“Nor from anywhere else, sir,” grumbled the man. “Why, if any one told me that if you dropped down there, you’d come out somewhere by Simla, I should believe him, for I know they go right through.”
“Nonsense!” said Perry, laughing. “There, father’s beckoning to me.”
It was evening once more, and they were coming again to an opening among the lower mountains, where they would halt for the night. In fact, half an hour later the leading Indian checked his mule in a bowl-shaped hollow, where there was a dense little wood of goodly-sized trees, and a thread-like fall of water came curving down into a mossy basin, while the whole place was brightened by the reflection from the mountains, made dazzling now by the setting sun.
The preparations were made for the evening meal with quite military precision; the arms were placed near the fire, and, as if in imitation, the two Indians placed together their long stave-like blowpipes and bows and arrows, before helping to unload the mules, and then sitting down patiently to administer snuff to each other, and wait to be asked to join the meal.
“It’s very awkward, Perry, my lad,” said the colonel suddenly. “We ought to have had a guide who could understand us more easily.”
“It is awkward, father,” said Perry.
“Come and help me now, and between us we may make the man comprehend.”
Perry followed to where the Indians were squatting down in their loose cotton smock-frock-like garments, and at a sign the leader rose.
“The other man—where is the other man?” said the colonel in Spanish; but the Indian gazed at him vacantly, till in a fit of inspiration Perry repeated his father’s words as nearly as he could, and then began to count, laughing as he said in Spanish, “One—two”—and gave an inquiring tone to the word “three,” as if asking for it.
The man smiled and pointed to the ground as he answered, and then closed his eyes and let his head fall over upon one hand.