A Fight for Life.
We have left behind us the montaño, with its verdant uplands and waving forests, its blooming valleys, flower-strewed savannas, and sunny waters, and are crawling painfully along a ledge, hardly a yard wide, stern gray rocks all round us, a foaming torrent only faintly visible in the prevailing gloom a thousand feet below. Our mules, obtained at the last village in the fertile region, move at the speed of snails, for the path is slippery and insecure, and one false step would mean death for both the rider and the ridden,
Presently the gorge widens into a glen, where forlorn flowers struggle toward the scanty light and stunted trees find a precarious foothold among the rocks and stones. Soon the ravine narrows again, narrows until it becomes a mere cleft; the mule-path goes up and down like some mighty snake, now mounting to a dizzy height, anon descending to the bed of the thundering torrent. The air is dull and sepulchral, an icy wind blows in our faces, and though I am warmly clad, and wrapped besides in a thick poncho, I shiver to the bone.
At length we emerge from this valley of the shadow of death, and after crossing an arid yet not quite treeless plain, begin to climb by many zigzags an almost precipitous height. The mules suffer terribly, stopping every few minutes to take breath, and it is with a feeling of intense relief that, after an ascent of two hours, we find ourselves on the cumbre, or ridge of the mountain.
For the first time since yesterday we have an unobstructed view. I dismount and look round. Backward stretches an endless expanse of bleak and stormy-swept billowy mountains; before us looms, in serried phalanx, the western Cordillera, dazzling white, all save one black-throated colossus, who vomits skyward thick clouds of ashes and smoke, and down whose ragged flanks course streams of fiery lava.
After watching this stupendous spectacle for a few minutes we go on, and shortly reach another and still loftier quebrada. Icicles hang from the rocks, the pools of the streams are frozen; we have reached an altitude as high as the summit of Mont Blanc, and our distended lips, swollen hands, and throbbing temples show how great is the rarefaction of the air.
None of us suffer so much from the cold as poor Gahra. His ebon skin has turned ashen gray, he shivers continually, can hardly speak, and sits on his mule with difficulty.
The country we are in is uninhabited and the trail we are following known only to a few Indians. I am the first white man, says Gondocori, by whom it has been trodden.
We pass the night in a ruined building of cyclopean dimensions, erected no doubt in the time of the Incas, either for the accommodation of travellers by whom the road was then frequented or for purposes of defence. But being both roofless, windowless, and fireless, it makes only a poor lodging. The icy wind blows through a hundred crevices; my limbs are frozen stiff, and when morning comes many of us look more dead than alive.
I asked Condocori how the poor girls of San Andrea could possibly have survived so severe a journey.
“The weaker would have died. But I did not expect this cold. The winter is beginning unusually early this year. Had we been a few days later we should not have got through at all, and if it begins to snow it may go ill with us, even yet. But to-morrow the worst will be over.”
The cacique had so far behaved very well, treating me as a friend and an equal, and doing all he could for my comfort. His men treated me as a superior. Gondocori said very little about his country, still less about Queen Mamcuna, whom he also called “Great Mother.” To my frequent questions on these subjects he made always the same answer: “Patience, you will see.”
He did, however, tell me that his people called their country Pachatupec and themselves Pachatupecs, that the Spaniards had never subdued them or even penetrated into the fastnesses where they dwelt, and that they spoke the ancient language of Peru.
Gondocori admitted that his mother was a Christian, and to her he no doubt owed his notions of religion and the regularity of his features. She had been carried off as he meant to carry off the seven maidens of the Happy Valley, for the misterios had a theory that a mixture of white and Indian blood made the finest children and the boldest warriors. But white wives being difficult to obtain, mestiza maidens had generally to be accepted, or rather, taken in their stead.
We rose before daybreak and were in the saddle at dawn. The ground and the streams are hard frozen, and the path is so slippery that the trembling mules dare scarcely put one foot before the other, and our progress is painfully slow. We are in a broad, stone-strewed valley, partly covered with withered puma-grass, on which a flock of graceful vicuñas are quietly grazing, as seemingly unconscious of our presence as the great condors which soar above the snowy peaks that look down on the plain.
As we leave the valley, through a pass no wider than a gateway, the cacique gives me a word of warning.
“The part we are coming to is the most dangerous of all,” he said. “But it is, fortunately, not long. Two hours will bring us to a sheltered valley. And now leave everything to your mule. If you feel nervous shut your eyes, but as you value your life neither tighten your reins nor try to guide him.”
I repeat this caution to Gahra, and ask how he feels.
“Much better, señor; the sunshine has given me new life. I feel equal to anything.”
And now we have to travel once more in single file, for the path runs along a mountain spur almost as perpendicular as a wall; we are between two precipices, down which even the boldest cannot look without a shudder. The incline, moreover, is rapid, and from time to time we come to places where the ridge is so broken and insecure that we have to dismount, let our mules go first, and creep after them on our hands.
At the head of the file is an Indian who rides the madrina (a mare) and acts as guide, next come Gondocori, myself and Gahra, followed by the other mounted Indians, three or four baggage-mules, and two men on foot.
We have been going thus nearly an hour, when a sudden and portentous change sets in. Murky clouds gather round the higher summits and shut out the sun, a thick mist settles down on the ridge, and in a few minutes we are folded in a gloom hardly less dense than midnight darkness.
“Halt!” shouts the guide.
“What shall we do?” I ask the cacique, whom, though he is but two yards from me, I cannot see.
“Nothing. We can only wait here till the mist clears away,” he shouts in a muffled voice.
“And how soon may that be?”
“Quien Sabe? Perhaps a few minutes, perhaps hours.”
Hours! To stand for hours, even for one hour, immovable in that mist on that ridge would be death. Since the sun disappeared the cold had become keener than ever. The blood seems to be freezing in my veins, my beard is a block of ice, icicles are forming on my eyelids.
If this goes on—a gleam of light! Thank Heaven, the mist is lifting, just enough to enable me to see Gondocori and the guide. They are quite white. It is snowing, yet so softly as not to be felt, and as the fog melts the flakes fall faster.
“Let us go on,” says Gondocori. “Better roll down the precipice than be frozen to death. And if we stop here much longer, and the snow continues, the pass beyond will be blocked, and then we must die of hunger and cold, for there is no going back.”
So we move on, slowly and noiselessly, amid the fast-falling snow, like a company of ghosts, every man conscious that his life depends on the sagacity and sure-footedness of his mule. And it is wonderful how wary the creatures are. They literally feel their way, never putting one foot forward until the other is firmly planted. But the snow confuses them. More than once my mule slips dangerously, and I am debating within myself whether I should not be safer on foot, when I hear a cry in front.
“What is it?” I ask Gondocori, for I cannot see past him.
“The guide is gone. The madrina slipped, and both have rolled down the precipice.”
“Shall we get off and walk?”
“If you like. You will not be any safer, though you may feel so. The mules are surer footed than we are, and they have four legs to our two. I shall keep where I am.”
Not caring to show myself less courageous than the cacique, I also keep where I am. We get down the ridge somehow without further mishaps, and after a while find ourselves in a funnel-shaped gully the passage of which, in ordinary circumstances, would probably present no difficulty. But just now it is a veritable battle-field of the winds, which seem to blow from every point of the compass at once. The snow dashes against our faces like spray from the ocean, and whirls round us in blasts so fierce that, at times, we can neither see nor hear. The mules, terrified and exhausted, put down their heads and stand stock-still. We dismount and try to drag them after us, but even then they refuse to move.
“If they won’t come they must die; and unless we hurry on we shall die, too. Forward!” cried Gondocori, himself setting the example.
Never did I battle so hard for very life as in that gully. The snow nearly blinded me, the wind took my breath away, forced me backward, and beat me to the earth again and again. More than once it seemed as if we should have to succumb, and then there would come a momentary lull and we would make another rush and gain a little more ground.
Amid all the hurly-burly, though I cannot think consecutively (all the strength of my body and every faculty of my mind being absorbed in the struggle), I have one fixed idea—not to lose sight of Gondocori, and, except once or twice for a few seconds, I never did. Where he goes I go, and when, after an unusually severe buffeting, he plunges into a snow-drift at the end of the ravine, I follow him without hesitation.
Side by side we fought our way through, dashing the snow aside with our hands, pushing against it with our shoulders, beating it down with our feet, and after a desperate struggle, which though it appeared endless could have lasted only a few minutes, the victory was ours; we were free.
I can hardly believe my eyes. The sun is visible, the sky clear and blue, and below us stretches a grassy slope like a Swiss “alp.” Save for the turmoil of wind behind us and our dripping garments I could believe that I had just wakened from a bad dream, so startling is the change. The explanation is, however, sufficiently simple: the area of the tourmente is circumscribed and we have got out of it, the gully merely a passage between the two mighty ramparts of rock which mark the limits of the tempest and now protect us from its fury.
“But where are the others?”
Up to that moment I had not given them a thought. While the struggle lasted thinking had not been possible. After we abandoned the mules I had eyes only for Gondocori, and never once looked behind me.
“Where are the others?” I asked the cacique.
“Smothered in the snow; two minutes more and we also should have been smothered.”
“Let us go back and see. They may still live.”
“Impossible! We could not get back if we had ten times the strength and were ten instead of two. Listen!”
The roar of the storm in the gully is louder than ever; the drift, now higher than the tallest man, grows even as we look.
Fifteen men buried alive within a few yards of us, yet beyond the possibility of help! Poor Gahra! If he had loved me less and himself more, he would still be enjoying the dolce far niente of Happy Valley, instead of lying there, stark and stiff in his frozen winding-sheet. A word of encouragement, a helping hand at the last moment, and he might have got through. I feel as if I had deserted him in his need; my conscience reproaches me bitterly. And yet—good God! What is that? A black hand in the snow!
“With a single bound I am there. Gondocori follows, and as I seize one hand he finds and grasps the other, and we pull out of the drift the negro’s apparently lifeless body.
“He is dead,” says the cacique.
“I don’t think so. Raise him up, and let the sun shine on him.”
I take out my pocket-flask and pour a few drops of aguardiente down his throat. Presently Gahra sighs and opens his eyes, and a few minutes later is able to stand up and walk about. He can tell very little of what passed in the gully. He had followed Gondocori and myself, and was not far behind us. He remembered plunging into the snow-drift and struggling on until he fell on his face, and then all was a blank. None of the Indians were with him in the drift; he felt sure they were all behind him, which was likely enough, as Gahra, though sensitive to cold, was a man of exceptional bodily strength. It was beyond a doubt that all had perished.
“I left Pachatupec with fifteen braves. I have lost my braves, my mules, and my baggage, and all I have to show are two men, a pale-face and a black-face. Not a single maiden. How will Mamcuna take it, I wonder?” said Gondocari, gloomily. “Let us go on.”
“You think she will be very angry?”
“I do.”
“Is she very unpleasant when she is angry?”
“She generally makes it very unpleasant for others. Her favorite punishment for offenders is roasting them before a slow fire.”
“And yet you propose to go on?”
“What else can we do? Going back the way we came is out of the question, equally so is climbing either of those mountain-ranges. If we stay hereabout we shall starve. We have not a morsel of food, and until we reach Pachatupec we shall get none.”
“And when may that be?”
“By this time to-morrow.”
“Well, let us go on, then; though, as between being starved to death and roasted alive, there is not much to choose. All the same, I should like to see this wonderful queen of whom you are so much afraid.”
“You would be afraid of her, too, and very likely will be before you have done with her. Nevertheless, you may find favor in her sight, and I have just bethought me of a scheme which, if you consent to adopt it, may not only save our lives, but bring you great honor.”
“And what is that scheme, Gondocori?”
“I will explain it later. This is no time for talk. We must push on with all speed or we shall not get to the boats before nightfall.”
“Boats! You surely don’t mean to say that we are to travel to Pachatupec by boats. Boats cannot float on a frozen mountain torrent!”
But the cacique, who was already on the march, made no answer.