Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

The corregidor looked at me curiously; a lone traveler at night on the high plateaus in these uncertain times and speaking bad Spanish was something of a novelty. One of the ragged policemen took me in charge and once again I was back in the dark alleys. Before a door in a long wall we stopped and then a rusty key squeaked and both horse and I walked through into the walled patio around whose sides opened the windowless rooms. The policeman brought in a bundle of cebada for my horse and a bowl of native Bolivian soup-stew, stinging with aji and grateful in its warmth. For the food and forage I paid, but for the house and shelter the corregidor would accept nothing. There was no bed nor did I need any, with my saddle and blankets. After the door had been barricaded with the log used for the purpose, I was asleep at once to the lulling of drums and flutes and banging dynamite.

CHAPTER XX
AMBUSHED BY LADRONES

Early in the morning I was off; some of the celebrants of the night before were strewn along the streets, still drunk, and among them the sociable hogs rooted or wandered. The horse I looked over anxiously, but he was sound as a dollar and even a little frisky in the keen air. Once in a while an Indian was to be seen plowing a tiny patch of the Andean plateau with a bull and a crooked tree trunk or here and there a single figure plodding the trail. In the afternoon I caught up with a Spaniard, the manager of a gold mine back in the mountains he said, and together we rode comfortably along. Until we met I had no idea of the enormous craving for companionship that can develop in the human mind. Bolivian fashion, he had galloped and exhausted his horse in the early morning and now it could not be urged off a tired walk.

At Cocuta we stopped and had a little supper, some fried eggs and a hot stew, mainly of aji, while the horses rested with loosened girths. La Paz was only some twelve miles distant and to the edge of the high plain from which its lights could be seen even less. I was going on so that I could get in that night. The Spaniard’s idea was to stop in one of the mud rooms of the tambo and ride in, freshened, foam-bedecked, and prancing in the morning. The mud rooms, acrid with llama-dung smoke from the cooking fires and infested as well, made no appeal to me. My companion went outside to look over his horse and came back in a state of suppressed excitement. He beckoned me over in one of the mud rooms:

“There are here a gang of ladrones—highwaymen,” he said. “We must go on at once I know them. They killed the mail carrier on the trail last month. We dare not stop here—we will saddle slowly and ride on as if we had not noticed them. Then we can see if they follow.”

We tightened the girths and the Spaniard’s Indian boy picked up his bundle and swung alongside on foot—he could keep up with the horse at the end of a day’s march on the trails. As we rode out of the corral there was a group of Cholos and Bolivians mud spattered and dusty who had evidently just arrived. Their animals wandered around while their riders with a bottle of alcohol and some bottles of native beer were getting drunk as rapidly as possible. One of them had on an old style blue army overcoat of the United States and, so far as looks went, they easily lived up to the reputation of brigands that my Spanish friend had just given them.

The interesting question for us was whether they would follow and overtake us. The cold afterglow of sunset was almost at our backs and we carefully watched the long, level horizon on which Cocuta long remained in sight for signs of horsemen. The Spaniard was for covering ground as fast as possible, but I insisted on keeping to a walk; his horse was played out and needed to be saved up to the last minute if we were really in for a bad time.

It grew dark, and the thinnest possible silver of moon gave only an accent to the night. No following horsemen had appeared and we were feeling quite relieved when the Indian boy spoke to the Spaniard. Off on our right, perhaps a couple of hundred feet from the trail furrows, rode a little group of horsemen. There were four or five, in the night it was uncertain, but they were off the trail—for nothing that one could imagine except of a sinister purpose since everyone follows the trail—and suiting their pace to ours, were walking abreast without closing in. We had dismounted to ease our horses and now we climbed back into the saddles. The figures did not close in nor did they give any sign.

“They are trying to count us,” said my friend, and then he added, “have you another pistol, señor, one that you could lend me—I have not one.”

I had not. And I remember to this day the cold, clammy undulations of my spine as I realized that the only gun between us belonged to me and that whatever responsibilities the situation developed the field of action was also to be wholly mine.