aptain did not ask him
for aid, believed that it was necessary now, and he at once ordered the
Marshal D. Diego de Almagro to get ready with thirty light horsemen,
well equipped as to arms and horses, and he did not wish him to take a
single peon with him, because he ordered him [Almagro] not to delay for
anything until he should come up with the captain who was ahead with the
others. And when he [Almagro] had set out, the Governor likewise
started, on the following day, with ten horsemen and the twenty peons
who were guarding Chilichuchima, and he quickened his pace so much that
day that of two days' marches he made one. And just as he was about to
arrive at the village called Andabailla, where he was to sleep, an
Indian came to him on the run to say that on a certain slope of the
mountain, which he pointed out with his finger, there had been
discovered hostile troops of war, on which account, the Governor, armed
as he was and on horseback, went with the Spaniards he had with him to
take the summit of that slope, and he examined the whole of it without
finding the warriors of whom the Indian had spoken, because they were
troops native to the land who were fleeing from the Indians of Quito
because the latter did them very great harm. The Governor and company
having arrived at that village of Andabailla, they supped and spent the
night there. On the next day, they arrived at the village of Airamba
from where the captain had written that he was with the armed troops
waiting for them upon the road.[47]

CHAPTER IX

Having arrived at a village, they find much silver in plates
twenty-feet long. Proceeding on their journey, they receive letters
from the Spaniards relating the brisk and adverse struggle they had
had against the army of the Indians.

Here were found two dead horses,[48] from which it was suspected that
some misfortune had befallen the captain. But, having entered the
village, they learned, from a letter that arrived before they retired
for the night, that the captain had here encountered some warriors, and
that, in order to gain the mountain, he had gone up a slope where he had
found assembled a great quantity of stone, a sign which showed that they
[the Indians] wished to guard [the pass], and that they were gone in
search of [other] Indians because they had warning that [the Spaniards]
were not far off and that the two horses had died of so many changes
from heat to cold. He [the ca