John Buchan - The Courts of the Morning (John Buchan) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

They arrived at a ruined village of mud where a couple of Indians had made their camp--hunters they seemed, tall active fellows of a different stamp from the broken men of the pueblas. Peters appeared to know them, for he called them by their names, and addressed them in pidgin Spanish which they understood. That night he told his troopers that the patrol was ended. He had been instructed to report on this eastern frontier of the Gran Seco, and next morning they would turn back. All to the east, he told them, was a God-forgotten country, which nature and man had combined to make unhealthy for Christians. He asked questions of the Indians and expounded their replies. There was fever there, and much poison, and very bad men, and valleys so deep that from the bottom one could see by day the stars and the moon. The troopers were impressed, and looked anxiously at the menacing mountain wall, with its coronal of snowfields now rosy in the after-glow.

But next morning Black was in no state to travel. Peters condemned the cussedness of things and declared that he could not afford to wait another hour. He was not unkind, and he did his best to ease the sufferer, but duty was duty and his called him back to headquarters. Black must be made as comfortable as possible, and the two Indians, whom he knew to be trustworthy, would look after him till the bout of fever had passed, and put him on his way home. After breakfast the patrol jingled off up the slope, and left Black wrapped in a foxskin kaross, drowsing in a corner of the ruins, while the Indians twenty yards off sat hunched and meditative beside their brushwood fire.

Black was really sick, but not with malaria. His vitality had run down like a clock, since too much had been demanded of it, and his trouble was partly a low nervous fever, and partly a deep fatigue. When the police had been gone an hour, the two Indians held a consultation on his case. Then they proceeded to strange remedies. They seemed to be friends of his, for he grinned when they bent over him and submitted readily to their ministrations. The country was volcanic, and close at hand, hidden in a crinkle of the hills, a hot sulphur spring bubbled from the rocks. They undressed him, and carried him, wrapped in the kaross, to the pool, where they plunged him into the most violent bath which he had ever encountered. Then they dried him roughly with a fine leather poncho, and rubbed the skin of his back and chest with an aromatic ointment. After that one of them massaged him for the space of an hour, a cunning massage which seemed to remould flaccid muscles and adjust disordered nerves and put him into a state of delicious stupor. Lastly, he was given a bitter brew to drink, and then permitted to sleep. This he proceeded to do for eighteen hours, and when he awoke in broad daylight the following morning his head was cool and his eye was clear, though he was still shaky on his feet. Peters had left enough provisions, and he ate the first enjoyable meal he had known for weeks.

There was another figure at breakfast, a fair young man with a golden-brown skin, who, judging by the dust on his boots and breeches, had ridden far that morning.

"My felicitations, Señor," the newcomer said. "I do not think you have taken any hurt in the last weeks, and that is a miracle. But where we are now going we must go on our feet, and for that you are not yet able. I am in command for the moment, and my orders are that to-day you rest."

So Black slept again and awoke in the afternoon with a most healthy hunger. The newcomer sat by him and rolled and smoked many cigarettes, but he would not permit the patient to talk. "Time enough, my friend. We do not part company for a little while. But I will show you this to cheer you."

He exhibited a small tinsel medal, such as humble pilgrims purchase at some famous shrine. On one side it bore a face which was clearly that of the Gobernador of the Gran Seco.

Black puzzled over it, for he was still dazed, and asked whose was the head.

"It is that of our noble leader," the young man laughed. "Yours and mine--he who is to lead this unhappy people to freedom."

Black seemed to see the obscure joke, for he too laughed.

"Jesucristo!" said the young man, "but that is a chief to fight for!"

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