CHAPTER XIV
OVERLAND TOWARD CUZCO
The truly romantic thing, of course, would have been to buy a llama to bear my burdens to the capital of the ancient Inca Empire. But however in keeping with the local color that prehistoric denizen of the Andes might have been, there were at least a score of cold, practical, modern reasons why he was not suited to my purpose. A few of them, such as pace, disposition, slight powers of sustained endurance, and uncompanionable temperament, experience had demonstrated native to a donkey, also. A horse, as a famous traveler has remarked, is a delicate and uncertain ally. A mule, in addition to several traits inherited from his paternal forebear, had the drawback of unattainability; for the house of Rothchild and I have this in common—that our wealth is not unlimited. There remained, however, an animal unknown to mankind at large that fitted my requirements exactly, as exactly at least as is possible in this imperfect world,—the Peruvian imitation of a horse. In a bare three centuries this descendent of our “fine lady among animals” has adapted himself to Andean conditions. His small, compact hoofs are almost as sure on precarious mountain-trails as those of the mule; he is gifted with an uncomplaining endurance far beyond what his appearance suggests; and he possesses an even, peaceful temper, and an absence of ambition and personal initiative equal to his fellow-countryman, the Indian. Moreover, he is capable of sustaining life and strength for an indefinite period on the sparse and hardy vegetation of the uplands, and is, at certain seasons, within reach of a modest purse.
“Foxy’s” mozo owned such a chusco and, the feast of his patron saint being near at hand, was induced to sell. I took to the animal at first sight. Not that he was a thing of beauty, in his shaggy coat of shedding reddish-brown; but it was this very air of unpretentious modesty and unAndean sense of duty over mere personal appearance that won my instant regard. Here, surely, was a companion who would keep his own counsel under the most trying circumstances. Being no larger than a large donkey, he was nicely fitted to the modest load of some sixty pounds that was destined to represent his share of the world’s labor. Not merely was he newly shod, but he had been enjoying the unbroken freedom of a potrero for several days, and should therefore be in condition to hold his own for an indefinite period, provided I did not set too swift a pace. The masculine gender was an asset not to be overlooked. Not merely did my sense of chivalry forbid sentencing any member of the other sex to the hardships that rumor insisted lay before us, but once they had been surmounted, I would not have my glory smudged by the possibility of a mere female boasting that she had also accomplished the feat. Again, the animal had never been fifty miles east of Huancayo; and I am of those who find no pleasure in a trip with a companion who has already been over the route. The mere nine dollars at which we finally came to terms seemed a slight equivalent for all these virtues, though I took care not to hint that impression to the erstwhile owner. The matter of a name was no problem at all. Even the Peruvians unconsciously tacked on the diminutive ito as often as they referred to my new fellow-adventurer, and it was natural that I should have instantly dubbed him Chusquito.
Relieved of the necessity of being my own packhorse, I could somewhat increase my outfit. In Lima I had acquired a rum-burner, with coffee-pot, frying-pan, and soup-boiling attachments that closed up into a compact kitchenette about six inches in diameter. With this went a bottle of alcohol, that could be filled at any town “muy provisto de todo” along the way. “Foxy” himself, whose faults, as every gringo up and down the Andes knows, do not include a lack of generosity, insisted that he would be forced to throw away a somewhat worn, but still very serviceable, rubber poncho, unless I carried it off; and this, with my llama-hair poncho from Quito, was destined to shield me from many a bitter night on lofty mountain-ranges. The clothing requisite for every possible variation of altitude, and photographic supplies sufficient to avoid the ill-will of local “authorities,” made up the bulk of my alforjas. Then there was room for a native and a foreign book, for a half-liter of pisco, with which to win the esteem of isolated Indians, a bag of cocoa leaves and the accompanying burnt-banana lime, to sustain such estimation, a candle for the endless Andean evenings, and a sufficient supply of imperishable foodstuffs to relieve my mind of the harassing daily preoccupation of finding hospitality before dark. Even my coat and kodak could be hung on the pack, leaving me free to stride lazily along, dressed in my shirt-sleeves and a cynical smile.
It was the tenth day of September when I creaked my hobnailed way out of Huancayo’s interminable street, my only load the end of a clothes-line that tempered Chusquito’s pace to my own. At the principal pulpería his former owner drank my health in pisco, and, though he shed no tear, it might easily have made a clean mark down his cheek. Of the road to Cuzco I knew nothing, except that it led through four “cities,” and that I should never reach, much less bring my four-footed companion to, the end of a journey on which not even a “son of the country” would “venture himself” without a guide and a tropilla of mules and arrieros. For myself I had no misgivings; as to Chusquito, I trusted to frequent halts and a militant attitude that should win him an unaccustomed wealth of fodder to confound the pessimists. All Huancayo gazed after me from their doorways with a mixture of astonishment and incredulity as I set out. Now is it not strange, when walking is the first and, indeed, the only natural means of locomotion, that people who look with complacency upon men on horseback, and upon trains, men who have heard of automobiles and aëroplanes, should gasp with wonder to see a man journeying afoot; and that andarines may go about living on the country and gathering certificates from every possible source to prove they do walk; as if there were any virtue in that action, except the purely personal pleasure of it, or nothing?
Even the burden of the tow-rope did not last long. Chusquito, being an experienced pack-animal, I soon found could be left to his own devices. In his own country, he knew fully as well as I how to climb up and down rocky, mountain trails, and if he showed a tendency now and then to wander off across the pampa, especially at sight of some of his own kindred, it was natural that he should have been somewhat bored at merely human companionship. Within two days we were strolling along like lifelong friends, at an even gait that never called for cudgel acceleration, and I journeyed as serenely as if I had found at last that automatic baggage of which I had so long dreamed, only subconsciously aware that my possessions were marching peacefully before me. The mind ran unbidden over the many improvements that might be added,—a tent and more supplies; or I might even become an itinerant photographer or peddler, and earn my way as I went, instead of greeting with disdainful silence the frequent question, “Qué lleva de venta?” But on one point I was quickly disillusioned. Somehow I had pictured a pack-animal as simply a perambulating chest of drawers, fancying that I had merely to hang my possessions on the animal’s back, snatching up anything as I chanced to need it. Whereas in real life I found that everything must be made snug and tight, and secured by the intricate “diamond-hitch” that made it as inaccessible on the march as if it had been left behind.
At Pucará, where the great valley of the Huancas narrows and begins to squeeze the trail upward, the inhabitants were killing a cow and stringing it up between two trees in the center of the grass-grown plaza. All the beef that could not be disposed of on the spot was cut into sheets a half-inch thick, and left to dry in the sun. By reason of this treatment all meat in the Andes is hopelessly tough; either it is “green,” direct from the hand of the butcher, or charqui of soleleather properties. Veal is unknown, for who would slaughter a calf that would grow up into several times its weight in beef? Mutton is scarce, or treated to the same charqui-ing process; and pork is of Hebraic rarity. Besides, the traveler who longs for a rasher of crisp bacon is more easily content to assuage his appetite in beef when experience has taught him what the pigs of the Andes feed on.
There was no public eating-house in Pucará. A party of a dozen men and women, however, all more or less gay with pisco, were glad of assistance in making away with their share in the weekly killing. I tied Chusquito before a bundle of wheat straw at a corner of the plaza, and we crowded around a wabbly-legged table in a neighboring mud room, and dined amid an uproar of maudlin hilarity and a series of stories often of a distinctly “raw” nature, in which the females easily held their own. Here cancha, or toasted, ripe, shelled corn did duty as bread, and each helping of beef was flanked by boiled chuño, or small, frozen potatoes. Then there were camotes de la sierra, one of the several species of the potato family unknown in other lands, a soft, sweetish, mushy tuber of the shape of a large peanut, which it was à la mode to pick from the plate with the fingers, and dip before each bite into the general bowl of ají, the Incaic peppers so beloved of the ancient Peruvians. As in all Peru, it was the custom here to drink the health of a companion and expect him to round the circle ad infinitum et intoxicatum. Luckily, my companions were so far gone in liquor, even before my arrival, that I managed to avoid most of the fiery “copitas” without giving offense.
In the group was the cholo school-master of the baked-mud Escuela Fiscal de Varones across the plaza. He was a native of Carhuáz, and grew so excited over the extraordinary fact that I had not only been in his birthplace but had traveled thence “by land” that, irrespective of the pisco, he was unable to begin the afternoon session when the boys gathered at one o’clock. It didn’t matter anyway, he confided, since he spoke no Quichua and the pupils almost no Spanish, and he would get his salary—whenever the government had the money—whether he pretended to teach or not. The school system of Peru being centralized, like that of France, orders from Lima sometimes transfer a maestro from one province to another without any notion as to whether or not he is fitted to his new assignment. The boys, all but one of whom were at least half Indian, could mispronounce a few sentences from the “Lives of the Saints,” but few could recognize one letter from another. Though he had nothing to show in the way of teaching, the maestro pointed with pride to the school-name in huge red letters, all but covering the adobe façade, as an example of his handiwork and “culture.” We spent an hour or more in posing the school for a group in the act of saluting the national flag, the “teacher” insisting on changing his brilliant red poncho for a khaki coat before he would face the kodak, and of course he grew enraged because I was so miserly as to refuse to deliver a dozen copies of the picture on the spot. Another round of “copitas” restored his amiability, however, and he insisted on giving me “something not to forget him by,” and forced upon me one of the unvarnished lead-pencils which the government supplied his pupils.
Travelers were frequent on the vast, rising world beyond, where the great valley of the Huantas shrivelled and disappeared into the past. Indian women trotted by, not only with a load and a baby on their backs, but often suckling the infant as they went. Ccoto, as the Incas called goitre, was common. Llama-trains, driven by fishy-eyed, noiseless Indians with colored rags around their heads under their thick, gray felt hats, passed frequently. There are few more interesting sights than that afforded by two of these trains shuttling through each other on a narrow mountain trail, each animal keeping its course as unerringly as a homing-pigeon. At a rocky turn of the road one of the frail beasts lay dying, an Indian boy slashing the gay ribbons out of its still quivering ears with a crude cutlass. Chusquito strongly objected to passing a scene so fraught with the dangers and cruelties of the trail. It was our first real difference of opinion. From Inca days it seems to have been the custom to decorate the ears of llamas with these bits of bright cloth, less from artistic notions than as a means of designating the ownership. To-day even the cows, bulls, goats, and sheep of certain regions are thus embellished—often with ludicrous results. When, as here, the matter is carried so far as to beribbon the donkeys, it seems time to call a halt; for what can look more absurdly incongruous than a plodding ass solemnly waving with the monotonous rhythm of his gait his gaily bedecked ears.