The trick was plain enough now. After lighting the fires, the three battalions had marched off, leaving just sufficient men to tend them, and to act as sentries. The sight of a soldier crossing the camp to throw fresh fuel on one of the fires changed suspicion into certainty, and I hastened back to O'Brien with my information.
"That's an old dodge," said he, "but a good one. It almost always pays in this part of the world. Now let us get back and tell the colonel."
Cautiously we crawled back, waited nearly an hour for a favourable chance to dodge the sentries, and then hurried down the pass.
"Thanks," exclaimed the colonel, on hearing our report. "We can afford now to let the men have a couple of hours' sleep; they need it."
"And I daresay some of the officers will lie down, if you press them," laughed O'Brien.—"What do you say, Crawford?"
"Well, the colonel need not press me much," I replied.
"Good boy! I'm pleased you're so willing to do as you're told."
"Well, he has certainly earned a rest," observed Miller. "But we are moving sharp at daybreak, remember."
"There's nothing strange in that," said I sleepily; "the wonder would be if we didn't." At which the colonel and O'Brien laughed heartily.
Next day we marched into the village of Puruchuco, on the eastern side of the mountain, and about six miles distant from the small town of Huamantanga, where the Royalists had halted. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining food, Colonel Miller now sent most of our infantry back to Macas; the Indians were thrown forward to act as a screen in front; while the rest of us bivouacked in some meadows near the village. The next day the colonel and I rode to within five hundred yards of Huamantanga, where we saw the enemy formed up in marching order.