While they were talking thus, and slowly descending one of the numerous richly-wooded, though rugged, paths which traverse the lower slopes of the Andes, they encountered a party of horsemen from the Pampas. They were well-armed, and from their looks might have been another troop of banditti, coming like human vultures from afar to swoop down on the carcass of the unfortunate town.
To have shown the slightest hesitancy or fear—supposing them to have been what they looked—would have been to invite attack, but, as the reader knows, our travellers were not the men to betray themselves thus. Before starting, they had carefully examined their weapons, and had bestowed them about their persons somewhat ostentatiously. Pedro had even caused Manuela to stick a brace of small pistols and a large knife in her belt; and, as Indian women are sometimes known to be capable of defending themselves as vigorously as men, she was by no means a cipher in the effective strength of the party.
With a dignified yet free-and-easy air that would have done credit to a Spanish Don of the olden time, Pedro saluted the party as he rode past. His aspect, and the quiet, self-possessed air of the huge Englishman, with the singularity of his cudgel, coupled with the look of graceful decision about the Indian maiden, and the blunt bull-doggedness of the square negro, were sufficient to ensure a polite response, not only from that party, but from several other bands of the same stamp that were met with during the day.
Diverging from the main road in order to avoid these bands, they followed a track well-known to the guide. Towards the afternoon, from the top of a rising ground, they descried a solitary foot traveller wending his way wearily up the hill.
He was a man of middle age, and powerfully-built, but walked with such evident difficulty that it seemed as if he were either ill or exhausted. Pedro eyed him with considerable suspicion as he approached. In passing, he begged for assistance. As he spoke in French, Lawrence, whose sympathies, like those of Quashy, were easily roused, asked in that tongue what was the matter with him.
He had been robbed, he said, by that villainous bandit, Conrad of the Mountains, or some one extremely like him, and had been nearly killed by him. He was on his way to San Ambrosio, where his wife and family dwelt, having heard that it had been greatly damaged, if not destroyed, by an earthquake.
“It has been utterly destroyed, my poor fellow,” said Lawrence, in a tone of pity; “but it may be that your family has escaped. A good number of people have escaped. Here are a few dollars for you. You will need them, I fear. You can owe them to me, and pay them when next we meet.”
The gift was accompanied with a look of pleasantry, for Lawrence well knew there was little chance of their ever meeting again.
Pedro sat regarding them with a grim smile. “You are a stout fellow,” he said, in a tone that was not conciliatory, after the beggar had accepted the dollars with many expressions of gratitude; “from all I have heard of Conrad of the Mountains, you are quite a match for him, if he were alone.”
“He was not alone, senhor,” replied the beggar, with a look that told of a temper easily disturbed.