Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 7

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Mary has been reduced to the ranks. No fault of hers. Just fate and the inevitable accident. Scarcely had we got over the worst part of the trail when I lost my first pack-mule. It was the usual story—a projecting pack caught against the corner of a projecting rock. The unfortunate mule lost its head at once and struggled desperately to bore through. The next mule nosed in behind it, jammed its pack, shoved blindly, and over went the first mule.

It was not a clean precipice, such as many a worse place that had been passed in safety. A precipitous slope, rather. Steep enough and deep enough to be the death of the poor mule. There it lay, badly mangled, and surrounded by the strewn items of its pack. Arrieros looked askance and muttered the customary commiserations mingled with the customary assurances that it would be quite impossible to retrieve the pack.

True to form they ran. It is one of the best tricks of the arriero breed. If they can persuade the gullible gringos that truth is on their side; and if they can bolster their persuasion with the assertion that the only next possible camping-place is so many hours ahead and that an hour's delay spent in retrieving the pack will mean arrival at the camp an hour after dark; and if the harassed gringos have already had experience of the awful mess and confusion of trying to make camp after dark with an army corps of mules—good. It means just that much profit to the arrieros, who retrieve the pack on their way back.

So the first precious hour was spent in argument. Argument, alas, supported by sundry of the more nervous scientificos, who believed the yarn about impending night. The word passed along the straggling mile-long line, relayed from arriero to arriero, who quickly yelled each at his string of mules to stop them before they, too, should push into a jam on the narrow path. The nearest arrieros and a scientifico or two arrived, crawling precariously round the stalled beasts and under their bellies. The consultation decided that the pack had better be abandoned. There was nothing of any great value to it, anyhow. Just some food and a blanket roll. Food would soon be plentiful and we were rapidly approaching the lower levels where blankets would not be needed.

Plausible, but far from the truth. The most priceless article of the whole expedition lay down there with that scattered pack. In a stout case, protected by a stouter outer case, nested the only musical instrument of the expedition with which to beguile the long night watches. Men of science, I suppose, have been too busy all their lives to acquire any such futile thing as a social accomplishment. Not so I. For the delectation and uplift of my fellow-man I have mastered God's noblest instrument, the bagpipe, and it was that inspiriting weapon that lay amidst the lower debris. With all the world against me I was as adamant as the cliffs themselves. Arrieros spat with disgust and called upon the major saints.

But—well, we wasted an hour and then I took an arriero, a good man who came cheerfully enough when he saw that the bluff would not work, and we found a way down. From above, other arrieros let down knotted lariats to us, and hauled up the gear, the pipes first. Then arose the question as to how the stuff was to be distributed. Each arriero swore vehemently that each single one of his mules was loaded to the extreme limit and bow-legged with its load. Insistence would have caused endless grumbling and charges of discrimination and favoritism. I had been through all this wearisome bickering before now. So I made the magnificent gesture.

"Good!" I said. "Let the clamor cease. My Mary shall carry the pack. I will sacrifice myself and walk."

Hence the demotion of Mary. It was good diplomacy. I'm sure Mary didn't mind. And since it was all downhill now, I preferred to walk, anyway. I wanted to be my own man, free to run on my own feet, not a poor creature of a chain-gang, bound helpless to the whim of a mule. We made camp, of course, in comfort, long before dark.

I'm talking too much about myself. With normal egotism I have told first of all how I reacted to the ups and downs of the Cordillera. I must tell about some of the others.

Among some of the others dissension has arisen. The irascible Statistician seems to have suffered most. But he is not without excuse. Let it be remembered that he is not young. I can't guess very closely, but he must be of an age with the Director, who is surely past the fifty mark—a parlous age for a perilous expedition. An age sufficiently advanced for set opinions and set ways. An age moreover, in this case arrived at with no more thrilling adventure through all its years than riding in a Pullman car.

Add to that age the amazing aloofness of a certain type of scientific mind. Immersed in his own work, his brain stuffed to repletion with his particular branch of knowledge, the Statistician had remained singularly incurious about many matters of the outside world. He had no conception, for instance, of how the Andes were to be crossed. Just a vague sort of idea that—well, he had traveled hither and yon in the United States. Over the Rocky Mountains more than once in security and comfort. Ergo, since the Andes were not so very different from the Rockies, he would similarly be conveyed somehow to the farther side, where presently he would connect with some sort of boat. All the petty details of ways and means were outside of his department. That end of things was in the hands of a fellow named MacCreagh; a rather obliging person who seemed to be competent enough in his way.

I have told of his consternation when he learned that over the Andes, Pullman trains were not. Not even the coaches of our savage Wild-Western days. He would have to ride on an obstreperous beast used, as far as he had hitherto known, only for army transport; a beast whose orneriness was a byword in the land. Well, he was plucky enough, in all conscience. What the ordeal must have meant to him, we can never understand. But I got him his saddle and he made up his mind to ride.

Consider this gentleman, then, when he found himself on dizzy snow trails where I, for one, felt the emptiness that catches the pit of one's stomach upon descending in a swift elevator. Had the circumstance not been so tragic it would have been a motion-picture comedy. Imagine the picture.

A precipitous trail, white where the snow could cling, and blue-black rock where the slope was too steep for snow. An endless string of pack-mules winding up and up ahead. In the rear of the line an intrepid explorer or two. Behind them, a giant Bolivian on a giant mule, hired by the Eminent Statistician at the last moment to be personally responsible for his life. From the giant's saddle-horn, a stout lariat leading back and fastened securely to the saddle-horn of the following mule. From the tail of the saddle, another lariat leading back to the saddle-horn of a third mule. Upon the central mule, clinging with both hands to the saddle-horn, the Eminent Statistician, eyes shut tight and desperately screwed down lest he look and be assailed by giddiness, and face set in grim determination.

All that was required to complete the picture was an alpenstock. And all the attendant ceremony and confusion were repeated at each bad place. And upon whom did the burden of arrangement fall? Upon me. Until I learned to be three miles away, effectually barred from recall by at least forty impassable pack-mules. Yet I can sympathize with the gentleman. The only difference between us was that he had even less confidence in a creature so closely allied to a horse than had I.

The thing had its laughable side, of course. And laughs at the old gentleman's expense were not withheld. But—give him honor—he carried on. There was yet time to go back; but for the service of his science he was determined to investigate the unknown on the other side, and he stuck grimly to it. A brave man.

But courage, alas! does not necessarily imply a cheerful acceptance of hardship. The strain on that man's nerves must have been terrific; and it was in his temper that the strain showed. There has already occurred a passage at arms, the missing of which I shall regret for all time. All over a matter of travel trifling in comparison with what had already been lived through. But the results, I fear me, are going to be more lasting than the petty cause.

This happened after we had left the snow and ice behind us and had reached the levels of the bare brown earth. The occasion was the morning after a miserable night before, which explains the contending tempers. In the night it had suddenly rained. A pure mischance of malicious Fate, for we are well into the dry season. But it seems that on this side of the great mountain barrier an easterly wind will sometimes pile up so much moisture from the steamy plains, to condense against the cold snow-banks, that the mist clouds just can't contain it any longer, and down it must come.

So down it came upon us—and we all unprepared. We had made camp. I must digress to tell comfortable sybarites how some of those high mountain camps are made. This particular evening we had halted in a hollow between cliffs, sufficiently level to set up army cots. As it was late,—observe how craftily Fate works,—only the barest possible necessities had been unpacked—just blanket rolls and supper. A clammy, cold supper out of tins; for we were not down to the vegetation level yet and no fuel was available. Ten thousand feet up in the thin air, and no camp-fire.

The First Glad Sight of Timber at Ten Thousand Feet

getting down to where things grow. See the Tree on the bluff

The Gateway of Good-by to the Snows

Ponder upon it, friends. Packs had been lifted bodily from off the mules and left roped. The beasts were head-roped together in bunches; I mean, a dozen or so head-ropes were brought together and tied in a central knot. To each arriero his own bunch, and each due by the next morning to be in a crazier tangle than is believable to a white man. Pegging out or hobbling would have saved endless irritation and swearing on the morrow's start, but pegging out was a nuisance and hobbling was a good deal of an undertaking; and the morrow was mañana, anyway.

Similarly was it a frightful nuisance, and with those inexpert arrieros a vast and clamorous undertaking, to unrope and set up and peg out tents. I would have insisted anyhow, for shelter is a luxury very dear to my heart. Followed naturally the pow-wow that is so dear to the heart of the genus arriero. On my side the Eminent Entomologist, the Scribe, and the Eminent Statistician—the last-named regretfully and very up-stage, because he isn't speaking to the bug-hunter just now. On the other side, all the arrieros. The remaining savants neutral.

We said, "It may rain."

They said, "But señores, we assure you on the honor of the Most Sacred One that it will not rain. We know this country, having been here before, countless numbers of times." (Two days before we had toiled eight miles along a ridge which ended in a clean drop of a thousand feet or so into a brawling torrent of ice-water; also eight complete miles back.) "And, señores, as to shelter, the señores themselves know that a tent without fire is no warmer than the open air. And furthermore, señores, the mules carrying the tents have strayed down the trail, and we can scarcely run after them and bring them back before dark."

They won, of course. Arrieros always win unless the brutal gringo is prepared to ride rough-shod over argument. The Eminent Director of the expedition, being appealed to, remained neutral. He was too tired to do any more riding that day. As was everybody else. And by that time the argument had carried on into the dark, anyhow. So we slept without tents. And at 2 a.m. the rain fell upon the just as well as upon the unjust. Rain at ten thousand feet and 2 a.m. is very cold moisture indeed. And one is assailed by the immediate thought that on the morrow there will be another night,—possibly dry, but certainly cold,—and that there will be no means of drying out wet blankets between now and then.

The scurry and the confusion and the irritability and the general mess require no description. My only comment upon the situation is that the Bolivian law in no circumstances permits explorers to kill arrieros. The impasse ended with somebody's finding a big tarpaulin and all huddling together under it. A cold, stiff thing it was, feeling chilly wet where it rested on our heads. But it was really waterproof, except where it had chafed against the pack-ropes, which seemed to be at intervals of every three feet or so. There was nobody who didn't complain of a wet drip somewhere upon his person. And presently the outside water which seeped along the ground and made its own little runlets began to soak through various areas of contact.

That was not a good night.