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The youth had naturally a gay and confident disposition, and added not a little to the liveliness of the trips. Marcoy profited by their stricter connection to converse with him about the cultivation of the farm at Sausipata, making use of a venial deception to let him think that the plan of operations had been communicated by the governor himself.
Yielding to pity and friendship, the colonel gave in his adhesion to the plan, and even proposed his own hammock as a sort of palanquin, and the loan of a pair of the peons for bearers. They could return with Eusebio to Sausipata, where the party would be obliged to wait for the three. After sketching out his plan, Colonel Perez looked for approval to Mr. Marcoy, and received an affirmative nod.
They had already laid low several cocoa groves, torn up the sugar-canes, broken down the bananas, and sliced off the green pineapples. Indignant at such vandalism, Marcoy caught the first offender by the plaited tails at the back of the neck. "What are you doing?" he cried. "But my fellows and I don't want to be sent any more to work at Sausipata."
In effect, on the return of the peons ten days after, the examinador was reported to have got quit of his fever shortly after leaving Sausipata, and to have borne the journey to Chile-Chile remarkably well. He charged his men to take back his compliments and the regrets he felt, at not being able to keep with the company. Nothing detained the band longer at Sausipata.
A frightful night in a deserted hut on a site called Jimiro where Marcoy had for mattress the legs of one of the porters, and for pillow the back of a bark-hunter followed the exodus from Sausipata.
After a slippery descent of the side of Huaynapata and the passage of a considerable number of babbling streams each of which gave new occasion for the colonel to show his ingenuity in getting over dry shod, and so sparing his threatening rheumatism the cry of "Sausipata!" was uttered by Pepe Garcia.
Colonel Perez, who never lost occasion to give a sly stab to the mozo, asked, as he peeled a banana, if he was duly authorized to dispose so readily of the property of his uncle: the youth, without losing a particle of his magnificent adolescent courtesy, replied that as nephew and direct heir of the governor of Marcapata it was a right which he exercised in anticipation of inheritance; and that just as Pepe Garcia, the interpreter-in-chief, had regaled the party in his residence, he, Juan of Aragon, proposed to do in the family grange of Sausipata.
Two of the porters they recognized at once, with their eagle eyesight, from having relieved them of their shirts while the latter were working out some penalty at the governor's farm of Sausipata, and proceeded to claim a warm acquaintance on that basis; but the bearers, with equally lively memories of the affront, responded simply with a frown and the epithet of Sua-sua double thief.
"Because Senor Aragon is nephew to Don Rebollido, the governor, and Sausipata belongs to Rebollido; and if he were to learn what we have done, we should be flogged and sent to prison to rot." The explanation, drawn out with many threats when the Indians had been driven from their work of ruin and placed once more in line of march, was curious.
The able gobernador of Marcapata had had the sagacious idea of making the local penitentiary out of his farm of Sausipata! It was cultivated entirely by the labor of his culprits. When culprits were scarce, the chicha-drinkers, the corner-loungers, became criminals and disturbers of the peace, for whom a sojourn at Sausipata was the obvious cure.
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