He slunk away, and picked up a battered cup behind one of the huts. Wiping this on his lifelong sleeve, he scraped the bottom of a huge earthen jar that leaned awry, in what would have needed only a fence to be a barnyard, at an angle that enabled the dogs to help themselves at the same source, and presented the half-filled vessel to me. There was no second choice in the matter, for this region, untold miles above sea-level, had no other supply of water than the rain that chanced to drop into the leaning cántaros. Fortunately the taste bore little evidence of what the appearance suggested. I made a round of the huts, resolved to spend the night there, even if I had to break into one of the buildings.
“Huasi-muñuy!” I cried, patching my Quichua together after my own fashion, and pointing to one of the padlocks.
“Manam cancha,” repeated the huarma in the same dull monotone. I held out what would have seemed a fortune of small coins to a country boy of other lands, but he shook his head doggedly, without a gleam of interest, casting a half-frightened glance at my weapon. An older youth, who had appeared noiselessly from somewhere, treated the offer of money with the same indifference and settled down to a silent attempt to drive me off, in spite of the storm and the night that was closing in. It was then that I thought of the sack I had filled in the market of Huancayo. At the magic word “coca” the pair awoke to a new interest in life. Each snatched off his hat to receive a handful of leaves, mumbling a “Gracias, tayta-tayta,” and the older youth ordered the other to clear away a miscellaneous assortment of junk, bundles of old sheepskins, and a heap of llama-droppings gathered for fuel, from one end of the hut “porch” under the edge of which I was seated. As he worked, there fell from somewhere under the projecting eaves the corpse of a tiny, black pig that had quite evidently died a natural death, but which the family just as evidently proposed to eat, for the boy carried it off to a safer spot, plainly doubting my honesty. In a corner lay two bundles of ichu grass. I tossed one to Chusquito, standing dejected and disgusted beside me, and spread out the other as a mattress. The youth made no protest, but shook his head at the real I offered in payment. A howling wind that even the stone hut failed to break made it useless to attempt to set up my cooking outfit. As I drew cold food from my pack, the Indians sat motionless as stone statues, but watched with keen eyes, monkey-like, my every move. I shared the lunch with them, though I should much have preferred paying them in money for their dubious hospitality. It is one of the drawbacks of Andean journeying that the traveler is expected to share his scanty supplies, not merely with his human companions of the moment, but is invariably surrounded under such circumstances by a ravenous swarm of begging and thieving dogs, pigs, and fowls. Except for a score of llamas lying in patrician aloofness beyond the huts, every living creature crowded round to appeal to my generosity or to catch me off my guard. The Indians accepted each morsel with a murmured “Gracias” that plainly proceeded from custom rather than from any real thankfulness. Innumerable experiments, from the Rio Grande southward, had demonstrated that the American aboriginal has not a trace of gratitude in his make-up; indeed, the use of the Spanish term suggests that the native language did not even include a word for thanks.
The thirst that follows an all-day tramp outlived the available supply of water, and even the bottle of pisco I dared not bring to light until darkness had concealed my movements from the Indians could not be shared with Chusquito, no doubt choking within, in spite of his bedraggled, dripping flanks. As the storm died down, the evening spread wonderful colors across this bleak upper world, bringing out in lilac tints, shading to purple and then to black, the saw-toothed range bounding the horizon on the far south. The night would have been bitter cold even inside one of the huts, to say nothing of lying on the earth floor of the open, mud corredor. Yet the cold which my rubber poncho kept out was no less surprising than the heat which the wooly llama-hair one kept in, and my sleep might easily have been much more broken than it was.
During my first doze there arrived an old Indian, evidently the head of the household that had hitherto kept itself successfully concealed. He was somewhat the worse for fiery waters and, being apprized of his visitor, set up a deal of howling and shouting in Quichua. Receiving no answer, he ventured to take a mild poke at me with his stick. It would have been heroic indeed to have gotten out of “bed.” Instead, I turned loose a string of American and Spanish words of high voltage which experience had shown to have a withering effect on his race. Though he did not understand them individually, he evidently grasped their general import, for he subsided at once, and retired to the beehive kitchen, where for a long time he howled and yelped, as brave men will in the midst of their trembling and admiring families. Bit by bit his women pacified him, in the way women have, perhaps with more pisco and coca, for I heard him laugh several times thereafter, with a sound like that of a choking cow, before anything resembling silence settled down over the lofty mountain-top world. Real silence is rare in these Indian huts at night. Either the lack of comfort they are too lazy or uninitiative to remedy, or the chewing of coca keeps the miserable inhabitants half-awake, and periods of growling and grumbling are seldom far apart from dark to dawn.
I fancy it was midnight, more or less, when I became drowsily aware that Chusquito, tied within a foot of my head, was munching some fodder I knew he did not possess; but I was too nearly asleep to rise and investigate. The moon testified that it was some two hours later when I was awakened to find the head of the household standing beside me, his hand on a damaged roof and bellowing a guttural stream in which I caught several times the words “Huasi micuni—eating my house.” This would be an impoliteness in any land, and I bravely forced myself to slip into my brogans and out into the icy moonlight. Chusquito had scalloped out the bangs of the grass roof in a new style that, to my notion, was more fetching than the original. If only the Indians of the Andes were not so stonily conservative, my host would have thanked me for the improvement, instead of sputtering with rage. I tied the innocent culprit to a stone-wall nearby, which was also an unfortunate choice, for I heard him knock down most of that in the hours that remained before daylight. During the long uproar that ensued in the kitchen, no doubt the old Indian told his family many times over that had he been at home when I arrived, I should not have remained; but in that he was mistaken, for it would have taken a considerable band of South American Indians to have denied me hospitality. I lay down again with my revolver and cartridge-belt handy under the edge of the ponchos; not that there was any danger, but because I do not care to be numbered among those who take foolish chances.
The next I knew distinctly, it was dawning. I fed my mattress to Chusquito and set up my kitchenette in the most sheltered corner of the corredor, bent on concocting a hot broth with a lump of ice from the bottom of a leaning cántaro. The directions on my magic can of concentrated soup asserted that “one cube with hot water makes a delicious bouillon.” But this, experience had demonstrated, should be taken with a grain of salt—also four other cubes. Even under the lee of my alforjas the rum-burner went out at the faintest breath of wind, but by constant coaxing, and at the imminent risk of setting fire to my possessions, I managed even to boil the two eggs that remained whole, though so great was the altitude that with eight minutes of boiling they were still soft. Gravelly bread of Huancavelica, and a native “chocolate” that was really a pebbly brown sugar, topped off a meal I might have longed for in vain at that hour in the best hotel of Peru. Many an hour on the road, during the best part of the day for walking, that simple little contrivance gave me, when I should otherwise have been waiting on the sleepy natives for breakfast.
By the time I had eaten, the householder appeared in his slit panties with white buttons down the sides, and a fancy upper garment evidently intended to impress me with his importance. But when he noted by daylight with whom he had to do, he gradually shrivelled up to a half-friendly smile, and accepted with a pretence of gratitude a coin for his forced hospitality and newly decorated roof. A silver-ringed, black cane, leaning against what Chusquito had seen fit to leave of the stone wall, proved him one of the “authorities” of the region. Above it stood a crude cross decorated with dry grass, designed to keep evil spirits—except those in bottles—away from the cluster of huts. Either my host’s knowledge of the trail ahead, or his manner of imparting it, was extremely hazy, and I dragged Chusquito away across the pampa in the cutting cold, but invigorating mountain air, burdened with the task of finding ourselves once more.
Within an hour we were so fortunate as to fall again upon a trail, where I could relinquish the tiller and drift into those day-dreams that come upon the solitary traveler across these vast Andean punas. Snow had fallen during the night, and a great white immensity, slightly undulating, spread out to infinity before us. We shared an all-night thirst that set us both to munching snow at frequent intervals. By ten the sun had burned away the whiteness and restored to the scene its accustomed monk’s robe of faded yellow-brown. All morning I continued to guess the way across a steadily rising world, in the utter silence that makes more impressive the dreariness of these lofty regions, until at noon we panted over a jagged rock-ridge from which all the kingdoms of the earth lay spread out below us, tumbled, broken, and velvety brown as far as the eye could command even in this transparent air. As we started gradually downward, shepherds and their flocks appeared once more, then little fenced patches and stone-heap hovels; then we dropped almost suddenly into the blazing hot valley of a little river, along which tiled huts and travelers were numerous. Several times I went astray and waged pitched battle with Chusquito cross-country, past hovels swarming like disturbed beehives with barking dogs, before I once more got securely under our feet the trail that was to lead us upward again over the next páramo. It is not merely that the stupid inhabitants of these regions speak only Quichua, but they are incapable of giving intelligent directions, even in that tongue. There is something exhilarating in the air of Andean heights that breeds reflection and a peaceful serenity of mind; but it is nature, rather than humanity, that awakens the marked optimism of spirits. The traveler grows “inspired,” lifted up out of himself by the magnificence of the scene, realizing for a moment how marvelous is this world we inhabit; then suddenly an Indian, a human being, intrudes, and snatches him back to earth again. Time after time I caught sight of an approaching figure which the mind, from youthful force of habit, imbued with human intelligence—and as many times it turned out to be a shuffling Indian, stupid and glassy-eyed from the quid of coca in his cheek and the chicha and pisco of the last hamlet in his belly, who cringed like some degenerate animal as he passed, mumbling some Quichua monosyllable. Incapable of intelligent reply, even when they are not in a half-drunken stupor, these plodding creatures have a very hazy notion of distance. The acco, or time of duration of a quid of coca, which they throw on the achepetas, or symbolical stone-heaps along the way, is at best but an uncertain term of length, and their besotted intellects seldom retain the memory of any number above three or four. So that, in spite of the frequent appearance of fellow-travelers, I had perforce to be satisfied with the half-certainty that I was on the right road, without any notion of whether the nearest shelter was one, or ten leagues distant.
Clouds crawled into the evening sky again, where the daytime sunshine had swept it clean; the purple shadows of the mountains, across the tops of which the setting sun cast a crimson glow, spread and darkened, and I had visions of shivering out another night in the corredor of an Indian hut, or out on the bare, freezing pampa. I had suffered so many dreary nights, twelve hours long, in South America, that it had become a habit to lose my cheerful mood in the late afternoon and succumb to apprehension, as of some impending misfortune. Under this I developed unconsciously a pace so swift that Chusquito, like a small boy trying to keep up with an inconsiderate father, took to trotting every little while some distance ahead. We were now far up again on a cold puna across which the bitter mountain wind swept unchecked, and even my companion seemed to cast apprehensive glances at the angry, black clouds overspreading the sky, and at the cold dusk descending upon us. We hurried unbrokenly on, without a sign of town or hamlet, though the last Indian stragglers still bore sufficient evidences of intoxication that proved it could be no great distance off. Then, in the last rays of daylight, we turned a wind-whipped boulder and caught sight of the place, far off in the lap of a stony valley, well aware from long Andean experience that the intervening distance was much greater than appearance suggested.