Mr. Fortescue Part 27

Carmen looked very grave.

"Think better of it, _amigo mio_," he said. "When we formed this project we were both in a reckless mood. Much of the country you propose to explore has never been trodden by the white man's foot. It is a country of impenetrable forests, fordless rivers, and unclimbable mountains. You will have to undergo terrible hardships, you may die of hunger or of thirst, and escape the poisoned arrows of wild Indians only to fall a victim to the malarious fevers which none but natives of the country can resist."

"When did you learn all this? You talked very differently a few days ago."

"I did, but I have been making inquiries."

"And you have fallen in love."

"True, and that has opened my eyes to many things."

"To the dangers of this expedition, for instance; likewise to the fact that fighting Spaniards is not the only thing worth living for."

"Very likely; love is always stronger than hate, and I confess that I hate the Spaniards much less than I did. Yet, in this matter, I a.s.sure you that I do not in the least exaggerate. You must remember that your companions will be half-breeds, men who have neither the stamina nor the courage for really rough work. When the hardships begin they are almost sure to desert you. If we were going together we might possibly pull through, as we have already pulled through so many dangers."

"Yes, I shall miss you sorely. All the same, I am resolved to go, even were the danger tenfold greater than you say it is."

"I feared as much. Well, if I cannot dissuade you from attempting this enterprise, I must e'en go with you, as I am pledged to do. To let you undertake it alone, after agreeing to bear you company were treason to our friendship. It would be like deserting in the face of the enemy."

"Not so, Carmen. The agreement has been cancelled by mutual consent, and to leave Juanita after winning her heart would be quite as bad as deserting in face of the enemy. And I have a right to choose my company.

You shall not go with me."

Juanita again gave me her hand, and from the look that accompanied it I thought that, had I spoken first--but it was too late; the die was cast.

"You will not go just yet," she murmured; "you will stay with us a little longer."

"As you wish, senorita. A few days more or less will make little difference."

Several other attempts were made to turn me from my purpose. Don Esteban himself (who was greatly pleased with his daughter's betrothal to Carmen), prompted thereto by Juanita, entered the lists. He expressed regret that he had not another daughter whom he could bestow upon me, and went even so far as to offer me land and to set me up as a Venezuelan country gentleman if I would consent to stay.

But I remained firm to my resolve. For, albeit, none perceived it but myself I was in a false position. Though I was hopelessly in love with Juanita I liked her so well that the contemplation of Carmen's happiness did not add to my own. I thought, too, that Juanita guessed the true state of the case; and she was so kind and gentle withal, and her grat.i.tude at times was so demonstrative that I feared if I stayed long at Naparima there might be trouble, for like all men of Spanish blood, Carmen was quite capable of being furiously jealous.

I left them a month before the day fixed for their marriage. My companions were Gahra, and a dozen Indians and mestizoes, to each of whom I was enabled, by Don Esteban's kindness, to give a handsome gratuity beforehand.

To Juanita I gave as a wedding-present my ruby-ring, to Carmen my horse Pizarro.

Our parting was one of the most painful incidents of my long and checkered life. I loved them both and I think they loved me. Juanita wept abundantly; we all embraced and tried to console ourselves by promising each other that we should meet again; but when or where or how, none of us could tell, and in our hearts we knew that the chances against the fruition of our hopes were too great to be reckoned.

Then, full of sad thoughts and gloomy forebodings, I set out on my long journey to the unknown.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HAPPY VALLEY.

My gloomy forebodings were only too fully realized. Never was a more miserably monotonous journey. After riding for weeks, through sodden, sunless forests and trackless wastes we had to abandon our mules and take to our feet, spend weeks on nameless rivers, poling and paddling our canoe in the terrible heat, and tormented almost to madness by countless insects. Then the rains came on, and we were weather-stayed for months in a wretched Indian village. But for the help of friendly aborigines--and fortunately the few we met, being spoken fair showed themselves friendly--we must all have perished. They gave us food, lent us canoes, served us as pilots and guides, and thought themselves well paid with a piece of scarlet cloth or a handful of gla.s.s beads.

My men turned out quite as ill as I had been led to expect. Several deserted at the outset, two or three died of fever, two were eaten by alligators, and when we first caught sight of the Andes, Gahra was my sole companion.

We were in a pitiful plight. I was weak from the effects of a fever, Gahra lame from the effects of an accident. My money was nearly all gone, my baggage had been lost by the upsetting of a canoe, and our worldly goods consisted of two sorry mules, our arms, the ragged clothes on our backs, and a few pieces of silver. How we were to cross the Andes, and what we should do when we reached Peru was by no means clear. As yet, the fortune which I had set out to seek seemed further off than ever. We had found neither gold nor silver nor precious stones, and all the coin I had in my waist-belt would not cover the cost of a three days' sojourn at the most modest of _posaderos_.

But we have left behind us the sombre and rain-saturated forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco, and the fine country around us and the magnificent prospect before us made me, at least, forget for the moment both our past privations and our present anxieties. We are on the _montana_ of the eastern Cordillera, a mountain land of amazing fertility, well wooded, yet not so thickly as to render progress difficult; the wayside is bordered with brilliant flowers, cascades tumble from rocky heights, and far away to the west rise in the clear air the glorious Andes, alps on alps, a vast range of stately snow-crowned peaks, endless and solemn, veiled yet not hidden by fleecy clouds, and as cold and mysterious as winter stars looking down on a sleeping world.

For a long time I gaze entranced at the wondrous scene, and should probably have gone on gazing had not Gahra reminded me that the day was well-nigh spent and that we were still, according to the last information received, some distance from the mission of San Andrea de Huanaco, otherwise Valle Hermoso, or Happy Valley.

One of our chief difficulties had been to find our way; maps we had none, for the very sufficient reason that maps of the region we had traversed did not at that time exist; our guides had not always proved either competent or trustworthy, and I had only the vaguest idea as to where we were. Of two things only was I certain, that we were south of the equator and within sight of the Andes of Peru (which at that time included the countries now known as Ecuador and Bolivia).

A few days previously I had fallen in with an old half-caste priest, from whom I had heard of the Mission of San Andrea de Huanaco, and how to get there, and who drew for my guidance a rough sketch of the route. The priest in charge, a certain Fray Ignacio, a born Catalan, would, he felt sure, be glad to find me quarters and give me every information in his power.

And so it proved. Had I been his own familiar friend Fray Ignacio could not have welcomed me more warmly or treated me more kindly. A European with news but little above a year old was a perfect G.o.dsend to him. When he heard that I had served in his native land and the Bourbons once more ruled in France and Spain, he went into ecstasies of delight, took me into his house, and gave me of his best.

San Andrea was well named Valle Hermoso. It was like an alpine village set in a tropical garden. The mud houses were overgrown with greenery, the rocks mantled with flowers, the nearer heights crested with n.o.ble trees, whose great white trunks, as smooth and round as the marble pillars of an eastern palace, were roofed with domes of purple leaves.

Through the valley and between verdant banks and blooming orchards meandered a silvery brook, either an affluent or a source of one of the mighty streams which find their homes in the great Atlantic.

The mission was a village of tame Indians, whose ancestors had been "Christianized," by Fray Ignacio's Jesuit predecessor. But the Jesuits had been expelled from South America nearly half a century before. My host belonged to the order of St. Francis. The spiritual guide, as well as the earthly providence of his flock, he managed their affairs in this world and prepared them for the next. And they seemed nothing loath. A more listless, easy-going community than the Indians of the Happy Valley it were difficult to imagine. The men did little but smoke, sleep, and gamble. All the real work was done by the women, and even they took care not to over-exert themselves. All were short-lived. The women began to age at twenty, the men were old at twenty-five and generally died about thirty, of general decay, said the priest. In my opinion of pure laziness.

Exertion is a condition of healthy existence; and the most active are generally the longest lived.

Nevertheless, Fray Ignacio was content with his people. They were docile and obedient, went regularly to church, had a great capacity for listening patiently to long sermons, and if they died young they got so much the sooner to heaven.

All the same, Fray Ignacio was not so free from care as might be supposed.

He had two anxieties. The Happy Valley was so far untrue to its name as to be subject to earthquakes; but as none of a very terrific character had occurred for a quarter of a century he was beginning to hope that it would be spared any further visitations for the remainder of his lifetime. A much more serious trouble were the occasional visits of bands of wild Indians--_Indios misterios_, he called them; what they called themselves he had no idea. Neither had he any definite idea whence they came; from the other side of the Cordilleras, some people thought. But they neither pillaged nor murdered--except when they were resisted or in drink, for which reason the father always kept his _aguardiente_ carefully hidden.

Their worst propensity was a pa.s.sion for white girls. There were two or three _mestizo_ families in the village, some of whom were whiter, or rather, less coppery than the others, and from these the _misterios_ would select and carry off the best-looking maidens; for what purpose Fray Ignacio could not tell, but, as he feared, to sacrifice to their G.o.ds.

When I heard that these troublesome visitors generally numbered fewer than a score, I asked why, seeing that the valley contained at least a hundred and fifty men capable of bearing arms, the raiders were not resisted. On this the father smiled and answered, that no earthly consideration would induce his tame Indians to fight; it was so much easier to die. He could not even persuade the _mestizoes_ to migrate to a safer locality. It was easier to be robbed of their children occasionally than to move their goods and chattels and find another home.

I asked Fray Ignacio whether he thought these robbers of white children were likely to pay him a visit soon.

"I am afraid they are," he said. "It is nearly two years since their last visit, and they only come in summer. Why?"

"I have a curiosity to see these; and I think I could save the children and give these wild fellows such a lesson that they would trouble you no more--at any rate for a long time to come."

"I should be inexpressibly grateful. But how, senor?"

Whereupon I disclosed my scheme. It was very simple; I proposed to turn one of the most likely houses in the village into a small fortress which might serve as a refuge for the children and which Gahra and I would undertake to defend. We had two muskets and a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and the priest possessed an old blunderbuss, which I thought I could convert into a serviceable weapon. In this way we should be able to shoot down four or five of the _misterios_ before any of them could get near us, and as they had no firearms I felt sure that, after so warm a reception, they would let us alone and go their way. The shooting would demoralize them, and as we should not show ourselves they could not know that the garrison consisted only of the negro and myself.

"Very well," said the priest, after a moment's thought. "I leave it to you. But remember that if you fail they will kill you and everybody else in the place. However, I dare say you will succeed, the firearms may frighten them, and, on the whole, I think the risk is worth running!"

The next question was how to get timely warning of the enemy's approach. I suggested posting scouts on the hills which commanded the roads into the valley. I thought that, albeit the tame Indians were good for nothing else, they could at least sit under a tree and keep their eyes open.

"They would fall asleep," said Fray Ignacio.

So we decided to keep a lookout among ourselves, and ask the girls who tended the cattle to do the same. They were much more wide-awake than the men, if the latter could be said to be awake at all.

The next thing was to fortify the priest's house, which seemed the most suitable for our purpose. I strengthened the wall with stays, repaired the old _trabuco_, which was almost as big as a small cannon, and made ready for barricading the doors and windows on the first alarm.