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On the other hand, the Pachatupecs were truculent, gluttonous, and not very temperate; they practised polygamy, and all the hard work devolved on the women, whose husbands often brutally ill-used them.
But when we reached the rendezvous she was not there. I whistled and called softly; nobody answered. "She will be here presently, we must wait," I said to Gahra. It was terribly annoying. Every minute was precious. The Pachatupecs are early risers, and if Señora de la Vega did not join us before daylight we might be seen and the opportunity lost.
Considering the light esteem in which women were held I was surprised that the Pachatupecs consented to be ruled by one of the sex.
He did, however, tell me that his people called their country Pachatupec and themselves Pachatupecs, that the Spaniards had never subdued them or even penetrated into the fastnesses where they dwelt, and that they spoke the ancient language of Peru. Gondocori admitted that his mother was a Christian, and to her he no doubt owed his notions of religion and the regularity of his features.
Meanwhile I was picking up information about her people, and acquiring a knowledge of their language, and as I was continually hearing it spoken I was soon able to make myself understood. The Pachatupecs, though heathens and savages, were more civilized than any of the so-called Indios civilizados with whom I had come in contact.
And then she told me that, while travelling in the mountains with her husband, a certain Señor de la Vega, and several friends, they were set upon by a band of Pachatupecs who, after killing all the male members of the party, carried her off and brought her to Pachacamac, where she had been compelled to become one of the wives of the cacique Chimu, and that between his brutality and the jealousy of the other women, her life, apart from its ignominy, was so utterly wretched that, unless she could escape, she must either go mad or be driven to commit suicide.
The next moment he was striding down the steep and stony pass at a speed which, in a few minutes, left the pursuing and shouting Pachatupecs far behind. The ground was so rough and the descent so rapid that I expected every moment we should come to grief. But on we went like the wind. Never in my life, except in an express train, was I carried so fast.
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