“Your eyes for it—mine don’t reach so far. But one does look to have fallen behind. Too bad! Now it is to run him down—a man even in a hurry can’t leave the poor wounded brute to be gouged piecemeal by the condors. Go on thy best with the pack-beast, Andrés, and I’ll catch thee at the tambo, or sooner.”
The arriero ambled on, with now and then a reminding cudgel to his charge. A funny man, this—no? But then, no doubt all gringos were a little wrong in the head. To refuse two hundred bolivianos for a picture, and then go ramping off to kill a wounded vicuña! Smart are the Yanquis, yes—but of reason, not much. As if the condors were to blame if they could catch a thing injured! And it can be that they will have mule as well as vicuña for supper. The viracocha evidently forgets that he is on the ground of the mountain sickness. Pity if it should catch him—since he is very good, unbrained though he be.
But at a turn in the trail Andrés found other matters to be thought of than the general follies and occasional virtues of the Yanquis. Other ears than his had heard the rifle, and other eyes noted the traveler’s tangent; and now the young Indian gave a start very like one of fear at the rattle of wheels behind him and an imperious call of “Alto!”
II.
Andrés glanced over his shoulder and faced about in his tracks. It was only for an instant that he thought of running. He might make a break down the rough hillside, where the carriage could not follow, yes. But the pack-mule, sagging under those boxes, of which the viracocha was so tender! The boy’s thick lips drew tight across his large, white teeth. He would stay. The instant he ceased to beset its heels the fagged beast stopped too, and there they stood like two shabby statues, while the carriage drew alongside.
“So the gringo hunts, eh?” spoke one of the maskers, briskly, stepping down from the buggy. “But he is very high priced, it seems—as much as unamiable. Come, tell us how much he does get—for in truth I thought we offered enough.”
“Who knows, your excellency?” stammered Andrés. “It is a month that I am with him as arriero, and until now he pictures only the monuments. And even of those I have not yet seen the retratos, for he says he is to finish them when we shall reach La Paz. Of people he always refuses—as your excellency saw. Except that once, in Copacabana, he pictured an ancient beggar at the gate, taking no money.”
“Ay, but these gringos are many sorts of fools—and this one all sorts. Come, then, these vistas he has made, they will be in the chipas. To see them!”
The speaker’s air and tone were plainly those of one who has no dream of not being obeyed, and he fairly stiffened with astonishment when the arriero, rather pale and very much embarrassed, stammered:
“P-pero, excellency, I—I—cannot!”