Andrés cinched up the sagging chipas on the pack-mule, setting his bare foot against its ribs and hauling at the hair rope with main strength. The traveler likewise tightened his saddle-girth and swung up. Half an hour more, and they were some miles down the slope, descending at a gait which was decidedly smart compared with the snail’s pace of the last few hours. Through gaps in the foothills ahead came now and then wondrous outlooks across the upper Bolivian plateau. Off to the left was the glorious blue of Titi-caca, highest great lake in the world; behind it, and stretching far to the right, the still more glorious white of the great Andes of Bolivia.
“There, mps, is Mururata, the Beheaded,” said the arriero, pointing to a flat-topped peak far lower than the rest, but still tall enough to wear eternal snow. “The gods cut off its head long ago, to punish pride, and set it over yonder, where you will soon see it smoke—for now it is a fire mountain.” Andrés trotted along, pointing, chattering, smiling, as if breath were quite the cheapest thing on earth.
Just then the traveler found a little, too—but not for the lost head of Mururata. He was staring across a saddle in the hills with very much such a face of incredulity and bewilderment as one might wear at sight of a ghost.
“Seest thou?” he demanded of the arriero. “Confuse me, but I thought there was no such thing as a wheel in the country, except the Chililaya stage.”
“Oh, si, viracocha—in La Paz are five or six carriages! And yonder will be the Jaúregui going to their chacra.”[29]
A top buggy of most ancient pattern was creeping up around the turn at the heels of four tired mules. In a few moments the travelers were not far apart; and now Andrés’s employer broke out afresh, but in a lower tone:
“Oyez! But where is the feast to which these maromeros go?”
They did look clown-like enough, to be sure. The driver was clearly an Aymará Indian, and showed nothing more peculiar than the quaint garb of his people. But at his left sat two tall and surprising figures in long linen dusters and white peaked caps. The latter were shaped something like fools’ caps; but instead of ending at the ears came down upon the shoulders, over the whole head. Eye and mouth holes and a woven nose gave them a finish as uncanny as it was strange.
“Á Diós, caballero!” cried a muffled voice in clearly well-bred Spanish; and the Indian driver pulled the willing mules to a halt. One of the masks leaned from the carriage, and from behind the white yarn a pair of keen, black eyes stared first at the pack-mule and then at the American.