Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

The hold-up in these parts is not practiced with the gentle chivalry of the “hands up” or stand-and-deliver method; you are first shot up and, if the aim has been successful from the chosen ambush, your remains are searched. Spanish—or the surviving Bolivian procedure—places a very high value on the testimony of surviving principals, so much so that one of the effects of any form of hold-up is to see that there are no surviving principals.

The little figures off the trail kept pace with us and gave no sign. Presently they gradually quickened their gait and disappeared in the darkness ahead. The Spaniard laid his hand softly on my arm:

“They have gone ahead to await us in an arroyo, señor,” he said. “Be sure that your pistol is in order.”

These arroyos are gashes in the high plateau, sometimes only six or eight feet deep and more often deep gullies with a dried watercourse at the bottom into which one rides in steep zigzags like the mountain trails, and by reason of having the only gun it became my part to ride ahead. Presently we came to one—deep and as dark as the inside of a cow. There was nothing else to do so I cocked my gun, a forty-four, Russian model, and shoved the spurs in so that my horse would take the trail, down into the arroyo first. There was not a sound except the rattle of stones from my horse’s feet; there was not a thing that could be seen in the darkness; I was on edge for the slightest sound.

“If you hear a sound, señor, shoot!” said my fellow traveler as I spurred ahead.

It seemed an age before I rode out on the plain on the other side—and it was only a little arroyo. And there were some eight or ten more of these ahead. How many we passed I do not remember, but it was from the opposite bank of one deep gully that I heard the rattle of displaced gravel and I swung my gun into the direction of the sound and blazed away. Down the last slope of the near side my horse slid and then in a rattling gallop stumbling and pitching over the dried watercourse on up the opposite side while I banged away in the direction of the first sound. More gravel poured down and then there came the sounds of scurrying and of hoof beats pounding on hard ground. Close behind me came the Spaniard in a clatter of flying stones and still further behind the noise of his Indian boy scuttling down the bank and trying to keep up.

On the farther bank we halted and took stock. To this day I do not know how many shots I fired for I broke the gun, dumped out all the shells, and reloaded without taking stock of expended ammunition. But the tension was gone; we looked at each other in the darkness and the rest of the trail seemed easy.

“They will not likely appear again,” he said. “But there are one or two bad places yet.”

There were narrow zigzags with sharp turns guarded by jutting rocks where a man could be hidden until the horse pivoted for the sharp turn and this constant riding with a cocked gun into a black gash that maybe contained something that never appeared wore on the nerves. How much I did not know until, as we rode into the outskirts of La Paz, a couple of fighting bulls broke loose in the streets and a loose fighting bull is very dangerous. A man on horseback was perfectly safe, but at the shrill, terrified cries of “los toros! los toros!” and the low bellow of the bulls, I spurred on a law-breaking gallop through the streets of La Paz and did not stop until I had clattered into the patio of the hotel. My nerve was gone.

The trouble over the lack of company funds was soon located. Our agent in La Paz, a hard drinking old man of many exaggerated politenesses and a teller of tales that began with a British commission in a Bengal lancers regiment and drifted through Sioux and Blackfeet raids, a man who was utterly delightful across a club table, had been seized with a madness for power. The poor old fellow, as honest as he was shiftless, a genteel drifter for years, had become an appointed and accredited resident agent and with a full company cash box felt for the first time in years the thrill of responsibility as “agent” and had been for days shifting from club to hotel and back to the club maudlin with boasts and Scotch-and-sodas. It did not take long to straighten out affairs and soon I was headed for the interior.