“I am sorry I was compelled to mislead you [he wrote]; but I mean to explore the Andes at this point, and I prefer to set out on a crazy project without undergoing the protests and dissuasion I should certainly have met with from the kind friend you have proved yourself. If all is well with you seven years from this date, write to me, care of the National Bank, New York. I will surely answer.”
“I am sorry I was compelled to mislead you [he wrote]; but I mean to explore the Andes at this point, and I prefer to set out on a crazy project without undergoing the protests and dissuasion I should certainly have met with from the kind friend you have proved yourself. If all is well with you seven years from this date, write to me, care of the National Bank, New York. I will surely answer.”
“Seven years!” shouted Malaspina, shaking a huge fist at the silent hills. “Seven devils! He is mad, mad! There will be an inquiry by the American consul, and I shall be accused of killing him. Holy Virgin! What a fool I was to let him go alone!”
He was minded to flog an Indian or two, and thus extract information; but calmer counsels prevailed. After all, he had a letter proving that Power had left the ship voluntarily. At first he resolved to report the astounding incident on returning to Valparaiso, and discussed the matter volubly with José, second in command. José said, “No. Let sleeping dogs lie. Those foreign consuls are plaguy fellows. They get many a poor man hanged just to please their governments.”
Malaspina had been well paid, of course; so he decided to hold his tongue, keeping the letter, in case—— Thus was the trail lost. Power was buried alive.
The guide led him twenty miles up the valley of the Aisen, and handed him over to the members of another tribe, describing him as a harmless moon-gazer. In a hovel lay an elderly Indian, shivering with fever. Power dosed the quaking wretch with calomel andquinine, and performed a miracle. Thenceforth his life was safe; as long as the few ounces of quinine and calomel lasted, at any rate. He had landed in the Chile region at the beginning of spring, and his nomad hosts moved nearer the Andes when the weather improved, taking him with them. Their barbarous tongue included a number of Spanish words, and by slow degrees he learned their comparatively small but curiously inflected vocabulary. Once he could make himself understood, the foundations of his mission were laid securely. By sheer initiative, having no training in such arts beyond the knowledge acquired by most intelligent men, he taught them how to spin and weave the long hair of the Chilean goat. He established some principles of communal law. He showed them how to use nitrate as a fertilizer. He experimented with medicinal herbs when his own small store of drugs had given out. He got them to build better huts, and adopt some elementary principles of sanitation. Tillage and crops broke down the migratory habit. Land was cleared, and drained or irrigated as needed. For the first time in its history, the tribe lived in permanent dwellings. In a word, Power established a state.
Within four years he had elevated these apemen and women to a standard so far above that of their neighbors that his fame spread into unknown fastnesses of the Cordillera. Among his adopted people he would have been worshiped as a god if he had not sternly repressed any such tendencies. But he could not stop the growth of his reputation as a magician, and a well-planned raid by another tribe brought about the slaughter of a section of the community and his own capture.
He was reduced now to the direst misery. His captors, some degrees cruder and more bestial than the men he was governing, took him by forced marches across a spur of the Andes, giving him food of such revolting nature that he became deadly ill. At last they were compelled to carry him, and, using such limited reasoning faculties as they possessed, allowed him to save his life by cooking and eating portions of animals freshly killed. Their object in making him a prisoner, he gathered, was to divert his magic to their own district so that his incantations might increase their herds. When he failed to accomplish this laudable purpose offhand, they became violent, and threatened to burn him alive. On the homeopathic principle, an abnormally dry and scorching spring came to his rescue. Some species of noxious insect, whose bite was fatal to horses and cattle, multiplied exceedingly, and the tribe lost half their stock. A wily candidate for the chiefship spread the notion that the white god had caused this misfortune, and that the person who really ought to be burnt alive was the chief who counseled the raid. This was duly done, and heavy rain fell that night, effectually disposing of the insect pests.
The new chief, who would have been an acquisition to certain political circles in more temperate climes, saw that, although he had scored heavily, the dangerous wonder-worker might be associated with evils yet to come; so, on his suggestion, Power was taken through the mountains by a secret pass, and left on the eastern slopes of the range to fare as best he might.
The Indians were afraid to gratify their instinctsby murdering him outright; but, seeing that he was absolutely unarmed, and without a scrap of food in his possession, there was no misunderstanding the malevolent grin with which their leader pointed out the path he must follow. These very aborigines, despite their animal lore concerning edible roots, and their readiness to dispute with vultures for a carrion meal, knew that no man could traverse those leagues of foothills without arms and a commissariat of some kind. No semblance of a track existed. Power and his guards stood on a scree of loose stones and shale not far below the snow line, and well above the first precipitous valley in which even the hardiest pines reached a stunted growth. The steep hillside was covered with the strange snow shapes known to Spanish South America as penitentes, weird wraiths like sheeted ghosts, and more than one broad track torn through these awesome sentinels showed where avalanches of rocks and ice had thundered down from the heights that very day.
Power looked out over the appalling vista of barren hills and tree-choked ravines which lay in front. In the direction shown by the Indian he saw a slight depression in an otherwise unbroken ring of unscalable mountains, and it was reasonable to assume that the milk-white glacier stream flowing through a canyon a thousand feet beneath must find its way to the sea through that gap. It was so long since he had glanced at a map of South America that he had only the vaguest notion of his whereabouts. As a rough guess, beyond those tremendous highlands lay the plains of Lower Argentina—the black, wind-swept, semidesert pampas. At the lowest calculation, he was three hundred andfifty miles from the Atlantic, and fifty of those miles offered such difficulties to man’s endeavor that well-equipped expeditions had turned back time and again from attempts to find new passes through the Andes in that region.
To try and reach the eastern coast meant almost certain death; but the scowling faces of the Indians showed that the effort must be made, unless he was prepared to fall under their weapons then and there. The uncouth tongue he had acquired on the Trans-Andean slope was not of much avail with his present custodians; but, when he asked the leader of the party for a spear, he was understood.
By nothing less, in Power’s view, than the direct intervention of Providence, the man was minded to treat the matter as a joke, and handed over his own spear, a nine-foot shaft of tough and limber hickory, tipped with a flat blade of iron about eight inches in length and two in width at its widest part. A stout shank was gripped by the split wood, and strongly bound in its socket with a thong of hide. Singularly enough, these savages had never searched their prisoner’s pockets. Probably, they were afraid to touch him, lest he laid some evil spell on them; so he was able now to produce a silver dollar, which he gave with a smile, indicating, at the same time, his willingness to purchase a couple of strips of the dried meat carried by some members of the escort.
This request was refused peremptorily, and a distinctly threatening gesture warned Power that the parley was at an end. He turned resolutely toward the rising sun, and began his lonely and affrightingOdyssey. He admitted afterward that he knew what fear meant during the first few strides across the broken ground, because he was suspicious lest the Indians might have planned to spear him from behind. Indeed, some such barbaric pleasantry may have occurred to them. A fierce clamor of talk broke out suddenly; but a swirl of snow swept down from a neighboring glacier, and even these hardy savages had no desire to be caught on that dangerous scree in a snowstorm. So the hubbub died away as quickly as it had arisen.
Fortunately, the snow did not fall so thickly as to be actually blinding. The hapless fugitive could discern his bearings, and he moved as speedily as possible to a point he had already fixed on as being out of the track of avalanches. He reached this landmark, a hump of rock, and perforce remained in its shelter till the weather cleared. During this vigil he heard the dull roar and rumble of falling débris, and, when the snow-shower ceased, he saw that two fresh lanes had been plowed through the serried ranks of the penitentes. Of the Indians there was neither sight nor sound.
It was then about noon on a spring day. He had not troubled to keep any reckoning of the calendar; but he knew that the month was late October or early November. So there still remained six or seven hours of practicable daylight, and he resolved to push on boldly, and reach a less perilous altitude before night fell.
He had two vital problems to solve. The first was the food difficulty; the second, to find a road where road there was none. The awful solitudes of the higherAndes and the dank forests which cumber the lateral valleys are singularly devoid of animal and bird life. It is a land of decay and death. The very hills disintegrate so rapidly that rivers which flow into the Pacific in one century may empty themselves into the Atlantic in the next. The constant falling away of precipices, and the luxuriant growth of trees and brushwood amid a tangle of rotting timber, render continuous advance by way of the ravines absolutely impossible. Hence, his only chance of escape lay in keeping to the highlands, trusting to luck and the lie of the land when an occasional crossing of a canyon became necessary in order to avoid doubling on his tracks and being driven back to the white wilderness of the inner chain.
Happily, he was better equipped than most men for an undertaking which was almost comparable with the plight of an explorer lost in the Arctic. Though enfeebled by his recent illness, and already in need of a meal, four years of exposure to hardships which would have killed a weakling, and daily living in the open in the worst of weather, had hardened his frame and toughened his constitution to that degree of fortitude with which Greek historians loved to invest Mithridates Eupator. Moreover, he was suitably clothed in skins, and his feet were incased in moccasins. Above all, his was an equable heart. Death had hovered near many a time and oft during those wild wander-years. He had heard the very fluttering of its sable pinions when he turned his back on the pitiless Indians; but he was firmly resolved not to lose faith while he could stand square on his feet. Time enough to liedown and die when movement was no longer possible. Meanwhile, he would struggle on.
Progress, of course, was slow. Every yard of the way was difficult, every second yard hazardous. As an alpenstock, the spear was invaluable. But for its aid he would have slipped and fallen a dozen times on that treacherous mountainside. After a couple of miles of fairly straight going, he was faced by the need of crossing to another range. Choosing a line which seemed practicable, he climbed down a broken rock face, plunged into the medley of fallen logs which cumbered the nearer slope of the intervening canyon, and ferried a torrent by the precarious bridge of a rotting pine, the only one, among hundreds which had fallen, long enough to reach the opposite bank, and so slender and brittle at its apex that it crumbled beneath him just as he sprang to safety on a rock slippery with spray.
The climb to the open again was exhausting work. Once he thought he was done for when an apparently sound log snapped suddenly, and plunged him into a dark and fearsome network of dead wood, so swathed in soft and noisome fungus growths that he seemed to be unable to find sure hold for either hand or foot. Somehow, he clambered into daylight again, and found himself clinging to the roots of a tree which throve on the tangled husks of its ancestors. It took him three hours to reach a height of five hundred feet, at which point the treacherous forest belt yielded to a firmer area covered by alpine moss.
Then, utterly worn out, and unequal to further effort that day, he was thinking of gnawing some bulbs ofresin which had exuded from the bigger firs, when he caught sight of a small armadillo scuttling over the rocks. It was the first living creature, save for an occasional vulture, he had seen since leaving the snow-line. The discovery brought a spurious energy, and he dashed off in pursuit. The armadillo, which was far removed from its natural habitat—probably owing to the drought in the lowlands—ran very rapidly, and was evidently making for a burrow. Indeed, Power despaired of securing the creature when it headed for a fissure in the ground. As a last resource, he hurled the spear at it. The weapon turned in the air, fell vertically, and buried its broad blade in the animal’s neck, striking the only vulnerable part of its body, since the whole remaining structure was covered with a strong, bony case of flexible plates.
The chances against any such haphazard casting of a javelin proving successful were simply incalculable; but Power took this piece of good fortune as further proof that he was being befriended by Providence. Leaving the armadillo where it had fallen, he searched the crevices in which it was about to seek refuge, and obtained some handfuls of dry moss. Then he gathered a bundle of the driest sticks he could find, and, by using a flint and steel, which, in his case, had long ago superseded all other means of lighting a fire, was soon enjoying a meal the like to which no chef in Paris could have prepared that night. True, there were but one course and one sauce; but the joint was eatable, with something of a pork flavor, and the sauce was ravenous hunger. Only the other day he told the most famous of contemporary head waiters that roastarmadillo was vastly superior to sucking pig, at which the eminent one smiled, realizing that his patron was no gourmet.
Covering the remains of the feast with the creature’s own armor, which, as an extra precaution against vultures, he weighted down with stones, Power arranged a bed of moss under an overhanging rock, and lay down to sleep. A wild storm of wind and rain raged during the night; but he was merely awaked for a minute or two by the unusual clamor, and slept soundly again, despite the fury of the elements. At dawn he was astir, and, after eating a few mouthfuls, tied the rest of the small joints to the spear by their own sinews, and began his march again.
As the armadillo supplied the only food he secured, or could have secured, during six days of a most arduous and nerve-racking advance through a country which offered every sort of obstacle to the explorer, it is not to be wondered at if Power came to believe that he would yet emerge in safety from the perils confronting him. But his rate of movement was exasperatingly slow. On one day of the six he only succeeded in crossing one particularly troublesome ravine. On another, after skirting a mountain slope which positively bristled with dangers, he found himself on a receding angle, and was compelled to retrace his steps; although, a dozen times already, he had been called on to exercise every ounce of strength, every shred of resolution, in order to cross appallingly difficult places which he must now tackle again.
Still, he kept on, and that gap in the hills grew ever wider and more distinct. He was gnawing the lastbone of the armadillo, and asking himself how much longer it would be possible to maintain an unequal struggle against the grim forces which sought to crush him, when he had a stroke of luck. The Andes would be even more impregnable than they are were it not for an unusual geological formation which provides broad and often practicable rock ledges along the walls of the worst precipices. Farther north, in Peru, and, to a less extent, in Chile, these roadways of Nature’s own contriving are much utilized by mountaineers and their mules. When Power stumbled across one of them after getting out of a specially steep and timber-clogged ravine, he really did believe that his troubles were lessening. He fancied he could discern faint signs of others having passed that way, and he jumped to the conclusion that those most unfriendly Indians knew of this track, and could have piloted him to it in a quarter of the time he had consumed. Obviously, it led in the right direction. After climbing to a dizzy height, it dipped again into the next valley, and, despite a hazardous crossing of a mountain torrent, with complications caused by a recent landslide, he discerned another similar ledge on the opposite hill, and valiantly made for it.
There could be no doubting now that he was entering a more open country. The pass had broadened into a valley, and a flat blue smear on the horizon told of earth and sky meeting beyond a plain. The sight spurred him to a frenzy of hope and effort. He pressed on at far too rapid a pace, and, when hunger gripped him once more, he strove to sate its pangs by munching some dried berries, remnants of last year’s autumn,which he gathered from a deciduous tree. He fancied, judging by the taste, that they were not poisonous; but, perhaps owing to his famished condition, they seemed to induce a curious excitation of mind, accompanied by dilated vision, which rendered colors entrancingly bright and clear. In the valley opening out before the descending ledge he imagined he could see patches of pink blossom which reminded him of the apple orchards of Colorado. He laughed aloud at the fantasy; nevertheless, he tore on in desperate haste to get into that attractive zone, where, surely, there must be animal life, and, with it, the prospect of a meal. Overjoyed, he sang as he went, rousing strange echoes. He, who had dwelt among the heathen like another Xavier, poured out his soul in the lilt and rhythm of “Marching Through Georgia”! That stirring refrain had led many a gallant heart to the “crash of the cannonade and the desperate strife”; but never, surely, has it been heard amid such surroundings. Cliff spoke to cliff. Primeval nature was stirred, and answered his voice in rude harmonies:
“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,While we were marching through Georgia.”
With a rush of wings and frantic clamor of screams, a flock of upland geese (Chloëphaga magellanica) rose from some hidden marsh beneath, and fled in ordered phalanx to some distant sanctuary; whereupon Power yelled that ecstatic “Hurrah!” anew. Here was life!Here was a world that smiled and was not dumb! He must hurry, hurry, and enter into this Paradise!
Yet it came to pass, as so often happens in the most commonplace phases of man’s life, that, at the very moment when the worst stage of the journey was nearing its end, when he had accomplished the almost impossible, when the leaping torrents of the hills were merging into a stream which, if turbid and noisy, bore some semblance to a river, he met with a disaster that brought death even nearer than it had come at any other crisis of his extraordinary career.
The track, rough as it was, offered comparatively easy going. Now winding round the inner curve of some huge fold in the hill, soon it would swing boldly out across the face of a promontory of rock; while passing one of these awesome precipices, which actually jutted out so far beyond its own base that Power could not see the river, though he could hear its mighty voice roaring among bowlders, he fell. That is to say, the broad ledge sank away beneath his feet, and, after a vain spring toward a section which still gripped the rocky wall, he fell with it.
He uttered no cry, made no plaint to Heaven. His brain worked with inconceivable rapidity, and he knew that he had been flung from a sheer height of well over a hundred feet. Thus, unless he dropped into deep water, and managed to retain his senses, either outcome of the accident being wildly improbable, he must be crushed into a pulp when he came to earth. He petitioned the Most High that, if this was death, it might be instantaneous, that his soul might go out of its worn tabernacle in merciful oblivion, that he mightnot be called on to lie, maimed and inert, watching the gathering of vultures. Then some mighty hand seemed to seize him in an irresistible grip, and he lost consciousness.
When his senses returned, he found himself staring blankly at a blue sky, a sky that shone gloriously through a fairy lacework of branches of trees laden with apple blossom; while a sweet and subtle scent was pungent in his nostrils, and undoubtedly gave rise to the quaint notion which instantly possessed him, that he was already dead, and translated to a land of everlasting spring. Then he knew that he was still clothed in skins, that his bones ached, that he was hungry and athirst; so this could be neither death nor immortality. Suddenly, a savage face bent over him, his head was lifted, and he was given some liquid. It tasted like cider, and he drank copiously. Then his brain reeled; for he was in no fit condition to withstand a draft of singular potency, and again the mists came, and he lapsed into the void.
He did not recover full consciousness that day. The Indians, who had heard and been amazed at his singing, saw him drop from the precipice, and ran to its base, expecting to find a mangled corpse. But a tall and slender pine had thrust its straight shaft into the stout skin coat he wore, and had bent until it yielded to the strain, and broke. Thus, he fell with enough force to knock the wits out of him; but the major catastrophe was averted, and the Indians were awed by an incident which no patriarch of the tribe had witnessed before, nor would ever see again if he attained the age of Methuselah. The spear, which had leftPower’s hand when he was in the air, had buried its eight inches of blade in a fallen treetrunk, and had to be hewed out with an ax.
These things the white necromancer learned afterward. He found also that his vision of apple blossom was no dream, but reality. Three centuries ago Jesuit missionaries had crossed the Andes by that very pass. They brought, as peace offerings to the Indians, some of the fruit-trees and cereals of more favored climes; but they were murdered without parley. Curiosity, perhaps, led the savages to plant the trees and seeds; the apples alone, finding a congenial soil, throve marvelously. All that region abounds in sweet, wild apples, from which the Indians concoct a fermented liquor which they callchi-chi. Those same apples, and the orgies of drunkenness to which they give rise, probably account for the legend of a great city existing within the untrodden depths of the Cordillera. But there is no city—no trace of civilization save the apples, a kindly memento of the unfortunate Jesuits.
And now Power began his regenerative work anew.
Thanks to the phenomenal style of his coming among them, the savages spared his life; but their possession of an almost unlimited stock ofchi-chi, and the truculent mood which strong drink induces, even in Indians, led them, at first, to treat him as a Kokó-huinché, or “white fool.” Though their hunting-grounds were hundreds of miles from the coast, and singularly remote from the influence of white settlers, they were aflame with vague resentment against the invaders, andgladly made one of the hated race the butt of their malevolent humor.
So Power, in self-defense, took to artifice. He discovered that they possessed two kegs of gunpowder, but owned no guns. He learned, too, that once there had been three kegs, but a careless experiment with one had removed a chief and his family. With some difficulty, and only by tickling their imagination by promising an exhibition of magic, he obtained some of the powder, and, on a dark night, electrified the community by a display of fireworks. Catharine wheels and Roman candles achieved wonders among the foothills of the Andes. From that instant his supremacy was established. A squib or two enforced edicts; a rocket set a constitution squarely on its feet. In less than three years he had become the Indians’ trusted guide and teacher. The day came when the store of powder was almost gone; yet he was strong enough to prohibit the manufacture of that season’s supply ofchi-chi.
But there was one thing he could not do. He could not calm these wild people’s frenzy when a hunting party came in hot haste from the plains and announced that a cavalcade of white men was forcing a passage along the river, being evidently bent on penetrating the valley of the apple-trees.
Power was asked to repel this invasion by black art; failing which, the Araucanians decided to massacre the explorers in a neighboring canyon. He had not the least doubt as to the success of the scheme. He knew the natural difficulties of the place. The upper end could be barricaded, the lower blocked by spearmen hidden in the dense vegetation, and every intrudercaught in the trap would be battered to death by boulders flung from the crests of opposing precipices.
Very reluctantly the Indians allowed him to act as their ambassador. By sheer force of will he bore down opposition, and was taken to a point whence the smoke of campfires was visible above the trees. It was hard to say whether the faith his friends placed in him was stronger than their fear and loathing of the white strangers; but he exacted a promise that, if he persuaded the members of the expedition to retreat, they would not be molested. Oddly enough, neither he nor the Indians gave a thought to any other possible development. These savages believed that the white god who had dropped upon them from the skies would never leave them, and Power himself had almost forgotten the existence of the outer world. Most certainly, he paid no heed to the fact that his seven years of expiation were nearly sped. He was happy among these simple people. In his way, he was a king, and the habit of ruling had become second nature.
By chance, that day he carried the spear which had been his faithful ally in crossing the Andes, and a weird and barbarous figure he must have presented when he walked into an almost unguarded camp which had been set up for a few hours on the right bank of the river. Clothed in skins, his face bronzed to a deep brown by constant exposure to the elements, his hair falling over his shoulders, and a long beard sweeping to his breast, he looked a veritable wild man of the woods.
A halfbreed peon who was the first to see him whipped out a revolver, and shouted a warning; but Power held his spear crosswise above his head, showing, by this Indian sign, that he came in peace, and he was permitted to approach.
“Where is your leader?” he asked in Spanish.
The peon seemed to be vastly astonished; but he turned to a tall, thin, elderly man who had dived out of a tent at his cry, and now strode forward.
“Where have you come from?” he said; but his speech betrayed him, and Power added to the sensation he had already caused by saying:
“You are no Spaniard, at any rate.”
“Good Lord!” cried the other. “It’s an Englishman!”
“Next thing to it, an American,” said Power.
“What is your name, and how do you happen to be in this outlandish place?” was the bewildered demand.
“I am here to explain all that, and more. Are you the head of this expedition?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about discussing matters in that tent of yours?”
“Come right along,” said the stranger, leading the way.
Nearly seven years had elapsed since Power had either seen a man of his own race, or heard civilized speech. During all that time, save when he spoke aloud in self-communing, or hummed the half-remembered words of a song, he had neither uttered, nor read, nor written a word of English. One literary treasure, indeed, had come his way, and he made good use of it.
Some men of the tribe, digging one day for truffles, broke into a cave, in which there was a skeleton. Among the bones, wrapped in soft leather and parchment, the Indians found a book, which they brought to their white leader. It was an illuminated Book of Hours, or “Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis,” written in Latin and Spanish, and, as Power ascertained subsequently, the work of an Italian of the fifteenth century. No more beautiful example of the exquisite classical Renaissance period could be produced by the Vatican library. The character in the figures and naturalness in the landscapes bespoke a ripe art, and many of the vellum pages were bordered by the solid frame which gives full scope to the artist’s fancy by its facilities for the introduction of medallions, vignettes, twisted Lombardic vines, cupids, fawns, colored gems, and birds of brilliant plumage. Veritably, this “Horæ” was more precious than if its leaves wereof solid gold; its value to Power in those lonely hours was of a spring in the desert to a parched traveler.
Despite such an invaluable stimulus to his mind, however, it was almost with difficulty, and certainly with marked hesitancy, that he was able now to arrange the words of a sentence in their ordered sequence, and often he found his tongue involuntarily lending an Indian twist to idiomatic expressions. But his labored utterance was either not so marked as he imagined, or his host was so surprised at meeting a white man so far from civilization that he could not repress his own excitement. At the outset, too, the instinct of hospitality helped to relieve the tension.
“Can I offer you anything in the way of refreshment—some whisky, or tea, or a cigar?” came the courteous inquiry.
“A cigar, by all means. I have not smoked one for so long a time that I have forgotten what it is like.”
“It is pretty evident you have been living among the Indians,” said the other, passing him a cigar-case. “How in the world did you contrive to get lost in these parts? You did not come through Patagonia, I fancy?”
Power took thought before answering. Some half-atrophied emotion stirred within him.
“Patagonia? Is this country Patagonia?” he said at last.
“Yes. Do you mean to say you don’t know that?”
“I had a notion that it was the Argentine. My Indian friends invariably speak of the white inhabitants as Argentinos.”
“But how did you get here?”
“By crossing the Andes.”
“With a party?”
“No, alone.”
His questioner whistled. “By Jove!” he cried, “you had your nerve with you.”
“I couldn’t help myself. I was a prisoner in the hands of a Trans-Andean tribe, and they turned me adrift. I had to win through somehow, or die.”
“What’s your name, anyhow?”
“John Darien Power.”
“Mine’s Sinclair—George Sinclair. Well, Mr. Power, this is a fortunate meeting for both of us. You could never have reached the coast if you had not fallen in with just such an outfit as mine, because there are the devil’s own breeds of Indians prowling about the last hundred and fifty miles of this river. Luckily, they dare not attack forty well-armed men; but, if looks count, they are willing for the job should an opportunity offer. We simply couldn’t secure a guide; so decided to follow the river all the way, especially as it made transport fairly easy, except at the rapids. Now you, on the other hand, can tell us just what we want to know. Is the stream practicable much farther? What sort of country lies between this point and the snow-line?”
“Yes, I can tell you those things, and a good deal more. What is the object of your expedition? Gold?”
Sinclair laughed rather constrainedly. “I suppose that is the bedrock of the proposition,” he said. “A bit of science, a bit of prospecting, a last glimpse at a country which is not marked on any map before I leavePatagonia for good—there you have the scheme in a nutshell.”
“Are you willing to turn back now?”
“No. Why should we? We have come close on three hundred miles; another fifty, or less, should see us close to the frontier of Chile.”
“But you may sacrifice your lives.”
“No Indians can stop us—let me assure you of that, straight away.”
“Won’t you let me mark your maps? I can supply every detail with sufficient accuracy.”
“Allow me to suggest that I am a business man, Mr. Power, and I mean this expedition to pay its way.”
“Ah! It is gold you really have in mind, then? But there is no gold.”
“Now you are talking nonsense. We have found it.”
“You have found alluvial gold. There are few fast-running streams in the world which do not contain gold in that form. The denudation of the Andes is so extraordinarily rapid that it would be a singular fact if this river did not yield float gold. But the metal is not, and cannot be, present in paying quantities. The primary sources of gold are reefs, either in quartz or in metalliferous veins of galena and the various pyrites. There are none of these in the lower Andean range, which is composed almost exclusively of crystalline schist with a slight blend of basalt. I am a mining engineer, Mr. Sinclair, and I know what I am talking about. If you could put the entire southern Cordillera through a mill, you would not secure a pennyweight of gold to the ton.”
Sinclair, of course, could not appreciate the remarkable way in which Power’s tongue loosened in dealing with the familiar jargon of his profession. For the time he was far more concerned with what he deemed a real marvel.
“A mining engineer, and your name is Power! Surely you can’t be the Mr. Power who sailed from San Francisco to Valparaiso on thePanamaseven years ago?” he cried.
“I am.”
“But, excuse me, there must be some mistake. My daughter, Marguerite Sinclair, who was on board that vessel, spoke of a Mr. Power; but he was a young man. Of course, time does not stand still for any of us; but this Mr. Power would now be thirty-five, or thereabouts.”
“That is my age.”
“Thirty-five?”
“Yes.”
Sinclair bent forward and peered into his visitor’s eyes; it was difficult to detect any play of expression in the bearded face. “Are you really the man my daughter met on that steamer?” he asked, and there was a note of solemnity, almost of awe, in his voice. This anchorite seemed nearer sixty than thirty-five.
“Yes, I remember her perfectly—a charming girl. She had suffered some injury to her face during an attack by Indians on her father’s ranch. Of course, you are her father?”
“Yes. But, tell me, Mr. Power—have you any notion of the extraordinary appearance you present? You force me to be blunt. You look like a man nearly twice your age.”
“Lend me a scissors and a razor, and I shall remove a decade or two. Remember, I have lived as an Indian for seven years.”
“I’ll do more than that. I can give you some clothes and boots. God bless my soul! how surprised Meg will be! I recollect now she told me that her Mr. Power walked with a limp. But it’s a far cry to Carmen. I——”
“Carmen, did you say?”
“Yes, why?”
Power had suddenly recalled the name of the stuffy little tramp on which he set forth from Valparaiso. What memories crowded in on him, what a record of suffering and achievement! Seven years! He knew now that his pilgrimage was ended. The great world had thrown wide its gates again. He could go back to his own country, his own people. His sacrifice had been accepted. He was assoilized. He thought of his mother, of Nancy, and tears glistened in his eyes. He believed that some lesion had been lifted off his brain. He looked at the great facts of existence with a new and saner vision. He almost heard a vibrant and majestic voice saying to his spirit, “Go, and sin no more! Thy faith hath made thee whole!”
He rose, and was dimly aware that Sinclair was pressing him to stay. There was so much to discuss yet, so many vital matters to weigh and debate; but he managed to explain that he must depart now, and would return later.
“You don’t understand that you are here on sufferance,” he said. “I had to stretch my domination to the utmost—and I am a king among these Indians—to stop them from attacking you. Your life, and the lives of every man in your party, are not worth a day’s purchase if my influence is weakened. I cannot tell what evil counsel may be given to these wild folk in my absence. If I show myself, and assure them that I am safe, and that you mean to retreat almost at once, they will be satisfied, and bloodshed will be averted.”
Sinclair glanced at him curiously, but did not seek further to prevent his immediate departure.
“You must act as you think best, Mr. Power,” he said amicably; “but I certainly cannot promise to retreat merely because a few wretched Indians bar the path.”
“I will convince you, never fear,” came the prompt assurance.
“But I am not the only skeptic. There are others to consult. I have two partners in this enterprise, and one of them is a mining expert.”
“Leave everything to me, and make no forward move till I come back. You can expect me in a couple of hours.”
He could say no more. He was choking. It was a mere pretense that he must conciliate the Indians, who, he knew, were watching every move in the camp with the eyes of eagles. What he really feared, in that moment of revulsion and self-enlightenment, was that he might break down and cry like a child.
He strode away, aflame with the fire of longing for communion with his fellow-men. The tumult of emotion evoked by contact with the expedition startled and dismayed him; but he had not gone two hundredyards up the valley before a sibilant hiss restored his scattered wits. He was passing an Indian outpost, and the faithful creatures were warning him of their presence. He signed that he was going to the village, and passed on. He had seen no one. Not a leaf moved among the trees; but the watchers were there, and would remain.
Much against the grain, though there was no help for it, he pacified the head men of the tribe by the statement that he must remain in the encampment that night; indeed, he did not purpose leaving the invaders until they had turned on their tracks. He dared not risk telling his “subjects” that he meant to abandon his empire. Their fierce passions were easily aroused, and a prompt massacre of Sinclair and his followers would be the certain result of a fanatical outbreak. Entering his hut, he picked up the “Horæ.” As he did so, a wave of sentiment shook him, because he thought of the poor Spanish priest who had brought that precious volume from Cádiz or Barcelona, and, perchance, gazed at it with eyes glazing in death while he lurked, wounded and starving, in the cave where he had sought shelter from the pitiless savages. Now, if God willed, it might cross the Atlantic again.
He opened the book haphazard, and read:
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum!”
Then he sank on his knees, and prayed; for, if ever man had placed soul and body in the keeping of the Almighty, he had.
That evening, master of himself, and ever recovering facility of speech, he reasoned with Sinclair and thetwo Spaniards who had joined in the adventure. One, a Señor Felice Gomez, though posing as an authority on mines, had to admit that his knowledge was that of the company director and well-informed amateur. They were inclined to scoff at Power’s predictions of disaster; but he wound up with an argument which proved irresistible.
“How much has this enterprise cost you?” he asked.
Sinclair answered readily.
“We have put up twenty thousand paper dollars*for expenses,” he said. “My share is ten thousand, and my friends stand in five thousand each.”
*A paper dollar is worth about 40 per cent. of the gold dollar.
*A paper dollar is worth about 40 per cent. of the gold dollar.
“Would you be satisfied if you got your money back, with a profit of one hundred per cent?”
“According to you, Mr. Power, and almost you convince me, we shall lose every penny.”
“But, assuming the profit I have named, would such return on your capital send you home well content?”
“Speaking for myself, it would.”
The Spaniards grinned amiably. As a conceit, the notion appealed to them. They were not poor men; but had embarked on the quest largely to sate their curiosity with regard to the unexplored reaches of the Chubut River.
“Good!” said Power. “I give your syndicate my personal undertaking to pay the sum of forty thousand dollars when we reach any place where there is a bank with a New York agent. I really mean what I say,” he went on, seeing the blank incredulity written on three faces. “I am rich enough to table that offer without the slightest chance of failing to make good. Even though I die on the way to the coast, you will have my written undertaking, which will be honored by my bankers. If I survive the journey, a cablegram will convince you of my financial standing. Naturally, you will ask why I behave so generously. Well, there are three reasons: Were it not for your presence here, I might never have had a chance of returning to civilization; so I am disposed to pay liberally for your safe escort, which, to my thinking, has been sent by Providence in my special behalf. That, in itself, should suffice as an explanation. But the remaining motives are almost equally strong. I am sure you are rushing to certain death if you advance another mile up the valley; but, supposing, as you imagine, that your guns open the path, it will be across the dead bodies of a people whom I have learned to like, and among whom I have passed three not unhappy years. Very well! I purchase their lives. All I demand to seal the bargain is your promise to start downstream at daybreak, taking me with you; but leaving here all the pieces of iron, knives, nails, and such like articles you can spare from your equipment. The Indians will find and value them. They have no knowledge of metallic ores. There are hardly any to be found in this locality. It is a dead land, mere shale and rock and crumbling earth, devoid of the riches which alone would make it habitable. What do you say? If you agree to my terms, give me a pen and paper. I suppose I still can write, though I have not held a pen during seven years.”
The man who could tame, and partly civilize, two Indian tribes was not like to fail when called on to subjugate men of his own or a kindred race. The triumvirate yielded. Next day, when the canoes had gone ahead, Power bestrode one of the dozen horses which accompanied the expedition. The rearguard set off at a canter, since a rolling down ran for eight miles to the first portage. As Power rode away with his new friends a long drawn-out, shrill wailing came from the forest. The Indians understood then. Their territory was left unspoiled; but they had lost their wonder-worker. Had they but known it, the “white fool” drew his hand across his eyes to clear away the tears.
For three weeks the horsemen and canoes followed the windings of a river the waters of which were never turbid or blue, but emerald green, except during occasional sunsets, when they became a vivid crimson. Then the party reached Port Madryn, whence a small steamer took its chief members to Carmen, in the Rio Negro Territory. The Spaniards hailed from that place, and Sinclair, who had sold his Chubut ranch, had left his daughter with friends there. There was no cable available; but, by this time, Sinclair and his partners would as soon have distrusted an archbishop’s word as Power’s. Each day he reverted more and more to type; yet he lost nothing of the dignity and air of reposeful strength which his wanderings had conferred. So, when he gave written orders for the various sums due on his bond, they were accepted with the confidencewhich would have been shown in the certified checks of a state bank.
The vessel had to steam several miles up the Rio Negro (the river is called “black”; but it is green as the Chubut) before touching the wharf at Carmen. News of their coming had preceded them, though no mention had been made of Power, and it was vastly amusing to Sinclair when his daughter, after embracing him affectionately, turned and held out her hand to the brown-skinned stranger.
“Welcome to Patagonia, Mr. Power!” she cried. “I was sure you would come to us some day; though I was told in Valparaiso, three years ago, that you were lost utterly in the depths of the Andes.”
“So you have not forgotten me?” was all that Power could find to say; though he flushed with pleasure at this prompt recognition.
“Forgotten you? Didn’t I tell you I should know you again in twenty years?”
“I am glad to have survived even a third of the time in your memory.”
“Well, please don’t test it so severely again. What have you been doing to yourself? You look like an Indian.”
“Meg,” broke in her father, “I hoped that four months’ residence in a Spanish household would give you a more polite way of expressing yourself.”
“Mr. Power takes that as a compliment, I am sure. When we parted he was running away from the flesh-pots of Egypt—or was it Bison? Evidently he has succeeded in his object. He is lean as a herring.Where did you find him, Dad? Ruling a tribe of Araucanians, I’m certain.”
“If I hadn’t found him, you would never have seen me again, Girly. But we can’t tell the horrible story here on the quay. Take me to a long cane chair, and mix me a whisky and soda. That wretched little tub of a steamer tried to stand on its head last night.”
One thing was evident. Power had convinced his companions of the real danger they had escaped. He had said no word concerning the canyon, while it constituted the Indians’ defense; but it was betraying no secret to make clear its perils during the journey to the coast.
Next day, after breakfast, Sinclair drew him aside, and handed him a sealed envelop.
“Meg objects strongly to the arrangement we entered into, in so far as it affects me,” he explained. “She insists that I return your draft. I was turning the matter over in my own mind, and I was not altogether happy about it. Now I see that she is right.”
“But both of you happen to be wrong,” said Power.
“We’re not. Why in blazes shouldyoupayme? The boot is on the other leg. I owe you my life. Look here, Power, the thing can’t be argued. If it pleases you to let my Spanish friends have their share of the money, I’ll not say a word, one way or the other; but I’ll see you cremated before I cash that draft!”
“Let me defray your out-of-pocket expenses, at any rate.”
“Not a centavo! If you say anything more about it, I’ll get an actuary to calculate my life value, and worry you till you accept a settlement in full.”
“Women invariably take a distorted view of a matter like this,” protested Power.
Sinclair laughed. “Oh, you have discovered that, have you?” he said. “Well, I can’t afford to quarrel with Meg, and her heart is set on your tearing up the draft, Mr. Power.”
The girl herself never mentioned the incident; but, when next they met, Power felt that a slight constraint of which he was sensible in her manner that morning had gone completely.
Sinclair’s affairs in Patagonia were settled before he set out on that long trek into the wilds; but there still remained some odds and ends of business which detained him nearly a month in Carmen. During those placid days Power and Marguerite Sinclair were together constantly. They boated on the Rio Negro, fished in its swift current, rode long miles over the gray and treeless pampas. The girl was a woman now, and, were it not for that cruel disfigurement of one side of her face, a singularly attractive one. She was never dull, never at a loss for a new and original turn to the old topics. Her interests covered a surprisingly wide range. Whether singing Spanish songs to her own accompaniment on a guitar, or discoursing learnedly on the habits of the migratory wild-fowl with which Patagonia abounds, she never failed to acquit herself with vivacious charm. Indeed, the recluse of the Andes could not have been more favored by fortune in the choice of a companion. With sure touch, and a happy blend of raillery and sympathy, she led him back to the gracious intimacies of every-day existence. A keen and discriminating reader of contemporary literature, she set herself the congenial task of filling the immense gap of the years lost out of this remarkable man’s life. On his part, so avid was he of the joys of regained citizenship of the world that he was blithely unaware of the place she filled in his thoughts until the day of parting.
He had traveled with father and daughter to Buenos Aires, whence he cabled to New York, and was placed in possession of ample funds. The Sinclairs were bound for England, and their steamer sailed almost immediately, and the vessel which would take him to New York was timed to start next day.
They lunched together in the Hôtel de l’Europe, Plaza Victoria, and Sinclair had left the younger people for a few minutes while interviewing a lawyer who had charge of certain financial matters in the Argentine. Some chance remark led Power to realize that Marguerite Sinclair’s bright personality would soon be merged with yesterday’s seven thousand years, and the knowledge darkened his new-born optimism as the black portent of a tornado blots out the blue of a summer sky.
It was hardly surprising that the discovery came thus tardily. The philosophical habit of mind induced by constant association with fatalistic Indians was not to be cast off like a disused garment. When each day resembled its predecessor, when the needs of the hour rendered care for the morrow an additional burden, he had trained himself to live, and almost to think, according to savage ethics, and it was with a positive shock that he awoke to the fact that before many hours had sped he would be alone. But, once it had enteredhis soul, the leaven worked rapidly. They were talking in conventional strain about her father’s plans for the future, which centered around a small sporting estate in Derbyshire, once owned by his family and now in the market, when Power rose suddenly.
“If you have finished luncheon,” he said, “come with me into the gardens across the plaza. We’ll leave word of our whereabouts with the hotel people, so that Mr. Sinclair will not think I have abducted you.”
She paled slightly, and seemed to hesitate, but only for an instant. “Why not?” she said, dropping the white double veil she always wore in public.
Power rather looked for some biting retort when he spoke of abducting her, and her unexpected meekness was somewhat disconcerting. Each was tongue-tied, and they walked away together in silence. A good many eyes followed them as they left the hotel, for the girl’s slender, lissome figure and noticeably elegant carriage would have attracted the attention of more censorious critics than a gathering of Spanish-Americans, while the wealth of brown hair which crowned her shapely head and column-like neck was adequately set off by a smart hat. Power, too, evoked some comment. People who saw him for the first time invariably asked who he was. A man who has twice established an empire, even among Indians, cannot possibly lack distinction, no matter how effectually the outfitting tailor may democratize him.
They entered the gardens, and Power led Marguerite to a seat under a tree whose spreading branches, broad-leafed and flower-laden, supplied grateful shade. If he could have peered beneath that heavy veil, hewould have seen that his companion was obviously ill at ease; but there was no trace of nervousness in her voice when she said, with a laugh:
“This, I suppose, is the local Garden of Eden.”
“Why?” he inquired.
“Because we are reclining under a Paradise tree.”
“I don’t see any serpents, and I cannot bring myself to regard you as either a cherub or a seraph.”
“How unkind of you! Here have I been behaving angelically all day, just because you will soon see the last of me, and that is my reward.”
“I believe the sex of angels is a matter of fierce dispute in certain circles. I wouldn’t dare form an opinion, and, just now at any rate, I am vexed by a different problem. If this tree is really the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, its influence will be helpful, because we should be moved to candor. I brought you here to ask you some questions of vital importance to myself. Are you promised to any man in marriage?”
“No. Is it likely?”
Not often did the bitter consciousness of her marred beauty rise thus bluntly to her lips; but she blurted it out now involuntarily. In this supreme moment it came as a protest against the edict of the gods. Even while she trembled in the belief that a happiness she had not dared to think of sanely was about to be vouchsafed to her, she could not restrain her terror lest the disillusionment of her scarred face might cost her the love of the one man on earth she wanted to marry. It was the heartfelt cry of a woman denied her birthright. “Male and female created he them.” Thesorry trick of fate which had tarnished the fair tabernacle that enshrined so many gifts had never before exhibited its true malice. In a word, Marguerite Sinclair was a woman, and the great crisis of her life had found her unprepared and nearly hysterical.
Power, of course, was splendidly deaf to her satire and its cause.
“I should say it was the most likely thing imaginable,” he replied. “I wish——” He broke off abruptly. “You and I should have no reservations,” he went on, after a pause, “and it would not be quite honest if I voiced the banal notion I had in mind. Yet I must tell you something of my history. You know, I suppose, that I am going to ask you to marry me; but, before you answer, you must hear the plea, the defense, of a man who committed a crime and had to pay the penalty.”
“You committed no crime, Derry,” and the girl’s utterance was so low and sweet that it swept through his inmost being like a chord of exquisite music. Some seconds elapsed before he understood that she had used a name which could not have come to her knowledge without a far more intimate acquaintance with his past life than he believed possible.
“Derry!” he repeated blankly. “How have you found out that those I once held dear called me ‘Derry’?”
She forced herself to speak calmly; though her hands were clenched in sheer physical effort to quell the riot in heart and brain.
“I am not as other women,” she said; “so I say shamelessly that I loved you practically from the hourwe first met. Do you remember? You looked at me, and then turned your eyes away resolutely, lest you should hurt my feelings by seeming to gaze at my scarred features. I knew that night that you were a man scourged by the wrath of Heaven, and my sympathies went out to you; for, in my own small way, I realized what you felt. But your affliction was of the spirit, and mine of the flesh, and I could afford to laugh at my malaise except—except on an occasion like this, when a man says he wants to marry me, but says nothing of love. No, please! Hear me out. I am really answering your question, in a woman’s way, perhaps, but candidly, with a frankness that should blight romance. When we parted at Valparaiso, my thoughts dwelt with you. You are the one man I have ever cared for, in that way. During these weary years I have hugged the delusion that some day you would tell me that you loved me. Well, I admit that love was implied when you spoke of marriage; but you have often been annoyed or amused by my distorted method of looking at things, and you should not resent it now when it happens to describe the situation exactly—because you yourself almost began by saying that you wished we had met before another woman came into your life. Yes, I know—at any rate, I can guess—why you were buried alive for seven years. My action may sound contemptible; but a woman in love does not stop to weigh niceties of behavior. When I could get no news of you by other means, I wrote to a school friend at Denver. Among the people she met when making inquiries were a Dr. Stearn and a Mr. Benson. They did not tell her much; but feminine gossip is far-reaching, and sometimes it probes deeply. I know you loved Nancy Willard. I know how you were separated from her. I know you met her again in Newport. I know you blamed yourself for the death of your mother. I know that your friends thought you were mad, but pitied you, because yours was a grievous plight. You see now how I peeped and pried into your life. Oh! it was mean and despicable of me. It is not foryouto plead and make excuse. That ismywretched task. Is it any sort of vindication to tell you that my heart ached because of that far-away look ever in your eyes while we voyaged south? You have not forgotten that I said you resembled a man walking in his sleep? Well, I wanted to find out what sort of folly or suffering had induced that trance. My poor little heart sang with joy when you stepped ashore at Carmen, and I saw that your obsession had gone, that you had come to life again, that no pale specters stood between us. Now you have heard my confession, it is foryouto take time—before—you commit yourself—to vows—which you may regret.”
It was as much as she could do to utter those concluding words. The tears she might not repress were stealing silently down her cheeks, and small, dark patches showed where the tightly drawn veil touched the corners of her mouth. The hotel porch was visible between two clumps of tropical shrubbery, and, when a mule-drawn street-car moved out of the way, Power saw Sinclair’s tall, thin figure standing in the doorway. Evidently, his glance was searching the gardens for the missing pair, and the departure of the tram rendered them visible. He raised a hand, and openedand closed it twice. Power waved comprehension, and Sinclair vanished. Perhaps he had a shrewd notion of the subject of their talk, and was minded not to disturb them till the last moment.
“I take it your father means that we still have ten minutes at our disposal,” said Power.
The girl nodded. If she spoke then, she would have screamed.
“You have relieved me of a highly disagreeable task,” he went on composedly. “Of course, I accept none of the unkind and unjust strictures you passed on yourself. This has been a strange wooing; but it is the best apology for the real thing I can contrive in the conditions. Some day, soon, I shall take you in my arms and tell you that I love you. When that day dawns, I shall be hindered by no ghosts; none other, that is, than a lurking fear lest such a wreck of a man may not be deemed worthy of the pure, sweet love of a woman like you. Good God! Can it be possible that so great a happiness is entering into my broken life?”
Then the delirium of joy vanquished the girl’s fears, and she contrived to say haltingly:
“Derry, do you really care for me? Do you think that such a poor scarecrow as I can make you forget all that you have endured?”
He laughed, and the blithe ring of his mirth was so eloquent of his real feelings that the blood raced in her veins like quicksilver.
“We must begin by refusing to call each other hard names,” he cried. “In truth, I regard myself as a tolerably compact wreck, while ‘scarecrow,’ as appliedto you, would make a cat laugh. Suppose we stick to ‘Derry’ and ‘Meg’ until the wonder passes, and we venture among those endearing terms in which our language is so rich. But, if you must have my opinion about your face—if you won’t be happy till you get it—I want to tell you now that before I kiss your lips I shall kiss that dear, scarred cheek, because I know well that, by God’s providence, when the Indians thrust you into the flames of your ranch, a mark was set on you that reserved you for me. Were it not for that, you could never have waited for me during the long years since we traveled together on thePanama. Why, Meg, there is no woman to compare with you in all this great city! But, look here! Confound my impudence! Man-like, I blandly ignore my own defects. How about my limp?”
“Derry, in my eyes, there is no man in all the world to compare with you.”
“Then we are profoundly satisfied with one another, and I really don’t see what we have to bother about otherwise. I am going now to tell your father that we have arranged to be married as soon as I arrive in England, which will be not more than two months from this day. I think he likes me, and will endure me as a son-in-law. If I obeyed my own impulses, I should not leave you again. I suppose that common sense urges me to visit New York and Colorado, just to look into my business affairs. In fact, in view of our marriage, I simply must go there. But I shall hurry, never fear. Come along, Meg. I’m wide awake now. You have exorcised the evil spirit that possessed me; but I shall be in a new fever tillnext we meet, and there is no more parting in this life.”
Thus was love reborn in Power’s heart. The pity of it was that he did not yield to the tiny god’s ardent whispers, and refuse to relinquish his chosen bride, even for a brief space. But, as he said, common sense demanded his presence in America, and common sense has shattered many dreams.