Yet they were still on the beaten track. This was the high road, through the pass, from one civilized country to another; and plainly its frequenters treated it as a quite ordinary affair. Single horsemen came galloping down at them with loose reins; a four-horse coach swept round one of the bends in the granite ledge at break-neck speed; long files of laden mules made clouds of dust, and twice the path was blocked by droves of cattle in the midst of which gauchos, apparently gone mad, were shouting and cursing.
Emmie’s excursion had but begun, she was merely doing what every tourist did, although the romance and grandeur of it kept her pulses racing. “I am in the Andes,” she murmured to herself. “I am with him—on the road to the Uspallata Pass—getting higher and higher in the Andes.”
They spent that night at the last of the mountain inns to be encountered by them for a long while. Next morning the true fun would begin.
The inn was a wretched little assemblage of low sheds standing on flat ground a few hundred yards away from the track; but it had a large walled corral in which the baggage of dozens of mules lay stacked or tumbled in loose confusion. The mules themselves—Dyke’s lot among them—were picketed or tied to the walls. Muleteers, the railway people, itinerant dealers, and so forth crowded the place. The living-room had more dreadful odours than the cabin of the Mercedaria. The sordidness and dirt of the boarded compartment in which she and Dyke were to sleep surpassed belief; one glance at the two beds—the two lairs—caused the flesh to creep in anticipation of the attack of an insect horde. Dyke, on their arrival, immediately became occupied with his men, and Emmie fell into the charge of the landlady, a dirty but kindly matron, and of Manuel Balda.
“A bit rough,” said Dyke; “but Manuel will help to make you comfortable.”
No one of course could do that; although Manuel, who was torn in opposite directions by his desire to be outside with Dyke examining the equipment and to be here waiting upon his lady, gallantly attempted the impossible task.
She wanted water to wash with; but both he and the landlady implored her to abandon this desire. Already the glare of the fierce sun had scorched her delicate complexion. She might rub her cheeks with vaseline or any procurable grease; but, for the love of heaven, no water! No more washing, Señora, for the future, if you are still to mount.
And now let us chat of these insects which “Missis” dreads in the beds and elsewhere. Well, it is so; and so unhappily it will continue. Perhaps Missis has not thought to meet lice in profusion at these big altitudes?
Miss Verinder confessed that she had not indeed thought of such a meeting; and, before an hour had passed, accepting the strong advice both of Manuel and the landlady, she decided to have her hair cut. Manuel did it for her—using a pair of shears generally employed on the manes of mules, after he had carefully cleansed the blades with oil.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” she kept murmuring, as she sat upon a wooden box and the long dark tresses fell about her on the dirty floor. “Yes, I feel more comfortable already—much more comfortable.”