As, overnight, the programme had been all arranged, their interchange of speech at present has only reference to something in the way of desayuna before setting out. This they find ready and near; at the central camp fire now blazing up, where several of the women, “whisks” in hand, are bending over pots of chocolate, stirring the substantial liquid to a creamy froth.
A taza of it is handed to each of the “cazadores,” with a “tortilla enchilada,” accompanied by a graceful word of welcome. Then, emptying the cups, and chewing up the tough, leatherlike maize cakes, the hunters slip quietly out of camp, and set their faces for the Cerro.
The ascent, commenced almost immediately, is by a ravine—a sort of gorge or chine worn out by the water from the spring-head above and disintegrating rains throughout the long ages. They find it steep as a staircase, though not winding as one; instead, trending straight up from its debouchment on the plain to the summit level, between slopes, these with grim, rocky façade, still more precipitous. Down its bottom cascades the stream—a tiny rivulet now, but in rain-storms a torrent—and along this lies the path, the only one by which the Cerro can be ascended, as the gambusino already knows.
“There’s no other,” he says, as they are clambering upward, “where a man could make the ascent, unless with a Jacob’s ladder let down to him. All around, the cliff is as steep as the shaft of a mine. Even the wild sheep can’t scale it, and if we find any on the summit—and it’s to be hoped we shall—they must either have been bred there, or gone up this way. Guarda!” he adds, in exclamation, as he sees the impulsive English youth bounding on rather recklessly. “Have a care! Don’t disturb the stones; they may go rattling down and smash somebody below.”
“By Jove! I didn’t think of that,” returns he thus cautioned, turning pale at thought of how he might have endangered the lives of those dear to him; then ascending more slowly, and with the care enjoined upon him.
In due time they arrive at the head of the gorge, there stopping to take breath. Only for an instant, when they proceed on, now no longer in a climb, the path thence leading over ground level as the plain itself; but still by the rivulet’s edge, through a tangle of trees and bushes.
At some two hundred yards from the head of the gorge they come into an opening, the Mexican as he enters it exclaiming:
“El ojo de agua!”