In the gathering darkness Raoul saw, just emerging from the cleft in the rocks, the huge figure of a man, dressed, as all travelers are in the mountains, in wide sombrero, capacious ruana, great hair-covered leggings reaching to the waist, his spurred heels clattering on the stones as he walked towards them. Two mules followed closely, the bridle of the foremost held in his hand; behind these came a burro, loaded with mountainous baggage which swayed from side to side as the patient little animal picked his way along the treacherous path.
“Good evening, senor,” said the man suavely, as if Raoul were some old acquaintance whom he expected to meet. “It grows dark quickly. Moreover, it is far to the city and the beasts are tired. We stop for the night at La Granja. And you, Senor?”
“My horse is fresh, I will ride to Bogota.”
“A stranger?” queried the man.
“An American.”
“Ah!” Then, as if to atone for his surprise: “Bueno, in Bogota my house is yours.”
Only the sure-footed mules of the Andes could have threaded this handsbreadth of a path in safety, and only a horsewoman of the lithe grace and dexterity of this daughter of the mountains could have swung herself with such slight assistance into the high, clumsy saddle as did this girl addressed as Sajipona.
“Watch your burro, Senor,” warned Raoul, viewing with some anxiety that much encumbered animal wavering disconsolately on the brink of the precipice. “He will slip into the lake.”
“Eh, Senor!” grunted the man, vaulting heavily to the back of his mule, at the same time spurring and then checking him with the reins. “He knows his business, the canaille! Besides,” he added, chuckling to himself, “we carry no treasure for Guatavita. Since the days of Sajipa, men pay no tribute here—they look for it instead.”