Part 6 (1/2)

There was plenty of room for them, the host said, with an air of profound respect for Pedro, whom he saluted as an old acquaintance. The house had been full two days before, but the travellers had gone on, and the only one who remained was a poor man who lay in an out-house very sick.

”Who is he?” asked Pedro, as he a.s.sisted Manuela to alight.

”I know not, senhor,” replied the host. ”He is a stranger, who tells me he has been robbed. I can well believe it, for he has been roughly handled, and there are some well-known bandits in the neighbourhood.

His injuries would not have been so serious, however, if he had not caught a fever from exposure.”

”Indeed,” returned the guide, who, however, seemed more interested in unsaddling his mules than in listening to the account of the unfortunate man, ”was it near this that he fell in with the bandits?”

”No, senhor, it was far to the west. The travellers who brought him on said they found him almost insensible on the banks of a stream into which he appeared to have fallen or been thrown.”

Pedro glanced at Lawrence.

”Hear you that, senhor?”

”My Spanish only suffices to inform me that some one has been robbed and injured.”

Explaining fully what their host had said, Pedro advised Lawrence to visit the stranger in his medical character.

”My friend is a doctor,” he said, turning to the host, ”take him to the sick man; for myself, I will put up the mules and then a.s.sist the old mother, for mountain air sharpens appet.i.te.”

In a rude, tumble-down hut close to the main building Lawrence found his patient. He lay stretched in a corner on a heap of straw in a state of great exhaustion--apparently dying--and with several bandages about his cut and bruised head and face.

The first glance told Lawrence that it was Antonio, the robber whom he had tried to rescue, but he carefully concealed his knowledge, and, bending over the man, addressed him as if he were a stranger. The start and look of surprise mingled with alarm on the robber's face told that he had recognised Lawrence, but he also laid restraint on himself, and drew one of the bandages lower down on his eyes.

Feeling his pulse, Lawrence asked him about his food.

He got little, he said, and that little was not good; the people of the farm seemed to grudge it.

”My poor man,” said Lawrence in his bad Spanish, ”they are starving you to death. But I'll see to that.”

He rose and went out quickly. Returning with a basin of soup, he presented it to the invalid, who ate it with relish. Then the man began to relate how he had been attacked a few days before by a party of robbers in one of the mountain pa.s.ses, who had cut the throats of all his party in cold blood, and had almost killed himself, when he was rescued by the opportune arrival of some travellers.

Lawrence was much disgusted at first by the man's falsehood. Observing the poor fellow's extreme weakness, however, and his evident anxiety lest he should be recognised, the feeling changed to pity. Laying his hand gently on the man's shoulder, he said, with a look of solemnity which perchance made, up to some extent for the baldness of the phraseology--

”Antonio, tell not lies; you are dying!”

The startled man looked at his visitor earnestly. ”Am I dying?” he asked, in a low tone.

”You are, perhaps; I know not. I will save you if possible.”

These words were accompanied by a kind look and a comforting pat on the shoulder, which, it may be, did more for the sick man than the best of physic. At all events the result was a sudden grasp of the hand and a look of grat.i.tude which spoke volumes. The robber was about to give vent to his feelings in speech when the door opened, and the burly host, putting his head in, announced that supper was ready.

Giving his patient another rea.s.suring pat, the young doctor left him and returned to the banqueting-hall of the mountain farm, where he found that Manuela, Pedro, and Quashy were more or less earnestly engaged with the contents of the iron pot.

CHAPTER FIVE.

LAWRENCE AND QUASHY BECOME ”FLOSUFFICAL,” AND THEY CAMP OUT BESIDE THE ”GIANT'S CASTLE.”

While the party were at supper the first gusts of a storm, which had for some time been brewing, shook the little hut, and before they had all fallen into the profound slumber which usually followed their day's journey, a heavy gale was howling among the mountain gorges with a noise like the roaring of a thousand lions. For two days the gale raged so furiously that travelling--especially in the higher regions of the Andes--became impossible. The Indian girl, Pedro, and the negro, bore their detention with that stoicism which is not an infrequent characteristic of mountaineers, guides, and savages. As for our hero, he devoted himself and all his skill to his patient--to which duty he was the more reconciled that it afforded him a good opportunity at once for improving his Spanish and pointing out to the bandit the error of his ways.