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Two thousand feet or more below is a broad plain, bounded on the west by a range of gaunt and treeless hills ribbed with contorted rocks, which stretch north and south farther than the eye can reach. The plain is cultivated and inhabited. There are huts, fields, orchards, and streams, and about a league from the foot of the bastion is a large village. "Pachatupec?" I asked.
"I will explain it later. This is no time for talk. We must push on with all speed or we shall not get to the boats before nightfall." "Boats! You surely don't mean to say that we are to travel to Pachatupec by boats. Boats cannot float on a frozen mountain torrent!" But the cacique, who was already on the march, made no answer.
The punishment of a woman who deserted her husband was death by burning; were Señora de la Vega caught, this punishment would be undoubtedly inflicted; were it even suspected that she had met me or any other man, secretly, Chimu would almost certainly kill her. Pachatupec husbands had the power of life and death over their wives, and they were as jealous and as cruel as Moors.
The stream, if that can be called a stream which does not move, had many branches, and we could well believe, as Gondocori told us, that it was as easy to lose one's self in this watery labyrinth as in a tropical forest. In all Pachatupec there were not ten men besides himself who could pilot a boat through its windings.
He told us, also, that this was the only pass between the eastern and western Cordillera in that part of the Andes, that the journey from San Andrea to Pachatupec by any other route would be an affair not of days but of weeks. The water was always warm and never froze. Whence it came nobody could tell.
Mamcuna had never married because, as she said, there was no man in the country fit to mate with a daughter of the Incas; but as Gondocori and some others thought, the man did not exist with whom she would consent to share her power. The Pachatupec braves were fine horsemen and expert with the lasso and the spear and very fine archers.
I was bound on the nandu by order of the Queen of the Pachatupec Indians." "The Pachatupec Indians! I have heard of them. But they are a long way off; more than a hundred leagues of desert lies between us and the Pachatupec country. Are you quite sure, monsieur?" "Quite.
About midday we reached the mountain range which divides Pachatupec from the desert. Anything more lonesome and depressing it were impossible to conceive. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass nor any green thing; neither running stream nor gleam of water could be seen.
Going back the way we came is out of the question, equally so is climbing either of those mountain-ranges. If we stay hereabout we shall starve. We have not a morsel of food, and until we reach Pachatupec we shall get none." "And when may that be?" "By this time to-morrow." "Well, let us go on, then; though, as between being starved to death and roasted alive, there is not much to choose.
"I ask no more, señor; and if you are fortunate enough to cure Mamcuna of her sickness " "Or make her believe that I have cured her." "That would do quite as well; you will thank me for bringing you to Pachatupec, for although the queen can make things very unpleasant for those who offend her, she can also make them very pleasant for those whom she likes.
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