Outside the hut, I couldn't open my eyes to the brightness. I squinted and moved around the clearing, inspecting my new home'. We were near the top of a mountain, on a level plateau. The old man, whose name was Pico, had come to this place thirty years ago and had cleared away the trees and brush to make a home for himself, a home that could not be seen from above or below, and was accessible only by a narrow trail that he took pains to conceal each day with fresh brush.
"I found you," he explained, "when I went to the bottom of my trail to gather bananas, coconuts, mangos and vegetables. Nothing edible grows at this height."
We ate another bowl of gruel and I found in it pieces of coconut and mango. As with last night, it was delicious. As we ate, the old man told his story.
He had been a professor of anthropology at Nicarxa University in his earlier years and had risen to the head of the department of Indian Culture, then had become involved in a plot to unseat a tyrannical leader. For his efforts, he was severely wounded, his family was killed and he was disgraced. He was also unemployed. He fled to the jungle and was captured by the Nincas who lived in the hills not too many miles from this clearing. He lived with the Indians for a time and became friendly with a young warrior who said he detested fighting and wanted to become a monk.
"Our friendship was short-lived," the old man said. "My friend, whose name was Ancio, became more fanatic as the days went by. I heard from others that he and a group of his followers were involved in some kind of sacrificial rites on Mount Toro. No one lived on Alto Arete then. There was no trail to the top of that magnificent column of rock in those days. But Ancio and his followers had found an ancient cave and were using it to make sacrifices to this new gow they had found."
"What were they using as sacrificial victims?" I asked. "Goats? Pigs? Sheep?"
Old Pico's face darkened and he closed his eyes. "The rumors said that they were using children from the Ninca tribe. Their own tribe."
The story didn't shock me because it didn't surprise me. History books are loaded with stories about human sacrifices, most of them children or young girls.
"The story goes that Ancio and his friends would take the children to the cave and burn them there on an altar of stone," Pico went on, opening his eyes and letting them glow like embers at me. "I learned certain truths about this when my own child was taken in the night."
"I thought you said your family was wiped out in the revolution."
He almost smiled. "My first family. When I lived with the Indians, I took a wife and she bore me a daughter. When the daughter was eleven years old, she disappeared. I asked Ancio about her and he said he knew nothing. I could tell by his eyes that he was lying. That was when I followed him and his friends and learned that he had indeed lied, and I came away a broken man. I had heard the rumors about him, about the sacrifices, but I had no proofs." He stopped, unable to go on.
"And you found those proofs," I said.
Ancio's head dropped, like a reluctant nod of assent. "The night I followed Ancio and his friends, they went up Mount Toro, along a difficult trail, and came to a deep place in the ground. I followed them down stone steps into a kind of well that had no water. I remember crawling then through a hole and coming out into a huge cavern deep inside the mountain. What I saw there has all but obliterated my memories of that night."
"What was it you saw there?" I asked. I was sitting forward, my skin tingling as I anticipated the horror of his story.
"It was over," he said. "There was nothing I could do. My daughter had been dead several days, yet they continued to ravage her lifeless body. As I watched, they poured oils over the bodies of several lifeless and ravaged young girls and set the torch…"
He stopped, his eyes glowing readily. He closed his eyes. I waited, but there was nothing more to be said. After a brutal death, his eleven-year-old daughter had been sacrificed to Ancio's new and vicious god. She had been burned in that cavern. Ancio raised his head and opened his eyes. He went on, intoning like a ghost:
"My fury was great, perhaps too great. A kind of shock overcame me. I crawled out of that cavern and went up the stone steps of the dry well. I rambled aimlessly on the trail through the whole long night. When daylight came, my fury was still great and so was my shock. It was then that I decided to leave the company of man. Before I left, though, I sought to close up that wicked cavern to prevent further sacrifices, further tortures of the innocent. I sought no revenge against Ancio. His god — or my god — would tend to Ancio's guilt and bring suitable punishment. But I did seek the cavern. I found nothing. In time, I came to this place and built my home. You are the first human I have spoken to in thirty years."
A hermit. A true hermit. I had heard of them and read of them, but I had never met one face to face. I had expected hermits to be silent men, taciturn to a fault, but old Pico seemed willing and ready to talk on and on through the days. And I had only four days to complete a truly impossible mission.
"There is something else in the rumors that you should know," Pico said. "It may not be of help, but you should know of it. It was said that the smoke from the sacrificial fires never came out of the mouth of the cave. It was said that for days after victims were sacrificed, thin plumes of smoke could be seen rising from Alto Arete."
I pondered that for a bit, then knew the answer.
"There's a chimney right up through the middle of the mountain," I said. "A kind of tunnel. There has to be."
"That is what the rumors say. One must not be too trustful of rumors."
But, I was thinking, hating myself for the complicated pun, where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's smoke, there's also a chimney. A chimney right up through the center of Mount Toro, up through that massive column, and out through the top of Alto Arete.
I spent the day moving slowly about the clearing, even testing my legs on parts of the steep trail down. Most of the time, though, I sat near the hut with Pico and picked the man's brains for more information.
By nightfall, I had learned only that the Ninca tribe still lived in an area near the east slope of Mount Toro, and that Ancio was either their chief or had been killed for his zeal in making human sacrifices. I knew that one of my first moves was to find the Ninca Indians and talk to Ancio if he were still around. If I found that ancient cave, I very well might find a way past Don Carlos Italla's fancy defenses.
That's why I broke my promise to Pico and crept away in the night. I had promised to wait until at least noon and the next day. But my days were slipping away too fast, and I felt strong. I set out for the lookout point, hoping against hope to find Antonio there, alive and well.
Dawn was just starting to break when I neared the lookout point Elicia had shown me the night I took her to her cousin's hut. I would have reached it sooner, but I kept getting lost on Pico's crazy trail.
The wound in my side throbbed with pain, but it hadn't broken open and I was convinced that Pico's work would hold up. Unless, of course, I got into a scrap with a guerilla or a Cuban Marine. Needless to say, my long journey from Pico's hermit hut had been a wary one, avoiding all signs of civilization.
I eased through the foliage, approaching the lookout with caution. Antonio could have been captured and tortured, he could have told the Cubans that he was to meet me here. Then, again Antonio could be hiding there with his rifle at the ready, and could shoot me if I made the slightest noise.
It had always seemed silly to me when I'd read in books that people signalled each other in the night with special bird calls or hooting like owls. It didn't seem silly to me now. I wished that I'd worked out such a plan with Antonio.