The Inca Emerald Part 18

"At any rate, the only thing to do is to press on as fast as possible."

"Why didn't my snake-skin make us safe from those people?" inquired Joe, as they hurried along.

"Because," explained the scientist, "the Miranhas are an outlaw tribe who have no religion and keep no faith. Nothing is sacred to them."

Beyond the tunnel a wide pavemented road led around the rear of the mountain and then up and up and in and out among a wilderness of peaks, plateaus, cliffs, and precipices.

In spite of the well-paved path along which in the old days the Incas had sent many an expedition down into the Amazon Valley, the progress of the party was slow. Will became rapidly weaker and for long stretches had to be helped, and even carried along the more difficult parts of the path.

Hour after hour went by. Once they stopped to eat and rest, but their tireless leader hurried them on.

"We're not safe on this side of Machu Pichu," he said.

Will pulled himself to his feet.

"I'm the one who's keeping you all back," he said weakly. "From now on I walk on my own legs!" And, in spite of the others' protests, he did so, forcing his numbed nerve-centers to act by sheer strength of will.

Toward the middle of the afternoon the path turned an elbow of rock, and in front of them towered a chaos of grim and lonely peaks, spiring above canons and gorges which seemed to stretch down to the very bowels of the earth. In the background were range after range of snow-capped mountains, white as the clouds banked above them, while in front showed a nicked knife-edge of dark rock. The professor's face lightened as he looked.

"On that ridge," he said, stretching out his arm, "lies the Lost City!"

The path led downward until, although it was early afternoon, it became dim twilight in the depths of dark canons, and then, twisting like a snake, came back to the heights, skirting the edges of appalling precipices in a series of spirals. As the way reached the summit of the ridge it became narrower and narrower, and at intervals above it stood stone watch-towers on whose ramparts were arranged rows of great boulders with which the sentinels of the Incas could have swept an invading army down to destruction in a moment. The path ended at last in a flight of steps cut out of the solid rock, with a wall on each side, and so narrow that not more than two could walk up them abreast. It was past sunset when the little party reached the last step and stood on the summit of the windswept ridge. In the east the full moon was rising above the mountains and flooded the heights with light white as melting snow.

Before them stretched the city of Machu Pichu, its shadows showing in the moonlight like pools of spilled ink. Lost, lonely, deserted by men for half a thousand years, the great city had been the birth-place of the Incas, who ruled mightily an empire larger than that which Babylon or Nineveh or Egypt held in their prime. In its day it had been one of the most impregnable cities of the world. Flanked by sheer precipices, it was reached only by two narrow paths enfiladed by watch-towers, eyries, and batteries of boulders. To-night the terraces were solitary and the strange houses of stone and vast rock-built temples empty and forsaken.

In the moonlight this gray birth-place of an empire lay before the travelers from another age, silent as sleep, and, as they pa.s.sed through its deserted streets, the professor told them in a half-whisper thousand-year-old legends which he had heard from Indian guides. At the far side stood the great watch-tower Sacsahuaman, guarding the other path, which spiraled its way up the slope of a sheer precipice half a mile high.

"The Inca who built that," said the professor, "gave the tower its name.

It means 'Friend of the Falcon,' for the Inca boasted that the hawks would feed full on the shattered bodies of any foe who tried to climb its guarded heights."

On the summit of a sacred hill he showed them a square post carved out of the top of a huge rock whose upper surface had been smoothed and squared so that the stone pillar made a sun-dial which gave the time to the whole city. Near by lay Sayacusca, the "Tired Stone," a vast monolith weighing a thousand tons, which was being dragged to the summit by twenty thousand men when it stuck. As the carriers struggled to move its vast bulk, it suddenly turned over and crushed three hundred of them. Convinced that they had offended some of the G.o.ds, the stone was left where it fell, and the skeletons of its victims are beneath it to this day.

High above the rest of the city was the sacred Sun Rock. From it the sun itself was believed to rise, nor might it be touched by the foot of bird, beast, or man. At the height of the Inca Empire it was plated all over with gold, which the Peruvians believed fell to the earth as the tears of the sun, and with emeralds and, except during the Festival of the Sun, covered with a golden-yellow veil. To-day its glory had departed, and the tired travelers saw before them only a frayed and weather-worn ma.s.s of red sandstone.

Seated on its summit, the scientist showed them the street where, during the Festival of the Sun, the Inca would ride along a pavement made of ingots of silver on a horse whose mane was strung with pearls and whose shoes were of gold. Beyond the Sun Rock was the Snake Temple, which had three windows and whose solid stone walls were pierced with narrow holes through which the sacred snakes entered to be fed by the priests.

"We might camp there," suggested Professor Ditson. "It would make a large, comfortable house."

"No, no," objected Jud shudderingly. "No snake temple for me."

They finally compromised on Sacsahuaman, whose thick walls were slit here and there by narrow peep-holes and whose only entrance was by a narrow staircase of rock cut out of the cliff and guarded, like most of the entrance staircases, by rows of heavy boulders arranged along the ledge. Inside were long benches of solid stone, and, best of all, at the base of a white rock in the center of the tower trickled an ice-cold spring whose water ran through a little trough in the rock as it had run for a thousand years. Professor Ditson told them that in the old days it had always been kept guarded and munitioned as a fortress where the Incas could make a last stand if by any chance the rest of the city should ever fall into the hands of their enemies.

That night they kindled a fire within the tower, and ate their supper high above the sacred city on the battlements where the guards of the Incas had feasted a thousand years before Columbus discovered the New World. Afterward they slept, taking turns in guarding the two entrances to the city from the same watch-towers where other sentries had watched in the days of the beginning of the Inca Empire.

The next morning Will could not move. The stress and strain and exertion of the day before had left him too weak to throw off the numbing effect of the virus. Professor Ditson shook his head as he looked him over carefully.

"There is only one thing to do," he said at last. "We must send on ahead and get a horse or a burro for him. He has walked too much as it is. Any more such strain might leave him paralyzed for life. Hen," he went on, "you know the trail to Yuca. Take Joe and start at once. You ought to run across a band of vaqueros herding cattle long before you get to the valley. Bring the whole troop back with you. I'll pay them, well, and they can convoy us in case the Miranhas are still after us."

A few minutes later Hen and Joe were on their way. Leaning over the parapet of Sacsahuaman, the rest of the party watched them wind their way slowly down the precipice until they disappeared along the trail that stretched away through the depths of the canon. All the rest of that day Jud and Pinto and the professor took turns in standing guard over the two entrances to the city, and in rubbing Will's legs and giving him alternate baths of hot and cold water, the recognized treatment for stings of the maribundi wasp.

That night it was Jud's turn to guard the staircase up which the party had come. Once, just before daybreak, he thought he heard far below him the rattle and clink of rolling stones. He strained his eyes through the dark, but could see nothing, nor did he hear any further sounds. In order, however, to discourage any night prowlers, the old trapper dropped one of the round boulders that had been placed in the watch-tower for just such a purpose, and it went rolling and crashing down the path.

Daylight showed the trail stretching away below him apparently empty and untrodden since they had used it when entering the city. Tired of waiting for Professor Ditson, Jud hurried up the steep slope to the fortress, meeting the scientist on the way to relieve him. The old trapper was just congratulating Will on being well enough to stand on his feet when a shout for help brought all three with a rush to the entrance of the tower. Up the steep slope they saw Professor Ditson running like a race-horse, while behind him showed the giant figure of Dawson, followed closely by half a hundred Miranhas. In another minute Professor Ditson was among them.

"They must have hidden during the night around a bend in the path and rushed up when we changed guards," he panted. "They were swarming into the tower just as I got there."

All further talk was stopped by the same dreadful tumult of war-cries that the travelers had learned to know so well.

"Steady, boys," said Jud, instantly taking command, as a veteran of many Indian fights. "Four against fifty is big odds, but we've got a strong position. Will, you sit by the staircase an' if any one starts to come up, roll one of them fifty-pound boulders down on him, with my compliments. I'll stay back here where I can watch the whole wall an'

pick off any one that tries to climb up. Professor, you an' Pinto keep back of me, with your ax an' knife handy in case any of them get past me. Now," he went on, as the three took their stations, "how about some breakfast?"

After the first fierce chorus of yells there was a sudden silence. Led by Dawson, the Indians were far too crafty to attempt a direct charge up through the narrow gateway. The roofless walls, no longer raftered by heavy timbers, as in the Inca's day, were the weak spot in the defense of the besieged. If enough of the Miranhas succeeded in scaling them in spite of Jud's markmanship, the defenders of the fort could be overpowered by sheer weight of numbers. While the little party of the besieged were eating breakfast at their several stations, they could hear the sound of heavy objects being dragged across the paved street without, and the clink and jar of stone against the wall. Always, however, the besiegers kept themselves carefully out of the range of vision from the tower's narrow loop-holes. At noon Jud insisted that Pinto cook and serve dinner as usual.

"Eat hearty, boys," the old Indian-fighter said. "You may never have another chance. I dope it out they're pilin' rocks against the walls an' when they've got 'em high enough they'll rush us."

It was the middle of the afternoon before Jud's prophecy was fulfilled.

For some time there had been no sign nor sound from the besiegers. Then suddenly, from six different and widely separated points in the semicircle of stone, hideous heads suddenly showed over the edge of the wall, and, with the tiger-scream of their tribe, five picked Miranha warriors started to scramble over and leap down upon the little party below, while at the end of the curved line showed the scarred, twisted face and implacable eyes of the outlaw from the North.

It was then that the wiry little gray-bearded trapper showed the skill and coolness that had made his name famous throughout a score of tribal wars which had flickered and flared through the Far Northwest during his trapping days. Standing lithe and loose, he swung his automatic from his hip in a half-circle and fired three shots so quickly that the echo of one blended with the beginning of the next. Hard upon the last report came the pop of Pinto's deadly blow-gun. Three of the besiegers toppled over dead or wounded, and with a dreadful shout Scar Dawson clawed frantically at his shoulder where a keen thorn of death from Pinto's tube had lodged. The other two Indians scrambled down in terror, and there came a chorus of appalling screams, wails, and yells from the other side of the thick wall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hideous heads suddenly showed over the edge of the wall]

"I could have got 'em all," remarked Jud cheerfully, polishing his smoking automatic on his sleeve, "but I've only got four cartridges left an' we're likely to need 'em later. Will," he went on, "you just step over to the watch-tower there an' see if there 're any signs of Hen an'

Joe. A few South American cow-boys would come in mighty handy just about now."

"If they don't come before night," stated Professor Ditson calmly, "we're gone. The Miranhas are certain to rush us as soon as it gets dark."

Even as he spoke, there came from outside a wail, swelling to a shriek like the unearthly scream of a wounded horse, yet with a note of triumph and antic.i.p.ation running through it. Pinto started and shivered, while Professor Ditson's face showed grim and set.

"You'll have to get us first," he muttered.

"What do they mean by that little song?" inquired Jud coolly.

"It's the hag-cry that the women raise before they torture the prisoners," returned the other. "They think they're sure of us as soon as the sun goes down."

Will returned just in time to catch the last words.

"There's no one in sight," he said. "Couldn't we slip off ourselves down the cliff?" he went on.

"Not a chance," explained the scientist. "They'd roll boulders down on us."

"Is there any way of holding them off after dark?" went on Will, after a little pause--and had his answer in the pitying silence of the two older men.

For a moment he turned very white. Then he set his teeth and threw back his shoulders.

"I'm only a kid," he said, "but I've been in tight places before. You needn't be afraid to talk plain."

"If they get over when it's too dark to shoot straight," said Jud at last, "we 're all in."

Will looked at him unflinchingly.