The gorge in the mountains, which the travellers soon afterwards entered, fully justified the guide’s expression “dangerous.” It was a wild, rugged glen, high up on one side of which the narrow pathway wound—in some places rounding a cliff or projecting boulder, which rendered the passage of the baggage-mules extremely difficult. Indeed, one of the mules did slightly graze a rock with its burden; and, although naturally sure-footed, was so far thrown off its balance as to be within a hair’s-breadth of tumbling over the edge and being dashed to pieces on the rocks below, where a turbulent river rushed tumultuously at the bottom of the glen.
One of the snow-clad peaks of the higher Andes lay right before them. One or two guanacos—animals of the lama species—gazed at them from the other side of the gorge, and several ill-omened vultures wheeled in the sky above, as if anticipating a catastrophe which would furnish them with a glorious meal.
“A most suitable place for the depredations of banditti, or fellows like Conrad of the Mountains, I should think,” said Lawrence.
“Bandits are sometimes met with here,” returned Pedro, quietly.
“And what if we should meet with such in a place where there is scarcely room to fight?”
“Why then,” returned the guide, with a slight curl of his moustache, “we should have to try who could fight best in the smallest space.”
“Not a pleasant prospect in the circumstances,” said Lawrence, thinking of Manuela.
For some time they rode together in silence; but Quashy, who had overheard, the conversation, and was of a remarkably combative disposition, though the reverse of bad-tempered or quarrelsome, could not refrain from asking—
“W’y de Guv’mint not hab lots ob sojers an’ pleece in de mountains to squash de raskils?”
“Because Government has enough to do to squash the rascals nearer home, Quashy,” answered Pedro. “Have a care, the track gets rather steep here.”