The Treasure of the Incas: A Story of Adventure in Peru by G. A. Henty (reading list TXT) 📖

think that that is too much, we can tie each across a separate mule. They were more trouble coming up than all the mules put together. We had pretty nearly to carry them through the deep places, though at other points they leapt from rock to rock cleverly enough."

"I am not going to be left behind if you are going to the fight, se�or," Donna Maria said, "if you will give me one of your pistols."

"We could manage that, I should think," Harry said. "We can put you on one of the steadiest mules when we first go down, and with one at each side of you we can manage it very well. Jos� must go on a hundred yards ahead to see whether any of the savages are on the watch at their end, and if so, you must wait till we have cleared them out. You see, we shall have no hesitation in shooting any of them if necessary, and though that would bring the rest of them down on us, yet when our squibs and crackers begin to fly among them, you may be sure they won't face us for an instant."

Dias grumbled that his wife had better stay where she was till they went back for the mules; but Harry said: "I do think, Dias, that she had better go with us. It would be cruel to leave her now that we are going into a fight—leave her all alone to tremble for our lives, with a knowledge that if things should go wrong with us the savages will soon be up here."

"Well, se�or, if you think so, there is no more to be said."

"I am not going to be made a trouble of," Maria said. "I shall go down on foot like the rest of you. I will take some other clothes with me, so that when you all come back for the mules I can change into them."

"Perhaps that would be the best plan," Harry agreed. "Now I will go back and take Bertie's place. It is my turn to be on watch, and he will be wanting to hear the news."

"Well, Harry, is it all right?" Bertie asked as he heard his brother coming up to him.

"It couldn't be better! There are sixty or seventy of them in a sort of little ravine three hundred yards away, on the left-hand side of the river. They don't seem to be keeping guard at all, and if they are not more careful to-morrow night we shall take them completely by surprise. We are going to saddle all the mules directly it gets too dark for any of the fellows on the hills to see us, then we must set to work and pull down enough of the barricade here to allow them to pass. We ourselves, when we go down, will cross at that shallow place above here, and go down the river at that side, otherwise we sha'n't be able to cross it except at some distance beyond the other end of the torrent. Of course the mules must go down this side, as we shall want to turn to the right when we get off. We shall make our attack about ten o'clock."

Bertie went off, and three hours later Dias relieved Harry. As soon as it was light the next morning Bertie and Jos� set to work to fill the cases—there were a hundred squibs and fifty large crackers.

Donna Maria after breakfast went out and returned with a number of flexible sticks of about half an inch in diameter; these she carried into her tent, where she shut herself up for the forenoon. When, at one o'clock, she came out with the result of her work, it resembled a chair without legs and with a back about a foot wide and three feet high.

"What in the world have you got there, Donna Maria?" Bertie asked.

"Don't you know?"

"No, I have never seen a thing like it before."

"This is the thing the porters use for carrying weights, and sometimes people, over the Cordilleras. You see that strap near the top goes round the man's forehead, and when there is a weight in the chair these other straps pass over his shoulders and under his arms, and then round whatever is on the seat."

"But what is going to be on the seat?"

"I am," she laughed. "Dias is so overbearing. It had all been arranged nicely, as you know; and then when he spoke to me afterwards he said, 'The first thing to-morrow morning, Maria, you will set to work to make a porter's chair, and I shall carry you down the stream. No words about it, but do as you are told.' Generally Dias lets me have my own way, se�or, but when he talks like that, I know that it is useless to argue with him. And perhaps it is best after all, for, as he said to me afterwards, it is a nasty place for men to get along, but for a woman, with her petticoats dragging and trailing round her, it would be almost impossible for her to keep her footing."

"Well, I thought the same thing myself when we were talking about it yesterday," Bertie said. "Of course I did not say anything, but I am sure Dias is right. I found it very hard work to keep my footing, and I really don't believe that I could have done it if I had been dressed as a woman. And Dias can carry you like that?"

"Carry me, se�or! he could carry three times that weight. He has cut himself a staff seven or eight feet long this morning to steady himself, but I don't think there was any need for it. Why, it is a common thing for people to be carried over the Cordilleras so, and Dias is stronger a great deal than many of the men who do it. As he said, if I had been going through on foot you would all have been bothering about me. And it is not as if two people could go abreast, and one help the other. There is often only room between the rocks for one to pass through, and it is just there where the rush of the water is strongest."