The
THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, OCTOBER 18, 1940.
SHORT STORY
Condors' Revenge By V.G. CALDERON
I've never awakened an Indian by kicking him, though Captain Gonzalez, who had such a pretty, with gold-handled whip, loaded six inches of lead, once tried to teach me how to do it.
"Good-for-nothing"! roared the captain, twirling his Don Juan's moustache. "All these rogues are alike. I ordered him to saddle- up at five in the morning, and there he is sleeping like a hog at seven--I've got to be at Huaraz in two days."
The Indian was sleeping in the open air fully dressed, his head pillowed on an old saddle. At the first kick he stretched and got to his feet. I've never been able to make out whether the punishment produced anger or respect.
As he was rather slow in walk- ing to his round of daily miser- ics, the soldier lashed him across the forehead. The Indian stood trembling, blood running off his face like tears! I was trembling myself, for I still had the senti- mental prejudices of a theorist. I the violent forcibly restrained
captain and so avoided further bloodshed.
"Idle good-for-nothing." re peated the tormentor. Then, turn- ing his hard eyes towards me "That's the way to treat these barbarians. You don't know them, doctor."
got a girl friend in every cottage. He served under ine last year, and now the Prefect, who's a friend of mine, has sent him to me as an orderly. He's scared to death of my little whip!".
whose
For some time I examined ad- miringly the skilfully woven rat- tans of the "little whip," lash gradually narrowed, to end in a ball of lead-irresistible, no doubt, when applied to the backs of animals or Indians.
The martial more through the inn:
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once
voice rang the court-yard of
"And the black fur cloak, you dog? You'll catch it if you don't hurry!"
mister."
"I'm fetching it now And the Indian plunged into the stable in search of the fur cloak. Ten: twenty, thirty minutes, which provoked in orchestral cresendo an explosion of the most varied invective.
Native interjections jostled God and Virgin on the lips of the cap- tain as in the rites of the moun- tain witches. But the orderly, that most admirable guide, could not be found anywhere in the port, and so Captain Gonzalez set out alone promising him more disas- trous punishments in the future.
i
Men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers marching on a beach of the East Coast where they are un dergoing training. (Copyright, Fox).
could lead me over the bad passes of the Sierra, and mend the nar- row road between the rocks and the abyss, which the rains or a single fall of stones can destroy
"Don't go with the captain, he's Captain Gonzalez had conferred a barbarian." advised the innkeep a university degree on me as soon er, and so I delayed my departure as he saw my shining boots, my on the ground that I had to make new cloak, unstained by the wea- some purchases. Two hours lat- ther, and my guileless townsman's er, while I was saddling my fine charity. Last night, after win trotting mule, a tousle-headed in a matter of seconds. ning four Peruvian pounds from me at checkers in the mean little came up to me and murmured: I agreed without fixing any harbour inn, he adopted me with "Shall I come with you, mister?" price, and the man explained in a paternal smile, saying. "Let's
his broken speech that I should travel to Huaraz together, dear Should he come! It was the meet him at the gates of the vil- doctor. We'll have some fine fun lost Indian. For an hour I also lage. with my out of an Indian. he's had been looking for a guide who
man in a dusty sheepskin cape
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I had stopped at a cottage to ask for a cup of that horacian maize liquor which has such a cheering effect, when I saw him ride up. His jennet, though lame seemed more spirited than my mule...
The guide led off without more ado. We went by short cuts and difficult passes, When the sun began to roast us he produced a bowl of cooling "chicha" and some puffed maize, soft and woolly.
I must say I enjoyed a much softer bed that night than I should have been able to make for myself out of capes, ponchos and the saddle, at a wayside inn.
The next day was more event ful. Though servile and humble as ever, my companion stopped un- necessarily often at the cottage doors along the road as though asking for news, in soft Quechua speech.
The Indian women who passed me the gourd of "chicha" looked attentively at me, and I thought
*
*
An hour of this sort of progress er with their wings, he loses his and topples into the set my nerves on edge, and the balance very whistling of the wind among chasm; that's what happened to the rocks made me feel giddy. The Captain Gonzalez, poor chap." condors, familiar spirits of the high peaks, now passed so that their wings fanned my face and I could see the glace of their eyes.
near
We had reached a narrow de- file, from which I could catch a glimpse of the yellowish cactus- covered tableland, breaking the drab monotony of the mountain range. The guide suddenly mut- tered, "You wait here, mister." In an instant he was gone,
me
Removing his wide felt hat, he crossed himself to prove to that he was speaking the truth. With the gesture of a conjurer he pointed to the great whirling birds already devouring their prey.
I asked no more questions, for there are secrets in my country which the Indians cannot explain to white men. Perhaps there is a dark pact between them and the condors to be revenged on us for our intrusion. But I learned from this incomparable guide who left I waited for him in vain, my heart sinking, my fingers on the me at the gate of Huaraz, having kissed my hand and refused all butt of my revolver. I cried en payment, that it is sometimes in- couragement, to my wavering
prudent to affront with a pretty mule, who, with ears twitching whip the resignation of a con- like weathercocks in the wind. measured the danger and listened quered people." for death. A deep. sound vibrat- ed on the mountain, in the heights something had begun to roll.
Suddenly, fifty yards from me. a flock of condors slanted down- wards. And then, quite distinct- ly, for I had reached bend in the road, I saw a dark mass ge clattering and bounding in a cloue of dust down the neighbouring mountain side. A man? A horse? Perhaps a man and a horse. splashing the sharp rocks with their blood and finally staining the foaming river far below..
Shaking with horror, I waited' while the mountains threw back and forth the echo of that mortal,
+
I could detect an unexpected cataract. A cone of drab wings triendliness in their eyes, though swirled like a whirlpool above the one never knows for certain what bodies. these poor slaves are thinking. Two or three times the guide Silding forward with the furtive broke the silence to tell me, in step of a viscacha," the_jennet his childish language, the sort of appeared, bearing my guide, who, stories which would make a tra- taking my mule by the bridle, veller's flesh creep,
murmured in a sorrowful voice, like a sigh, "That was the cap-| tain, mister.
教育
Simple stories of travellers roll- ing down the precipice because a rock had suddenly slipped from "The Captain?” My eyes open- the Andean mountainside, and edwide with astonishment. The carried them with it to the bot- Indian threw me an inscrutable. tom of the gorge, where their look and explained, in reply "to bones lie washed in the foaming my flood of questions, that “some” river.
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Against my will I began to be impressed. In the evening the Andes are like great grey tombs. and I shuddered in the mist that rises like a visible melancholy from the blue table-lands to the snow-capped peaks. The rond. nicked out of the rock above the perilous gorge, seemed to lead us, as in some ancient sacred alle- gory, towards a sinister goal.
But the same Indian, who had trembled beneath the whip was now a fearless gerobat, swinging: easily out of his saddle to take the bridle of my frightened, shiver- ing mule, which slithered on the loose stones and gazed fascipiated into the abyss.
•
times, mister, as a traveller stands on the edge of the precipice, the f insolent condors graze his should-
THE END
* A large burrowing rodent found in South America.
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