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Bret Harte - "The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales"

Amelia E. Barr - "The Man Between"

Edith Wharton - "The Touchstone, by Edith Wharton"

William Hazlitt - "Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion"

Under the Andes

R >> Rex Stout >> Under the Andes




"Dearest," he murmured, "dearest, speak to me!"

His hand sought her swelling bosom gropingly; and his eyes, as
they looked pleadingly even into mine, shot into my heart and
unnerved me.

I rose to my feet, scarcely able to stand, and moved away.

But the fate that had finally intervened for us--too late, alas!
for one--did not leave us long with our dead. Even now I do not
know what happened; at the time I knew even less. Harry told me
afterward that the first shock came at the instant he had taken
Desiree in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

I had crossed to the other side of the passage and was gazing
back toward the chasm at the Incas on the other side, when again
I felt the ground, absolutely without warning, tremble violently
under my feet. At the same moment there was a low, curious rumble
as of the thundering of distant cannon.

I sprang toward Harry with a cry of alarm, and had crossed about
to the middle of the passage, when a deafening roar smote my ear,
and the entire wall of the cavern appeared to be failing in upon
us. At the same time the ground seemed to sink directly away
beneath my feet with an easy, rocking motion as of a wave of the
ocean. Then I felt myself plunging downward with a velocity that
stunned my senses and took away my breath; and then all was
confusion and chaos--and oblivion.

When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling
at my side. I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be
impossible to make a greater exertion.

"Paul!" cried Harry. "Speak to me! Not you, too--I shall go
mad!"

He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours,
but that appeared to be all that he knew. How far we had fallen,
or how he had found me, or how he himself had escaped being
crushed to pieces by the falling rock, he was unable to say; and
I concluded that he, too, had been rendered unconscious by the
fall, and for some time dazed and bewildered by the shock.

Well! We were alive--that was all.

For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass
of bruises and blisters from head to foot. And we had had no
water for something like twenty-four hours. Heaven only knows
where we found the energy to rise and go in search of it; it is
incredible that any creatures in such a pitiable and miserable
condition as we were could have been propelled by hope, unless it
is indeed immortal.

Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.

The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of
boulders and broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level
and straight as any tunnel built by man.

Down this we made our way. Every few feet we stopped to rest.
Neither of us spoke a word. I really had no sense of any purpose
in our progress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to
death, move on and on until there is no longer strength for
another step, when they lie down for the final breath.

We saw no water nor promise of any; nothing save the long stretch
of dim vista ahead and the grim, black walls on either side.
That, I think, for hours; it seemed to me then for years.

I dragged one leg after the other with infinite effort and pain;
Harry was ahead, and sometimes, glancing back over his shoulder
to find me at some distance behind, he would turn over and lie on
his back till I approached. Then again to his knees and again
forward. Neither of us spoke.

Suddenly, at a great distance down the passage, much further than
I had been able to see before, I saw what appeared to be a white
wall extending directly across our path.

I called to Harry and pointed it out to him. He nodded vaguely,
as though in wonder that I should have troubled him about so
slight an object of interest, and crawled on.

But the white wall became whiter still, and soon I saw that it
was not a wall. A wild hope surged through me; I felt the blood
mount dizzily to my head, and I stilled the clamor that beat at
my temples by an extreme effort of the will. "It can't be," I
said to myself aloud, over and over; "it can't be, it can't be."

Harry turned, and his face was as white as when he had knelt by
the body of Desiree, and his eye was wild.

"You fool," he roared, "it is!"

We went faster then. Another hundred yards, and the thing was
certain; there it was before us. We scrambled to our feet and
tried to run; I reeled and fell, then picked myself up again and
followed Harry, who had not even halted as I had fallen. The
mouth of the passage was now but a few feet away; I reached
Harry's side, blinking and stunned with amazement and the
incredible wonder of it.

I tried to shout, to cry aloud to the heavens, but a great lump
in my throat choked me and my head was singing dizzily.

Harry, at my side, was crying like a child, with great tears
streaming down his face, as together we staggered forth from the
mouth of the passage into the bright and dazzling sunshine of the
Andes.



Chapter XXIV.

CONCLUSION.


Never, I believe, were misery and joy so curiously mingled in the
human breast as when Harry and I stood--barely able to
stand--gazing speechlessly at the world that had so long been
hidden from us.

We had found the light, but had lost Desiree. We were alive, but
so near to death that our first breath of the mountain air was
like to be our last.

The details of our painful journey down the mountain, over the
rocks and crags, and through rushing torrents that more than once
swept us from our feet, cannot be written, for I do not know
them.

The memory of the thing is but an indistinct nightmare of
suffering. But the blind luck that seemed to have fallen over our
shoulders as a protecting mantle at the death of Desiree stayed
with us; and after endless hours of incredible toil and labor, we
came to a narrow pass leading at right angles to our course.

Night was ready to fall over the bleak and barren mountain as we
entered it. Darkness had long since overtaken us, when we saw at
a distance a large clearing, in the middle of which lights shone
from the windows of a large house whose dim and shadowy outline
appeared to us surrounded by a halo of peace.

But we were nearly forced to fight for it. The proprietor of the
hacienda himself answered our none too gentle knock at the door,
and he had no sooner caught sight of us than he let out a yell as
though he had seen the devil in person, and slammed the door
violently in our faces. Indeed, we were hardly recognizable as
men.

Naked, black, bruised, and bleeding, covered with hair on our
faces and parts of our bodies--mine, of recent growth, stubby and
stiff--our appearance would have justified almost any suspicion.

But we hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree
and plight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by my
excellent Spanish--which could not, of course, be the tongue of
the devil--and convinced by our pitiable condition of our
inability to do him any harm, he at length reopened the door and
gave us admittance.

When we had succeeded in allaying his suspicions concerning our
identity--though I was careful not to alarm his superstitions by
mentioning the cave of the devil, which, I thought, was probably
well known to him--he lost no time in displaying his humanity.

Calling in some hombres from the rear of the hacienda, he gave
them ample instructions, with medicine and food, and an hour
later Harry and I were lying side by side in his own bed--a rude
affair, but infinitely better than granite--refreshed, bandaged,
and as comfortable as their kindly ministrations could make us.

The old Spaniard was a direct descendant of the good Samaritan
--despite the slight difference in nationality. For many weeks he
nursed us and fed us and coaxed back the spark of life in our
exhausted and wounded bodies.

Our last ounce of strength seemed to have been used up in our
desperate struggle down the side of the mountain; for many days
we lay on our backs absolutely unable to move a muscle and barely
conscious of life.

But the spark revived and fluttered. The day came when we could
hobble, with his assistance, to the door of the hacienda and sit
for hours in the invigorating sunshine; and thenceforward our
convalescence proceeded rapidly. Color came to our cheeks and
light to our eyes; and one sunny afternoon it was decided that we
should set out for Cerro de Pasco on the following day.

Harry proposed a postponement of our departure for two days,
saying that he wished to make an excursion up the mountain. I
understood him at once.

"It would be useless," I declared. "You would find nothing."

"But she was with us when we fell," he persisted, not bothering
to pretend that he did not understand me. "She came--it must be
near where we landed."

"That isn't it," I explained. "Have you forgotten that we have
been here for over a month? You would find nothing." As he
grasped my thought his face went white and he was silent. So on
the following morning we departed.

Our host furnished us with food, clothing, mules, and an arriero,
not to mention a sorrowful farewell and a hearty blessing. From
the door of the hacienda he waved his sombrero as we disappeared
around a bend in the mountain-pass; we had, perhaps, been a
welcome interruption in the monotony of his lonely existence.

We were led upward for many miles until we found ourselves again
in the region of perpetual snow. There we set our faces to the
south. From the arriero we tried to learn how far we then were
from the cave of the devil, but to our surprise were informed
that he had never heard of the thing.

We could see that the question made him more than a little
suspicious of us; often, when he thought himself unobserved, I
caught him eyeing us askance with something nearly approaching
terror.

We journeyed southward for eleven days; on the morning of the
twelfth we saw below us our goal. Six hours later we had entered
the same street of Cerro de Pasco through which we had passed
formerly with light hearts; and the heart which had been gayest
of all we had left behind us, stilled forever, somewhere beneath
the mountain of stone which she had herself chosen for her tomb.

Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the
arriero. He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up
on our mules. Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and
staring eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as
though fascinated.

I opened my mouth to call to him, but before the words left my
lips he had let out an ear-splitting yell of terror and bounded
down the steps and past us, with arms flying in every direction,
running like one possessed. Nor did he return during the few
hours that we remained at the hotel.

Two days later found us boarding the yacht at Callao. When I had
discovered, to my profound astonishment, at the hacienda, that
another year had taken us as far as the tenth day of March, I had
greatly doubted if we should find Captain Harris still waiting
for us. But there he was; and he had not even put himself to the
trouble of becoming uneasy about us.

As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of
wine, he "didn't know but what the senora had decided to take the
Andes home for a mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little
matter of transportation."

But when I informed him that "the senora" was no more, his face
grew sober with genuine regret and sorrow. He had many good
things to say of her then; it appeared that she had really
touched his salty old heart.

"She was a gentle lady," said the worthy captain; and I smiled to
think how Desiree herself would have smiled at such a
characterization of the great Le Mire.

We at once made for San Francisco. There, at a loss, I disposed
of the remainder of the term of the lease on the yacht, and we
took the first train for the East.

Four days later we were in New York, after a journey saddened by
thoughts of the one who had left us to return alone.

It was, in fact, many months before the shadow of Desiree ceased
to hover about the dark old mansion on lower Fifth Avenue,
incongruous enough among the ancient halls and portraits of
Lamars dead and gone in a day when La Marana herself had darted
like a meteor into the hearts of their contemporaries.


That is, I suppose, properly the end of the story; but I cannot
refrain from the opportunity to record a curious incident that
has just befallen me. Some twenty minutes ago, as I was writing
the last paragraph--I am seated in the library before a massive
mahogany table, close to a window through which the September sun
sends its golden rays--twenty minutes ago, as I say, Harry
sauntered into the room and threw himself lazily into a large
armchair on the other side of the table.

I looked up with a nod of greeting, while he sat and eyed me
impatiently for some seconds.

"Aren't you coming with me down to Southampton?" he asked
finally.

"What time do you leave?" I inquired, without looking up.

"Eleven-thirty."

"What's on?"

"Freddie Marston's Crocodiles and the Blues. It's going to be
some polo."

I considered a moment. "Why, I guess I'll run down with you. I'm
about through here."

"Good enough!" Harry arose to his feet and began idly fingering
some of the sheets on the table before me. "What is all this
silly rot, anyway?"

"My dear boy," I smiled, "you'll be sorry you called it silly rot
when I tell you that it is a plain and honest tale of our own
experiences."

"Must be deuced interesting," he observed. "More silly rot than
ever."

"Others may not think so," I retorted, a little exasperated by
his manner. "It surely will be sufficiently exciting to read of
how we were buried with Desiree Le Mire under the Andes, and our
encounters with the Incas, and our final escape, and--"

"Desiree what?" Harry interrupted.

"Desiree Le Mire," I replied very distinctly. "The great French
dancer."

"Never heard of her," said Harry, looking at me as if he doubted
my sanity.

"Never heard of Desiree, the woman you loved?" I almost shouted
at him.

"The woman I--piffle! I say I never heard of her."

I gazed at him, trembling with high indignation. "I suppose," I
observed with infinite sarcasm, "that you will tell me next that
you have never been in Peru?"

"Guilty," said Harry. "I never have."

"And that you never climbed Pike's Peak to see the sunrise?"

"Rahway, New Jersey, is my farthest west."

"And that you never dived with me from the top of a column one
hundred feet high?"

"Not I. I retain a smattering of common sense."

"And that you did not avenge the death of Desiree by causing that
of the Inca king?"

"So far as that Desiree woman is concerned," said Harry, and his
tone began to show impatience, "I can only repeat that I have
never heard of the creature. And"--he continued--"if you're
trying to bamboozle a gullible world by concocting a tale as
silly as your remarks to me would seem to indicate, I will say
that as a cheap author you are taking undue liberties with your
family, meaning myself. And what is more, if you dare to print
the stuff I'll let the world know it's a rank fake."

This threat, delivered with the most awful resolution and
sincerity, unnerved me completely, and I fell back in my chair in
a swoon.

When I recovered Harry had gone to his polo game, leaving me
behind, whereupon I seized my pen and hastened to set down in
black and white that most remarkable conversation, that the
reader may judge for himself between us.

For my part, I do swear that the story is true, on my word of
honor as a cynic and a philosopher.





[end of text]


Note: I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE PARA. LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
2 1 2 sursounding surrounding
22 6 2 hunderd hundred
24 9 1 La Mire Le Mire
32 1 1 ager eager
36 4 5 earthqakes earthquakes
45 5 2 tossd tossed
56 10 1 then than
58 8 1 or our
69 8 2 geting getting
74 1 3 unstead unsteady
87 13 1 Whey Why
106 5 1 placng placing
112 4 2 aggreeable agreeable
115 1 to some some
123 1 2 Desiree arms Desiree's arms
125 3 5 had made has made
129 11 4 But was But it was
140 4 1 Lords knows Lord knows
158 5 6 begin towed being towed
168 6 2 dicussing discussing
178 6 3 Pachacamas Pachacamac
179 7 3 cabin cavern
185 2 1 was wild was a wild
192 8 3 carvern cavern*
196 8 1 perservation preservation
196 9 4 dour days four days
204 6 1 litte little
208 2 1 on my on me
209 3 4 aked asked
210 5 2 retuned returned
211 8 3 said side
212 3 3 touch tough
224 6 2 Soliel Soleil
226 5 5 aproaching approaching
243 1 3 serius serious
247 5 5 forseen foreseen
247 6 1 They The
259 4 5 peceptibly perceptibly

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