The Rover of the Andes | Page 9

a little below the knees, with loose leggings, which were richly ornamented with needlework. A straw hat with a simple feather, covered her head, beneath which her curling black hair flowed in unconfined luxuriance. She wore no ornament of any kind, and the slight shoes that covered her small feet were perfectly plain. In short, there was a modest simplicity about the girl's whole aspect and demeanour which greatly interested the Englishman, inducing him to murmur to himself, "What an uncommonly pretty girl she would be if she were only white!"
The colour of her skin was, indeed, unusually dark, but that fact did not interfere with the classic delicacy of her features, or the natural sweetness of her expression.
The order of progress in narrow places was such that Manuela rode behind Pedro and in front of Lawrence, Quashy bringing up the rear. In more open places the young Englishman used occasionally to ride up abreast of Manuela and endeavour to engage her in conversation. He was, to say truth, very much the reverse of what is styled a lady's man, and had all his life felt rather shy and awkward in female society, but being a sociable, kindly fellow, he felt it incumbent on him to do what in him lay to lighten the tedium of the long journey to one who, he thought, must naturally feel very lonely with no companions but men. "Besides," he whispered to himself, "she is only an Indian, and of course cannot construe my attentions to mean anything so ridiculous as love-making-- so, I will speak to her in a fatherly sort of way."
Filled with this idea, as the party came out upon a wide and beautiful table-land, which seemed like a giant emerald set in a circlet of grand blue mountains, Lawrence pushed up alongside, and said--
"Poor girl, I fear that such prolonged riding over these rugged passes must fatigue you." Manuela raised her dark eyes to the youth's face, and, with a smile that was very slight--though not so slight but that it revealed a double row of bright little teeth--she replied softly--
"W'at you say?"
"Oh! I forgot, you don't speak English. How stupid I am!" said Lawrence with a blush, for he was too young to act the "fatherly" part well.
He felt exceedingly awkward, but, observing that the girl's eyes were again fixed pensively on the ground, he hoped that she had not noticed the blush, and attempted to repeat the phrase in Spanish. What he said it is not possible to set down in that tongue, nor can we gratify the reader with a translation. Whatever it was, Manuela replied by again raising her dark eyes for a moment--this time without a smile--and shaking her head.
Poor Lawrence felt more awkward than ever. In despair he half thought of making trial of Latin or Greek, when Pedro came opportunely to the rescue. Looking back he began--
"Senhor Armstrong--"
"I think," interrupted the youth, "that you may dispense with `Senhor.'"
"Nay, I like to use it," returned the guide. "It reminds me so forcibly of the time when I addressed your good old father thus."
"Well, Senhor Pedro, call me what you please. What were you about to say?"
"Only that we are now approaching one of the dangerous passes of the mountains, where baggage-mules sometimes touch the cliffs with their packs, and so get tilted over the precipices. But our mules are quiet, and with ordinary care we have nothing to fear."
The gorge in the mountains, which the travellers soon afterwards entered, fully justified the guide's expression "dangerous." It was a wild, rugged glen, high up on one side of which the narrow pathway wound--in some places rounding a cliff or projecting boulder, which rendered the passage of the baggage-mules extremely difficult. Indeed, one of the mules did slightly graze a rock with its burden; and, although naturally sure-footed, was so far thrown off its balance as to be within a hair's-breadth of tumbling over the edge and being dashed to pieces on the rocks below, where a turbulent river rushed tumultuously at the bottom of the glen.
One of the snow-clad peaks of the higher Andes lay right before them. One or two guanacos--animals of the lama species--gazed at them from the other side of the gorge, and several ill-omened vultures wheeled in the sky above, as if anticipating a catastrophe which would furnish them with a glorious meal.
"A most suitable place for the depredations of banditti, or fellows like Conrad of the Mountains, I should think," said Lawrence.
"Bandits are sometimes met with here," returned Pedro, quietly.
"And what if we should meet with such in a place where there is scarcely room to fight?"
"Why then," returned the guide, with a slight curl of his moustache, "we should have to try who could fight best in the smallest