"Peneleo, the Indian chief, sat by our fire folded in his ample mantle
of guanaco skins. He was an athletic savage, with an enormous square
shock head of hair resembling a straw beehive in shape and size,
and with grave, surly, much-lined features. In his broken Spanish he
repeated, growling like a bad-tempered wild beast, that if an opening
ever so small were made in the stockade his men would march in and get
the senora--not otherwise.

"Gaspar Ruiz, sitting opposite him, kept his eyes fixed on the fort
night and day as it were, in awful silence and immobility. Meantime, by
runners from the lowlands that arrived nearly every day, we heard of the
defeat of one of his lieutenants in the Maipu valley. Scouts sent afar
brought news of a column of infantry advancing through distant passes to
the relief of the fort. They were slow, but we could trace their toilful
progress up the lower valleys. I wondered why Ruiz did not march to
attack and destroy this threatening force, in some wild gorge fit for an
ambuscade, in accordance with his genius for guerrilla warfare. But his
genius seemed to have abandoned him to his despair.

"It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight
of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to
pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge,
indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands
clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees,
gazing--gazing--gazing.

"And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as
himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the
desultory fire directed at the loopholes.

"One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude,
spoke to me unexpectedly 'I have sent for a gun,' he said. 'I shall have
time to get her back and retreat before your Robles manages to crawl up
here.'

"He had sent for a gun to the plains.

"It was long in coming, but at last it came. It was a seven-pounder
field-gun. Dismounted and lashed crosswise to two long poles, it had
been carried up the narrow paths between two mules with ease. His wild
cry of exultation at daybreak when he saw the gun escort emerge from the
valley rings in my ears now.

"But, senores, I have no words to depict his amazement, his fury, his
despair and distraction, when he heard that the animal loaded with the
gun-carriage had, during the last night march, somehow or oth