"A thousand!" exclaimed Cristoval, with contempt. "Is that all Pizarro hath offered? By the saints, he’ll double it before I have done! Well, _bastante_! Thou didst seek reward! _Bien_! But now thou ’rt unhorsed thou canst hope for reward no longer and canst answer freely. How many are in pursuit?" "Nearly all have been, saving Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro, De Soto, José, and a few more.—But hold, Cristoval, the Cañares are out and after thee. I give thee warning." Cristoval drew a long breath, his face darkened, and he stood in reflection. He threw down the choke-pear with which he had purposed gagging his captive. "We’ll not trouble thee with it. Thy news is not welcome, Valera, but thy warning is. We will go, Ñusta Rava." "First, I will attend to your wound," she said, and tearing a strip from her robe, soon had it bandaged. In a few minutes Cristoval was in his enemy’s armor, and taking up the lance he said: "_Adiós_, Valera! Thy comrades will find thee in the morning." He assisted Rava to the trail, secured his sword and belt, and once more they were on their way, leaving De Valera leaning mournfully against a rock, a prey to varied fears. A mile up the canyon Cristoval captured the horse, and found De Valera’s mace and buckler hanging on the saddle. The first care was to examine the contents of the saddlebags. "Ah!" exclaimed the cavalier, with satisfaction. "Praise Heaven, they are well stocked. Here is _charqui_, bread, and parched maize, and grain for our steed in the other—with discretion, some days’ supply. But I was more sure of De Valera’s providence than of his honesty. Now, we’re equipped, Ñusta Rava, and now we’ll mount." It was a trial of her courage, but soon she was seated upon the horse’s croup, holding her place with the aid of the cavalier’s belt. *CHAPTER XVIII* _*The Vale of Xilcala*_ In Rava’s memory, afterward, the toil, suffering, and peril of the succeeding days remained as fragments of an anguished dream. There were dim recollections of unmeasured hours of weariness, of journeying upward through huge defiles, along the verge of precipices, and out upon barren stretches of tableland which seemed, in their desolation, the abode of Despair and Death: the moaning of the wind, their voices. Here was infinite loneliness, the dreary solitude of a world forgotten of God. Over these lofty wastes, gasping and dizzy in the rarified air, their brains pierced by the fierce rays of a sun which gave no warmth, their lips split and bleeding, their faces raw and smarting in the eager wind, they labored on. Cristoval, silent, walked and led, his eyes rarely lifted from the faint trail left by herdsmen and their flocks of llamas. This once lost, there would be slight hope. Followed, it might lead to safety.