The Lost Gold of the Montezumas: A Story of the Alamo

A few handfuls of dust, a careful wiping out of foot- and hand-marks, and then the secret of the wall was as safe as it had ever been.

Bowie, however, lingered for a moment, looking at the shattered adobe.

"One thing more is true," he muttered. "All that stuff was found and coined in this country. There is more where it came from, wherever the mines and placers may be. It stands to reason that the old Mexicans didn't get it all out. That makes me believe Tetzcatl! Cortez didn't, couldn't, have gotten hold of all the gold the Aztecs had above-ground when he came here. The Spaniards knew there was more. I'll go after it."

Back went the two discoverers to the cook-room and to their rations, and none who saw them come could have found upon their faces a trace of the excitement they had shown over their bags of doubloons and dollars.

Two hours later all the animals belonging to the party were feeding peacefully in the grassy open, and behind a knoll, not far from some of them, lay Colonel Bowie. His long, heavy "Mississippi rifle" was thrown forward across the knoll. Just behind him, among some withered weeds, lay the Lipan boy, as if he did not now feel willing to be far away from his white chief. He was watching him closely, and the thought in his mind almost escaped at his lips, so clear was the meaning that he read in the motions of the marksman.

"Big Knife sight deer," he thought. "Long shoot. Whoop! Comanche!"

His whoop was uttered aloud as the fire flashed from the rifle-muzzle, and the report was answered by a chorus of yells from among the dense masses of the chaparral.

"Tally one," said Bowie, coolly. "This business is going to cost Great Bear something. I'll get a bead on him next. Six yesterday and five to-day. I'll lie still and load up, though. It's close quarters."

Not one of the other Texans had uttered a word, but each was already near enough to good cover to drop behind it, ready for long-range rifle practice.

One feature of the situation was only too evident, nevertheless, and there was immediate peril of a crushing disaster.

The hot blood ran like fire through the veins of Red Wolf. Here was a grand chance to earn distinction. It would be worthy of the oldest brave in his tribe. The horses! The only hope for escape!

So like a deer he bounded from his cover and went forward. He did not go to the nearest horses, but beyond them, to those which were apparently in the greatest danger of speedy capture by the Comanches.

One of these had belonged to the brave who was killed in the open that morning, and another had been won in the chaparral from his companions. They were especially valued as prizes of war. Up came the two lariat-pins. Sharp jerks of the lariats called the ponies from their feeding and they followed the pulling. Louder every moment sounded the whoops from among the bushes, and arrow after arrow whizzed through the air.

"Whoop!" yelled the young adventurer. "Red Wolf heap boy! Comanches little dogs! Rabbits! Coyotes! Crows!"

It was genuine Indian glory to be able to send back such screeches of insult and derision in reply to all those arrows. Some of them narrowly missed him, although he managed to make a good shield out of the two ponies. That was the way he lost one of them, for the poor animal was shortly plunging hither and thither with an arrow through his neck.

Down he went, but Red Wolf immediately pulled up another peg, saving the noble racer of Colonel Bowie, and he therefore got in with a pair. He was met by Tetzcatl, the only man upon his feet, but he took the lariats into his own hands, remarking in a very business-like way, —

"Bueno! Go! Bring all! Quick!"

The remaining animals were hardly near enough to the bushes for arrows to reach them, and the red men under cover seemed to hesitate about exposing themselves.

"Humph!" growled Bowie. "They're only waiting for something or they'd dash out at him. But isn't he a buster! He'll equal his father some day. This is too bad, anyhow. All those dollars must stay where they are for a while."

Every horse was brought in without any further incident, but, for all that, the situation of the mere handful of Texans was becoming extremely unpleasant. It would, however, have been a great deal more so if they had been compelled to rely upon their own scanty knowledge of the neighborhood they were in. It was too new a country.

Colonel Bowie had not moved until the animals were safe, but he now put his fingers to his lips and blew a long, vibrating whistle. Instantly his men arose behind their covers of adobe or of rough ground and began to make their way to the central ruin. It was rapidly done, and Red Wolf was the last to come in, leading his own sorrel.

"We're corralled!" said one of the men.

"Not quite so bad as that," replied another; "and it'll be bad for them if they rush in."

"I reckon they're waiting for more to come," said the colonel, coolly. "It takes a good many to work a surround."

"Bueno!" said Tetzcatl just then. "Time to go. Beat the redskins now."

"Go ahead," responded Bowie; "we're ready."

The men mounted at the word. They had been hurriedly putting on saddles, and bridles, and now they sat like statues on horseback while he exchanged a few swift sentences with their white-headed guide.

"Forward! Take it easy!" was the next command.

Then it looked at first as if he were about to lead a charge directly into the bushes from which had come the arrows and the whooping. So complete was the appearance that several Comanches on the opposite side of the pond came out into the open. They would have been in just the right position to attack the Texans in the rear, after riding around the pond. Moreover, it seemed plain that the "surround" had been very nearly accomplished.

"That's it," said Bowie. "We've drawn 'em out. We know where they are. Now! Gallop! Boys, it's a run, but I reckon we've euchered 'em."

He and Tetzcatl had suddenly wheeled toward the left, and not a Comanche made his appearance on the easterly side of the open as he and his men dashed into one of the widest avenues.

Fierce were the whoops and yells of the outgeneralled red men as, with one accord, they came out of their several covers to follow. Over a score were already in sight, and the yelling indicated that twice as many more were near at hand. The Texans were to run a race for their lives, but every animal that was entered for the race was in good condition, and not one of them was a second-rate runner.

"Pull in!" shouted Bowie, at the end of a quarter of an hour. "Tetzcatl says we're about safe."

"We've rid through tangles enough," replied a ranger. "How fur are we now from the south side of the chaparral?"

"Not so far as we were," replied his commander, "but we don't get out into prairie right away. You'll see what it is when you get there."

"I want to git thar, then, awful," came from another of the men. "We haven't had a scratch yet, but it's been right smart of a close shave."

So it had, and the Comanches were following upon the plain trail that was made by so many horses. Their real difficulty as pursuers was not the trail itself, by any means. Great Bear was with them now, and he had a high respect for the men he was dealing with. A number of minutes had been lost to him at the outset by the make-believe charge. After that, as his gathering band rode on, the prudent chief compelled his eager braves to draw rein several times at places where the thick "tangles" suggested the possibility of an ambush and a deadly volley of rifle-bullets. It was really a pokerish business to follow dead shots, men of desperate courage, too, among those dense coverts. He was a wise chief, no doubt, but every time his foremost warriors paused to reconnoitre the white men gained additional time.

Red Wolf all the while kept somewhat diffidently in the rear. He was, after all, only a boy among great warriors. Before long, however, he found himself riding at an easy gait side by side with Colonel Bowie, and the Big Knife was holding out something.

"Young brave!" said he. "Want good knife? Present."

It was one which had been found in the belt of the first Comanche warrior killed in the open, and there had been no claimant for it. It was a very good knife, longer than most others, although not shaped altogether like a bowie. Its sheath was silver-mounted and its edge was keen. It was worth a dozen of common butcher-knives such as the one Red Wolf now carried, and his eyes glistened with pleasure. It would be a war-trophy to show to his father, and all his tribe would envy him so fine a weapon. Its greatest value, however, even to them, would be the fact that it was a battle-token given by the great single-hand knife-fighter of the white men.

"Ugh!" exclaimed Red Wolf. "Heap knife. Great chief give! Whoop!"

He secured it in his belt, and then his old butcher-knife was contemptuously transferred to a place among the fringes of his leggings.

The Texans were not using up their horses, but no halt was made. They went steadily forward for several miles of winding way, and then the chaparral began to change its character. Instead of mere bushes there was heavy timber with much undergrowth, and the land grew rugged and rocky instead of sandy.

Tetzcatl was continually several yards in the advance. He now turned and beckoned, spurred his mule, and seemed almost to vanish.

"Forward, men!" shouted Bowie. "I know what he means! I've been bothered by that very ravine more than once. It runs almost to the Nueces River. Hurrah! Great Bear won't run his braves into such a death-trap as that is. Come on!"

A number of fine old oak-trees stood like sentries grouped around the mouth of a kind of chasm, with rocks on either side. There was a descent at once, and the ravine grew deeper as the rangers rode farther into it. Tetzcatl was ahead of them, but the mule plodded on without waiting for anybody, while his rider turned and put a finger on his lips.

Not a shout was uttered, therefore, to tell how glad they all were to get into that ravine, and Bowie almost instantly exclaimed, in a low voice, to the long-legged Texan who was riding near him, —

"Jim Cheyne! Look! That's what he means. That head, up there at the cliff-edge, among the rosin weeds. Can you fetch him? Long range, but I'll try. One of us may hit."

"Ready! Together!" answered Jim, and in a few seconds more the two rifles cracked almost like one.

Tetzcatl had watched the marksmen, and now he nodded approvingly and rode on, but no one climbed to the upper level to inquire whether one bullet or two had cut short the scouting of the imprudent brave, whose eagle feather had betrayed his weedy lurking-place.

It was, nevertheless, another proof that Great Bear was a great chief and that he knew that country, for he had sent his scouts in the right direction before trying to close in upon the Texans at the pond. He had even guessed correctly at one of their possible lines of escape. He could not have calculated beforehand that a feather and a head with a bullet in it should give so complete a confirmation.

"He won't go back to tell," said Bowie, "but we shall be followed all the way."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAMP AT THE SPRING

"Crockett, there isn't any use talking. We've an awful tough job cut out."

The old bear-hunter had stuck his coonskin cap upon the muzzle of his rifle, and he stared up at it for a moment.

"Reckon we have," he said; "but we kin skirmish around the corners of it somehow. I've been in tight places before now, but I allers crawled out or fought out."

"We'll have to fight out this time," said the large, determined-looking man he was talking with. "But what on earth are we to do for money?"

"We're played out," replied Crockett, thoughtfully. "We've borrowed all we could. We've taxed till we can't put on any more. Uncle Sam won't let us have any. Houston, we're in a hole."

"The worst of it is right here," continued Houston. "If the legislature lays a tax, all the cash is appropriated before it's collected. What I want is some money to spend without giving any account of it. We want a powder-and-lead fund. I've spent all I had."

"You kin skin my pile," said Crockett. "Wish thar was more of it. We're torn down poor. We might almost be whipped by Santa Anna for want of money to keep the men in the field. Think of losing the Alamo!"

"I couldn't help it just now if we did," groaned Houston. "It's safe yet."

"'Tis till somebody comes to take it," was the ominous response of Crockett, as he lowered his rifle and put on his coonskin. "Just as I told ye. Travis is off on his scout with half the garrison. Bowie went on that expedition of his, and I hope he may get back. Thar isn't enough powder in the fort to fire all the guns more'n twice 'round. No provisions to speak of. No nothin'. If Greasers enough came, they could a' most walk right in."

"They're not ready to come yet," said Houston; "but they're coming, Davy! There 'll be blood when they get in as far as the Alamo!"

"You bet thar will!" shouted Crockett, springing to his feet. "I mean to be thar when they come. We kin hold it ag'in' all Mexico if we've men and powder."

The two Texan patriots were not in any house. They had been sitting side by side upon a log not far from a rail-fence corner where their horses were hitched. From what they said it appeared that they had met there by appointment. It was as good a parlor as such men needed to discuss affairs of state in. Houston had now risen, and they were walking toward their horses.

"Crockett," he said, "it's time for me to git up and git. You go on to Washington. See what you can do. Inquire about rifles and cannon and ammunition."

"Well," replied Crockett, "money's the best kind of am'nition, but we needn't forget one thing. Santa Anna feels a kind of bowel grip right thar. He can't fetch as many rancheros as he'd like to cross the Rio Grande with. He'd ruther 'tend a cock-fight any day than meet us in a shootin' match, onless he was ten to one."

"I wouldn't mind four to one," said Houston, "but I would mind being cut up for lack of powder to shoot with."

"You bet!" said Crockett, bitterly. "Think of bein' jest murdered by Greasers!"

They had reached their horses, and in a moment more they were steadily galloping northward.

A very undefined domain was the vast region to which the Spanish conquerors had given the name of Texas. They had never thoroughly explored it, nor had they determined its boundaries. Its northerly line was that of the then French province of Louisiana, and that was as uncertain as the weather. It might be said to begin at the Sabine Pass on the sea-shore. From that it was supposed to wander inland. The United States surveyors had made their own maps after Jefferson purchased Louisiana from Napoleon, but they had no direct French or Spanish help.

Westward, Texas was believed to have a limit somewhere among the as yet unvisited mountains and plains. No line had been fixed on that side. Southward, the old Spanish maps, and afterwards the Mexican copies of them, were at variance as to whether the Nueces River or the Rio Grande marked the Texas border. This was of less consequence so long as Texas should belong to Mexico, but, a few years later, those conflicting maps played an important part in bringing about the war with the United States. All of that record belongs to history, and so does the older claim that Texas never, at any time, belonged to Spain, but was, in part at least, French territory, and was sold to the United States, accordingly, along with Louisiana.

It is history now, but that history had not been made up when, late that day, Colonel Bowie and his men rode out of the long ravine and found themselves upon an open prairie. It was dotted here and there with groves of oak. Much more interesting at first to the mounted marksmen was the fact that it was also dotted by several small droves of wild cattle.

"Buffalo!" exclaimed Bowie. "I didn't think of meeting any here. We must have one. Then we'll go into camp as soon as we can find water."

"Ugh!" came instantly from the Lipan boy. "Red Wolf find heap water."

"Bully!" said the colonel. "This used to be a Lipan hunting-ground. Go ahead. Find us a good spring."

Red Wolf had his orders and off he went, while Jim Cheyne looked after him and remarked emphatically, —

"That young chap's going to be a buster. But now, boys, don't let's load up too much with meat. One good critter's all we want."

"All right," replied one of his comrades; "but, Jim, if we keep our hair on overnight thar won't be any time wasted on huntin' to-morrow."

"We shall strike straight for the Nueces, and then for the Rio Grande," said Bowie. "Great Bear hasn't let up on us, and we must look out for him all the time. He's just death on a trail."

"You kin swar to that," added Cheyne. "He's as ready to ride into Mexico, too, as we are. How's that, Tetzcatl?"

"Bueno!" snapped the dark-faced panther. "Comanches find Bravo's lancers beyond the river. Kill them all."

He gave no reason for the resentful feeling he had shown against Great Bear, but loud chuckles among the men expressed their approval of his idea that if the Comanches should meet the lancers the story of the Kilkenny cats would be repeated.

A general hunt was forbidden on account of the horses, and only two men went out as buffalo butchers.

On leaving his party, Red Wolf rode in a kind of long circuit instead of aiming at the nearest grove. He galloped a full mile before he gave any reason why he had not gone in a straight line. He may have been a little uncertain about his landmarks, but he made no considerable error in his calculations.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed, as he pulled in upon the crest of a prairie roll and looked forward earnestly. "Heap hole. Big stone. Big Knife get water."

He was near the brink of a deep and remarkable hollow. It was almost regularly funnel-shaped, and on the opposite side of it sat a large boulder of granite. Such "sink-holes" can be found only in limestone formations. They are supposed to lead to caverns and subterranean watercourses. The presence of a mass of granite was, therefore, one of the many puzzles for geologists. Perhaps it had floated there upon a cake of ice. Then the ice had melted; the water had run off down the sink-hole; and the boulder was left to supply the red hunters of the plains with a perpetual guide-board.

"Big stone here," he said. "Water there."

The direction in which he rode away gave his words an explanation. He went as straight as an arrow for more than another mile, hardly glancing aside, either at groves of trees or herds of fat bisons.

Meantime, the white men he was providing refreshment for rode slowly onward. They heard a brace of rifle reports, and took the success of their hunters for granted. They remarked to each other, however, that good luck was with them, for "bufler" were getting scarcer year after year so far as that to the eastward.

"One of these days," said Bowie, "they'll all be gone. This 'll be corn land then, and every farmer 'll raise his own beef."

"He'll kill it for himself, too," laughed Cheyne. "I don't want to be here then. I'd ruther have my beef runnin' round the prairie for free shootin'."

Bowie's eyes were all the while busy in a search for "sign." He had found none near his present line of march, but if he could have looked back upon his entire trail he would have seen several things to interest him.

The first point was in the timber at the upper end of the long ravine. A dozen braves of the Comanches were grouped, on foot, around the opening through which Tetzcatl had so suddenly disappeared. They were watching, bow in hand, as if it had been the den of some wild animal, or rather as if, possibly, some returning Texan might at any moment show himself as a target.

Not far down the ravine, but on the upper level on one side of it, three more braves sat in silence by the body of their tribesman who had been slain by the bullet of Cheyne or Bowie. Every now and then they peered over into the gorge below and listened as if for the sounds of horse-hoofs upon the gravelly bottom. Watchers had been set, therefore, to intercept any returning ranger. That was only by way of precaution, in case of an escape from the other part of the relentless pursuit.

Miles and miles away, along the route of the winding cleft and on its westerly side, rode twice as many Comanches as had been with Great Bear when first he had been seen by Red Wolf, on the plain beyond the chaparral, two days before. His reinforcements had arrived and he was ready for extensive mischief.

At point after point, wherever the ravine was approachable and descent into it fairly easy, a warrior on foot, sometimes even on horseback, would go down and search any soft earth at the side of the little rill at the bottom. Then he would swiftly return, report that he had found the trail; that Bowie's men were farther down, all of them; and the band would ride steadily on.

Of course, this did not mean rapid riding, but it did mean a deadly and persistent pursuit. It meant a bloody revenge for slain warriors.

One brave was now sent back after the squad of watchers, but Great Bear's force was a very strong one without them. Yet other braves were riding fast and far in the advance.

Sooner or later it was sure that such a following, by trailers so skilful and so determined, would bring them near enough for a sweeping blow. What could half a dozen rangers and one Lipan boy do against the overwhelming rush of a hundred and fifty warriors?

Red Wolf did not actually come back to his white friends. He only rode near enough to whoop to them and to wave his lance, as if inviting them to follow.

"That's high!" exclaimed Jim Cheyne. "We might ha' hunted for water all night if it hadn't been for him."

"It takes an Indian sometimes," replied the colonel. "But this crowd won't make a long camp on this prairie."

"You bet!" came from several voices at once, and away they rode after the young Lipan.

It was a very pretty place for a camp, when they came to look at it. Nearly an acre of ground was occupied by tall, old sycamores and spreading oaks, and outside of these were bushes. In the middle of all was a fine spring, from which a tiny brooklet rippled out into the plain. Close around the spring the ground had been trodden hard by the hoofs of many generations of buffalo and deer, but there was plenty of grass without picketing their horses outside of the grove.

"Boys," said Bowie, "if Great Bear should find us, he'll have braves enough to corral us in such a place as this. They could just ride around and around, out of shot, and pen us in till we starved."

"That's so," put in a short, bandy-legged ranger whom the others had called "Joe," without troubling themselves to add any other name; "but I reckon we won't wait to be penned in. What I'm a-thinkin' of jest now is bufler hump."

He had the entire sympathy of his hungry comrades, and they did not have to wait long. The fire was hardly up in good shape before the two hunters rode in, bringing the best pieces of a fine "bufler."

"Now we're all right for rations," said Jim Cheyne; "but I'd like to know what's went with that young Lipan wolf."

Every man glanced quickly around him, but the son of Castro was nowhere to be seen. He had been as ready for his supper as any white man, but stronger than anything else was his feeling that he was on his first war-path. He was a brave of the Lipans, with a new name and a new knife. He had already won some glory and he was burning for more. As for even buffalo "hump," a Lipan warrior who could not go without his dinner had never yet been heard of.

He had mounted silently, therefore, and had galloped away, straight back, along the line by which he had first come to the grove and spring. He and his pony had been watered, and the latter had nibbled a little grass, but that was all.

"Comanche come to hole," he said to himself, as he rode along. "Red Wolf see."

The plan in his head seemed to include nothing more than scouting duty, but this was of a peculiar and dangerous kind.

The shadows were deepening in the groves and on the prairie when Red Wolf reached the sink-hole, but he was able to examine it carefully. The sides of the funnel-shaped hollow were not too steep in some places, and he led his mustang half-way down. He picketed him there, upon a slope where he could stand, a little uncomfortably, and pick grass, which was greener than any on the outside prairie. As soon as this was cared for, Red Wolf went up again and stationed himself by the boulder. There was quite enough granite for one watcher to hide behind.