THE ANDES CLOSE THEIR JAWS
The one thing in which Cliff did not outguess Huayca was in the manner
of his planning for the white party’s annihilation.
Huayca was not of the hidden Inca tribe. He was a man of Cuzco, but of
the higher grade of intelligence. To him had come the Inca noble who had
gone with Pizzara to America: that noble had chosen Huayca to serve him
and had promised a great reward. By the failure of his ambush he had let
the white party get through to Quichaka. And, worse, they had escaped
again, as he discovered when he visited the scene of the night raid in
the secret pass.
Huayca, being a native of Cuzco, knew that the Spanish justice was as
swift as that of the Incas. Since he must live in Cuzco, far from Inca
protection, he must not invoke the penalties which the Spanish law would
demand if he destroyed the white party. Even in such a place as the
Andes passes the law of the Americans would compel the law of the
Spaniards to quest and to find him out, if he turned his hand against
white men of that America.
He had a better plan and one so thoroughly diabolic that it seemed as
though the Cupay, or evil spirit, of the Incas must have whispered it
into his ear.
An infuriated mob, turning against white men who sought to rob the
buried Incas, hidden among the hills, of their treasure—that was the
instrument that would strike swiftly and who could seek, find or punish
its scattered arms afterward? No one! Having followed the party to the
stairway, keeping well hidden, he let them climb. He went to another
spot in the secret pass and there, with catlike agility, soared up the
side of a steep crag, hanging sometimes almost by a thread of sheer
willpower, clinging with nails and bare feet; but he reached the top,
slipped along it to another point, there descended to the main,
open-traveled pass and so across the osier bridge. While Cliff was
discussing his prophetic idea Huayca ran fleetly along the main pass,
under the lip of that very ledge, bound for the nearest settlement.
Bill, when Cliff made his prophecy, looked very sober.
“You may be right,” he told Cliff, “but here’s our situation: We can’t
go back to Cuzco as Indians. If we leave this ledge we lose a good
position, in the matter of strategic location; no one can attack us from
below if we cut loose the ladder and we can guard the cleft much easier
than we could watch an open place on the pass. I vote for staying here,
at least until I can get some stuff to replace the bleacher we lost when
Pizzara took our packs away.”
They talked it over from every angle and finally, although Cliff felt
that he was right, they found no other plan as good as Bill’s. Having
their strong, light rope, plenty long enough to reach the ground, they
promptly cut loose the upper fastenings of the Incas’s osier ladder and
put a guard, in two-hour shifts, just within the cleft, with Bill’s
small revolver, recovered from Pizzara by Bill after the visit to the
scene of the Spaniard’s destruction: a shot would warn the whole camp,
day or night.
They ate a frugal supper for the supplies were running very low and must
be made to last at least a day more, until Bill could visit the
settlement and come back with more. Then, because it was cold and they
did not wish to build a fire to attract attention, they made rude
blanket beds within the small stone hut, and, secure in the knowledge
that Nicky was wide awake, watchful, in the cleft, they slept with the
healthy weariness of their long climb that afternoon.
And beyond their camp the mighty Incas were getting ready to snap their
jaws and leave the white party, apparently, no way of escape!
At ten o’clock Nicky left his post long enough to shake Bill awake: it
was Bill’s next watch. The mountain prospector woke easily, got up,
already alert and rested, and took up his post.
And the mountains seemed to sleep.
Mr. Whitley’s watch, from midnight till two, was equally uneventful. Mr.
Gray was spared a watch the first night and so it was Cliff who was
called to follow Mr. Whitley.
Huayca, having gone to a small settlement, called the men in council,
told them that the white men who had previously gone that way were
coming back, disguised as Indians, and thus fired his fuse to ignite
Peruvian hatred. He told them that the men had discovered an old burial
mound, far in the hills, and had ravaged it, in spite of his protest.
Then, giving them some hints, he slipped away, leaving a fuse of anger
steadily hissing toward a powder-keg of rage and racial hatred.
Huayca, feeling quite happy, returned along the pass, over the bridge,
up the cliff, along its top, down into the valley spanned by the bridge,
and thus again up the stone stairway that Cliff’s party had used the
afternoon before: he was back in the narrow outlet by the time that
Cliff, consulting his radiumite watch face, decided to call Tom for his
shift just after Cliff’s own ended.
It was so still, Cliff thought, that you could almost hear the stars
singing as they twinkled with strange brightness in the clear air.
Not a sound reached Cliff’s ears, though. The stars did not sing, nor
did anything else make any noise. Nature seemed to be resting in the wee
hours before dawn, gathering her strength for a new day.
So Cliff crept as quietly as he could to the hut and shook Tom.
When his chum was thoroughly awake and stood outside the doorway with
him, Cliff spoke.
“Don’t shoot if you see a shadow on the ledge,” he said in a whisper. “I
am going over to the edge and look around toward the lower pass for a
minute before I roll into my blanket.”
“All right,” Tom agreed, and went one way while Cliff went the other.
Tom comfortably disposed just inside the open fissure, saw Cliff
standing outlined against a star. The cleft was as still as a tomb. Tom
gazed up at the stars, looked along the deep, velvety blackness of the
fissure, turned to look again toward Cliff.
Something was happening!
Cliff seemed to be moving crazily—or was it Cliff and another.
Tom deserted his post and raced across the turf. Then he shouted,
pointed his small revolver aloft, pressed the trigger.
Crash! And the camp started up. The jaws had shut and the Andes were
ready to crunch their prey.