City and Santiago, and asked to be dropped off at Madrigal. Here I shifted my light pack to a comfortable position athwart my shoulders and headed into the west, toward the spot where natives have made a ford across the Jaina River. There were many natives with me on the trail, and of some of these I asked where the trail branched off to the Desert of the Dead. Again the natives crossed themselves—and made marks in the prints my shoes had left.
"Go not into the desert of Los Muertos!" cried one man when I put the question. "As alcade of Madrigal it is my duty to warn you that those who enter that aged trail never return again to the sight of mortal men! I warn you as a friend—and because it is my duty."
I thanked him and, for some reason which even I could not fathom, I studied his face so that I should remember him if ever we met again. There was no reason why I should have done this. Natives do not interest me in the slightest. But I did it. I looked back a few moments later, intending to wave him a friendly adios. He was stooping to the tracks I had made, and was making crosses in the heel prints with his grimy fingers! I did not wave. But I watched the natives who were going in the same direction as I.
Four hours out of Madrigal, near El Jamey, I saw an opening in the jungle which had at one time been the beginning of a trail. It was choked with brambles and tropical vines. It led straight toward the mountains which raised their serrated edges against the western horizon. I wondered if this were the trail. I watched the natives. One and all, old and young, they passed the smothered opening with averted heads, and with their right hands they made the sign of the cross athwart their bodies. Then I knew that this, indeed, was the beginning of the trail.
I drew a machete I had purchased and cut my way into the opening. I made considerable noise at first, and some of the natives cast frightened eyes at me. Then they fled along the main trail in either direction. I smiled to myself with the cynic's amusement.
But after an hour or two of fighting the jungle growth, the way became easier and I sheathed my machete. There was no mark to indicate that anyone had passed this way in years. Yet the trail was there, and at the other end of it, what? The sun was touching the serrated crest of the Cordilleras to the westward when I asked myself that question. I was tired and almost famished. I stopped where a trickle of water crept forth from beneath a jumble of boulders and made my camp for the first night.
The sun was almost in the same place next evening when I came to the end of the trail, right against where a passageway through a stone wall had been filled in by a great explosion, which had blown in the opposing sides of the wall. There was a trickle of water here and I cooked my supper before exploring farther. Then I lifted my bedding roll to my shoulders once more and started to climb up the face of the cliff, intending to skirt the old cave-in. Twenty minutes later I stood on the summit and gazed, stricken with wonder, directly down upon the Desert of the Dead. It wasn't particularly gruesome and I laughed anew as I recalled the actions of natives whom I had questioned about the place.
It was a giant amphitheater surrounded by sheer walls of stone, upon the sides of which not even a Dominiean goat might have found footing. The floor was desert, desolate, bare of even a blade of grass.
I looked back at the spot where I had eaten my supper. It would be a good place in which to spend the
