“Cómo no?” came the mechanical answer, and a long time after dark a big bowl of broth, luke-warm of temperature but sizzling hot with ají, was followed by some hashed black chuño, or frozen potatoes, mixed with an egg, and some bran-like bread.
“How much do I owe?” I asked when I finished.
“Pues—ah—será setenta centavos.”
“Está bién. And who is going to sleep on those beds?” I continued, pointing to the long adobe divans, each with a roll of thin mattress and blankets, at either end of the room.
“Nadie.”
“No one? How much do you charge for a bed?”
“Un boliviano, no más,” replied the chola in that droning, soothing voice in which the Andean always names an exorbitant price which he knows the traveler cannot refuse to pay. “Voy á tender, no?” “Yes, spread it out.”
I was stripping to crawl into the “star” bed of the tambo—in which only horsemen are accommodated—when there sounded at the door I had fastened ajar with a bench, the worn and humble voice of Tommy. Having fallen behind because of a half-sprained ankle, he had stumbled on into town down that stony, looping descent which I had found bad enough even by day. Fortunately there was a bit of cold broth and some chuño left, after devouring which he turned in on the other divan.
Next day we passed a wind-blown, rain-gashed plain, with a few huts on which to practice my neglected Quichua and, early in the afternoon, reached Totora, so named from a long rush which grows in swampy ground. It is the largest town between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and capital of a province, with several thousand inhabitants. Set in a hollow of the treeless hills, it was dreary and colorless as a mining town, with breakneck cobbled streets, and a little tile-paved plaza surrounded by what Tommy called “drapers’ shops,” all with the selfsame display of bayeta and other crude-colored cloths. The vista of many a street was enlivened by swinging red signs, like Japanese or Chinese banners, above the doors where chicha was for sale. Far better, and almost given away in Colombia, this native drink had come to cost twice what a larger glass of beer would in the United States. In the upper corner of the plaza we spread ourselves at ease on a shaded bench. Around the pila in the center of the square a constant crowd carrying earthen jars fought for the two trickles of water. Behind us stood what dared to call itself the “Hotel Union,” consisting of a billiard-table and an absent proprietor, who, according to the disinterested cholas, might be back during the evening to discuss with us our offer to spend the night with him. The neighboring tambo was closed “because of a wedding in the family,” so rare a ceremony in Bolivia that we had not the heart to complain. Tommy tired of sitting, and went to lie down in frank “hobo” fashion in the plaza band-stand. As dusk came on we made a round of the shops, warned that there would be none for some days ahead. We bought eggs, and blocks of crude sugar, now called empanada, coca to chew when thirsty, several loaves of the bran-like bread that weighed us down like grindstones, and some shelled peanuts which we found next day to be unroasted. Any chip of stone or scrap of iron served as weights in the shops, though some had brass cups full of shot, over which a paper was pasted by the rare government inspector, soon to “break itself” until he came again. That purchaser who got twelve ounces to his pound was as lucky as the one whose vara came anywhere near being a yard long. A half-pound weight was commonly the heaviest on hand, and the old woman who sold us sugar poured that amount in with the weight in the other side of the scales, and so on until she had made up the unprecedented quantity we demanded.
A telegraph wire strode bandy-legged over the hills with us on the twenty broken and panting miles to Duraznillo. Across a flanking valley the range was mottled with all colors from deep red to Nile-green, the depths of its gullies purple under dense cloud-shadows, while all the rest of the world lay in brilliant sunshine, and vast banks of snowy-white clouds took on fantastic shapes which the imagination could animate into all manner of strange beings, or people with innumerable plots and fairy-tales. One mighty descent brought us to a “river,” but at the very moment we reached it, it turned suddenly muddy from rains somewhere in the hills above and spoiled our plan for a “bathe,” as Tommy expressed it. In the dry, burning hills beyond, my companion went astray, but found himself again by following my hob-nailed footsteps. He had so little initiative that he would not lead the way, and his favorite plan of plodding at my very heels having been vetoed, as he did not mix well with the landscape, he commonly trailed a half-mile behind, usually taking care not to lose sight of me.