Part 6

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.”

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