All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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68 On the crest of almost every hill along the way were to be seen the ancient ruins of the Incas. At these Jim Arnold often cast a ’ wistful eye, wondering if within their crumbling portals the splendid, dark-eyed girl who had become his ideal and his dream might not be looking down to watch him pass. After leaving Huantar, he had heard no more of her; but his determination to find her was unaltered, unalterable. At Tantamayo Jim fell before temptation. CHAPTER XII. ““SOME EVIL BEFALLS.” EW earthly things breed such a sense of loneliness and depression as does the sight of a deserted human habi- tation moldering into quiet decay, un- tenanted, uncared for and alone. An aban- doned village is more gloomy by far than a-cemetery. What then might one say of an aban- doned country—the desolate, empty ruins of a nation that has vanished? . Scarcely a traveled league is there of the Andean trails that does not yield its poig- nantly melancholy reminder of a grandeur that is gone, of a civilization that has passed utterly from earth. Sometimes it is a bit of rude but endur- ing masonry in the roadway, set there by toiling hands in past centuries to make safe the way for the tread of an armed host; or perhaps for some dusky emperor travel- ing luxuriously with his retinue of SyCo- phants and slaves. Sometimes it is a crumbling watch-tower or a length of old gray wall, frowning down upon the road from an almost inaccessible height. Here a feudal lord had his keep, and with his vassals and retainers lived his furtive life, in constant fear of attack by the enemies against whom he builded so strongly that even time, the leveler, has forborne to overthrow his work. Again, it is a great, quiet hillside all fur- rowed and checkered with the remnants of the ancient terraces, where a teeming population once tilled the soil for its sub- sistence, utilizing every available inch of ALL-STORY WEEKLY. space where the life-bearing mold, flesh of the earth itself, clung to its ribs of rock. No vanished civilization of any land has left behind it such indelible traces of its having been, such a vast loneliness and melancholy in its departure as that of the Incas has bequeathed to Peru and her sister states of South America, where once its empire lay: Even the Andes, mightiest of all_ the world’s mountain chains, derive their name from the humble Quechua laborer’s lowly terraces, the andenes, wherewith he set the impress of his simple toiling upon the hills forever. Something of this Jim Arnold felt as he stood in the waning sunlight in a rolling green meadow near Tantamayo, and saw on the opposite side of the valley a row of Square towers, dark and grim against the fading sky; eery and fantastic ‘in their almost inaccessible isolation on the brow of a beetling, sullen hill. It was quite the most remarkable collec- tion of ruins that Arnold had seen; and it appeared to be in an exceptional state of preservation. Though near—hardly more than a half- mile from the village—the stern old towers seemed as aloof from the squalid life of the valley town below them as though they had been separated from it by the width of a continent. Their proximity attracted Jim. He was in the mood for such things. “I suppose that I’m an adjective fool to think of tiring my bones any more to-day,” he thought; “‘ but I’m just coming up there to have a look at you old fellows.” He nodded at the brooding towers. Katherine had bten feeling indisposed, and Jones was with her in the small tent. The Martian had ridden into the town with Don Castro. Remained only Grimshaw, Nambe, or one of the Indians as a possible companion in the venture. _ “What do you say to a little hike over yonder, Grimshaw?” Jim asked, pointing to the towers. “Pardon me, Mr. Arnold.” Zalmon sur- veyed his bulk and heaved a sigh as he reached for his tobacco-pouch. “I wasn’t designed by nature as a hill-climbing ma- chine, except under strong compulsion. comiclboolk C©