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.”