Although the four cavaliers found no difficulty in reconciling their complicity in the Inca’s escape to their consciences, their generosity did not therefore extend to the rest of his people. They knew from what had already happened that the little force in Cuzco would soon be called upon to fight desperately for its very existence. They knew too from their Indian spies that all the approaches to the beautiful valley were fast filling with detachments of Peruvian warriors, and finally there had come rumours that Ruminavi, the last of Atahuallpa’s great chieftains, had returned from Quito and had rallied all that remained of the four great armies of the empire and had united all the factions, Quitans and Cuscans, tribes of the Sierras and tribes of the plains, under the banner of the Last of the Incas, and devoted them to one supreme effort to crush the conquerors in the midst of their conquests. As they were now well on the road to Yucay they held a brief council of war when they halted, and determined to spend the rest of the night and the following day in reconnoitring the approaches to the valley and discovering, as far as they could, the positions held by the Peruvian army. The first thing they did was to collect the Cañaris and rate them soundly for permitting the Inca to escape, emphasising their reproaches, lest they should be not fully understood, with their rein-straps and the flats of their swords, promising them further that if they went back to Cuzco without the information that was needed they should every one be put to death as traitors. They then took up the march again and rode on slowly and cautiously for the best part of the night, but without discovering a sign of the enemy. A couple of hours before dawn they halted for food and rest and then with the earliest light rode on again. The bleak uplands over which they had passed now began to slope downwards and become more fertile, and as the light increased they saw that they were approaching the entrance to a great valley walled in on all sides by huge and precipitous mountains, and by the time the sun rose they had reached a rocky ledge from which they beheld a scene whose strange and wonderful loveliness told them at a glance that this could be nothing else than the far-famed valley of Yucay.