He reached the bend; carefully he peered around. There ended the fissures; the pass, which had run between high cliffs, swung rather sharply around the nose of a ledge and ran along the side of an open depth, a valley filled with mist; in the dark Cliff could not tell how deep it was, nor how wide.
The ledge, right at the turn, projecting a trifle, and about sixty feet above his head, was an ideal spot to spy from; if he could find a way up it would give him a place to see the pass toward the camp and also around the bend.
“Such a ledge as that would be perfect for an ambush,” he thought. Cliff had read how the Incas, in their battles against the invading Spaniards, had ambushed soldiers in these mountain passes, dropping rocks from points above them, loosing flights of arrows, stunning them with stones from the slings with which they were expert. Here was the spot for such an attack.
How did the Incas get to such ledges? As he remembered his history, Cliff thought of a ladder woven of osier strands, tough vines that were to be found in that country. Bridges were swung across mountain streams with twisted ropes and cables of those stout vines; with planks supported by them footways were made that swayed dizzily, dipped in terrifying fashion, but that gave safe crossings to sure footed mountaineers.
He stepped off the rocky path into brush under the lip of the ledge and, almost as much by feeling as by sight, explored the side of the cliff. There was nothing, at first, to reward his search; but after some time, cleverly hidden among the brush, he found twisted, sturdy ropes that were so woven as to give the shape of a rude ladder with sagging but staunch crosspieces of the same vines. The ladder ran upward as high as his arms could reach, and without any hesitation Cliff began to climb.
From its location his ladder could not be seen until one got well around the bend and there, for the light was better and he could see, the pass ran only a short way, then swung across one of those osier bridges, still kept in repair because this was one of the main-traveled paths. Amid the brush and stuff and with trees between it and the path, the ladder was not apt to attract attention. Its withes felt pliant and fresh with sap. Cliff decided that it was not an old ladder, but a new one, recently placed; perhaps for the very purpose to which Huayca might recently have put it.
As he neared the top, Cliff became cautious. He lifted himself slowly so that he would make very little noise. When his head was level with the top of the ledge he protruded it upward with utmost care and spied around, his eyes just able to see.
The flat top of the ledge, he saw, was about an acre in extent. It sloped slightly upward to the next sharp rise at the back and light showing from the brightening sky indicated a fissure, possibly another pass, in the cleft.
But his attention focused on a clump or mass of stone, quite large, near the middle of the level space.
In the pale light it bulked like a ghostly ruin. Cliff eased carefully until he could get to the pajonal—short, yellow grass of the mountains—which covered the top of that ledge.