Riding out upon this tract—more pleasant for a traveller—they make a momentary halt, but still remaining in their saddles, as they gaze inquiringly over it.
And here Cypriano, recalling a remark which Gaspar had made at their last camping-place, asks an explanation of it. The gaucho had expressed a belief, that from something he remembered, they would not have much further to go before arriving at their journey’s end.
“Why did you say that?” now questions the young Paraguayan.
“Because I’ve heard the old cacique, Naraguana, speak of a place where they buried their dead. Strange my not thinking of that sooner; but my brains have been so muddled with what’s happened, and the hurry we’ve been in all along, I’ve forgotten a good many things. He said they had a town there too, where they sometimes went to live, but oftener to die. I warrant me that’s the very place they’re in now; and, from what I understood him to say, it can’t be very far t’other side this salitral. He spoke of a hill rising above the town, which could be seen a long way off: a curious hill, shaped something like a wash-basin turned bottom upwards. Now, if we could only sight that hill.”
At this he ceases speaking, and elevates his eyes, with an interrogative glance which takes in all the plain ahead, up to the horizon’s verge. Only for a few seconds is he silent, when his voice is again heard, this time in grave, but gleeful, exclamation:—
“Por todos Santos! there’s the hill itself!”
The others looking out behold a dome-shaped eminence, with a flat, table-like top recognisable from the quaint description Gaspar has just given of it, though little more than its summit is visible above the plain—for they are still several miles distant from it.
“We must go no nearer to it now,” observes the gaucho, adding, in a tone of apprehension, “we may be too near already. Caspita! Just look at that!”
The last observation refers to the sun, which, suddenly shooting out from the clouds hitherto obscuring it, again shows itself in the sky. Not now, however, as in the early morning hours, behind their backs, but right in front of them, and low down, threatening soon to set.
“Vayate!” he continues to ejaculate in a tone of mock scorn, apostrophising the great luminary, “no thanks to you now, showing yourself when you’re not needed. Instead, I’d thank you more if you’d kept your face hid a bit longer. Better for us if you had.”