The Rover of the Andes: A Tale of Adventure on South America, R. M. Ballantyne [world of reading .txt] 📗

After several days had passed away, our travellers found themselves among the higher passes of the great mountain range of the Andes.

Before reaching that region, however, they had, in one of the villages through which they passed, supplied themselves each with a fresh stout mule, besides two serviceable animals to carry their provisions and camp equipage.

Pedro, who of course rode ahead in the capacity of guide, seemed to possess an unlimited supply of cash, and Lawrence Armstrong had at least sufficient to enable him to bear his fair share of the expenses of the journey. As for Quashy, being a servant he had no expenses to bear.

Of course the finest, as well as the best-looking, mule had been given to the pretty Manuela, and, despite the masculine attitude of her position, she sat and managed her steed with a grace of motion that might have rendered many a white dame envious. Although filled with admiration, Lawrence was by no means surprised, for he knew well that in the Pampas, or plains, to which region her father belonged, the Indians are celebrated for their splendid horsemanship. Indeed, their little children almost live on horseback, commencing their training long before they can mount, and overcoming the difficulty of smallness in early youth, by climbing to the backs of their steeds by means of a fore-leg, and not unfrequently by the tail.

The costume of the girl was well suited to her present mode of life, being a sort of light tunic reaching a little below the knees, with loose leggings, which were richly ornamented with needlework. A straw hat with a simple feather, covered her head, beneath which her curling black hair flowed in unconfined luxuriance. She wore no ornament of any kind, and the slight shoes that covered her small feet were perfectly plain. In short, there was a modest simplicity about the girl’s whole aspect and demeanour which greatly interested the Englishman, inducing him to murmur to himself, “What an uncommonly pretty girl she would be if she were only white!”

The colour of her skin was, indeed, unusually dark, but that fact did not interfere with the classic delicacy of her features, or the natural sweetness of her expression.

The order of progress in narrow places was such that Manuela rode behind Pedro and in front of Lawrence, Quashy bringing up the rear. In more open places the young Englishman used occasionally to ride up abreast of Manuela and endeavour to engage her in conversation. He was, to say truth, very much the reverse of what is styled a lady’s man, and had all his life felt rather shy and awkward in female society, but being a sociable, kindly fellow, he felt it incumbent on him to do what in him lay to lighten the tedium of the long journey to one who, he thought, must naturally feel very lonely with no companions but men. “Besides,” he whispered to himself, “she is only an Indian, and of course cannot construe my attentions to mean anything so ridiculous as love-making—so, I will speak to her in a fatherly sort of way.”

Filled with this idea, as the party came out upon a wide and beautiful table-land, which seemed like a giant emerald set in a circlet of grand blue mountains, Lawrence pushed up alongside, and said—

“Poor girl, I fear that such prolonged riding over these rugged passes must fatigue you.” Manuela raised her dark eyes to the youth’s face, and, with a smile that was very slight—though not so slight but that it revealed a double row of bright little teeth—she replied softly—

“W’at you say?”

“Oh! I forgot, you don’t speak English. How stupid I am!” said Lawrence with a blush, for he was too young to act the “fatherly” part well.

He felt exceedingly awkward, but, observing that the girl’s eyes were again fixed pensively on the ground, he hoped that she had not noticed the blush, and attempted to repeat the phrase in Spanish. What he said it is not possible to set down in that tongue, nor can we gratify the reader with a translation. Whatever it was, Manuela replied by again raising her dark eyes for a moment—this time without a smile—and shaking her head.

Poor Lawrence felt more awkward than ever. In despair he half thought of making trial of Latin or Greek, when Pedro came opportunely to the rescue. Looking back he began—

“Senhor Armstrong—”

“I think,” interrupted the youth, “that you may dispense with ‘Senhor.’”

“Nay, I like to use it,” returned the guide. “It reminds me so forcibly of the time when I addressed your good old father thus.”

“Well, Senhor Pedro, call me what you please. What were you about to say?”

“Only that we are now approaching one of the dangerous passes of the mountains, where baggage-mules sometimes touch the cliffs with their packs, and so get tilted over the precipices. But our mules are quiet, and with ordinary care we have nothing to fear.”

The gorge in the mountains, which the travellers soon afterwards entered, fully justified the guide’s expression “dangerous.” It was a wild, rugged glen, high up on one side of which the narrow pathway wound—in some places rounding a cliff or projecting boulder, which rendered the passage of the baggage-mules extremely difficult. Indeed, one of the mules did slightly graze a rock with its burden; and, although naturally sure-footed, was so far thrown off its balance as to be within a hair’s-breadth of tumbling over the edge and being dashed to pieces on the rocks below, where a turbulent river rushed tumultuously at the bottom of the glen.

One of the snow-clad peaks of the higher Andes lay right before them. One or two guanacos—animals of the lama species—gazed at them from the other side of the gorge, and several ill-omened vultures wheeled in the sky above, as if anticipating a catastrophe which would furnish them with a glorious meal.

“A most suitable place for the depredations of banditti, or fellows like Conrad of the Mountains, I should think,” said Lawrence.

“Bandits are sometimes met with here,” returned Pedro, quietly.

“And what if we should meet with such in a place where there is scarcely room to fight?”

“Why then,” returned the guide, with a slight curl of his moustache, “we should have to try who could fight best in the smallest space.”

“Not a pleasant prospect in the circumstances,” said Lawrence, thinking of Manuela.

For some time they rode together in silence; but Quashy, who had overheard, the conversation, and was of a remarkably combative disposition, though the reverse of bad-tempered or quarrelsome, could not refrain from asking—

“W’y de Guv’mint not hab lots ob sojers an’ pleece in de mountains to squash de raskils?”

“Because Government has enough to do to squash the rascals nearer home, Quashy,” answered Pedro. “Have a care, the track gets rather steep here.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the Indian girl as he spoke. She was riding behind with an air of perfect ease and self-possession.

“Fall to the rear, Quashy,” said Pedro.

The black obeyed at once, and a minute later they turned the corner of a jutting rock, which had hitherto shut out from view the lower part of the gorge and the track they were following.

The sight that met their view was calculated to try the strongest nerves, for there, not a hundred paces in advance, and coming towards them, were ten of the most villainous-looking cut-throats that could be imagined, all mounted, and heavily armed with carbine, sword, and pistol.

Taken completely by surprise, the bandits—for such Pedro knew them to be—pulled up. Not so our guide. It was one of the peculiarities and strong points of Pedro’s character that he was never taken by surprise, or uncertain what to do.

Instantly he drew his sword with one hand, a pistol with the other, and, driving his spurs deep into his mule, dashed down the steep road at the banditti. In the very act he looked back, and, in a voice that caused the echoes of the gorge to ring, shouted in Spanish—

“Come on, comrades! here they are at last! close up!”

A yell of the most fiendish excitement and surprise from Quashy—who was only just coming into view—assisted the deception. If anything was wanting to complete the effect, it was the galvanic upheaval of Lawrence’s long arms and the tremendous flourish of his longer legs, as he vaulted over his mule’s head, left it scornfully behind, uttered a roar worthy of an African lion, and rushed forward on foot. He grasped his great cudgel, for sword and pistol had been utterly forgotten!

Like a human avalanche they descended on the foe. That foe did not await the onset. Panic-stricken they turned and went helter-skelter down the pass—all except two, who seemed made of sterner stuff than their fellows, and hesitated.

One of these Pedro rode fairly down, and sent, horse and all, over the precipice. Lawrence’s cudgel beat down the guard of the other, flattened his sombrero, and stopping only at his skull, stretched him on the ground. As for those who had fled, the appalling yells of Quashy, as he pursued them, scattered to the winds any fag-ends of courage they might have possessed, and effectually prevented their return. So tremendous and sudden was the result, that Manuela felt more inclined to laugh than cry, though naturally a good deal frightened.

Lawrence and Pedro were standing in consultation over the fallen bandit when the negro came back panting from the chase.

“Da’s wan good job dooed, anyhow,” he said. “What’s you be do wid him?”

“What would you recommend?” asked Pedro.

The negro pointed significantly to the precipice, but the guide shook his head.

“No, I cannot kill in cold blood, though I have no doubt he richly deserves it. We’ll bind his hands and leave him. It may be weakness on my part, but we can’t take him on, you know.”

While Pedro was in the act of binding the robber, a wild shriek, as of some one in terrible agony, startled them. Looking cautiously over the precipice, where the sound seemed to come from, they saw that the man whom Pedro had ridden down was hanging over the abyss by the boughs of a small shrub. His steed lay mangled on the rocks of the river bank at the bottom. There was an agonised expression in the man’s countenance which would have touched a heart much less soft than that of Lawrence Armstrong. Evidently the man’s power of holding on was nearly exhausted, and he could not repress a shriek at the prospect of the terrible death which seemed so imminent.

Being a practised mountaineer, Lawrence at once, without thought of personal danger, and moved only by pity, slipped over the crags, and, descending on one or two slight projections, the stability of which even a Swiss goat might have questioned, reached the bush. A look of fierce and deadly hate was on the robber’s face, for, judging of others by himself, he thought, no doubt, that his enemy meant to hasten his destruction.

“Here, catch hold—I’ll save you!” cried Lawrence, extending his strong right hand.

A glance of surprise told that he was understood. The bandit let go the hold of one of his hands and made a convulsive grasp at his rescuer. Their fingers touched, but at the same moment the branch gave way, and, with a cry of wild despair, the wretched man went headlong down.

Not, however, to destruction. The effort he had made threw him slightly to one side of the line which his horse had taken in its fall. The difference was very slight indeed, yet it sufficed to send him towards another bush lower down the cliff. Still, the height he