“You won’t mind lending me an olla?” he murmured to the wall of expressionless faces about him.
A woman brought the kettle in silence. The soldier, humming a barrack-room ballad, half-filled the pot with water, set it over the fire, dropped in the stones one by one, and squatted on his heels with a sigh of contentment. By and by he borrowed a wooden spoon and tasted the concoction from time to time, throwing the residue back into the kettle in approved Andean fashion.
“You don’t happen to have a bit of salt?” he murmured, after a time, to the family now gathered close around him watching this possible miracle silently but intently.
“Cachi? That we have,” said the woman, handing him a piece of purple rock, which he beat up and sprinkled into the now steaming pot.
“Too bad I haven’t a few potatoes to put in,” he droned, as if to himself, “it would help the flavor.”
The old woman shambled away into the darkness of a far corner, and came back some time later to thrust silently toward him a handful of small potatoes, her eyes glued on the miraculous pot. When these were about half-boiled the soldier again broke off his song to murmur:
“This is going to be one of the finest chupes de guijarros I’ve ever made. All it lacks now is a bit of ají to give it life.”
The old woman muttered something to one of the ragged girls beside her, and the latter went to dig two red peppers out of the thatch.
“A piece of cabbage would make it perfect,” sighed the soldier.
The Indians, too engrossed in the production of a stone soup, and too slow of mind to have caught up yet with the course of events, brought to light a small cabbage. By this time they were so consumed with curiosity that the old man asked innocently: