“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——