“Pierda cuidado,” orated the thin, angular fellow, peering at me with his short-sighted squint, “the government will furnish you a horse and all that is needed.”
Nobody wanted the government to furnish me anything, but I did not stop to argue the matter. My entire attention was taken up just then with resisting the efforts of the “authorities” to throw me into a dank mud den, under the allegation that it was a lodging. Fortunately there was some one else than Peruvians in the town. It was through the village priest that I won at last a second-story room above the prefectura, of mud floor in spite of its elevation, supported on poles that yielded to the tread. He was a tall, powerfully-built Basque of fifty, with a massive Roman nose and, in memory of his mountain-land, a boína set awry on his head and matching his long, flowing gown only in color. He had suffered from the same ailment during his first year in this foreign land and was sure he knew an instant cure—and instead of merely talking about it, like a native, he sent a man to prepare it. This was a half-bottle of wine boiled with the bark of a mountain tree called the cimarruba; but whatever effectiveness it might have possessed was offset by the impossibility of keeping to a proper diet, or even of getting boiled water to drink. There was no doctor in Cabana; yet all Cabana posed as physicians. Now some fellow would drop in to say, “the very best thing you can eat is pork-chops,” and he would scarcely be out of sight before another paused to assure me that pork-chops would kill me within an hour. “Eat the whites of eggs,” cried another. “You can eat almost anything,” asserted the next comer, “except the whites of eggs.” Again the room would be darkened by a shadow in the doorway, and a man would step forward to say, “Now here is an old Indian woman from up in the mountains whose grandfather’s nephew died of dysentery, and....”
All night the town boomed with fireworks, the howling of dogs, the bawling of drunken citizens, and the atrocious uproar of a local “band,” for it was the eve of something or other. Far from finding the promised horse waiting for me at dawn, I did not see the shadow of a person until after ten. Then a stupid, insolent soldier came to ask if I wanted “breakfast.” At twelve he had not returned. I dragged myself down to the plaza. The subprefect and all his henchmen were making merry in a pulpería. I requested him to have some one prepare me food, at any price. Price? They were horrified! Of course they could not think of letting me pay for anything. I was the guest of Cabana. They would obsequiar me a “magnificent meal” at once, cried the subprefect, tying himself in several knots in his excess of courtesy. What would I like, roast lamb with eggs, a fine steak with.... No, I would be completely satisfied with a bowl of gruel. Ah, certainly, I should have it at once, and a basket of fruit, and ... and there they dropped the matter, until the priest, discovering my plight, well on in the afternoon, sent up a dish of rice gruel.
Everything does not come to him who waits in the Andes, and I descended again to mention the word “horse” to the now reeling subprefect.
“Have no care,” he hiccoughed, “the government will attend to all that.”
Knowing he was merely showing off before his fellow-townsmen, and that he would really let me lie where I was, or at most furnish me some crippled Rozinante to carry me to Tauca, three miles away, I refused his putative charity. He turned to the crowd about us with a pretense of being hurt to the quick, then sent a boy to summon the half-negro gobernador, likewise maudlin with the celebration.
“Since this señor has declined my offer to furnish him all that is needed,” stuttered the offended subprefect, “you will have a paid horse, with saddle and bridle, ready for him—to-morrow.”
“But why not to-day?” I protested.
“Absurd, señor! To-day is the great Corpus Cristi procession and you would not wish to miss that, even if you could get an Indian to go with you.”
The procession, set for mid-morning, started soon after my return to my room. From the altar of the church it encircled the plaza and returned whence it had come. The route had been carefully scraped and swept—evidently for the only time during the year—by ragged Indians, forced to contribute this pious labor by the several grades of labor-dodging “authorities” howling over them. Then it had been spread with a long strip of carpet, after which came scores of barefoot women to cover it with a fixed design of flower-petals of all colors. Then forth from the mud church issued the Basque priest in cream-tinted vestments, his boína and incessant cigarette gone, four Indians protecting him from the dull, sunless day by a rich canopy. Proceeded, followed, or surrounded by all the bareheaded, drink-maudlin piety of Cabana, the distressing “band” blowing itself wobbly-kneed, he moved slowly forward, only his own sacred feet touching the carpet, women and children pouncing upon the flower petals behind as rapidly as they were blessed by his number-eleven tread, and carrying them off as sacred relics. Outwardly he seemed sunk in the profoundest depths of devotion, yet twice, at a sign from me, he halted the procession, as by previous understanding, until I had caught a picture. Over the door of the towered mud-hovel into which the throng crowded after him were the half-effaced words, “Haec est domus dei et porta cieli.” No doubt they were right, but it would have been easy to have mistaken it for something else.