use before, “you get on that mule, and let us have no more nonsense. I
like your pluck; and it is because you have more real ‘sand’ (as they say
in our West) than any young man I know, that I picked you out for this
journey. But courage is a dangerous thing unless you mix it with brains.
You must learn that there are some things pluck cannot overcome—and this
is one of them. Mount, then!”
Barton obeyed with rather an ill grace, and promptly got angrier with
himself at realizing what a relief it was to be perched again in the
ridiculously comfortable Peruvian saddle. He could not get over a feeling
of shame that the muscles which had borne the cruelest tests of the
frontier should now have “played the baby,” as he put it; and he rode on
somewhat sulkily.
It was here that Ramon Ynga stumbled into their lives; and, as I have
said, all by the doing of the llamas. As the travelers rounded a sharp
turn in the trail the mules stopped suddenly almost face to face with
the two strangest animals that Barton had ever seen. Shabby, grotesque
figures they were, with splay feet, long, awkward legs, and bodies
looking like long tussocks of dry grass. But their necks were the
worst—tall and ungainly as stovepipes covered with hair. Their backs
were hardly so high as those of the under-sized mules; but on these
unspeakable necks their heads were quite on a level with Barton’s. And
_such_ heads! They were disproportionately small and ludicrously narrow,
with pointed ears, malignant little faces, and lips wickedly drawn back.
“Why, I never saw anything, except a rattlesnake, look so vindictive!”
cried Barton. “What on earth are they?”
“That is the national bird of Peru,” replied the Professor roguishly.
“We are apt to see many up here. In fact, if we had had any daylight in
Casapalca you would have noticed many hundreds of them; for they bring
all the ore to the stamp mills, and do most of the freighting besides.
Lower than 10,000 feet you will hardly ever find them; the llama[13] is a
mountain animal, and soon dies if taken to the coast.”
“So that is the llama! But I thought that was called the ‘Peruvian
sheep;’ and these look no more like sheep than my mule does.”
“It got that foolish name from the closet naturalists. No one who
ever saw a llama could fail to recognize it for a camel—smaller and
longer-haired than the Eastern beast, and without a hump; but a true
camel.”
“It’s a funny-looking brute,” laughed Barton. “It seems to put in its
time thinking what a grudge it has against everybody. Hi! Get out of the
way, you standing grievances!”
The Professor and the young frontiersman had thus far enjoyed the pause
of the mules; but now the need of pushing on recurred to their minds,
and Barton’s exclamation was meant as a signal for advance. But the
llamas stood stolidly, blocking the trail. He drummed his spurs against
his mule; whereat the animal took two steps forward and stopped, bracing
back, unmindful of the rowels. The llamas did not take a step. Only they
seemed to drop their bodies a little, upon those long legs.
“Why, they’re not such fools as they look!” cried Barton, whose sharp eye
understood the trifling motion. “See! They are going to give us the edge!”
The trail was two feet wide—an endless thread of a shelf hewn along the
mountain wall. On the right, the great, dark slope ran up to the very
clouds; on the left, one could snap a pebble into the white torrent, 500
feet below.
“I have heard that they always take the wall,” the Professor rejoined,
“and that when two llama trains meet on one of these trails it is almost
impossible to make a passing. Sometimes they even shove each other off
the cliff.”
“I guess we’d better not force the right of way—a tumble into the Rimac
there is more than I care for!” And Barton jumped from his mule and
advanced upon the blockaders, waving his arms threateningly.
“Look out!” cried the Professor; but before the words were fairly off his
tongue, the foremost llama opened its ugly mouth and spat at Barton in
fury. At this unpleasant salutation he retreated hastily.
“That is their weapon of defense,” said the Professor. “And their saliva
is wonderfully acrid. It’s as well you didn’t get it in the face. But I
wish they _would_ get out of the way—we have no time to spare.”
Just then there was another surprise. A figure hardly less remarkable
than the camels slid down from the overhanging hillside, and stood in the
path, looking at the startled travelers. It was a dwarfish creature, not
four feet tall, with a large, round head, a broad, strong body, and very
short legs, peculiarly bundled up in unfamiliar clothes. A boy—what in
the world was he doing on that impossible slope? What a goat he must be!
“Hulloa!” cried Barton, as soon as he could find a voice.
“God give you good day, sirs,” answered the lad gravely, in thick
Spanish. “Wait me so-little, and I will get you by.”
With this he called “U-pa!” to the llamas, lifting his finger as if to
point them up the trail. Ordinarily they would have obeyed; but the
aggressive manner of Barton had roused their obstinacy, and they did not
budge. The boy put his shoulder to the ribs of one, and heaved hard, but
the brute stood its ground.
“Well, it is to wait!” said he; and ran about the path, gathering up
very small pebbles until his shabby hat was full. Then he sat down on
a boulder that jutted from the bank, settling himself as if for a long
rest, and threw a mild and measured pebble at each llama. They turned
their heads a little and wrinkled their disagreeable noses. He waited a
moment and then pitched two more pebbles—which had the same effect. So
he sat, slowly and mechanically tossing his harmless missiles upon the
dense hair of his charges. Evidently he was in no hurry; and the two
travelers, impatient as they were, had too much wisdom of experience to
try to push him. They sat quietly in their saddles, watching the droll
scene. It was very ridiculous to need deliverance from two stupid beasts,
and to get it from such an owlish little tatterdemalion. His ragged
clothing was of very thick, coarse cloth; and upon his feet were the
clumsy _yanquis_, or rawhide sandals of mountain Peru, and he wore thick
stockings rising to his knees. Over his trousers was a curious garment,
half apron and half leggings; and oversleeves of the same material, hung
with a cord about his neck, came up over the elbows of his coat. These
two garments were knit in very strange patterns, amid which were square,
brown llamas wandering up and down a gray background. Around his waist
was a woven belt, now very old, but of beautiful colors and workmanship.
And his face—what a brown, round riddle!
“How do you call yourself, friend?” asked the Professor in Spanish. “And
have you ten years or a hundred?”
“Ramon Ynga, señor. And the other I do not know. I have been here a long
time—ever since they built the mill at Casapalca.”
“You must be about fifteen, then. And where do you live?”
“There, above,” answered Ramon, tossing another pebble.
“A curious habit of the mountaineers,” said the Professor. “These
Indians, instead of living in the valleys, climb to the very tops of
these peaks, and build there their squalid stone hovels. They seem to
think nothing of the eternal clambering up and down.”
An hour crawled by, and the stones in Ramon’s hat were running low.
Suddenly the brown llama turned with a snort of disgust, and strode off
up the trail. The white one hesitated a moment, snorted, and followed.
“That way they get tired, sirs,” said the boy, emptying his hat and
pulling it down upon his thatch of black hair.
“I’d take a good club to them!” growled Barton, who had great confidence
in the Saxon way of forcing things.
“No, the boy is quite right. It is another case wherein you must not try
to be smarter than nature. The llama is the stubbornest brute alive—a
mule is vacillating compared to him. If you put a pound too much on
his load, he will lie down, and you might beat him to death or build a
fire beside him, but he would not get up. Nobody but a Peruvian Indian
can do anything with a Peruvian camel, and Ramon has just shown us the
proper tactics. Hurt the animal, and he only grows more sullen; but the
pebbles merely tease him until he can bear it no longer. And really he
repays patience; for he is the only animal that can work effectively at
these altitudes, where horses and mules are practically useless. But
_adelante_! (forward!)”
“Is your Excellency going to Cerro de Pasco?” asked the little Peruvian,
running alongside the mule and looking up at the Professor with unusual
animation in his non-committal face. He had never spoken with “Yankees”
before, and indeed for any stranger to notice him kindly was a new
experience. He liked these pale men; and a dim little wish to please
them warmed in his heart. That big young man—why, he was taller than any
Serrano in the cordillera!—was good. Ramon had seen money a few times;
but that round, shiny _sol_,[14] which the stranger had tossed him when
the llamas moved, was the first he had ever held in his hand; and it was
almost a worry to be so rich! But the other man, with a little gray above
his ears, who only looked at him _so_, and spoke as if he knew him—he,
surely, was very great; and it was to him that the ragged boy had said
“_Exceléncia._” His face was kindly; and there were little smiles at the
edges of his mouth, though he did not laugh.
“No, _hijito_ (little son),” he answered, “we are not bound to the mines.
We are going to climb the Chin-chán, to look at the ice cornices and to
measure them.”
Even Ramon looked astonished at this. If a Serrano had said it, every one
would know he was crazy. Or if it were the young man—well, what could you
expect of one who would give away a whole _sol_? But this one—whatever
_he_ did, it must be right. He certainly was not crazy. Still——
“But the Soroche, your Excellency,” ventured the boy. “For all strangers
have it; and many die, even in crossing the slope. Only we who were born
here can go so high.”
“We have to go, my boy; for I must look at the snow fields and the cliffs
of ice, and measure them,” said the Professor, kindly. “I know well of
the mountain sickness, and we will be very careful. Besides, we are both
very strong.”
[Illustration: THE HOME OF THE SOROCHE]
“It is not always of the strong,” persisted Ramon. “Sometimes the sick
cross in safety, and those who are very large and red—even larger than
your Excellency’s friend—fall suddenly and never rise again; for the
Soroche is stronger than any.”
“You are quite right, my wise friend. It is terrible. But all do not fall
victims, and we must brave it.”
“At the least, Excellency, let me go also! For I know these hills very
well, and perhaps I could help. As for the llamas, my brother Sancho
comes even yonder, and he will herd them.”
“You won’t really take the little rat up there, will you, Professor?”
broke in Barton. “It would be the death of him.”
“M-m! I only hope we may be as safe as I know he will be! _Está bien_, my
boy! _Vamos!_”[15]
* * * * *
At nine the next morning the three were entering the edge of the snow
fields. They had camped for the night in a deserted hovel at the head of
the valley; and there the mules could be seen grazing, pulling as far
down bill as their ropes would allow. The hut was not a mile behind; but
the travelers had been ever since daylight coming thus far. The Professor
looked old; and Barton’s big chest was heaving violently. As for Ramon,
he clambered along steadily and soberly, stopping only when he saw the
others had stopped.
By noon they were at the foot of the last ridge, in a great rounding bay
flanked by two spurs of the upper peak. The curving rim far overhead was
a savage cliff of eternal ice—a cliff of 1,500 feet sheer. At the top a
great white brow projected many yards, overhanging the bluish precipice.
“It is—a—noble—cornice,” gasped the Professor, as they sank upon the
snow to rest for the hundredth time since morning. “But I fear—we—made—a
mistake. We—should—not have—tried this—without—waiting a—few weeks—in
Casa—palca—to get—acclimated.”
“It’s awful!” groaned Barton. “My head—feels—as if—it would—burst. But
I’ll be hanged—if I—give up!” And the resolute young man fairly snatched
himself to erectness, and started toward the spur. But with the third
step his tall form swung half around, and swayed an instant, and fell as
a dead pine falls in the wind, and lay heavily upon the snow. His face
was black; and a bright red stream trickled from each nostril as the
Professor sank on his knees beside him, crying huskily, “My—poor boy! I
have—killed—you!”
The Professor’s face had a strange look, too. His eyes were very red and
swollen—but that was from the merciless glare of the snow—and in his
cheeks a gray shadow seemed to be struggling with the unnatural purple.
And he was so unlike the Professor of yesterday. He seemed so dull; even
stupid!
“Come, Excellency!” Ramon was shouting in his ear. “It is the Soroche,
the mountain sickness, and none can fight it. We must be gone from here,
else very soon you are both dead. Come!” The small brown fist was tugging
at the old man’s shoulder, and in the quaint, boyish voice was a strange
thrill. The Professor understood. Dazed as he was, the way in which Ramon
said that one word “Come” roused and cheered him like the far bugle call
which tells of reinforcements to the besieged. He was not alone. Here
was help—the help of a dwarfed Indian boy of fifteen! But that is often
the very sort we need—not muscle so much as the elbow-touch of a staunch
heart.
“But—Barton?” said the Professor. He could no longer think clearly;
and instinctively he turned to Ramon as superior. “Barton?
We—cannot—leave—Barton!” The Serrano lad looked at the prostrate figure
and then at the Professor.
But even in those bloodshot eyes Ramon read something that decided him.
It was very hard, and it was more dangerous so; but the Friend-man loved
the other. The other must be tried for too!
Ramon unwound his long woven belt and passed it under Barton’s back. The
ends he drew up under the armpits and crossed them at the back of the
neck, giving one end to the Professor and keeping one himself. Then, when
they pulled apart, the crossing of the belt supported Barton’s head.
“Now!” cried Ramon; and pulling strongly the two dragged the heavy form
along the snow to the edge of the steep slope. The Professor’s face was
purple, and drops of blood beaded his finger tips.
“Let me, señor!” said the boy; and taking both ends of the belt over his
shoulder, he went plunging down the declivity, Barton’s limp head bumping
against his legs, and Barton’s body and heels dragging in the soft snow
just enough to act as a brake. As for the Professor, he stumbled after as
best he could, with vague eyes and bursting veins and treacherous legs.
Sometimes he fell forward and plowed a rod in the snow, and once he was
beginning to roll, but Ramon leaped and stopped him just in time.
And so at last they came to the end of the snow. The boy laid his burden
upon the matted grass, with head up-hill, and piled a little drift of
snow about the head. “Put it so, also, to your head,” said he, “and I
will bring the mules.”
With that he was racing off down the hill in knowing zigzags, though it
looked too steep for a goat.
In half an hour a very tired boy was getting two helpless men upon two
almost helpless mules. Perhaps if the latter had been able to object, he
could not have succeeded. But by the help of the slope, and hauling with
his belt over the saddle from the down-hill side, he presently had both
up. Barton’s feet he tied together under the mule, and Barton’s hands
around its neck. The Professor could sit up, in a stupid way, and Ramon
tied only his feet. “Hold well!” he cried loudly and sternly, but with
the same little quiver in his voice; and taking both bridle reins in one
hand, he plunged down the hill, his weight thrown forward upon the hard
bits, so that the reluctant mules had no choice but to follow.
The only one who remembers much of that grim journey is Ramon, and as he
is not much given to talking, no one knows just what he does think of
it. The Professor’s clear recollection begins with finding himself on
board the train at Casapalca—a train of that most wonderful railroad in
the world, the railroad above the clouds, that clambers up and burrows
through the cordillera of Peru. Before that are only hazy memories of a
vast mountain wall leaning over to crush him; a winding path in the air;
a queer, boy’s voice, coming from nowhere, with little Spanish words of
cheer. And now a round, brown face from the opposite seat was watching
him seriously—even tenderly, the Professor fancied—while the burly
conductor was saying:
“I never seen it come any closer! How ever the boy got you in, beats my
time. And I saw he hated to leave you, so I says to him, says I, ‘Just
get in, sonny, ’n’ go down to Lima with us, ’n’ I’ll fetch you back if
I lose my job!’ He’s the right sort, he is! An’ you’ll be all right, as
soon as you get down there—that’s the only medicine for the S’rochy.”
All right they were next day in the capital. Even Barton was able to sit
up; and he nodded weakly as the Professor said to Ramon:
“My boy, I would like you to go with us. We have to travel much in Peru;
and if you will accompany us you will earn good wages. And you shall
be as my son. For neither of us would be alive now if we had not had a
little hero with us. Will you come?”
Joy flashed over Ramon’s face. But then it faded, and tears started in
his eyes as he said simply:
“You are good, Excellency! I would go _anywhere_ with you. But in the
Chin-chán is my mother, with the babies; and since father died, I must be
the man, for Sancho is too young. _Adios!_”
And he ran out, so that they should not see him crying.
A Daughter of the Misti.
A Daughter of the Misti.
Not the elder daughter, whom all the world knows where she sits, white
upon her little green patch against the hopeless desert, looking up with
now and then a shiver at the white-headed giant, her father. No, the
one I mean now is something like three hundred and fifty years younger
than the Misti’s first born and favorite, and not white at all, nor
over-dignified, nor even given to much thought as to when _taita_[16]
shall shrug again those mighty shoulders and rattle the walls about
her ears. In fact, to look at the two—the fat, brown, clumsy _cholo_
girl and the shining city—I dare say you would never take Tránsita and
Arequipa[17] for sisters at all. But as both are daughters of the Misti,
I see no other way out of it.
What! You don’t know either of them? Hm! Of course it could hardly be
expected that you should be acquainted with Tránsita, for she lives on a
back street on the other side of the river and comes very seldom to the
plaza. And probably you could not talk with her, anyhow, since her speech
is only Spanish and Quichua. But not to know Arequipa—why that is to
count out the prettiest city in Peru, and one of the oldest in America.
And if you do not know the daughter you have missed the father, too,
which is an even greater pity—for he is one of the handsomest giants on
earth, though a baby in his own family. Well, well—the sooner I give you
an introduction the better, then.
The Misti is an inactive but living volcano, a hundred miles from the
sea, in southern Peru. As I have said, it ranks small at home, being
only 19,300 feet tall, while some of its brother Andes tower to 26,000
feet. But few of them are so handsome. It stands alone and erect, with
head up and shoulders squared, while some of them look as if the nurse
had dropped them in their babyhood and they had never got their spines
straight again. It is a huge and very perfect cone, symmetrical as the
sacred peak of Japan, but vastly higher. So steep is it that the thick
blanket of volcanic cinders would surely slip down from its shoulders,
except for the long brooches of dead lava that pin it up. As for its
head, that is old with eternal snow.
For time unknown—since long before history—the Misti has been the best
known mountain in Peru; and I do not much wonder. It has a nobility of
its own, such as its mightier brethren do not all possess. Just to its
right vast Charchani climbs 20,000 feet into the sky, and a most majestic
peak it is. Just to its left towers the grand wall of Pichu-pichu, itself
taller than the greatest mountain in the United States. But it is always
the lone, solemn Misti, to which every one looks, of which every one
speaks—with a strange mixture of love and awe. Meeting an Arequipeño
abroad, you might very likely fancy there were no other mountains in
sight of his home; but you will not be left long in ignorance that
there is a Misti. Even before Europeans knew of America, the remarkable
Indians of Peru half worshiped the Misti; and so Arequipa gets its name,
an Aymará word which means “with the peak behind it.” Far up its deadly
sides they toiled to make their sacrifices to Those Above; and even in
the elder crater I have counted the ruins of aboriginal shrines. It is
so isolated, so individual, so majestic in its awful stature; and above
all, while its neighbor brothers are just mountains, it has a soul—the
wondrous fire-soul of the volcano.
A stern father is the Misti. His daughter is surely not undutiful, but
many a time he has punished her sorely. Many a time he has sent her
sprawling in the dust, and turned her smiling whiteness to a generation
of mourning. So, even as late as 1868 over half the buildings of Arequipa
went down in a mortal chaos of stone, killing as many people as fall in
an ordinary battle.
One might fancy that such a parent would get himself disliked; but his
severity does not seem to be laid up against him. Arequipa loves the
Misti—and as for Tránsita, she loved him even more than she did Arequipa.
Their house faced south, but the first thing in the morning Tránsita used
to climb to the stone-arched roof to look at the peak black against the
rising sun; and the last thing at evening to watch the rosy west-glow
upon that venerable head. And always she wondered the more, for now as
she grew taller, and the untaught soul had room to swell, she saw more
and more in that great dark one with his elephant-wrinkled hide and
the lava scars on his white head, and now and then, of a hushed dawn,
the ghost of a cloud floating plume-like from his brow. Perhaps it was
because he is so incomprehensible a giant that she comprehended him—in
that child way which is more at home in some mysteries than we older
stupids are. At all events, she turned to him for companionship and
confidences, and had a way of talking with him ever so softly, that no
one else should hear.
“Now, _taita_,” she was whispering this morning, “hast thou heard what
is to be? For they say that the _Tuerto_, the cross-eyed, who oppressed
us before, is to make new revolution, that he may be president again and
rob himself still richer. And it has always been in Arequipa that they
begin. Dost thou think it? And would they kill Eugénio? For he is very
loyal, and is one of importance, being a corporal. Do not let them hurt
my brother—wilt thou, _taita_?”
To all these questions and the adjuration the giant answered never a
word. His face was grave with the morning shadows. To look at him no one
but Tránsita would have dreamed he knew anything about it.
Nor do I really know that he did, though he had the best of
opportunities. From that lookout in the sky, so overtopping the town, he
could see right into the high-walled court of Don Telesfor’s mansion. It
was a flat old courtyard, paved with tipsy blocks of stone and framed
four-square with long shadowy verandas of the white _sillar_.[18] In the
center was a long-forgotten fountain, and at the middle of each side
a quaint staircase of the same white tufa ran up to the cracked and
precarious _sillar_ roof. No one was to be seen about the court. Only,
along the eastern _portal_[19] was a long ridge of fresh earth.