And there, at the mouth of the hollow, were two dozen guerillas, just rousing themselves for breakfast, in a small camp of a man-made clearing. They had been camping in the open — no tents, huts or even cots. I knew that Don Carlos had dispatched them all along this area. He knew the location of the cave and was protecting it, just in case we stumbled onto it. Because of this protection, I had the feeling that old Don Carlos considered himself safe from invasion through the lost cave. That was good. If he felt really safe, he wouldn't bother to have the top part of the chimney guarded.
I reported back to the others and we decided against a frontal attack against the superior force of guerillas. I had noticed sentries at a half-dozen outposts. We set out, knives in hands, with instructions from me on how to take out a man quietly, without alarming the others.
After staking out the sentry I would kill, I watched his activities until I found the place where he came nearest the jungle wall. I made a circuitous route to that spot, lay in the bushes and waited for the others to do the same with their sentries. Only five of the spearchuckers and I were involved in the caper. Antonio, Purano and the other seven Ninca warriors were set up in a phalanx formation near the camp's main entrance. They would press to the attack on the main force of guerillas only if one of the sentries managed to set off an alarm.
The backup phase of the operation wasn't necessary. No sooner had I leaped from cover, slashed the throat of my appointed sentry and dragged him into the brush, than the other five warriors, armed with long, keenly-honed blades, were already on top of their sentries, dispatching them silently and swiftly.
When we had dragged them all into the brush, the camp was as quiet as if nothing had happened. The balance of the guerilla force, eighteen of them, were huddled in a patch of shade near the back part of the clearing, in a narrow part of the hollow. Once again, silence and swiftness were called for. If any of the guerillas called out or escaped, they could bring reinforcements from the adjacent hollow, not more than a half mile away.
My heart, really wasn't into this obvious massacre, especially since we had no idea if this were the hollow that would lead us to the ancient cave. The hieroglyphics on the map, according to Antonio, indicated that one of the seven hollows on this side of the mountain led to the cave. If the cave were at number seven and there were twenty four guerillas guarding each hollow, we would spend the entire precious day trying to kill nearly a hundred and seventy men in groups of two dozen each.
The odds in favor of us succeeding in killing all 170 men without running into a fatal snag somewhere along the line were so scant that I knew we were flirting with disaster, as well as the clock. I signaled for a council of war and we met far down the hollow beside a meandering stream.
After I had put forth my reservations and doubts, and my aversion to such a wholesale bloodbath in the seven hollows, it was agreed that we must devise an alternate plan. I turned to the taciturn Purano.
"Do you or your men know of any other trail up the mountain, one that circles around these hollows and comes out at the headwaters, nearer the base of Alto Arete?"
He studied the question, then spoke tersely with his spearchuckers. I didn't understand the language, but there was a great deal of grunting and nodding. Finally, Purano stood and gazed up the hill to the right of the first hollow.
"Come. We try old trail."
We found an old and nearly closed trail that hadn't been used in so many years that it was little better than cutting our way through the thickest part of the jungle. And it was steep, much steeper than the trail up the center of the hollow. When we had gone two hours, two very precious hours, the trail seemed to open up a bit. We moved more easily, but it was late in the morning by the time we had finished a complete survey of that side of the mountain's base.
If there were indeed a cave at the base of Alto Arete, we failed to find a trace of it. The answer lay in the fact that it must be farther down the hill, in one of the seven hollows guarded by Don Carlos Italla's guerillas. It would take too long to go back and instigate our original plan, too long even to check out the valleys from the upper end and thus circumvent the guards.
We were defeated and we all knew it as we started back down the old trail that had brought us here. Even the spearchuckers walked with a sullen gait as we started back down the mountain. My mind raced with thoughts and ideas, none of them worth a damn. Somewhere in my memory, though, was a key to all this. Someone, somewhere had said something to me to indicate that someone other than Ancio, now known as Don Carlos, knew how to decipher those damned hieroglyphics. But who? And where had I met him? Or had I merely overheard it or read of it? As we trudged along, disconsolate, not only were our spirits at low ebb, our vigilance was non-existence.
We had no idea that danger lurked until one of the Ninca spearchuckers, heading our small procession and walking far out ahead of Purano, suddenly fell in his tracks. Purano might have been silent, but he made up for it in swiftness. Even before the man was flat on the ground, Purano was off in the bushes.
The rest of us scattered, plunging into the wall of jungle on either side of the scant trail. I had my luger in my hand and lay still in the bushes, studying the trail below. I could see the Indian lying on his back, a huge throwing knife protruding from his chest.
We waited, patient, expecting an all-out attack, not even knowing who our attackers might be. In the stillness, we heard someone move in the brush far down the trail. A man in peasant garb and carrying a rifle over his shoulder, stepped into the trail and walked boldly up to the dead spearchucker. He looked around, saw nothing threatening, then bent to pull his knife out of the Indian's chest.
A spear came flying from out of the jungle and caught the man in the throat. He fell back, clutching his wound and the spear with both hands. His eyes bulged and he kept coughing like a consumptive. Soon, though, he gave up the struggle and fell across the body of the dead Indian.
The jungle was quiet again. I waited perhaps five minutes, then went down to check the dead bodies. I turned the peasant over and saw that he was one of the guerillas we had seen in the camp at the mouth of the first hollow. Danger bells jangled all through my head. The others were coming out of their hiding places, but I waved them back and plunged once again into the jungle. Not a moment too soon. I had just turned to peer back at the trail when I saw six more guerillas, their automatic rifles at the ready, creep up the trail. They stopped when they saw the two dead men and I knew they were about to open fire on the surrounding jungle. I opened my mouth and let out a single word, loud, raucous and anxious:
"Attack."
Antonio and I opened fire at the same time. A split second behind us, Purano and his spearchuckers let go their lethal weapons. Purano himself leaped into the trail and started after the guerillas, knife in hand. Antonio and I stopped firing, to avoid hitting him.
The remaining guerillas, seeing the tall, strong apparition coming down on them with teeth bared and knife flashing, took off running. A new volley of spears sailed accurately past Purano and found marks on the backs of the fleeing guerillas.
Only one of them remained alive, none got away. It wasn't necessary to torture the poor devil to get information. He looked around at his massacred friends and talked as willingly and as profusely as that Cuban Marine sergeant had talked back there in the Cortez stable the night I had literally strung him up by his balls.
He said guerillas at the mouth of the first hollow had quickly missed their sentries. Rather than send for help from an adjacent hollow, they had split up in squads and had set out to find out what had happened to their sentries. This squad had been searching for two hours, finally locating this old trail but not expecting to find anyone. One of the guerillas had run on ahead. He was the one who had spotted the Indian and had killed him by throwing his knife at him. The others hadn't known what was happening up ahead and had walked into our trap.