“We gente blanca have not the indifference to cold of los naturales,” I replied.
“Well, then, here in the kitchen,” he grumbled.
“How about that casita?” I asked, pointing to a pampa-grass lean-to against the largest hut.
“That is where the family sleeps.”
“And that?” I persisted, indicating a structure of beehive or beaver-house shape, built entirely of ichu and with a rounded door not three feet high, that stood forth on a knoll behind the others.
But that, it seemed, was where the watchman slept—though what he watched was not apparent. After a long conference in Quichua, however, this was assigned me with sullen grace; a boy was sent to drag out the “watchman’s” bed of sheepskins, and I struggled up to the shelter with saddle, pack, and equipment, and crawled inside on hands and knees. The choza was constructed on the same plan as the wigwams of the American “red men,”—a pole frame set up cone-shaped and covered with mountain grass, through which the bitter wind that swept across this sterile upland cut as a knife through cheesecloth, and so low that even in the center I could barely stand upright on my knees. The chusco had been turned over to a boy who was to watch it all night for a week’s wage. It was not that I took much stock in the Indian’s assertion that there was horse-stealing in these parts; but I hoped by this arrangement to forestall any rascality he might himself set afoot. The “watching,” however, was evidently by some species of aboriginal telepathy; for not only was no sign of a guardian to be seen as often as I crawled out into that interminable night, but when morning came the head of the household greeted me with:
“El chusco se ha perdido—the animal has lost itself.”
“Lost!” I cried.
“Sí, señor, but it will be found again. The boy has already been sent to search for it.”
How even my long-experienced instinct for guessing aright among a hundred splendid chances to go astray saved me from getting hopelessly lost during that day, I have never been able to fathom. Across the utterly uninhabited and almost untraveled mountain-top the trail was at best faintly marked, and finally, beyond the cold, blue lake of Lauracocha, reputed the real source of the Amazon, it disappeared altogether. For hours I prodded my wretched imitation of a horse forward by compass over hill and dale, and by some stroke of luck fell upon the trail again beyond. Soon the pampa gave way to green and tremulous sod, and a swamp in which I all but mired the animal beyond recovery. Nor did the route hold to the same direction, but frequently sidestepped unexpectedly for no apparent reason, and it was only by the general lay of the hills and the instinct of long practice that I picked it up again. Once it split evenly, and the branch I chose led far up the face of a thousand-foot cliff, the path hewn in the sheer wall growing ever narrower, until the animal thumped my knee against the stone precipice and all but pitched us headlong into the appalling ravine below. To dismount was no simple task, and had the horse been a foot longer I should not have succeeded in turning him around and leading the way back to the fork. On the other side of the peak was a great natural stone stairway, down which the animal slipped and dropped with a painful succession of jolts. The gorge narrowed and deepened; then suddenly, close at hand on the steep flank of the mountain, appeared the first llamas I had seen in Peru, a whole flock of them. From then on they were so frequent that within the next half-hour I had seen far more llamas than in all the rest of my life. A new costume for men, at first sight ludicrous, came into evidence almost at the same time. Instead of trousers they wore very roomy, dark-colored breeches, cut off exactly at the knee, so that the first glimpse of their wearers at a distance was little short of startling, suggesting for a moment the astounding incongruity of an Indian woman sporting the skirt of a ballet-dancer. Below these garments they wore the long, knitted wool stockings, gray or black, and the hairy cowhide moccasins that had first appeared a few days before, and as they passed me they snatched off their heavy, brown felt hats with some mumbled greeting in Quichua.