The beds of the gentlemen-travelers were spread side by side in the adjoining room, and Garcia gravely assured them that they would sleep like the Three Wise Men of the East.  Unable to see any personal analogy between themselves and the ancient Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, the tired cavaliers turned in without remarking on the subject.  They paused a moment, however, before taking up their candle, to set forth to Garcia in full the circumstances and nature of Juan of Aragon’s engagement.  This explanation, which the close quarters of the troop had made impossible during the journey, was received in excellent part by the interpreter-in-chief.

[Illustration:  “The straw sheds and grassy plaza of Chile-Chile.”]

“Oh, I am not at all jealous of Aragon,” said he, “and the gentlemen have done very well in taking him along.  He will be of great use.  He is a bright, capable mozo, who would walk twenty miles on his hands to gain a piastre.  As an interpreter, I think he is almost as good as I am.”

Having thus smoothed away all grounds of rivalry, the colonel, the examinador and Marcoy took possession of their sleeping-room.  Here, long after their light was put out, they watched the scene going on in the apartment they had just left, whose interior, illuminated by a candle and a lingering fire, was perfectly visible through the partition of bamboo.  The dark-skinned girls, on their knees in a corner, were gathering together the shirts and stockings destined for the parental traveling-bag.  Garcia, for his part, was occupied in cleaning with a bit of rag a portentous, long-barreled carbine, apparently dating back to the time of Pizarro, which he had been exhibiting during the day as his hunting rifle, and which he intended to carry along with him.

The sleep under the thatched roof of Pepe Garcia, though somewhat less sound than that of the Three Magi in their tomb at Cologne, lasted until a ray of the morning sun had penetrated the open-work walls of the hut.  The colonel rapidly dressed himself, and aroused the others.  A disquieting silence reigned around the modest mansions of Chile-Chile.  The interpreter was away, Juan of Aragon was away, the muleteers had returned, according to instructions received over-night, to Marcapata with the animals, and the peons were found dead-drunk behind the mud wall of the last house in the village.

After three hours of impatient waiting there appeared—­not Garcia and Aragon, whose absence was inexplicable, but—­the faithful Bolivian bark-hunters in a body.  Not caring to stupefy themselves with the peons, they had gone out for a reconnoissance in the environs.  Contemplating the nodding forms of their comrades, they now let out the discouraging fact that these tame Indians, madly afraid of their wild brothers the Chunchos, had been fortifying themselves steadily with brandy and chicha all the way from Marcapata.