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Show ' Family Weekly Octobers, ij$7 I Challenged the Death Gathering material for a novel, this famed writer found himself wandering in the snowy mists of a treacherous mountain, his life entrusted to a horse ' v. was writing my most recent novel when I ran into a problem. Fiction may be the opposite of reality but it I has to "seem" real. If you try to describe a time or place, somebody ' going to know it far better than you, and, if you make one little mistake, they'll hoot, and .. k T- - If there goes your book. .... I couldn't afford mistakes. I was dealing with history, .known and recorded by soldiers and in : ririe-raord- aTl mapped but ridden over by soldiers and cattlemen for the past 100 years. ,' I'd read, I'd studied, and then I'd asked tor get a man from what is now the Araucano Indio reservation n the Bio-Barea of southern Chile over the Andes mountains and into northern Patagonia on horseback and in a certain time period. In two dispatch I'd noticed the Paso Vurilo-ch- e mentioned. The pass was south 'of Lake Nahuel Haupi and made access between Chile and Argentina simple. The people I'd talked to waved me off; some saying it was an old Indio legend, others that an earthquake had destroyed 7 it But I'd decided to find out if the pass had, in factf existed, and if it could have been crossed at the time I was writing about The foothills beneath where the pass is to be is magnificent lake country, and I spent some time there making friends- - with the local Indios. One evening I met the son of a famous Indio cacique, or chief of clan, and he invited me home to discuss arrangements. I said that Ijwanted to cross the pass and stated a price per man and horse. Next noon, the son came to say that his father would ride the following morning and for me to come and camp with them, ready for an early start It was getting light when we started off myself, Hueco, the eaciqus guide, and two gauchos, each leading a pack horse. We were in thick forest, mostly pine, cypress, and brush and were going up more than 3,000 feet to the snowy peaks - in front of us. The air was mild and Hueco said he didnt ex- pect to see bad weather near where we were going. Nevertheless, we took along goatskin chaps and bedding:, and I wore two pairs of thick socks beneath my knee boots. . We didn't meet anyone that first day. or cross a track, and glancing at my compass now and again, I saw that Hueco was keeping-- a steady line, though how, in that wilderness, I'D never know. That night after more than 12 hours in the saddle, we stopped to eat by a spring of water. We were almost out of the forest, and it was much colder. Hueco said that we would be at the pass late next afternoon. ; ' Hueco, who by his count was nearly 80 years old but who looked more like 40, said that he'd gone across the pass with his father many times as a child. Then the white men came and opened the lakes to shipping. They built loads aid soon -; the pass was forgotten. ; Next morning: we got away late because the io - sup-pos- ed - j ; . I dug kirn with my heels, but the kortt wouldn't budge. We were at the tip of a great precipice.' ice-co- ld r - gauchos had to look for the horses. These Indio" horses have no match in endurance in all the world, and the Indio believes that the horse has the same right as a maato eat what he wants, where he wants, after he's done his work. What I didn't like was the waste of a couple of hours. We came out of the forest about two in the afternoon. The sun blinded its in a clear blue sky. We were now on rock, near the peaks, and a , lakes spread out below. shifting rock and pebbles. The hoofs of the Indio pony, called "nails," dug into the ground as it started to shift under us. He'd arch his back and make a sort of jump, leaving me holding on tenuously. We got to shelf rock a little late, and Hueco fell back to tell me we weren't yet on the pass. At that moment I couldn't for the life of me see string of greenish-blu- e We climbed steeply on 1- FemUu Weekiv, October t, M7 - UlUSTKATION IT TED COCONIS 1 |