“Cómo no! Gracias,” I answered, fancying the good-hearted old fellow was about to favor me with a tin crucifix or a bottle of holy water.
He sat up slowly and, pulling open a drawer of his massive home-made desk, took out five silver soles ($2.50), and held them toward me.
“Mil gracias, no, señor,” I cried in astonishment.
“Tómaselos—take them as a memento,” he persisted, attempting to thrust the coins into my pocket. Plainly he regarded my refusal a mere preliminary formality to save my face. So ingrained is the Latin-American notion that no man exerts himself physically, except under compulsion, that, for all my explanations, he still cherished the idea that I traveled on foot because I had not the means to travel otherwise. Nor did I avoid his proposed charity without a great waste of flowery Castilian, and for all that left him somewhat offended. Even the sons of the misled German could not be made to understand why I had refused the proposed benefaction. “Andarines” of the Peyrounel variety have given these isolated towns of the Andes the impression that all foreigners arriving on foot were “living on the country.” Tramps, in our sense of the word, are unknown in the Andes. The few foreign “beach-combers” who reach Peru rarely get beyond Lima, and the Indians still cling to the Inca rule—though they may no longer know that an Inca ever existed—of each man sticking pertinaciously to his own birthplace. It is as impossible for the American to realize the absolute lack of anything approaching wanderlust in the Andean, and his dread of moving away from his native pueblo, as it is for the Indian to understand why the American is so far from home. Even among the more or less educated officials I could not shake off the title “andarín.” More than one rural “authority” showed himself aggrieved because I did not ask for his testimonial, seal, and signature, fancying himself slighted as of too little importance. Many another assured the gaping bystanders:
“Ah, ganan un platal, esa gente—Those fellows win a wad of money! When he gets back, his government will give him a great prize, at least 300,000 soles for the trip, señores.”
A prize, indeed! As if there were not a prize at every turn of the winding trail, in every new vista of tumultuous nature under the clear metallic blue of the highland sky!
I determined to push on next morning, for Pallasca was no nearer recovery than my journey’s end. The diluted Germans had promised to have an Indian carrier ready at dawn. But they were true Peruvians. The morning was half gone when I gave up in disgust and set out alone. At the zaguan, however, a fishy-eyed Indian rose to his feet to say that he had been sent by the gobernador to “assist” me, and I piled my bundle upon him forthwith.
Though Pallasca seems to perch on the very summit of the world, the trail managed to find another range to climb. Scores of cold, crystal-clear streams babbled tantalizingly across my path. A cosmic wilderness of gaunt and haggard mountains, here throwing forward bare and repulsive outliers, there weirdly decorated with shadow-pictures of clouds and jutting headlands, lay tumbled on every hand as far as the eye could range. The Indian chewed coca constantly, pausing frequently to dip a bit of lime from the gourd he carried at his waist, and appeared to have as little energy as I. When we had crawled some six miles, and a scattered hamlet was visible about as far ahead, with a deep gash of the earth between, he began to complain of pains, and finally lay down in the trail. I did not regret the halt, but when I had waited a half-hour and his groans still sounded, I sought to urge him on. It was useless. Whether he was really ailing—and Sunday may have left him with what is technically known in sporting circles as a “hang-over”—or was merely taking this means of shirking an unwelcome task, now we were far enough away so that I was not likely to return to complain to the gobernador, arguments and threats moved him exactly as they would have the rocks on which he writhed. Consigning him to the nethermost regions, I struggled to my feet under my harness and staggered on down the stony bajada.
Hours afterward, utterly exhausted by the short dozen miles, I entered the mud hamlet of Huandoval, expecting a miserable night on the earth floor of some icy dungeon hut. It was not quite so bad as that. At the first doorway where I paused to inquire for the gobernador, a half-Indian young woman of unusual Andean intelligence offered me lodging where I stood. The baked-mud den was as dreary as usual, but in a corner stood a bare slat bedstead, half-buried under an immense heap of potatoes. Early as it was, I spread my poncho and lay down, anticipating a welcome repose—only to discover that I was lodged in the Huandoval telephone exchange! On the wall hung an aged Errickson instrument, the strange vagaries of which brought the chola in upon me as often as its jangle sounded. The place, too, like telephone exchanges the world over, was exceedingly popular with the young men of the town, and when my rest was not being broken by some mistaken call from another exchange, it was disrupted by the labored wit of some rural Lothario.
It is but eight miles from Huandoval to Cabana, capital of the province; yet it required nine hours of the most concentrated effort, both mental and physical, to drive myself over the low, barren ridge that separates the two towns. The story of the next few days, trivial in detail, I give in no spirit of complaint, but merely because it sheds so direct a light on the character of the Andean Peruvian. I had learned that there was a hospital in Huaráz, the department capital, and requested the subprefect of Cabana to use his authority to help me hire a horse, as he was in duty bound to do by the official orders I carried.