de Las Flores.
On the deck of the wheezy, palpitating river steamer, “Barcelona,” toiling slowly up the turbid waters of the Magdalena, sat the usual throng of passengers who are compelled to sacrifice two weeks of their lives every time they travel from the seacoast to Colombia’s mountain capital. Fortunate such travelers count themselves if their lumbering, flat-bottomed craft, its huge stern wheel lifted high above the down-rushing eddies and whirlpools, escapes the treacherous mudbanks which form and dissolve in this ever-shifting, shallow current, and which not infrequently elude the vigilance of the navigator.
On this particular voyage, however, it is pleasant to record that the “Barcelona,” in spite of various temptations to the contrary, had behaved in a most decorous manner, diplomatically avoiding the aforesaid mudbanks, submerged treetrunks and the like and giving promise of an early arrival at her destination in the Upper Magdalena.
In any part of the world except Colombia the progress of this steamer up the river on this occasion would have been followed with the liveliest interest from one end of the country to the other. News bulletins would have chronicled every detail of her voyage; there would have been editorial speculation as to the possible delays she might encounter; predictions of the outcome of her snail-paced journey and, finally, statements—bogus or otherwise—would have come every now and then from the important personage who headed the list of the “Barcelona’s” passengers. For there was an unhappily important personage on board—a personage who, much to his own amazement, had helped in the making of history, and who was now on his way to report to the President of the Republic the details of what he had done.
Some men, according to one familiar with the accidents common to humanity, have greatness thrust upon them. General Herran was neither born great, nor had he, of his own free will, achieved greatness. But it had been thrust upon him. Without thought or act of his own he awoke one morning to find himself famous. It was an unenviable kind of fame, won in an opera-bouffe sort of way, and might, in some countries, have cost the general his head. But in Colombia there was, happily, no danger of this. Having lost his head once why should he lose it a second time, and just because he had fallen a victim to the wiles of the Panamanians?
Here is the brief but important chapter of history in which General Herran played a leading part. In the performance of his duty to quell any and every uprising which might occur on the Colombian coast he had gone with his army to the Isthmus, where, he had been told, something like a revolution was in progress. At Colon he had been courteously met on shipboard by representatives of this revolution. On their friendly invitation, and without disembarking his troops, he and his staff of officers had then been escorted politely across the Isthmus to Panama where, much to their astonishment, they were promptly lodged in jail—a climax which any one but this unsuspecting general might have foreseen. During his absence his troops were sent back by the revolutionists to Colombia—and thus, without the firing of a shot, the Republic of Panama achieved its independence.
On board the “Barcelona,” freed from the problem of keeping the Isthmians within the Colombian Union, General Herran gave no evidence of any disastrous effect on his own fortunes following his memorable experience of Panama diplomacy. The center of a convivial group of admiring friends, flanked by an inexhaustible supply of “La Cosa Sabrosa,”—the suggestive title given by one enthusiast to the native rum which accompanied them in an endless array of demijohns—this excellent leader of armies appeared to be making a triumphal progress homeward, rather than a decidedly ignominious retreat. His large mirthful brown eyes, peering out of a boyish face fringed by a heavy black beard, were undimmed by regrets and gave no token of the wily, self-seeking politician their possessor was said, by his enemies, to be. “El General,” as he was usually called, was, in fact, the best of good fellows; one who, we can well imagine, might easily forget so paltry an adjunct as his troops, lured by the promise of a lively hour or so in a gay city with congenial companions. “Bobo” his detractors might call him, or “tonto”—but never “pendejo” nor “traidor.”
With General Herran on board the “Barcelona,” although not exactly of his party, and certainly not in the least of the military persuasion, was a round-paunched, bullet-headed little man who, arrayed in the flimsiest of apparel, a wide-flapping Panama sombrero coming down to his ears, paced restlessly about the deck, fanning himself vigorously with a huge palm-leaf fan. Although of pure Spanish lineage, there was nothing of the traditional polish of his race in this explosive person’s manner or speech. He had rolled about—one can hardly describe his mode of travel by another phrase—among many people and had recently settled down in a delightfully fever-ridden section of Colombia to practice medicine. “Doctor Quinine” he was called—behind his back—and it is said that he had simplified the methods of his profession by administering, on all occasions and for all diseases, the one simple, famous drug, discovered centuries ago by his ancestors in his native Peru. Quinine and a few drastic purgatives summed up his medical creed. If these remedies failed to cure—and they sometimes did fail—why, the unfortunate victim was simply a “canaille,” and had, through his own stupidity, or malice, defeated the otherwise infallible result of the doctor’s treatment.
The quininizing of the human race, however, was not the mission upon which Dr. Manuel Valiente Miranda had at present embarked. He had recently made a journey to the United States, whither he had gone to take out a patent on some marvelous “pildoras de quinina” of his own concoction. Having succeeded in the main object of his trip, and having failed incidentally to sell a single box of these same patented “pildoras” to any one of the benighted thousands whose faith was pinned to the ordinary medical practitioner, he had resolved to return to his old occupation of dosing with quinine the faithful on the Colombian coast. On his homeward journey, however, he met a party of Americans who induced him to abandon for a time his original project and to join them in a trip to Bogota. As he was a man of independent means, a political exile from his native land, with no family ties whatsoever, there was nothing to hinder this sudden change in his plans. Hence his presence on the “Barcelona,” where he had assumed guardianship over his American friends—whom he abused on occasion, as was his wont with those he liked—and where he engaged in sarcastic tilts with his old ally “El General.”
In the political upheaval caused by the secession of Panama Doctor Miranda took especial delight; nor did he hesitate to upbraid those in authority for what he called their lack of gumption in the present situation. He predicted, moreover, the coming supremacy of “los Yankees” in South America. In all of this Doctor Miranda was good naturedly tolerated by his Colombian friends, who suffered his sarcasm much as they did his quinine, ignoring the bitterness out of regard for the curative virtue behind it.
Harold and Una Leighton, David Meudon, Andrew Parmelee and Mrs. Quayle were the Americans to whom Doctor Miranda had attached himself on this pilgrimage to Bogota. It was an oddly assorted party. That the persons composing it should be voyaging together up the Magdalena, with an eccentric Peruvian physician as a sort of cicerone, and in friendly intimacy with a group of discredited army officers accused of a traitorous abandonment of the national cause, formed one of those curious situations not unusual in South American travel.
The reader has already learned of the decision reached by Harold Leighton and David to visit Bogota in order to solve there the mystery of the three months following the dynamite explosion in the Guatavita tunnel. As her uncle had foreseen, Una insisted on going with them, and had brought Mrs. Quayle along besides. There was no particular reason why that estimable lady should accompany them. She had rarely ventured beyond the borders of her native Connecticut, and could certainly be of no possible use on so long and difficult a journey as this. But something had to be done with her. She was afraid to be left alone at Stoneleigh, and as she was anxious about Una it seemed best on the whole to take her along. She proved an inoffensive traveler and gave amusement to more than one tourist by her extraordinary costumes, especially the massive, old-fashioned jewelry, with which her hands and neck were covered and from which she refused ever to be parted.
The trip was a hard one for Leighton, who was wedded to his quiet methodical life in Rysdale, and who had no mind for the distractions and annoyances of foreign travel. He was spurred to activity, however, by his interest in the psychological puzzle presented by David, added to which was a growing curiosity regarding the mysterious Indian lake and its reputed treasure. An ordinary mining scheme, no matter how promising, would not have moved the philosophic master of Stoneleigh. But here was something out of which might come a fine scientific discovery revealing the secrets of a bygone civilization. Hence, he had not regretted his resolution to make this quixotic pilgrimage and, as he had latterly fallen into a sort of dependence on Andrew Parmelee for much of the detail work connected with his scientific studies, he had arranged with the village authorities for the schoolmaster to accompany him to Colombia.
Andrew was not a little alarmed at the intimate daily association with Una, the object of his adoration, which such a journey involved. But the fancied terrors of the situation had their compensations. It might even happen that in the primitive region to which they were going he could be of vital service to this stony-hearted fair one—a possibility that filled him with dreams of deadly peril by land and sea in which he acted the part of rescuer to helpless innocence. So, this modern knight errant was miraculously strengthened to ward off the attacks of his Aunt Hepzibah, and departed on his mission fired with all the zeal of the hero of La Mancha, his high resolve unclouded by the horrors that speedily came to him in the rotund nightmare known in the flesh as Doctor Miranda.
“Ah, this little Yankee,” repeatedly declared that restless follower of Aesculapius, regarding the bewildered Andrew with professional glee; “he must take my pills or he will die!”
Then, Andrew, helplessly declaring that he never felt better in his life, would be seized by the merciless doctor, his eyelids forced apart until the whites of the eyes were fully exposed to whoever cared to inspect them, while a triumphant announcement marked the success of the dismal exhibit: “See! it is all yellow! This leetle fellow have the malaria, the calentura. And he refuse to take my pills—the estupido!”
But if Andrew was disturbed by these alarming outbreaks of the doctor, his companions enjoyed to the full that mental and physical relaxation experienced by many only in the tropics. An endless panorama of primeval forest, broken at intervals by clusters of wattled Indian huts, known as villages, with high-sounding names, to the Magdalena boatmen, gave to the long river journey the pleasant surprises of some half remembered dream. There was the charm of the familiar as well as the picturesque in the drowsy air, the swift oily flow of turbid waters, the flashing green, gold and scarlet of the riotous shore. Merely to feel, if only for a day, the changing moods of this tropical nature, more than repaid, one felt, all the hardships and weariness of primitive travel.
For Una and David all this formed a memorable interlude in their mutual experiences. Even the complex mission upon which the girl had entered was forgotten in the novelty of the world to which chance had brought her. The scenic splendor of the river exceeded anything she had imagined. She was fascinated by the wide sweep of water, the foliage, the glorious passion-flowers that embroidered, here and there, the thick mantle of green vines and swaying lianas that bound the treetops to the river beneath; by the flocks of parrots, glistening like living emeralds in the sun-bathed air, chattering their language of wild happiness as they flew from branch to branch on the silent shore. Never had she beheld such serene, graceful creatures as the swans—she took them for swans, although Leighton chuckled grimly when appealed to on the subject—great, long-necked birds, wheeling and soaring far above the steamer, clouds of shimmering white in a sea of purest sapphire. White, too with head and neck a brilliant scarlet, was the stately King of the Vultures, surrounded by a fluttering throng of dusky followers, dining on a dead alligator.
“See, Senorita!” exclaimed Miranda, pointing to a bowerlike opening amid the bushes and trees on the shore. “Ah, he is one bad fellow, that canaille!”
“I see nothing. Oh, yes—another dead alligator!”
“Dead!” laughed the doctor. “He is just one trap. Soon he come together—so!—and catch his dinner.”
It was a familiar scene on this river of the tropics: an alligator lying motionless on the shore, his yellow, mottled jaws open, waiting for his prey. In form and color he seemed a part of the dead branches and tangle of brushwood he had chosen for his resting place. Once recognized, however, and the malignant creature became a vivid symbol of the ruthless death with which he threatened whoever mistook his yawning mouth for a rift in a fallen tree-trunk.
“What a monster!” exclaimed David, roused from his daylong dreams.
“Estupido!” retorted Miranda. “He wait for his dinner—as you and I—that is all. The so cruel alligator, you know, is good mother for the young ones. She love them better than some womens.”
“That hideous brute!”
“Si, Senor!” declared the doctor. “So soon that they hatch themselves, she carry the young ones in the mouth and teach them to hunt. She fight for them and die, if it be so.”
Miranda’s vague natural history was of the kind derived from wonder-loving natives. It blended well with the Magdalena’s scenic marvels, the wild animal life, glimpses of which were caught at every hand, the dark-skinned natives in their rude dugouts—all that set this apart as a sort of primeval world far removed from any hint of the modern. But the skepticism of the scientist was proof against idle tales.
“I am not sure that your theory of the alligator is correct, Senor Doctor,” remarked Leighton dryly.
“Ah, carai!” spluttered Miranda, wheeling about, ever ready for the fray.
“What you say about the care of the female alligator for her young may be true enough,” said the savant, ignoring the scowl with which he was regarded; “but that the brute over there in the bushes is holding his mouth open by the hour in that ridiculous fashion, hoping that something may walk into it, is unreasonable.”
“Then, what for she do it?” demanded the doctor severely.
“I can’t tell you that,” admitted Leighton, adding, with a touch of humor, “perhaps he finds it comfortable on a hot day like this to get as much air as he can. Of course, I have no doubt that he would close his mouth quickly enough if any creature walked into it.”
“I agree with Mr. Leighton,” ventured the schoolmaster.
“Ah!” sniffed the doctor scornfully. “And you, Senorita?”
“Why,” said Una doubtfully, enjoying the doctor’s wrath, “he certainly does look hungry, doesn’t he? I wouldn’t trust him—although he seems to be asleep.”
“And you, Senor?” glaring at David.
“Oh, I’m not a naturalist,” he laughed. “But, he looks like a pretty good sort of trap, just the same.”
“Bueno, General, what sayest thou?” asked the doctor somewhat mollified. “What is that cayman doing there under the trees?”
General Herran gazed meditatively at the monster who was unconsciously causing this pother in natural history, and his eyes had a reminiscent twinkle as he answered the question:
“That cayman with his mouth open is like the Yankee waiting for Colombia to walk in.”
“And you walked in!” shouted Miranda delightedly.
“Well, I walked out again,” said the other complacently.
“But you left Panama inside the mouth!”
“Have your joke, Senor Doctor,” said Herran, not relishing the broad allusion to his discomfiture. “But perhaps your American friends here will find a cayman in the bushes. Why do they go to Bogota just now?”
“They are friends to you. With you it is all right.”
“I hear that the peons are rising against the Yankees.”
“The canaille! They can do nothing.”
“Besides,” pursued the general, “excellent and harmless as this learned Senor and his family are, I can hardly appear, under all the circumstances, as protector and champion of a party of Americans.”
General Herran spoke in so rapid an undertone that only one to whom Spanish is the native tongue could have followed him. But Leighton’s keen intelligence, although he was not well versed in Spanish idioms, was quick to catch at least an inkling of what was passing between his two companions.
“There is danger for Americans traveling in the interior?” he asked.
“I not say so,” replied the doctor stoutly.
Herran tugged at the tangles of his bushy beard. “I hear that some peons have left Bogota to fight the Yankees on the coast,” he said. “But—it is nothing.”
“Well, what shall we do?”
The general shrugged his shoulders. Miranda fanned himself more vigorously than ever.
“It is not important, Senor,” he said impatiently. “These people are good peoples; they are not caymans.”
“Perhaps it is better to wait before you go to Bogota,” persisted Herran.
“Wait in the river?” angrily demanded the doctor.
“I don’t believe there is any danger. I love this country,” said Una. “Let’s go to Bogota, Uncle Harold.”
“Heavens, child!” exclaimed Mrs. Quayle tremulously, the heavy gold rings that adorned her fingers clicking together in dismay. “With all these savage, half-dressed natives about, threatening the lives of innocent Americans—and poor Mr. Parmelee down with this terrible fever——”
“I am not,” feebly protested Andrew.
“Yes, that is so!” exclaimed the doctor, a joyous grin wrinkling his face. “The vieja (old lady) speak right. We stay at Honda and give this little fellow my pills.”
“There is sense in your plan,” declared Leighton. “If we can be comfortable—and safe—at Honda, we will stay until we know what is happening away from the river, and until Mr. Parmelee regains his health under your treatment.”
“My dear Mr. Leighton, I assure you,——” began the schoolmaster piteously.
“Don’t be an estolido!” interrupted Miranda bruskly. “Soon you will be all right with my pills. This little vieja, she know—she is very wise.”
Mrs. Quayle’s gray ringlets bobbed deprecatingly at this generous tribute to a hitherto unsuspected sagacity on the part of their modest owner, while Andrew looked more uncomfortable and woebegone than ever.
“Doctor, you are sure that Mr. Parmelee has this miserable fever?” inquired Una anxiously.
“Senorita,” declared the little man, drawing himself up impressively, “I never mistake. I have been doctor when thousand and thousand die of the calentura——”
“Good heavens! Poor, dear Mr. Parmelee!” murmured Mrs. Quayle.
“And I know,” continued Miranda, ignoring the interruption. “I say he have the calentura, the malaria. You will see in the eyes—I will show to you.”
Andrew, prepared for what was coming, eluded his medical tormentor, seeking safety behind the chair of the portly Leighton.
“Caramba! que estupido!” growled the doctor, balked of his prey. “Bueno,” he added, fanning himself resignedly, “we shall see. In Honda you take my pills. Soon we will be there. And then it is good that everyone take my pills. I am friend to you. I will take the care, I charge nothing for the family.”
“I’ll not stay in Honda,” said David, breaking the silence following this wholesale offer of assistance. “I must get to Bogota as quickly as possible. Once there I can let you know if it’s safe to travel into the interior.”
“A good idea,” assented Leighton.
“If it’s dangerous for us, it’s dangerous for you,” objected Una.
“Oh, I’ll take a burro loaded with the doctor’s pills along with me,” said David. “I know the country. I have friends in Bogota; there is no danger. And I leave you in good hands.”
“So, that is settle,” remarked Miranda complacently. “Very good! I take care to your families. But—you will beware, my young fellow.”
“I tell you I’ll have a burro load of your pills, doctor!”
“That is good. You are not estupido, like this leetle fellow with the malaria! Remember, these people are no friend just now to the Yankee.”
“Everyone knows me here; I have no enemies,” was the confident reply.
Honda, the picturesque little river-port whence the traveler from the coast sets out on muleback for his three days’ journey up the mountains to Bogota, was reached on the following day, after a twenty-five mile trip by rail from La Dorada, the terminus of the Magdalena steamers. Charming as Honda is architecturally, its quaint red-tiled houses nestling against a background of radiantly green foothills over which the winding trails leading to the far distant capital are scarcely ever without their ascending or descending trains of jostling mules and burros, the place has something of a bad name among foreigners for its fevers. Whether or not its reputation in this respect is deserved would be hard to say. For the traveler, certainly, who has been confined for ten days to the rude quarters provided by a river steamer, the little town comes as a welcome respite in a long if not uninteresting journey. Here, for the first time, he tastes the freedom and glamour of the Andes; and in the movement and bustle incident to setting out on the arduous pull over the primitive passes that thread their way across the mountains, there is the stimulus that comes with the promise of adventure and discovery. Honda, with its radiant sunshine, its tilted streets, its cool white buildings and low rambling hostelries hidden under a veil of flashing greenery, its sparkling little mountain stream tumbling beneath a venerable bridge that savors of the days of Spanish conquest and romance, is the link of emerald between the mighty river of the tropics and the vast highlands that stretch upward to the region of perpetual snow. As an emerald it lives ever after in the traveler’s memory.
In this village—it is hardly more than that—oriental in its sensuous beauty, American of a century or two ago in character and outward aspect, the “Barcelona’s” passengers were content to stay for a time. Una’s delight in the picturesque little settlement was marred by the impending separation from David. It was not merely his absence that caused her unhappiness; she worried over the dangers that she believed awaited him in Bogota. Her anxiety was increased by the rumor, reaching the travelers on their arrival at La Dorado, that war had been declared between the United States and Colombia. There was no truth in this rumor; it was without official confirmation, and ridiculed alike by Doctor Miranda, David and Leighton. But it was credited by most of the natives, whose belief was stoutly upheld by the principal American resident of Honda, an amiable patriarch who had once acted as his government’s representative and was known throughout the republic. True or false, the rumor did not add to the comfort of the travelers, and intensified Una’s desire to keep David with the rest of the party until they could all set out together for Bogota.
Doctor Miranda was right about Andrew. By the time he had finished moving his party and their luggage from the stifling railroad shed to the cool courtyard of Honda’s principal inn, the schoolmaster had been beaten in his last feeble fight for liberty and had become the victim to an unlimited amount of quininizing. No need now to force his eyelids apart to reveal the telltale yellow within. Even a tyro in such matters could see from his jaundiced appearance, his quick breathing, his general inertia, that he was in the first stages of an attack of fever. This being beyond dispute, the little doctor dropped his fighting humor for one of bustling activity, beneath which there lurked a rough sort of tenderness for his unhappy patient. A bed, a pitcher of “lemon squash,” and a box of the famous “pildoras,” were quickly provided by dint of much storming at the indolent hotel servants and angry prodding of the astonished proprietor. When all his arrangements were perfected, Andrew completely in his power and stuffed as full as might be with quinine, the triumphant Miranda rejoined his friends, his rubicund features beaming with satisfaction.
“No! No! my lady,” he answered Una’s anxious inquiries, “there is no danger. That leetle fellow has my pills and plenty of squash. He cannot die. Soon he will be well. You will see. I am doctor to him.”
His assurances had their effect, although they failed to convince the despondent Mrs. Quayle, who shook her head dolefully, rocking herself back and forth in her chair and bewailing the sad fate that was awaiting “poor dear Mr. Parmelee in this desolate country.” At all of which the irascible doctor scowled ominously, taking her complaint as a reflection on his medical skill. Leighton, however, faced the situation in a matter of fact way, while David set about the necessary preparations for his journey to Bogota. An excellent opportunity offered that very day to join General Herran’s party in the trip over the mountains.
A train of twenty mules and burros was needed for the expedition, and to procure these and load them with the necessary baggage, called for no small amount of work and skillful management. The stone courtyard of the inn rang with the shouts of burro drivers, the quarrels of peons intent on selling their wares to travelers at the best prices, and the threats and commands of General Herran and his officers. Above this din, apparently necessary on such occasions, one could hear the strident voice of Doctor Miranda, browbeating some luckless vendor of merchandise, or ridiculing the exertions of those who would bestow a maximum of baggage on a minimum of burro. In spite of the confusion, however, everything moved along in as orderly and expeditious a manner as is possible with these ancient methods of travel. By midday the last load was adjusted, the twenty animals forming the cavalcade stood strapped and ready for the start.
Hot, stifling was the air in the courtyard; the cobbled pavement of the street outside fairly baked beneath the relentless sun. Most of the shops and tiendas were closed for the noon siesta, and only a few listless stragglers ventured beyond the cool white portals of the houses. It was not a happy hour in which to commence a difficult journey; but General Herran, marvelously energetic for once, had planned to cover a certain distance before nightfall. So, without more ado, the “bestias” were marshaled, single file, and driven out, with much shouting and laying on of goads, into the street, where they stood patiently waiting for the eight travelers whom they were to carry to Bogota.
“We are off at last!” announced David, entering the salon where Leighton, Una, Mrs. Quayle and Miranda awaited the caravan’s departure. “In less than a week you’ll hear from me. By that time, I hope, you’ll be ready for Bogota.”
“I can never go on one of those vicious animals,” sighed Mrs. Quayle, her bejeweled fingers nervously clutching the arms of the chair.
“Vicious!” exclaimed David. “They are harmless as kittens.”
As if in denial of the comparison, one of the burros standing near the doorway stiffened out his forefeet and brayed with all the vehemence of which burro lungs are capable. He was followed by his comrades in misery—a full chorus of brays from which no discordant note was missing. Had it been the traditional bellowing of a herd of bulls—it was noisy enough for that—the timid lady could not have been more alarmed, nor the doctor more delighted.
“Bravo!” he shouted. “They want you, my Senora. They wait for you.”
“Good-bye!” said David, clasping Una’s hand.
“Good-bye!” she said, almost inaudibly.
“Doctor, look out for them,” he called to Miranda.
“Be sure! Be sure!” was the response, a glint of sympathy lighting his eyes. “Have a care to you. I have that leetle fellow in bed. He is full of lemona squash and my pills. Soon his calentura is kill.”
“Well, don’t kill him too!”
“Ah, canaille!”
The members of General Herran’s party had already mounted and were slowly disappearing down the bend of the street, pack-mules and burros in the lead. The general himself, on a pinched-up, piebald horse that, like Hamlet’s cloud, bore a comical resemblance to a camel, lingered behind for his guest. David’s bay, lacking in zoological vagaries, pranced spiritedly to begone as soon as it felt its rider in the saddle.
“That is one good animal,” commented Miranda.
“The other needs your pills,” remarked Leighton solemnly.
With a laugh and a hearty “adios!” the two horsemen saluted the group in the doorway and galloped off after their companions. Una watched, motionless, long after David was out of sight. She had done her best to prevent his going, but all her efforts had been useless. Nor could she explain, even to herself, why it was that she so dreaded his leaving their party to travel alone with Herran. There was nothing logical in the feeling, of course, and she had to confess that for once she was influenced by an utterly unreasonable fear, a sort of superstition.
The journey from Honda to Bogota is a scramble over precipitous trails worn into the living rock by centuries of travel, through wastes of traffic-beaten mire, along glades of dew-soaked herbage that gleam refreshingly under cloudless skies in a wilderness of impenetrable forest. No other city of like size and importance has so rude and picturesque an approach, nor are there many that keep their commerce along ways and by methods so unmodern. The stranger, ignorant of the simplicities of South American life, whether in town or country, is bewildered by the oddities and hardships in a trip of this kind. But David had traveled more than once over the Bogota trail, and for him it had lost its novelty, especially as his sole aim on the present occasion was to reach his destination as quickly as possible. Herran had a similar feeling; hence, as the day was not unpleasantly warm, once they had passed beyond the lowlands of Honda both men urged their horses on to top speed. In a short time they had left the rest of the party far behind them, and broke into a race over the rough mountain trail. Tiring of this, they dropped back to a more sober gait, letting their horses choose their own way for a time.
“I telegraphed from Honda that we were coming,” said Herran in Spanish. “They are looking for us now in Bogota.”
“Did you say that I was with you?” asked David.
“Surely. As an officer it is my duty to give complete information,” was the somewhat pompous reply. “I gave the names of all who are in your party and told why they stayed in Honda.”
“Why so much detail about us? My friends and I are not connected with the military movements of the country.”
“That may be true, Senor. But you travel with me and—I am ignorant of your business, you know.”
“We travel partly for pleasure, partly—I am interested in a Guatavita mining venture.”
“So! Will they know that when they see your name in the Bogota papers?”
“My friend that I am going to visit will know, of course. I wrote to him that I was coming. Why do you ask?”
“Ah! Just now, it may be, my countrymen will not like American mining ventures—or Americans.”
“Then, Americans are in danger?”
“How can I say, Senor?” he answered with a shrug. “I have lost Panama, they say. I, too, have enemies. Perhaps I am in danger. But you have a friend in Bogota? He is—?”
“An American; Raoul Arthur.”
“I have heard of him.”
“He is well liked here.”
“That is good,” commented Herran drily.
For the first time since he had been in Colombia David felt uneasy as to the possible outcome of his trip. His friends, in reach of the river steamers, could leave the country at the first sign of real danger. But every mile placed between himself and the Magdalena lessened his chances for escape—and that he might need to get out of Colombia in a hurry was evident from Herran’s attitude, his reserve, his ambiguous answers to David’s questions. All this was not exactly through a lack of friendliness on the general’s part. David knew Herran fairly well, and did not doubt his loyalty. He also knew that he was under suspicion on account of the Panama affair, and for this reason would have to be extremely wary in extending protection to an American seeking to enrich himself in Colombia. Politically, the man who lost Panama could not afford to let his name be further compromised.
General Herran, however, was not one to keep up an attitude of restraint for long. The air was bracing, the mountain trail was in excellent condition, the horses were fresh and responded readily to whip and bridle. Under these favoring influences the two travelers soon became sociable enough, and even joked over some of the sinister circumstances attending their journey.
“We are a long way from Panama, Senor—and Miranda’s pills!” exclaimed Herran.
“Heaven help the schoolmaster!” laughed David.
“Ah, poor fellow! To be at the doctor’s mercy! But he is not a bad doctor. Only nine out of every ten of his victims die, they say. Perhaps this schoolmaster—— Have you your pistol, Senor?” he broke off suddenly.
“My pistol, General?”
“For a salute to Panama and our friends,” explained the other. “You do not know the custom of the road to Bogota in times of revolution—that is, at all times. And you have no pistol,” he added with a sigh. “But this will do for both of us.”
Reining in his horse at a shaded bend in the trail, General Herran, unconsciously following the Fat Knight’s memorable exploit on Shrewsbury Battlefield, took from his hip pocket a huge case bottle and handed it to David.
“Fire the first shot, my friend, and I will come after with a long one for your Guatavita mine.”
In the act of carrying out this pleasant suggestion, the attention of David and Herran was suddenly caught by a babel of voices—shouts of command, the tramp of many feet—coming from the Bogota end of the trail. Interruptions of this kind are more serious than they may seem to those unfamiliar with Colombian mountain travel. So rough and narrow is the road to Bogota, with sometimes a precipice on one hand and a sheer wall of rock on the other, that the problem of two parties passing each other is not always an easy one. Although this is the chief thoroughfare between the national capital and the Magdalena, it remains quite as primitive and unadapted to modern needs as in the days of the Indians. To widen and pave it proved more of a task in road-building than the Spanish conquerors cared to undertake; and their successors in the government of the country have, until now, attempted little in the way of improvement. Thus, travelers from the lowlands over this Indian trail frequently have to fight for a passage through a descending rabble of men and burros, or else allow themselves to be crowded off into a tangle of underbrush on one side or thrown down a steep cliff on the other.
As it happened, the spot chosen by General Herran and David for their friendly salute was a particularly awkward one in an encounter with a lot of travelers coming from the opposite direction. In front of them the trail rose abruptly in a long zigzag of rocks and gullies, down which the caravan from Bogota, the noise of whose approach grew rapidly more distinct, was bound to descend upon them. Their only chance to escape was either through a morass, covered with a dense forest growth, or else up a hazardous mountain side, strewn with boulders and loose stones. Of course, they might retrace their steps until they found a more open space; but this seemed too much like retreating from an enemy and did not recommend itself to either of the horsemen.
“It sounds like a regiment of soldiers,” said David, taking another long draught from the Falstaffian “pistol” and returning it to Herran.
“Perhaps,” replied the General, indifferent to outside matters until he had finished his part of the prescribed ceremony. “And here we are,” he added, with a sigh of contentment, “saluting Panama and an American company, with an army of volunteers, bent on licking the Yankees, coming down upon us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Caramba! In Honda they said these volunteers started from Bogota three days ago. They are due here now.”
“We must meet them,” said David, upon whom the General’s “pistol” had not failed to score.
“Wait a moment! As Miranda would say, these peons are canaille and—there is no room for a meeting.”
Both men laughed. Nevertheless, in spite of the humor of the situation, it had more than the usual peril incident to travel on the Bogota trail to be comfortable.
“Two men against a regiment!” chuckled Herran.
“But they are not after us,” argued David.
“They are after the Yankees—and you are a Yankee. Well, Senor, what shall we do?”