Then they began, as is so often the case, to become enthusiastic and hopeful, and also added ideas of their own.
“We would need Tom, too,” Mr. Whitley hesitated.
“I’m not afraid,” Tom said. “If I can do anything to help! Tell me what it is.”
“We must get that rope that we hid at the ledge,” Bill told him. “My idea is for you to strip down to the sort of costume the Inca’s ‘chasquis’ or messengers, wear. I am going to make up a quipu like one that would be used to identify the Inca’s runners, and you are to take it and go to the place we left our rope, for we will need it in the mountain passes. If you meet anybody you can show the quipu and they won’t stop you. If you meet soldiers near the ledge, show the quipu and say ‘I go to get what the Inca has learned about.’ Then, even if they go with you they won’t take the rope away.”
“Can’t I go, too?” Nicky pleaded. “The chances would be better with two——”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Whitley decided. “Tom proved that he can run during the races, and—I must say this in frankness, Nicky—he can keep a quiet tongue and a level head if an emergency comes before him.”
Nicky was crestfallen, but had he been able to look into the future he would not have been depressed at his forced inactivity just for the time.
Tom rehearsed his quichua words, Cliff went over, again and again, the things he might be called on to do and to say. Bill, Mr. Gray and their leader revised and discussed their plan until they could see no possible emergency that could come up that they would not be prepared to meet.
With his fading flashlight, later replaced by Mr. Whitley’s, Bill fashioned a simple quipu of woven strands, taken from a raveled edge of a woolen wall hanging: he knotted it craftily.