A railway journey of something under seven hundred miles, during
each mile of which the train and everything in it became enveloped
in a deeper and deeper mantle of dust, brought them to the town
of Mendoza at the foot of the Andes. They stayed here for two
nights and a day; then they went on again, climbing now, in the
narrow-gauge railway, as far as it could take them. They slept the
following night at a still comparatively decent inn, and next day
mounted their mules and began to ride.
It was at this point that Miss Verinder, or Mrs. Fleming, or
whatever one liked to call her, temporarily disappeared; her
place being taken by a person in breeches, with boots big enough
to contain a fur lining and at least three pairs of stockings--a
person who might readily have been mistaken for a bright-eyed,
eager, excited lad, until for a moment she took off her immense
straw hat and disclosed an unexpected profusion of dark wavy hair.
Thus she rode out, bestriding her large mule jauntily, with Dyke
on one side of her and the capataz or chief muleteer on the
other side, the keen thin air fanning her, the fiery sun blazing
at her--through such scenery as till now she had seen only in
dreams, along the edge of precipices, past ravines through the
hidden depths of which torrents went raging, beneath stupendous
overhanging cliffs--she rode out into brain-reeling wonder and
heart-folding enchantment.
“Isn’t it a lark, Emmie? What?”
“O pig, O laziest of swine,” said their capataz, smiling at her
ingratiatingly, but addressing her mule. “Will you move when a lady
rides you or will you not?” And, dropping back, he belaboured the
hindquarters of Emmie’s mule with a substantial stick.
This highly praised muleteer--Manuel Balda by name--was ferocious
enough of aspect; dressed in the usual gaucho style, with slouch
hat, poncho, and knife at belt; rolling his sloe-like eyes and
showing yellow teeth in a weather-stained face. But his manner had
been quite magnificent when Dyke ceremoniously presented him to
Emmie a few minutes ago, and since then he had taken off his hat
and bowed to her at least five times. His voice, too, grew gentle
and caressing whenever he addressed her directly. He spoke English
well, and one understood at once that he was inordinately proud of
his knowledge of the language. He called her Missis, not Señora or
Donna. “Now he moves for Missis,” said Manuel, satisfied with her
mule’s accelerated pace. “And I, Manuel Balda, myself would die for
Missis”; and he doffed his hat and bowed. “That is comprehended,
is it not? Don Antonio has said me to be the guard of Missis all
time our journey shall last. Be it so, to the last drop of my
blood.” Then, with the most graceful ceremony, he gave his cudgel
to her, vowing that he had trimmed it for this express purpose, and
begging her not to spare its use. Then with another profound bow
he galloped ahead, and they saw him no more till the evening. He
had gone on to overtake their train of pack-mules, which had been
slowly plodding forward for the last three days.
Emmie, although amused by Manuel’s words and manners, did not
take to the man himself. In her first swift impression there was
something vaguely disconcerting, as of weakness or shiftiness
detected behind the outward show of loyalty and strength--the
quite vague feeling that decides one during one’s first interview
with a servant. It did not in any way perturb her, but it was just
sufficient to make her ask Dyke if he trusted Manuel implicitly.
“I don’t trust him an inch further than I see him,” said Dyke
cheerily. “But he knows his job. That’s the great thing. Presently
I’ll let him see--and the others too--that there’ll be trouble for
anybody who attempts to play the fool.”
They rode on, and the imagination almost fainted in presence of
reality. It made one turn dizzy to look down, it set one trembling
to look back. Each sharp turn or twist of their path revealed
things more tremendous. The heights and depths, the chaotic masses,
the savage grandeur of it all, made the fantastic impossible
pictures drawn by that popular artist Gustave Doré seem, in one’s
memory of them, pale and insipid.
Yet they were still on the beaten track. This was the high road,
through the pass, from one civilized country to another; and
plainly its frequenters treated it as a quite ordinary affair.
Single horsemen came galloping down at them with loose reins; a
four-horse coach swept round one of the bends in the granite ledge
at break-neck speed; long files of laden mules made clouds of dust,
and twice the path was blocked by droves of cattle in the midst of
which gauchos, apparently gone mad, were shouting and cursing.
Emmie’s excursion had but begun, she was merely doing what every
tourist did, although the romance and grandeur of it kept her
pulses racing. “I am in the Andes,” she murmured to herself. “I am
with _him_--on the road to the Uspallata Pass--getting higher and
higher in the Andes.”
They spent that night at the last of the mountain inns to be
encountered by them for a long while. Next morning the true fun
would begin.
The inn was a wretched little assemblage of low sheds standing on
flat ground a few hundred yards away from the track; but it had a
large walled corral in which the baggage of dozens of mules lay
stacked or tumbled in loose confusion. The mules themselves--Dyke’s
lot among them--were picketed or tied to the walls. Muleteers, the
railway people, itinerant dealers, and so forth crowded the place.
The living-room had more dreadful odours than the cabin of the
_Mercedaria_. The sordidness and dirt of the boarded compartment
in which she and Dyke were to sleep surpassed belief; one glance
at the two beds--the two lairs--caused the flesh to creep in
anticipation of the attack of an insect horde. Dyke, on their
arrival, immediately became occupied with his men, and Emmie fell
into the charge of the landlady, a dirty but kindly matron, and of
Manuel Balda.
“A bit rough,” said Dyke; “but Manuel will help to make you
comfortable.”
No one of course could do that; although Manuel, who was torn in
opposite directions by his desire to be outside with Dyke examining
the equipment and to be here waiting upon his lady, gallantly
attempted the impossible task.
She wanted water to wash with; but both he and the landlady
implored her to abandon this desire. Already the glare of the
fierce sun had scorched her delicate complexion. She might rub her
cheeks with vaseline or any procurable grease; but, for the love of
heaven, no water! No more washing, Señora, for the future, if you
are still to mount.
And now let us chat of these insects which “Missis” dreads in
the beds and elsewhere. Well, it is so; and so unhappily it will
continue. Perhaps Missis has not thought to meet lice in profusion
at these big altitudes?
Miss Verinder confessed that she had not indeed thought of such
a meeting; and, before an hour had passed, accepting the strong
advice both of Manuel and the landlady, she decided to have her
hair cut. Manuel did it for her--using a pair of shears generally
employed on the manes of mules, after he had carefully cleansed the
blades with oil.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” she kept murmuring, as she sat upon
a wooden box and the long dark tresses fell about her on the
dirty floor. “Yes, I feel more comfortable already--much more
comfortable.”
Dyke, coming in just when the operation was finished, gave a yell
of horror and fury at sight of her sitting there brutally bobbed,
changed while his back was turned from his glorious dusky-locked
princess into a travesty of du Maurier’s popular heroine, Trilby.
He beat his breast, he waved his arms, he roared. And then, as
Emmie pacified and explained, he picked up fallen meshes, ran them
through his fingers, and almost wept.
“Your greatest loveliness. Oh, Emmie, I can’t bear it. It has
broken my heart.”
“Don’t be silly, Tony. My hair will grow again. There will be
plenty of time--when you are gone”; and again she explained her
reasons.
Ah, yes. Well, it must be admitted, lice are lice. Dyke muttered
and moaned, but gradually submitted to the cruel stroke. Yes,
perhaps, after all, it was the wisest thing to do. “But mark you.
This”--after winding a long mesh round his fingers he was putting
it in his pocket-book--“this I shall keep for remembrance to my
dying day.”
She did not mind the loss of her pretty hair. She did not mind
anything--not the foul odours, the greasy food, the bitter cold,
the inability to sleep. She feared nothing, she regretted nothing.
She was with him still, postponing the inevitable, sharing life
with him high in the Andes.
She slept a little towards dawn, and was awakened by Dyke, who for
two hours had been working with his men in the darkness outside,
loading the pack saddles, seeing that everything was in its place.
Now the cavalcade was ready to move. They drank some hot coffee,
and started.
It was wonderful to her, most wonderful, that departure in the grey
mists of morning. Near a broken gap in the wall of the compound,
Dyke, sitting high beside her, held the rein of her mule, and they
remained there while one after another the mounted men and the
laden mules flitted past, silent, ghostly; vague shapes seen for a
moment and immediately lost in the mist. Then, with his hand still
on the rein, they trotted boldly on, as if through a white sea,
until he had reached the head of the column.
The ground was apparently level and there seemed to be few
impediments, but as yet nothing of the way was visible. When Dyke
spoke to her his voice seemed to come to her from a distance and to
roll from her in the moving waves of white vapour; strange murmurs
swept above her head; the rattle of hoofs as they struck upon stone
made echoing sounds behind her; and she had what she supposed to be
an illusion of a bell that chimed and tinkled, now near, now far
away, but never ceasing.
Then swiftly yet gradually the mists broke and the light came
flooding down upon them. First the tall peaks caught fire, vast
rock buttresses thousands of feet high flamed with orange and
crimson, black ragged cliffs shone and glittered, fields of
dazzling white snow hung like islands in the air till dark brown
mountains rose to carry them; then the whole brightly coloured
masses of the hills seemed to spring forth, to steady themselves,
to grow less fantastic of shape, more solid of texture; and in a
few moments it was broad daylight, with a translucid blue sky,
every object far or near sharply defined and the mighty crests of
Aconcagua, monarch of the wilds, highest mountain of the southern
continent, towering majestic in the blue.
The strong, clear picture given to her by the sunlight was one that
would remain with her until memory itself should fade and grow
dark. The ground was not as she had supposed, level and free from
obstacles; they were winding their way along a rock-strewn valley
and mounting fast. The pack-mules, twenty or more of them, with
lowered heads climbed patiently each in the footsteps of another;
at intervals rode the eight mounted men; and Dyke now pushing
ahead, riding alone, seemed an enormous figure in his huge mushroom
hat and hung round with wallets. He was happy and joyous, beginning
to sing scraps of song; so that his music floated back to them
pleasantly, and after a while caught the riders with its pleasant
contagion and made them sing too. But queerly there mingled with
the song or its pauses that other music of the bell, which she had
fancied an evocation of tricked senses. It was with them still,
faintly chiming, gently tinkling, as if a cadence of the march
itself.
Manuel Balda, most attentive of guardians, riding by her bridle
since Dyke had left her, explained the matter. Pointing to a small
grey pony that plodded unladen in advance of the pack-mules, he
told her that this little mare was the “madrina” or adopted mother
of the troop. With the bell strapped round her neck, she and not
any of the riders was really leading the mules. Wherever she went
they would follow. If they strayed, the sound of the madrina’s bell
would bring them back. They would be miserable, despairing, if they
lost it.
Emmie liked Manuel better to-day; indeed that first faint distrust
or questioning doubt of him recurred no more to her contented mind.
Every hour he proved himself more useful and valuable. Moreover,
though no less respectful, he was less ceremonious now that they
had entered the wilderness and left the beaten track far behind
them. He laughed and joked, told her travellers’ tales, and showed
her how he could swing down from his saddle and pick up a stone
from the ground as he cantered past.
He told her, amongst other things, that there had been much
talk last night at the inn concerning Ruy Chaves, the notorious
bandit of the mountains. This bloodthirsty ruffian and his gang
were still at large--a disgrace, as Manuel opined, both to the
Chilian and the Argentine frontier forces--and quite recently they
had seized a pack train rich with merchandise and murdered the
inoffensive merchants and muleteers. “It is a shame, Missis.” And
amplifying his narrative, Manuel related how travellers in small
parties feared to move freely because of Chaves, how the poor
defenceless little innkeepers were forced to pay him tribute; and
how, impelled by the cruel humour that is traditionally common with
such pirate-dogs, he “teased” as well as killed his victims--for
instance, making them dance and caper on the edge of precipices,
till to the prick of his knife they jumped into eternity.
Miss Verinder wished to know if Mr. Dyke had heard this talk about
Ruy Chaves the bandit; and Manuel said yes, he had heard it all,
and he “had laughed and done so.” And Manuel snapped his fingers,
and then looked very fierce; implying that bandits would be wise to
give him, Manuel, as well as his friend and patron Don Antonio, the
widest of wide berths. “You not fear, Missis?”
And he laughed gaily, assuring her that bandit gangs worked
frequented highways, and never came up here where there was nothing
to prey upon; and that in any circumstances they would not for a
moment dream of attacking a strong armed party such as this. Missis
need not fear it or anything else. Starvation, thirst, snow--those
were the true enemies. And there was much food on the mules, there
would be water nearly all the way, the full summer season was
propitious.
“So we hope Don Antonio will find what he seeks. It is treasure, is
it not, Missis? Ah, ha”; and Manuel laughed cheerfully. “You must
not say me. But _he_--Don Antonio--has allow the boys to guess. You
can see in the boys’ eyes--so happy and hoping. The Indians most.
They will not grow tired--our Indians--now they know what they
hunt.”
“Which are the Indians?” asked Emmie. “They all seem just alike.”
In fact, except to a practised eye, there was little that could
enable one to distinguish between the descendants of the men who
had once owned the land and the descendants of the men who had
stolen it from them. Spanish or Indian, these muleteers were
dressed in the same manner, spoke the same tongue, and had the same
wild cut-throat look except when they were singing or laughing.
There was not even a difference of complexion visible. But, as
Manuel said, these good boys, although of unadulterated Indian
blood, had long enjoyed the advantages of civilization. They were
gauchos; they had abandoned the savage hills for the prosperous
plains. Yet they could be more useful here than anybody else,
because this was their ancient home; they would be able to work
well in the air that their ancestors had breathed.
Dyke, far ahead, had reached the top of the valley, and,
dismounted, was leading his mule up a steep ridge. This was the
first taste of difficulty. They climbed the ridge, scrambled down a
long slope, and emerged into another valley, more rock-strewn, more
chaotic than the first, with a deep-cut stream running a serpentine
course towards them.
They made a long halt by this stream during the intense mid-day
heat; and then moved on again till dusk. Their camping-place was
on a wide ledge above the stream, where the admirable Manuel made
them extraordinarily snug. Dyke was well pleased. Although going so
easily, they had made a long march, he said--and not a mule galled,
not a pack shifted. Before crawling under the tilt of their little
tent, he stood for an hour talking to the men round the camp
fire--“jollying them,” as he called it.
Emmie, already asleep, warm and snug in the nest of blankets and
furs, murmured a welcome as he crept into it; changing her attitude
when he had settled down, dreaming a little, and then sinking back
to those depths of slumber in which memory itself lies still and no
gleam from the surface of life pierces the darkness.
And so it was day after day, as they moved steadily northwards.
It seemed to her that she had never been doing anything
else. Climbing, scrambling, fording; eating tinned meat and
hard biscuits, sleeping on the ground, smearing oneself with
vaseline--all this seemed perfectly natural, the easy routine of
the glorious nomad life that she had been leading for many years.
In these early days of the pilgrimage they were not yet entirely
out of touch with the rest of mankind. The distant roar of an
explosion, with the long rolls of thunder that followed it, told
them of the operations of those railway engineers, blasting the
rock barrier where they could not pierce or evade it. Through a
cleft that gave an unexpected view of lower slopes and foot-hills,
they saw roofs and smoke that belonged to a camp made by other
engineers, who were busy with the underground telegraph cable. Once
they saw a string of mules carrying provisions to a military post,
and twice they met solitary riders searching for lost mules.
For the rest, all things were exhilarating, charming, amusing.
Dyke, always now in the high spirits of a schoolboy, rode by her
side whenever possible; made her sing with him snatches from
Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas--“The flowers that bloom in the
spring, tra-la”--gave her his revolver and made her fire it.
“Aim at that white-topped boulder, Emmie. Now then--let go!
No--don’t shut your eyes when you pull the trigger. Go on.”
He loaded the weapon again, and she practised its use in a
business-like way, with open eyes. She certainly hit boulders, but
perhaps not those that he had selected for her target. Whatever
she did, and however she did it, he laughed and praised her. He
made her strain her eyes to see black spots in the sky that were
condors, hovering, waiting, at an immense height, for the chance of
a meal.
It seemed once that their chance had come.
Manuel was leading the column, and she and Dyke had dropped back
to the rear. It was easy going, judged by the higher standards of
her experience, and yet still most tremendous. They were following
what might be almost called a path, half way up the brown hillside.
Rolling stones and débris shifted and slid beneath their feet, and
every now and then they came to horrible narrow scrambling corners
on top of almost perpendicular cliffs, where a stumble would have
been as dangerous as the “teasing” knife of that atrocious brigand.
Emmie, having got round the worst of these corners, was admiring
the cautious and yet fearless progress of the pack mules, and
thinking that travellers might well describe the sure-footedness of
these animals as miraculous. They never made a mistake. Then, that
moment, the pack mule immediately in front of her fell. She saw its
hindquarters rise, and its laden back disappear; then there was a
flash of its four feet, upturned, and the weight of the saddle and
burden carried it head over heels into the void. It was dreadful
to see--and to hear too. One heard it crash down the precipitous
slope, the loosened stones tumbling with it. Down there at the
bottom, far below, it lay stretched--perfectly still.
Then, before the men had done shouting, it got up; it staggered to
its feet, shook itself, and attempted to struggle upwards. They
all watched. To give aid was impossible. Wildly and desperately it
began to work its way along the bottom of the ravine, with head
lifted and ears pricked, listening for the tinkle of the bell, as
the bell-mare plodded onward, unconcerned. They could see that its
pack was hampering it terribly. Then, in its scrambles and leaps,
the surcingle broke. The whole thing was under its belly now, and
it bucked and kicked, till it fell again. When it rose this time,
the pack was round its hocks, and plunging, jumping, springing like
a chamois from rock to rock, it kicked itself free. Then, lightly
and easily, it sprang along the slope, clambered up, and rejoined
the head of the column, where it curvetted playfully to the sound
of the bell, and rubbed its wounds against the ribs of the beloved
grey pony, which was still plodding on, and still quite unconcerned.
Little incidents like this, ending so happily, served but to
enliven the days.
Indeed, so far, the whole jaunt was, as Dyke had said, a picnic--a
picnic on a large scale; a “lark” of antediluvian dimensions.
* * * * *
Imperceptibly, but most completely when one perceived it, the
character of their pilgrimage had changed. The way was harder, the
obstacles were greater, the heat and the cold became more difficult
to support. Each day’s march seemed unending, yet the distance
traversed in a day was comparatively small. They moved still from
valley to valley, fighting the walls that intervened, laboriously
working round insurmountable barricades. But hitherto the line of
their march had been falling as well as rising; now always the
valley they entered was at a higher level than the one they had
left.
Dyke was systematically jolly with the men at the now frequent
halts. He allowed a magic word to be spoken in order to keep up
their spirits--the word that for hundreds of years has controlled
the destiny of the land and signified life and death to the races
of men that inhabited it. Gold. Yes, why not? If we can dig or
scratch some to the surface at the end of our journey, or wash it
out of its dirt in those bowls that we have brought with us on that
saddle, well, we shall be able to make presents all round, beyond
the handsome amount of the promised pay. So come along, my lads.
One whole day they were stopped by wind and storm. That was a
day of wretchedness, and next morning Dyke did something that
appeared utterly fantastic to Emmie watching and shivering before
she mounted her mule. He gathered the men together, jollied them,
and then solemnly paid them the money that they had so far earned.
Truly it was astounding to watch this solemn handing over of the
paper dollars to men who were hundreds of miles away from shops and
drinking saloons and any other of the joys that money would bring
them. But Dyke knew that they liked the feel of the notes in their
fingers, the comfortable glow which came when they had bestowed
them in recesses of their garments, the certainty that this the
price of so much accomplished toil could never be forfeited or
taken away. Understanding that one should not travel on credit even
in the remotest places, he had brought much money with him.
They all started merrily, and the burning sun soon dried their wet
garments. Emmie ceased to shiver, and could smile when Dyke praised
her courage and good humour. He said they had a bit of a ridge
to get over in the next few days, but _after_ that it would be
downhill again--all easy going, plain sailing, what you could do on
your head.
* * * * *
They crossed the ridge.
It was an exhausting episode. The scene had become Dantesque,
terrible; they were amidst a ruin and devastation that had been
wrought by countless ages, and still the work of destruction was
continuing. These gigantic hills were slowly crumbling to dust;
their sides, torn and split, poured down together with torrents
of melting ice the very fabric of which they were composed, so
that their foundation lay buried beneath a vast, ever accumulating
rubbish heap. And over and through this débris the little party
laboured upward; through twisting lanes of detached rocks as large
as churches, under high jutting crags that looked like fortresses
shattered by a titan artillery, upon shifting beaches of smooth
pebbles, in refuse that time had pulverised so finely that it was
here a layer of sand and there a quagmire of mud. Riding was no
longer possible. One led one’s mule, one panted and gasped for
breath in the increasing thinness of the air. One stopped and
rested every moment that one might.
On the first and the second night of the climb Emmie suffered a
little and a great deal. The cold was almost unbearable; it numbed,
it stabbed, it seemed to gnaw away the envelope of flesh and then
play havoc with one’s bones. Dyke took the most tender care of
her, but neither wraps nor solicitude could keep her warm. Towards
morning of that second night he took alarm, scared by thoughts of
frost-bite, when she confessed that after considerable pain all
sensation seemed to have gone from her feet. He took off her boots,
woollen socks, and stockings, and for a couple of hours rubbed her
bare legs and feet. She was all right; the suspended circulation
restored itself; and daylight showed him the white flesh stained
with dirt, but not discoloured, and quite unswollen. He put grease
on her feet; and Manuel brought them a breakfast of condensed
milk, some ground sugar, and a biscuit. The lamps refused to boil
water for tea, and only by much coaxing had they consented to give
out heat sufficient to thaw the milk. It froze again before Emmie
finished her portion.
“Now let’s be off,” said Dyke; and looking at her attentively,
he asked if she felt sick. “No? Well, that’s grand of you. Now,
listen. The worst is really done. To-day’s climb will bring us over
the top.”
They climbed long slopes of pebbles in which they sank to their
ankles. At each footstep they slipped back; if they trod upon a
slab of rock it slid from beneath their feet; the mules floundered
and sent down cascades of loose stones upon those behind. Between
the slopes came stretches of nearly bare ground. They skirted
glistening fields of snow, made an immense detour above the neck of
a glacier that had plunged into and been held by the gorge furrowed
out by preceding torrents. And all this time the sun beat upon
them with hammering strength.
Sometimes an hour was spent in climbing, with many halts, a
hundred yards. One halted now without orders because one must,
mules lay down and let the sound of the bell grow faint, all along
the line the men were coughing. If one made a false step and
stumbled, one immediately caught one’s breath and had a fit of
semi-suffocation. Then, as soon as one was able to breathe again, a
sort of despairing drowsiness possessed one; a weak recoil both of
mind and body urged one to move no more, to escape at all hazards
the anguish of further effort, to close one’s eyes, lie down,
and forget the odious impossible task. On the last and longest
slope Manuel Balda abruptly gave in. He was seized with mountain
sickness. Two of the Indians tried to pull him to his feet, to help
him on, but he went down again.
Thus all were suffering--except Dyke. Just as he had not seemed
to feel any real annoyance from the cold, he appeared to find
no trouble in keeping his lungs comfortably at work without a
sufficient supply of air. With his arm about her waist he pulled
Emmie, almost carried her, along with him till they reached the
naked and nearly level table-ground that was the summit of their
climb. Now he went back, leaping and sliding down the slope to the
rescue of Manuel. He brought him up, and went down again to drag up
the mules. He wrestled with them, pulled them, pushed them, somehow
set them going, and one heard his cheery shouts from far down below
while he still expended his super-human energy.
Then at last they were all up--the men lying on the ground,
the poor mules side by side, their heads all one way, their
nostrils widely distended as they vainly sought more air, their
legs shaking, and the sweat pouring in rivers from their heaving
flanks--and Dyke stood there laughing, snapping his fingers,
chaffing, “jollying” his too feeble crowd. He also praised them,
swearing that they had done grandly, and that they might feel
proud of themselves. But it would not do to linger, he added; for
the afternoon was getting far advanced, and the lower they could
get before pitching their camp the better it would be. A few more
minutes, and then down we go.
For these minutes he sat beside his Emmie’s prostrate form, and
“jollied” her in her turn.
“You angel, you have been magnificent. You have set us all an
example.” And laughingly he confessed that, after her performance
on board ship, he had dreaded lest she might be sick again in
the mountains. He confessed, too, that until they were fairly
started and “things began to come back” to him, he had forgotten
that there was this little high bit to negotiate. “We are at an
elevation of sixteen thousand feet. Do you realize it? We are well
above the summit of Mont Blanc. In Europe people would say we
had made a remarkable ascent.”--and he laughed. “Yes, quite an
ascent--something to write about to the newspapers. It is only out
here, in this glorious atmosphere, that it seems such a trifle.
No, I oughtn’t to have said that. It was very wrong of me. For of
course I know that it must have tired you. You dear girl, you are
so splendid and brave that I forget. But all easy going now--as I
promised you. And, Emmie, I want you to have a good look at the
view. You’ll say it’s worth all the trouble. Sit up, dear.”
She obeyed him, and looked about her with dazed eyes at the
incredibly superb panorama. Truly, if one had been able to breathe
painlessly, if one’s head had not seemed to be bursting, if the
murderous sun had not been melting one’s spine and battering at
one’s shoulders, it was a view to compensate one for the trouble of
attaining it.
One seemed to be lying on the roof of the world, and the nearer
peaks, which still rose above them, were its towers and cupolas;
across its parapet one gazed at a vast semi-circle of sunlit space.
Looked at from here, the great brilliantly-coloured hills through
which they had fought their way appeared smooth, gently curved
and rounded, dull of tone; northward one saw, as if painted on a
map in sepia, with streaks and patches untouched by the brush, a
perspective of almost parallel ridges that one guessed were the
outlines of unending valleys; while eastward beyond a range of
lower summits, one had a glimpse of the plains themselves and a
true horizon, a flat, faintly golden sea meeting the sky at a
distance of eighty, a hundred, or perhaps more miles away. Closer
to one’s eyes, if one looked directly downward, there were strong
colours, forceful shapes. Spires of red rock glowed fiercely
beside a profound gorge filled with purple shadow; and an immense
unbroken cloak of snow that stretched from the crest to the base
of one neighbouring hill gave off a white smoke in the sun’s rays
and made rainbow shafts hover amidst the smoke. But the prevailing
impression was of colourless distance, measureless space, and light
so strong that it destroyed the substance and form of all that it
shone upon.
They began the descent. Two thousand feet lower down one felt
an immense relief, after another thousand one was breathing in
comfort; all the heads had ceased to ache; Manuel Balda was
cracking jokes, laughing at sickness, vowing that he had stopped
that time merely because of a slight stitch in the side of him.
Next day they rode on, through a valley wider and easier than any
they had yet entered. Dyke set the men singing, made Manuel the
leader of the march, and kept by Emmie’s side. She saw condors
at close range. Four or five of them rose from the dry bed of a
torrent, and, coal-black in the sunshine, swept upward on extended
wings. They looked enormous, as sinister and evil as their ugly
reputation had led her to imagine. One of the men fired his rifle,
but without effect. They soared into space, vanished.
Dyke spoke to her of the emeralds, telling her how he meant to
set about the work of exploration. Without his telling her, she
understood that he felt excited as they drew nearer to the goal.
He talked to her also of “the sense of direction.” This was after
she had paid him compliments upon the unwavering confidence with
which he had led them through the labyrinth of hills and vales.
“It is too wonderful, Tony. I can’t think how you do it.”
“Well,” he said modestly, but much gratified, “of course, there’s
the compass--and the sun. Besides, I can always go to any place
where I have once been. Then I have my landmarks. If you want to
know, I’m looking for one of them now. It’s about due. Yes,” and he
smiled complacently, “I suppose I _am_ rather good at finding my
way. The gods, Emmie, gave me something beyond the usual European
outfit--they gave me the _sense of direction_.” And he held forth
about this instinctive faculty, saying it was being investigated
and that much more would be known concerning it later on. There had
been some good research work with homing pigeons, migratory birds,
and wild as well as domesticated dogs. “I don’t attempt to explain
it myself. If you’ve got it, you’ve got it--and you know you’ve
got it. It was that and nothing else which saved my life in North
Australia in the year 1884. I was temporarily blinded, by the sand,
you know--so that I couldn’t see five yards ahead--but I knew. I
didn’t go in circles--I didn’t falter--I didn’t have to calculate
or think. I knew. Yes, that’s my trump card--and except for it, I
wouldn’t be so bumptious. I might consent to take a back seat to
others--the gentlemen that the press eulogise for their scientific
training--and their learning--and culture. But Anthony Dyke beats
them _there_. That’s why I say, put your money on old A. D. What?”
He broke off, laughing. “How I do gas about myself! But you lead me
on, Emmie; you spoil me. You should check me instead of encouraging
me. All those Indian fellows behind us have the gift I speak
of--but perhaps less fully developed. You remember where we lost
that pack--the place where the mule went down. If I told one of
them to go back there, he’d find his way unerringly--even, mark
you, if he didn’t actually retrace his steps. He’d get there.”
They rode on. And Emmie felt as if her past had gone from her
utterly; it was not now that she had grown so accustomed to this
new life that she felt she had been leading it for years. There had
never been another life.
And certainly, could they have seen her, no old friends of Queen’s
Gate or Prince’s Gardens could have helped to recall her to
herself. They would not have recognised her. Although she still
spoke so gently and smiled so dreamily, she sat her mule with the
nonchalant ease of a gaucho; her whole aspect was wild and fierce;
the remnants of her stout straw hat, battered out of its original
shape, were tied beneath her chin and bound about her neck; her
dusty smeared face was almost black, with yellow lines that had
been scored by perspiration. She might have been an Indian boy--as
Dyke had told her. He said he must hit upon a good man’s name and
rechristen her.
Soon after the mid-day halt there came into view the landmark for
which he had been watching. With a grunt of satisfaction he pointed
it out to her--the white dome of a mountain that had shown itself
above the nearer summits. “That’s my guide now.” The sight of it
made Dyke pleasurably excited. He talked of his emeralds again.
They must push on steadily now and waste no time. He galloped off
to tell Manuel that the goal was drawing nearer, and then returned
to her.
They rode on--on into silence. That day Emmie was conscious of
it, in this manner, for the first time. Yet it must have been
with them, one would think, for a long while. The silence seemed
to have become a property of space. It could no more be broken by
the slight sounds they made--such as the note of the bell, the
shuffle of so many iron-shod feet, the shouts of the muleteers,
the song of Dyke--than you can break the ice of a frozen lake by
throwing a small stone at it. The stone slides across the surface
till it comes to rest. She remembered the noise of explosions
heard during the early days, when they were still in touch with the
fretful ambitious labours of humanity--those engineers on the new
railway blasting the rocks that opposed them. Here it was as if the
mountains could permit no noises, not even echoes of noises, that
they did not themselves create. They commanded a universal hush, in
which, after breathless listening pauses, they sucked the roaring
wind through their jagged teeth, threw a garment of snow from their
shoulders, or with earthquake groans let their sides gape open and
a vast new ravine appear in the raw wound. Then one might hear
their reverberating voice high in the air and low in the ground.
But otherwise all must be still. Silence and solitude--the sense
of loneliness undisturbed since the world began grew deeper as the
shadows of the hills began to creep across one’s path. It seemed
then to be a valley into which man had never been, into which no
man should ever go.
But that was an illusion, mere nonsense. As Dyke told her, in the
dim past many men had been here. These valleys, all of them running
north and south, had formed a great trade route that stretched
nearly from one end of the continent to the other. During the
dominion of the Incas, perhaps earlier still, perhaps ages and
ages ago, before the Pharaohs reigned and pyramids were built in
Egypt, this was a busy crowded highway of commerce and government;
with troops of soldiers passing and repassing, tax collectors
going south, great nobles being carried in gilded litters, priests
of the sun, long trains of llamas instead of mules carrying
tribute northward from remote provinces or conquered territories.
Doubtless, if one dug away the dust of time, or could remove
the layers of fallen rocks, one would find traces of the great
highway--its buried pavement, the foundation masonry of ruined
bridges, fragments of wall that had belonged to rest-houses.
Yes, if all the ghosts of antiquity should appear, they would form
a multitude to fill the valley floor from hillside to hillside.
Talking of these things led him naturally to speak once more of
the emeralds. Of course, it stood to reason that they mined as far
south as this. In those days the mineral wealth of the hills was
searched with untiring vigour; there were mines everywhere--for
gold, for silver, for the precious stones--above all, one must
suppose, for emeralds. The word was on his lips continually.
Emeralds!
He was eager to push on, but with all his urging, the march had
grown slow and languid. The men seemed tired and stupid; they would
not respond to his cheering holloas. They let the mules string out.
And two or three times Manuel Balda came and asked him if they
might not halt for the night. At last he gave the order.
The night fell swiftly, and it was very dark until the moon rose.
Emmie, after lying down, lifted the flap of their tent, and saw the
bare ground silvered and the rocky slopes greyly shining, and she
felt as if far and near, all round her, to the ends of the earth,
there were solitude, silences, mysteries. The sensation--for it was
no more--had not the smallest importance to her mind. She was very
happy, supremely contented.
She looked at the tiny camp-fire, dying down now, to red embers,
so that the group of men who were crouched upon the ground about
it showed in the pale moonlight with no glow of flame upon their
faces. Dyke was standing by them, still talking to them. It was a
lengthy jollying to-night.
There stood her man. She had got him now, for her very own. These
hired followers did not count; he and she were alone now, with
no human being to come between them. They had travelled far in
their great love--away from etiquette books, beyond the reach of
laws--backward through the ages to forgotten codes and outworn
ceremonies--back, almost, to the elements of life and the rule of
nature. She was half dreaming; and she thought, as she dropped
her curtain and lay down beneath the rugs, that Aconcagua had
married them; these mountains had confirmed the bond, making them
one under the cold stars, mingling their limbs by the pressure of
iron frosts, moulding their embrace to the uneven surface of their
bed of stone; and now the shadowy stately ghosts of the Incas had
gathered round the nuptial tent, to put a mystic seal upon their
union.
* * * * *
“Emmie, are you asleep?”
She was asleep, but she woke to the murmur of his voice at her ear.
Lying beside her, he continued to whisper.
“Emmie, there’s something wrong with the men.”
“Something wrong? How do you mean?”
“I can’t understand, myself. I’ve been at them for hours, and
I can’t make anything of them. It’s as though they had become
suspicious--or as though they were all sickening for some infernal
disease.”
“What does Manuel say? Is he all right?”
“No. I believe he’s been somehow upset too, but he won’t own it.
He was helping me with them, seeming to back me up, and yet I had
the feeling that he would let me down if he dared. It struck me
they might have taken alarm because I made them fill the water
skins yesterday. You know--they might have supposed we were going
where there’d be no water. But it wasn’t that. Emmie, I had to tell
you this. Don’t worry about it.”
“No--only because you are worried yourself, Tony.”
“Well, it would be too damnably disappointing if they lost heart
now, or shirked the work I have to give them. But I don’t believe
they will. No, it is some ridiculous and absurd fancy that has
taken possession of them. One must be prepared for anything--in the
Andes. Whatever it is, I’ll put it right to-morrow.”
At daybreak they went on.
There was something wrong with the men--you could not observe them
and retain any doubt as to the fact. They moved slowly, silently,
often with downcast eyes; the whole march was languishing. Dyke
rode up and down the straggled column talking to the riders one
after another; he was very jolly with them, full of fun and good
fellowship, but resolutely determined to get to the bottom of the
queer paralysing trouble.
At last one of them told him. The explanation was more
fantastically absurd than anything he could have divined. They told
him they were disturbed because they had heard him using a word--a
bad word--an ominously bad word to use in these regions. Gold was a
good word--a word to set one’s mind on fire, brace one’s muscles,
and make one’s blood dance. But that other word, emeralds--oh, no.
Merely to hear it, in the mountains, took the heart out of one.
Surely everybody knew that the quest of emeralds was forbidden.
“Yes, that is the silly belief of these Indian boys,” and Manual
Balda, voluble and discursive now that the secret was out. “It
is their legends--how can I say how old? Oh yes, Missis, vairy
silly. But an Indian is a child always. Not Christian-believing.
Su-per-sti-tious!” And he indicated that he and the other three
Spaniards held such nonsense in proper contempt.
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth about it yesterday?” asked
Dyke.
Why? Ah, that was difficult to answer. Manuel had felt timid, had
not liked to carry tales, had feared that Don Antonio, instead of
laughing and snapping his fingers, might be angry.
“Has he think I was su-per-sti-tious also, like those boys?” he
inquired of Emmie. “See here, Missis. Why should I, Manuel Balda,
fear the evil spirits? I am good Christian. I carry my charm.” He
had pulled out of his clothes a little silver crucifix tied to a
dirty string, and he held it up reverently. “No evil spirit will
dare touch him who carries that.”
Dyke called an immediate halt, and gathering the men together
he thrashed out the matter with them in jovial friendly style.
First he made the Indians talk, encouraging them to say all that
was in their minds; with much wisdom patiently listened to the
long involved stories that they soon began to tell him. For a
considerable time he denied nothing. Yet it was very difficult not
to make mock. To stand there, at this late period of the world’s
history, and hear such legends from the lips of strong grown men,
no matter what their race or position in the social scale! But for
the setting of the scene itself, it would have been impossible.
The primeval ramparts, the forlorn grandeurs, the lonely unvisited
pomp, that surrounded them, made what is real and what is
incredible seem almost to join hands.
They told him stories as old as that of the famous River of
Emeralds and its guarding dragon, who demolished with thunder and
lightning every intruder that sought to steal the hidden richness.
They told him stories as recent as that of the five travellers
from Santiago, who were changed into five round stones only a few
years ago. Then when Dyke thought the time had come to argue with
them and jolly them, they said that perhaps they did not implicitly
believe such tales; but this they did indeed believe--that a curse
or ban had been laid on emerald-hunting, and that for their part
they were averse from defying it. They vowed that at least this
much was true: for hundreds of years no one had done any good by
looking for emeralds, and many had come to grief at the game. The
Spaniards nodded their heads in grave affirmation.
Dyke said that, accepting for argument’s sake the notion of a ban,
or curse or bad luck, then anything of that sort would fall upon
him, the leader of the expedition, and not on them his honest
followers. It was he who made the defiance and wanted emeralds, not
they. And on his head be all the consequences. He said this loudly
and solemnly, looking about him with a majestic sweep of the eyes;
and it had a great effect upon them. They cheered up visibly.
At the mid-day halt he tackled them again, enforcing his
successful argument; telling them he merely wanted them to dig for
him. There would almost certainly be gold. And if emeralds were
found, they need not even touch them. He Dyke would do that. They
were not likely to find so many that he could not carry them all
away himself. He made them laugh, and after that all seemed well.
He snapped his fingers and told Emmie that he had done the trick.
They were now “as merry as grigs.”
All seemed well; the afternoon march progressed rapidly.
At night he sat with them, sang to them; told them how nearly their
destination was reached. Early to-morrow, he said, they would come
to a break in the hills on both sides, and the narrow valley that
opened on their right hand would bring them to the final halt.
They need have no apprehensions about water. There would be no
difficulties.
Next day they started betimes. All was well; the men seemed alert
again, just as they had been when they first brightened to the
sound of the “good word.” Manuel, who was nearly as excited as Dyke
and far more exuberant, obtained leave to go ahead and signal to
them as soon as the promised fateful valley came into view.
There was a cry of satisfaction when they saw him, far ahead,
standing in his stirrups and waving his hat above his head. They
waved to him in return, to show they had got the signal, and he
disappeared. All pushed on to follow him. Dyke shouted and sang, as
they swept into the entrance of this the last of the valleys, his
own valley.
Plainly it was the ancient bed of a torrent that once used to pour
down into the wide valley they had left; strewn with rocks large
and small, it looked even now so much like a water-course that one
could scarcely believe it was dry. The hour was still so early that
the high frowning cliffs filled it with grey shadow, and made the
sunlight overhead seem trebly vivid.
Then they saw Manuel riding back towards them with breathless
haste. They could see him belabour the galloping mule, urging it
to its full speed, oblivious of all obstacles. He pulled the poor
brute almost upon its haunches when he reached Dyke, and spoke in
wild excitement.
“Don Antonio, we are forestalled. There are men there already.”
Dyke would not believe. He laughed. “Manuel, old chap, you have
been dreaming.”
But Manuel, gesticulating, swore that he was very wide
awake--happily so, perhaps, for everybody’s sake. He had seen. He
could trust the evidence of his eyes.
“How many men did you see?”
“Two only. But there may be more, many more, hidden there among the
rocks.”
“What sort of men are they?”
“How can I say? Brigands! A gang perhaps? Not Indians.”
“What were they doing?”
“Watching--those two--as if on guard--as if they certainly knew we
were coming--and so watched and waited for us.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Dyke quietly. “I can’t believe it. It’s
impossible. Emmie, fall back a bit, and keep with the others.”
And he ordered the men to unsling their rifles and to follow him
slowly, leaving the pack-mules behind. “Now, Manuel, old boy, come
along with me.”
The thing was a fact, no day-dream, no optical delusion.
Dyke saw them plainly, unmistakably, when Manuel drew rein and
pointed with outstretched hand. At perhaps five hundred yards
distance the sun’s rays, pouring down through a break in the cliff
top, had invaded the lower ground and made a bright patch of
coloured rock and sand; and here, apparently crouched beneath a
huge boulder, but in the full sunlight, the two men were sharply
visible, although one had an impression that they themselves were
perhaps not aware of how conspicuous they had become. Dyke rode
boldly on and Manuel reluctantly for another four hundred yards;
and the men, though seeming to watch them, did not once stir.
Dyke dismounted, gave his mule to Manuel, and walking on slowly,
with his revolver in his hand, called to the two watchers. They did
not answer, they did not move. They were seated side by side, but
at a few yards one from the other; their hats were drawn down upon
the brow, so that Dyke could not see the eyes which seemed to be
watching him with such intentness; their attitude was identical,
backs slightly bowed, hands clasped about their knees.
When he got within fifty yards of them, he put the revolver in his
pocket, turned round, and beckoned to Manuel and the others to come
on.
He knew now why these men remained so strangely motionless. They
were dead. They had been dead for a long time, possibly for years;
the cold and the rarefied air had preserved their bodies, their
mummified hands were intact, all the flesh of their faces that one
could see beneath the broad-brimmed hats was free from any sign
of decomposition. Dyke, looking sadly down at one of them, judged
him, by the grizzled hair upon his chin and the deep wrinkles at
each side of the mouth, to have been a man of over fifty years of
age, and noticed how the sun had obliterated the colour of the once
scarlet shawl that was bound about his waist, and faded the brown
leather of his belt and pouches. With gentle reverent hands he
raised the soft brim of the hat, and looked at the whole face.
Then he started back in horror and disgust. Not the faintest
suspicion of the truth had come to him till the lifted hat
disclosed the nose, the eyes, the forehead; and all the features,
swiftly assembled, flashed into a long familiar mask. It was his
old comrade, Pedro del Sarto.
He sprang to the other body, and took it roughly by the shoulder.
It fell over sideways, queerly and lightly, like a thing made of
basket-work and hooped steel, and lay there with its hands still
clasping its knees, in the frozen attitude that could not change.
But the hat had rolled away, and Dyke saw the face that he had
expected to see. It was Juan Pombal, del Sarto’s underling and
constant associate.
Dyke went back to the other body, knelt by it, and searched it.
There was no weapon of any kind; there was no food in a wallet on
the ground; but in the belt pouches he found dollar notes, a small
pocket book, and some papers--amongst them, tattered and stained,
the map that he himself had given to Pedro at Buenos Ayres over two
years ago.
Manuel and his fellow Argentines had gathered round; they were
gesticulating, chattering, asking each other questions; while they
feasted their curiosity in scrutinising the dead men. How had they
come here, whence, why? The four Indians stood where the mules had
been left and would approach no nearer.
Dyke, going to Emmie, told her the nature of the discovery he had
made. He understood at once all that it implied. His comrade, his
friend, the man he trusted as a brother, had played him false, had
tried to cheat him, and in making the attempt had thus miserably
met with disaster. No other explanation was possible. Pedro,
falling into low water, as people reported at Buenos Ayres, had
yielded to the temptation offered by a chance. He knew that the
friend he was betraying would not return for a year and a half at
least; there would be plenty of time to come up here, put his dirty
hands in the pocket of treasure, and get safely away. As to facing
Dyke afterwards, he probably made no plans; he left the future to
take care of itself.
“And I loved him, Emmie,” said Dyke bitterly. “I loved that man.”
But Pedro and Pombal did not venture to come here alone. No,
obviously, they must have brought mules and muleteers with them;
they fitted themselves out much as Dyke had done, although in more
meagre style, before they risked themselves in the wilderness. What
had happened to their hireling followers?
The bitterness passed from Dyke’s tone, as little by little he
reconstructed the horrible details of the tragedy. Their muleteers
had deserted them. But why? Perhaps Pedro bullied the men, drove
them too hard, or fed them badly. Or the men took fright, thinking
their provisions might give out. Something had frightened them,
and they had consummated the hideous deed. The betrayers had
themselves been betrayed.
Working backwards to the date of Pedro’s disappearance from Buenos
Ayres, he hit upon the most probable cause of the men’s fright.
It was the menacing state of the weather that struck fear into
their craven hearts. Dark snow-laden clouds banking up from the
south, a spatter of rain and sleet, a wind with ice needles in its
breath--and they had thought that the winter was upon them. Pedro
had started too late; he himself must have known it by then. But he
would not give in. Perhaps the men urged him to turn back, pleaded
with him; but dogged, and resolute even to ferocity, he drove them
on. Then waiting for an occasion, they fell upon him and his fellow
slave-driver, disarmed them, and left them to perish. The doomed
pair wandered hither and thither, lost themselves in a gathering
darkness of sluggish death. Storms of snow hid the faint light.
The wind cut them. They sat down in the shelter of these rocks to
wait till the wind dropped. It was a bad place, the worst possible
place, if the wind changed its quarter and the snow began to drift.
They slept, and woke no more. The snow covered them; the sun melted
the snow. Twice they had been covered and uncovered.
Rancour against a treacherous friend had vanished, and a fierce
impersonal indignation moved Dyke as he thought of the treachery of
those half-bred dogs. The damnable curs--to leave their leaders,
taking food, arms, everything. It made one sick. But, as he knew,
things like this happen in the Andes--have always been happening.
Philosophising presently, he spoke of fear, and of what a horrible
force it is. The most degrading of all passions, it would seem also
the most powerful. Half the wickedness of the world can be traced
to it. When it binds five or six people together in its loathsome
clutch, there is no enormity that they may not commit, because--and
this is so terrible--fear felt in common by five or six men is not
five or six separate fears added together, but multiplied together
many times.
And Emmie, looking round her, thought that this place might well be
the primeval home of fear; in this overwhelming loneliness, among
these dark cliffs, the stealthy grey shadows, and the sunlight
that seemed to make the solid rock tremble, fear was originally
engendered; so that the first live matter, waking to life here,
was afraid--afraid of all things, even of itself. It was only her
transient thought. She herself had no fear. Why should she? She was
with Anthony Dyke.
They resumed the march. There was a question of burying the
corpses, but in view of the evident reluctance of Manuel and the
others, Dyke gave up this intention. The pious task would have
entailed a considerable labour and waste of time. “Leave them
there as a warning,” said Manuel, not to Dyke but to the empty
air. He had fished out his crucifix, and looking back, he crossed
himself and shivered. “Leave them to the condors,” said one Indian
to another. “The condors left them so long without touching them.
Let no one touch them now.” All were eager to get away from the
sinister spot.
A profound depression of the spirits had fallen upon them. Again
they moved languidly and needed frequent rallying. They spoke
apathetically, if not sullenly. Dyke dealt gently with them, and
pleased them by making the day’s march shorter than he had wished.
At night, when they had eaten their food and Dyke as usual went and
talked to them, they seemed contented enough.
They camped at a point where one enormous rock--a monster carried
by ice and stranded here thousands of years ago--stood isolated in
the middle of the way. Manuel Balda pitched Dyke’s tent and made
the sleeping-place behind this rock, out of sight of the camp-fire
and the men, very neatly and snugly. More silent than was his wont,
but as efficient as ever, he carried out his customary duties,
boiled their tea, gave them their supper.
The moon had risen high and was shedding its gentle radiance far
and near, as Emmie and Dyke came round the broken angles of the big
rock, and standing side by side, looked down at their little camp.
All was peaceful; the familiar aspect of the nightly assemblage
gave one a sense of comfort and security. The men lay huddled on
the ground with saddles for pillows; the mules, some with shining
moonlit coats, some dark and shadowy, were ranged behind their
deposited burdens. In the profound silence one could hear the
slightest movement, and a note of the bell as the madrina raised
her head startled one by the sharpness of the sound. Beyond this
one spot of animated existence the moonlight showed them the valley
stretching away tenantless through its stone walls, like an unused
passage in a dead world. There was no need to post sentries on
guard; there were no living foes that could attack the camp. Dyke
and Emmie went back behind their rock, and they too lay down to
sleep.
Dyke woke at dawn, and mechanically groped for the revolver that
from habit he kept within reach of his hand while sleeping. His
hand did not encounter it. No doubt it lay buried in the blankets
and the rugs. He crept from the tent, got upon his feet, stretched
himself, and went yawning round the rock. Then he uttered a roar of
anger.
The place was empty. The camp had vanished. Not a sign of man or
beast was anywhere visible. Like Pedro del Sarto, he had been
abandoned by his cowardly followers. As far as the eye could
reach--and that was for many miles--the valley lay grey and void.
Those scoundrels already had made good their escape from it; their
resented intrusion no longer troubled its blackened heights and
barren flats; it had swept them away with the deadly impalpable
force that it contained. They were gone again, by the path on which
they had dared to come; and Fear triumphant laughed in the sunlight
above the deserted valley and lay down to rest in its shadowed
depths.
Presently Dyke found a small pile of tinned meat neatly arranged
near the ashes of the fire. The deserters had left him food, then?
Not a great deal, but some. He stood looking at the piled tins and
thinking. The germ of panic had entered the blood of those Indians
when they first heard what they called the bad word, and hence
onwards they were diseased, sickening creatures able to spread
contagion to the rest of his crowd; the sight of the dead men,
scaring them, seeming to confirm their notion of a curse upon an
impious quest, had made it almost certain that they would try to do
what they had now done. All of them together had become resolved
to go no further. The Spaniards, little less superstitious than
themselves, agreed to their plan. And Manuel? He too was afraid,
and yet perhaps he endeavoured to be faithful and staunch; but if
those others stood round him with their knives at his breast, his
fidelity would not avail. They would simply tell him what they had
resolved; they would give him orders, and he must obey. They had no
grudge against the chieftain. Dyke knew that they liked him--until
they began to fear him. Thus, if Manuel asked them to leave that
food, they would be willing to do so. They took the riding mules
because, if left, these would have provided the means of pursuit.
Dismounted, he could never catch them. When one of the Indians
crawled on his belly like a snake, and with careful hand beneath
the flap of the tent abstracted his revolver, it was a necessary
precaution, nothing more. They disarmed him merely to prevent
any dangerous interference should he chance to wake. Then, their
precautions taken, the madrina’s bell muffled, and all being ready,
they stole off in the moonlight--with Manuel Balda, perhaps looking
back, trembling, crossing himself, feeling pity and regret. What
must be must be.
Dyke shook his fist in the direction the runaways had taken. Every
bone in their bodies should eventually be broken; but meanwhile old
A. D. had allowed them to put him in a very tight place. He did not
doubt that he could get out of it easily, on his head, if--It would
be almost amusing, a sprightly continuation of the lark, if--Yes,
if he had been alone.
An immense remorse seized him, and he stood for a few moments
with bowed head, staring at the stony pitiless ground. Why had he
brought her here? Wrong--very wrong. But it was not in his nature
to remain brooding on past mistakes when the future demanded prompt
activity. He roused himself, shrugged his shoulders and gave a
grunt.
Those blackguards had left tins of meat but no tin-opener. He
smashed a tin against the rock, and he and Miss Verinder had their
meagre breakfast. He offered her his apologies before sitting down.
“I blame myself--I should have forseen--guarded against it. Of
course,” and he laughed ruefully, “my emeralds have gone up the
chimney. And for ever probably--for goodness knows if I can find
time to come back here again later on. A disappointment, I admit.
But I am not thinking of _that_. Certainly not. I’m only thinking
of you. Emmie--you plucky, jolly little Emmie--it’s going to be
difficult--for _you_”; and he looked at her wistfully. “On foot,
you know! Without our furs we’re going to feel cold at night. We’re
going to miss our nice hot tea, too. Yes, we’re ill provided with
comforts now.” And he laughed again, but gaily this time. “I have
plenty of money--my pockets are full of money. That’s rather funny,
isn’t it? An object lesson, what! No grocer’s shops--or Army and
Navy Stores handy.
“But, of course, you understand, Emmie, my pretty one, that there’s
not the least cause for anxiety. It will be absolutely all right
if we go slow and don’t fuss. That’s the one great thing on these
occasions--never fuss yourself.”
While he talked he was thinking hard. He decided to strike for
Chile and hit off one of the hill roads at its nearest accessible
point. That way they would have nothing to climb; it would be all
down hill. And he calculated the distance and the number of days
that would be required. Could she do as much as twenty miles a
day, on an average? Then he calculated the amount of nourishment
contained in the tins. How long would it last her? He saw plainly
that it was going to be a desperate race against starvation.
He took two blankets for her; he dared not cumber himself with more.
“Now, Emmie, my lad,” he said, smiling at her, just before they
started.
“Left foot foremost. And don’t hurry.”