“Well,” said Cliff, “still being Whackey, I think I would follow all by myself.”
“Why?” It was like a chorus of well trained voices—all asked the question at one time.
“Less chance of being noticed for one thing. For another—and from what I saw of them I think this is how an Inca noble would think—I could let the party get to this ledge and make camp. Then I could wait until dark, slip over and cut away the ladder, wait until the camp was quiet to do it. Then I could pick them off, one by one, with a sling or bow and arrows, in the dawn. If any of the party hid in the ruins I could starve them out.”
“And that is exactly the way an Indian’s mind—an Inca, not an American Indian—would work,” Mr. Gray nodded at Cliff.
“I prophesy that will happen if we stay here,” Cliff said boldly.
And in all but one particular he was exactly right!
CHAPTER XXXII
THE ANDES CLOSE THEIR JAWS
The one thing in which Cliff did not outguess Huayca was in the manner of his planning for the white party’s annihilation.
Huayca was not of the hidden Inca tribe. He was a man of Cuzco, but of the higher grade of intelligence. To him had come the Inca noble who had gone with Pizzara to America: that noble had chosen Huayca to serve him and had promised a great reward. By the failure of his ambush he had let the white party get through to Quichaka. And, worse, they had escaped again, as he discovered when he visited the scene of the night raid in the secret pass.
Huayca, being a native of Cuzco, knew that the Spanish justice was as swift as that of the Incas. Since he must live in Cuzco, far from Inca protection, he must not invoke the penalties which the Spanish law would demand if he destroyed the white party. Even in such a place as the Andes passes the law of the Americans would compel the law of the Spaniards to quest and to find him out, if he turned his hand against white men of that America.