"Now. My burro's packed."
"Your porters?"
"They won't go," I said wryly. "They've been talking to your
villagers. It doesn't matter. I'll go it alone." I put out my hand,
and Fra Rafael gripped it strongly.
"_Vaya con Dios_," he said.
I went out into the bright Peruvian sunlight. The Indios were standing
in straggling knots, pretending not to watch me. My porters were
nowhere in evidence. I grinned, yelled a sardonic goodbye, and started
to lead the burro toward the Pass.
The fog vanished as the sun rose, but it still lay in the mountain
canyons toward the west. A condor circled against the sky. In the
thin, sharp air the sound of a distant rock-fall was distinctly
audible.
White Huascan towered far away. A shadow fell on me as I entered the
Pass. The burro plodded on, patient and obedient. I felt a little
chill; the fog began to thicken.
Yes, the Indios had talked to me. I knew their language, their old
religion. Bastard descendants of the Incas, they still preserved a
deep-rooted belief in the ancient gods of their ancient race, who had
fallen with Huayna Capac, the Great Inca, a year before Pizarro came
raging into Peru. I knew the Quichua--the old tongue of the mother
race--and so I learned more than I might have otherwise.
Yet I had not learned much. The Indios said that _something_ had come
into the mountains near Huascan. They were willing to talk about it,
but they knew little. They shrugged with apathetic fatalism. _It_
called the young virgins, no doubt for a sacrifice. _Quien sabe?_
Certainly the strange, thickening fog was not of this earth. Never
before in the history of mankind had there been such a fog. It was, of
course, the earthquake that had brought the--the Visitant. And it was
folly to seek it out.
Well, I was an anthropologist and knew the value of even such slight
clues as this. Moreover, my job for the Foundation was done. My
specimens had been sent through to Callao by pack-train, and my notes
were safe with Fra Rafael. Also, I was young and the lure of far
places and their mysteries was hot in my blood. I hoped I'd find
something odd--even dangerous--at Huascan.