Chapter Thirty One.
Taste after Powder.
Long before daylight penetrates the interior of the cavern, or shows its first streak on the sky outside, the trackers are up and active.
A hasty breakfast is prepared; but, as the mutton bone is now quite bare, they have to fall back on another kind of flesh-meat, which the provident Caspar has brought along. This is charqui, or as it is called by English-speaking people “jerked beef;” in all likelihood a sailor’s pseudonym, due to some slight resemblance, between the English word “jerked,” and the Guarani Indian one charqui, as pronounced by South American people.
Charqui is simply beef cut into long, thin strips, then hung over a rope or rail, and exposed to a hot sun—in the absence of this, to a fire—till the juices are thoroughly dried out of it. Thus prepared, it will keep for weeks, indeed months.
The reason for so preserving it, is the scarcity of salt, which in the districts where charqui prevails, is difficult to be got at, and, in consequence, dear. Most of the beef imported from the La Plata, under the name of “jerked beef,” is not charqui, but simply meat cured with salt. Beef is preserved by a similar process throughout most parts of Spanish America, as in Mexico, and California, and for the same reason; but in these countries it is termed tasajo, and sometimes cecina.
Charqui is by no means a dainty viand; not nice either to the nose or palate. Those portions of it which have not had sufficient sun in the drying process, become tainted, and the odour is anything but agreeable. For all, it serves a purpose in those countries where salt is a scarce commodity; and cooked—as all Spanish Americans cook it—with a plentiful seasoning of onions, garlic, and chili, the “gamey” flavour ceases to be perceptible. Above all, it is a boon to the traveller who has a long journey to make through the uninhabited wilderness, with no inns nor post-houses at which he may replenish his spent stock of provisions. Being dry, firm, and light, it can be conveniently carried in haversack, or saddle-bags.
By Caspar’s foresight, there is a packet of it in Ludwig’s alparejas, where all the other provisions are stowed; and a piece cut from one of the strips, about the length of a Bologna sausage, makes breakfast for all three. Of the Paraguay tea they have a good store, the yerba being a commodity which packs in small space.
Their morning meal is dismissed with slight ceremony; and soon as eaten, they recaparison their horses; then leading them out of the cavern, mount, and are off. As the arroyo has long since shrunk to its ordinary level, and the path along the base of the bluff is dry as when trodden by them in their rush for shelter from the storm, they have no difficulty in getting out. So on they ride up the steep acclivity to the cliff’s crest; which last is on a level with the pampa itself.
But on reaching it, a sight meets their eyes—it is now daylight—causing a surprise to Ludwig and Cypriano; but to Gaspar something more—something akin to dismay. For the sage gaucho mentally sees further than either of his less experienced companions; and that now observed by him gives token of a new trouble in store for them. The plain is no longer a green grassy savanna, as when they galloped across it on the afternoon preceding, but a smooth expanse, dark brown in colour, its surface glittering under the red rays of the rising sun, whose disc is as yet but half visible above the horizon!
“Santos Dios!” exclaims the gaucho, as he sits in his saddle, contemplating the transformation, to him no mystery. “I thought it would be so.”
“How very strange!” remarks Ludwig.
“Not at all strange, señorito; but just as it should be, and as we might have expected.”
“But what has caused it?”
“Oh, cousin,” answered Cypriano, who now comprehends all. “Can’t you see? I do.”
“See what?”
“Why, that the dust has settled down over the plain; and the rain coming after, has converted it into mud.”
“Quite right, Señor Cypriano,” interposes Gaspar; “but that isn’t the worst of it.”
Both turn their eyes upon him, wondering what worse he can allude to. Cypriano interrogates:—
“Is it some new danger, Gaspar?”
“Not exactly a danger, but almost as bad; a likelihood of our being again delayed.”
“But how?”
“We’ll no longer have track or trace to guide us, if this abominable sludge extend to the river; as I daresay it does. There we’ll find the trail blind as an owl at noontide. As you see, the thing’s nearly an inch thick all over the ground. ’Twould smother up the wheel-ruts of a loaded carreta.”
His words, clearly understood by both his young companions, cause them renewed uneasiness. For they can reason, that if the trail be obliterated, their chances of being able to follow the route taken by the abductors will be reduced to simple guessing; and what hope would there be searching that way over the limitless wilderness of the Chaco?
“Well?” says Gaspar, after they had remained for some moments gazing over the cheerless expanse which extends to the very verge of their vision, “it won’t serve any good purpose, our loitering here. We may as well push on to the river, and there learn the worst—if worst it’s to be. Vamonos!”
With this, the Spanish synonym for “Come along!” the gaucho gives his horse a dig in the ribs, with spur rowels of six inches diameter, and starts off at a swinging pace, the others after.
And now side by side go all three, splashing and spattering through the mortar-like mud, which, flung up in flakes by their horses’ hoofs, is scattered afar in every direction.
Half an hour of quick cantering brings them back upon the Pilcomayo’s bank; not where they had parted from it, but higher up, near the mouth of the arroyo. For Gaspar did not deem it necessary to return to that prophetic tree, whose forecast has proved so unfailing. To have gone back thither would have been a roundabout of several miles, since they had made a cross-cut to reach the cavern; and as on the way they had seen nothing of the Indian trail, it must needs have continued up the river.
But now, having reached this, they cannot tell; for here, as on all the plain over which they have passed, is spread the same coating of half-dried dirt, fast becoming drier and firmer as the ascending tropical sun, with strengthened intensity, pours his hot beams upon it. It has smothered up the Indian’s trail as completely as it snow several inches deep lay upon it. No track there, no sign to show, that either horses or men ever passed up the Pilcomayo’s bank.
“Caspita!” exclaims the gaucho, in spiteful tone. “It is as I anticipated; blind as an old mule with a tapojo over its eyes. May the fiends take that tormenta!”