The advance guard moved on, and Matopo passed with his officers, casting a curious glance at the señora as he bowed. She responded with a haughty inclination and compressed her lips. It required all the persuasive eloquence of her three countrymen to induce her to mount and enter the column; but finding separation from Pedro the alternative, she at last consented, declaring vigorously that the barbarian who undertook to make a prisoner of her would repent his insolence and remember the circumstance. She swung into her saddle, disdaining assistance, and they were soon on the march.
Now Cristoval's good heart was warmed by later news of Rava. He rode with Father Tendilla, listening with eagerness to the tale of her sojourn at Xauxa, given with detail and sympathy by the kindly old priest, who was glowing in his eulogies of the gentle proselyte. The cavalier's hundred repeated questions were patiently answered over and over, and before an hour Cristoval had unbosomed himself, candidly revealing his hope of escape with her from the country. The priest listened to the plan, and said:—
"Well, my son, it will be for the child a hazardous undertaking. However, it will be in the guidance of Heaven. I had thought the maiden might find refuge from her sorrows in a life of holiness, for which her spirit seemeth well adapted. If it be otherwise ordained, it would not beseem me to oppose, and I will do all in my power to further thy happiness and hers."
"I thank you, father," said Cristoval. "But do you know whether Rava is aware that I am living?"
"I know not. I have written to Father Valverde since I learned it from the youth whom thou didst send from Xilcala, but have had no reply. Cañares have been abroad, and communication uncertain. The messenger may not have passed them. I have come myself, therefore, thinking to bear the news, but it hath ended—thus,"—and he cast a look over the battalions.
"Doubtless we can send her word," said Cristoval. "Matopo saith she is likely to be at Yucay, where the Incas have a castle. I think we may reach her, good father."
"I pray it may be so, surely," replied Tendilla.
That night the command encamped on the elevated plain of Curahuasi, awaiting the morrow to cross the Apurimac. Before daylight it was moving again, and shortly the head of the column was threading its way down the wall of the chasm whence rose the faint murmur of the torrent, thousands of feet below. The trail seemed to Cristoval a mere scratch on the cliff. At his elbow rose the rock-mass, so steep that scarcely a shrub found clinging-place, while almost beneath his stirrup the precipice dropped away to an abyss. The descent, at first moderate, became so rapid as it zig-zagged from point to point that every step threatened to plunge horse and rider headlong. Generations of wayfarers had worn the rock treacherously smooth, and he presently dismounted to lead his horse. The others followed his example, and he heard the señora whimpering to Pedro. Gingerly now he went, hugging closely to points which so crowded the path that his saddlebow was scraped by the overhanging wall. In places the descent was by steps hewn into the granite, down which his horse blundered perilously, menaced at every slip by a hideous fall into vacancy. Cristoval's eyes were drawn to the brink in resistless fascination, and he crept along with shrinking soul. He heard Pedro muttering: "Martyred saints—and spirits damned! This is what cometh—of being a cook!"
They were hours descending, but the hours seemed days. At length the path lost itself in the blackness of a cavern-mouth. Cristoval found himself in a reverberating tunnel driven three hundred yards through living rock. Openings on the right admitted air and the growing thunder of the torrent. In the open again for another giddy, stumbling clamber down a hundred fathoms; and the bridge! Cristoval whispered a prayer. From a narrow shelf it swung out over the chasm in a long, sweeping curve to its anchorage on the farther side, a mere gossamer swaying in the breeze and vibrating fearfully beneath the soldiers' tread. Cristoval quailed within his steel at its frailty. From a huge windlass on the platform beside him stretched three cables of four or five inches in thickness, forming the support for the narrow floor. Above and on either side was a smaller cable connected with the floor supports by ropes, and serving as guard-rails, though the security afforded was largely moral, the vertical spaces between the cords being large enough to admit of a fall through at any point.
As Cristoval looked out over the quivering one hundred and fifty feet of fragility, listening to the lugubrious creaking of the cables at their anchorage, his hardihood slowly oozed. The bridge was now clear for his passage. He swore a little in undertone, piously consigned himself to the Virgin's keeping, and led off. His horse sniffed at the footway with deep-drawn breaths and long, tremulous expirations, but followed at his word. A stiff breeze was blowing up the canyon, swinging the structure rhythmically through an arc of six or eight feet, and Cristoval's brain reeled as he glanced at the sinister, whirling rush of green and foam bellowing a hundred feet below. Steadying his eyes on a point ahead, he picked his way out into the air. An age in crossing, but at last he neared the end. Here his weight and that of the horse shifted the sag of the cables so that the last few feet were a steep ascent with scant foothold; but he scrambled up, and with a sigh of relief, stood on solid ground. He looked back. Father Tendilla was following, leading his mule and holding his hat in place, the wind tossing and tearing at his robe, and the cavalier turned giddy again as he watched the old priest's slow advance over the narrow, swinging floor. Cristoval gave him a hand at the end, and fairly jerked him to safety on the shelf.