"Have you fallen in with them often, Dias?"
"Yes; but, as you see, they have done me no harm. Sometimes, when I get to the end of my journey, the mules are not so heavily laden as when I started; but generally the people for whom I work say to me, 'Here are so many dollars, Dias; they are for toll.' There are places in the villages at the foot of the most-frequented passes where it is understood that a payment of so many dollars per mule will enable you to pass without molestation. In return for your money, you receive a ribbon, or a rosette, or a feather, and this you place in your hat as a passport. You may meet a few men with guns as you pass along, but when they see the sign they salute you civilly, ask for a drink of wine if you are carrying it, then wish you good-day. It is only in little-frequented passes that you have to take your chance. I may say that though these men may plunder, they never kill a muleteer. They know that if they did, all traffic on that road would cease, and the soldiers would find guides who knew every path and hiding-place in the mountains."
"Anyhow, I think it is well, Dias, that I took your advice, and handed over my gold to Señor Pasquez, for if we do fall into the hands of any of these gentry, we can lose practically nothing."
"No money, señor, but we might lose everything else, except perhaps the mules, which they could not use in the mountains. But if they were to take our blankets, and tents, and provisions, and your firearms, we should be in a bad way if we happened to be a couple of hundred miles in the heart of the mountains."
"Well, I don't think they will take them," Harry said grimly, "without paying pretty dearly for them. With your gun and our rifles, and that old fowling-piece which you got for José, which will throw a fairly heavy charge of buck-shot, I think we can make a very good fight against any band of eight men, or even one or two more."
"I think so," Dias said gravely. "It is seldom I miss my mark. Still, I hope we shall not be troubled with them, or with the Indians. You see, it is not so much an attack by day that we have to fear, as a surprise at night. Of course, when we are once on the hills, José and I will keep watch by turns. He is as sharp as a needle. I should have no fear of any of these robbers creeping up to us without his hearing them. But I can't say so much for him in the case of the Indians, who can move so noiselessly that even a vicuña would not hear them until they were within a spear's-throw."
"The spear is their weapon then, Dias?"
"Some tribes carry bows and arrows, others only spears, and sometimes they poison the points of both these weapons."
"That is unpleasant. Are there remedies for the poisons?"
"None that I know of, nor do I think the savages themselves know of any. The only chance is to pour ammonia at once into the hole that is made by an arrow, and to cut out all the flesh round a spear-wound, and then to pour in ammonia or sear it with a hot iron."