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

"Find Comanche," suggested Red Wolf.

Bowie was silent, but when the old man drew near enough he asked, —

"Did you sight the Lipans?"

"All gone!" gasped Tetzcatl.

"Castro?"

"Gone!" came faintly back. "Great Bear's whole band. My mule! We must push on! They are crossing the Rio!"

Bowie sprang to the ground and strode forward.

"Man alive!" he said. "Where are you hurt? Tell us the rest of it while I fix you up. Jim, get that plaster and scissors out of my saddle-bags. We mustn't lose him just now."

Off came the serape from the old man's shoulders and an awful gash was discovered. His left arm told of an arrow, and there was a deep cut on his head. He was tough indeed to have carried all those hurts with him across the Rio Grande.

"I'm surgeon enough," remarked the colonel. "I don't believe he can live, boys, but we must do the best we can. Put him on his mule."

The wounds had been dressed with much care and skill, but the wounded man had hardly seemed to think of them. Briefly and clearly he told of his scouting beyond the river; of a meeting with Castro and then with the party of Lipans. There had been an attempt to rejoin the Texans, but in making it the entire force of Great Bear, called out by the return of the horse-thieves from the hacienda, had suddenly swarmed around them. Tetzcatl had escaped mainly because he was on foot, but a lance-thrust in the dark and the arrows that fell like snow had done their work upon him. Here he was now, to say as persistently as ever, —

"Gold! The treasure of Montezuma."

"What do we care for gold just now?" grumbled Jim Cheyne. "I'm thinkin' of the ha'r on my head."

Tetzcatl raised his uninjured arm, as he sat upon his mule, and pointed toward the hacienda.

"Bravo's lancers," he said, "sweeping the whole country."

"Fact!" said Jim, but Tetzcatl now pointed northward.

"Great Bear and his Comanches all the way to the Alamo."

"That's about so," came from one of the rangers. "We can't git through 'em."

Once more Tetzcatl turned, and now he pointed westward.

"Apaches!" he said. "Bowie must come with me. A few days' ride. Then he will come back with his ponies loaded."

He spoke with some difficulty, and at the end of his very pointed remarks he spurred his mule, as if he were going his own way whether or not the Texans were to follow.

"Boys," said Bowie, "what do you say?"

"Thar isn't a word to say," growled Joe. "We've jest got to git. Come on, fellers. This crowd's travelling gold or no gold."

"The coast 'll be clear by the time we want to come back," said the colonel. "We shall hardly meet an enemy going or coming."

So they turned and rode on after the old Tlascalan. Behind them quietly followed the Lipan boy. His young face was clouded with sorrow, but the only words that escaped him were, —

"Castro! Great chief of the Lipans! Gone! Red Wolf will strike the Comanches!"

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST OF TETZCATL

A week had gone by and a little cavalcade rode slowly on along a fairly well marked forest road. In front was a man on a fine-looking horse, but at his side a mule was carrying a rider who almost lay down, with his arms around the animal's neck.

"Can you stand it to get there?" asked the man on the horse.

"Bowie, you are in the valley now," was the faint-voiced response. "Ride on, Tetzcatl cannot die but in the house of Huitzilopochtli."

"Pretty nigh gone, old chap?" was the not unkindly inquiry from the next horseman behind them. "We'll git you thar. You may pull through. You're as tough as a hickory knot."

They could have seen how beautiful was the valley they were riding through if they had not been in it. As soon, however, as the path they were in began to climb a steep ascent and they could look back through the trees, they broke out into strong expressions of admiration.

"It was a'most worth while comin'," said Jim Cheyne, "if 'twas only to see this 'ere. If Americans got hold of sech a country as this is they'd make something out of it."

"They never will," remarked Bowie. "Best timber. Best farm land in the world. Fine climate – "

"Gold! gold! Silver!" gasped the sufferer on the mule. "Americans – all men will come some day. I die, but the lands of the Montezumas will not be held by the Spaniards."

It was as if he could bear the idea of leaving his mountains and valleys and their riches to any other race than the one which had broken the empire of its ancient kings and destroyed the temples of the Aztec gods.

The Texans could also see more clearly now the grand height of the mountain chain into which they were climbing. They were evidently in a pass, partly natural and partly artificial. In places which would otherwise have been difficult the narrow roadway had been solidly constructed of massive stonework, for the greater part unhewn. There had been excavations also, but before long Joe was justified in remarking, —

"I say, colonel, this might do for mules, but it won't for mustangs. I'd rather go afoot."

He sprang to the ground as he spoke, and his comrades followed his example. Well they might, for at their right arose an almost perpendicular cliff, while at their left the side of the mountain went down, for hundreds of feet, without a tree or a bush to prevent man or horse from rolling the entire descent.

"How far have we now to go?" asked Bowie of his guide. "Red Wolf, hold on."

"Red Wolf find road," came back in Lipan-Spanish. "Big Knife bring old man. Tetzcatl heap dead."

"Pitch ahead, then!" exclaimed the colonel. "Boys, wait here with the critters. I'll go on and find the place. The boy can come back after you."

"All right, colonel," replied Jim. "He won't last long now."

"On! on!" exclaimed Tetzcatl, his fierce, black eyes burning with the fire of the fever which had set in upon him, caused by his hurts. "We are at the door! I will die in the house!"

He was very weak and in pain, but at the end of a hundred yards more of that steep and dangerous pass he halted his mule, slipped off to the ground, and actually stood erect.

"Stay here," he said. "No Spaniard ever entered the last house of Huitzilopochtli. I go on!"

He turned, bracing himself with all his remaining strength, and went forward as if he believed that his injunctions had been obeyed.

"Fever crazy," said the colonel, in a low voice. "Keep just behind him. If we can follow without his knowing."

That was by no means difficult, for he did not turn his head, and there were many bushes, but it was best to let him keep a number of paces in the advance.

It was a winding pathway as well as steep. There were sudden turns around rocky projections, and now the gorge at the left was deeper and more terrible to look down into.

"What?" exclaimed Bowie, as he and his boy companion turned one of these corners. "Where is he? Did he tumble off the path? There isn't a trace of him!"

Vacant indeed was the narrow way before them, but Red Wolf sprang forward. The mountain-side above was not perpendicular at this point and there were bushes.

"Too much heap bush," said Red Wolf. "Track rabbit into hole. Ugh!"

He parted the luxuriant growth as he spoke and uncovered something plainer than a rabbit-track.

"Go ahead!" said the colonel. "Don't make a sound. He was trying to get away. He never meant to show it to us at all. Thunder! A man might hunt for this a hundred years and never find it."

"Ugh!" came warningly from Red Wolf, for right before him was the cleft in the rock.

No guard was there to hinder them, but they pushed forward with all caution. Tetzcatl could not be many paces farther on. He must, as yet, be entirely unaware that he had been so closely followed.

"It's a hole into a den," muttered Bowie. "We've got to all but go on all-fours."

It was an exciting moment with so much mystery and uncertainty just ahead of him, but he did not betray any excitement. Hardly as much could be said for the Red Wolf, for he was on an entirely new kind of hunt and it did excite him.

There is a singular muscular power that often comes with the delirium of fever. It sometimes even exceeds, for a moment, the utmost strength of health.

Not at all feeble, but firm and elastic, was the step with which Tetzcatl walked out from the entrance burrow into the great hall of the cavern. He went forward without a pause at first, and without speaking, although something more than ordinary was going on.

The sculptured head of the war-god stood out in full relief from the dark face of the rock, for a great glare fell upon it from the altar. The fire was blazing high, revealing here and there the ghastly, ghostly figures of the priestly worshippers. They seemed to be more in number than on the day of his departure, but there were also other human beings present. Several of these latter stood immediately in front of the altar with rope fetters on their wrists.

A species of monotonous chant was sounding, by discordant voices, in the tongue of the ancient race. Every now and then, as the weird, hoarse cadences rose and fell, a club was lifted, a heavy blow was struck, followed by a flash of steel and the fall of one of the fettered persons. Each shriek of fear or agony seemed to act as a signal for louder chanting, that had in it a sound of angry mockery.

"God in heaven!" exclaimed Bowie, in a hushed whisper, at the upper end of the cave. "I've heard of it! I've read of it! That's an idol. They are offering human sacrifices. It's awful, and I can't do one thing for 'em. There went the last of 'em, as far as I can see. Red Wolf, keep close by me. I'm going to see this thing clean through. There goes Tetzcatl."

"Ugh!" was all the reply of Red Wolf, but he was apparently quite ready to charge forward, lance in hand, if such were his orders from his white chief.

Bowie had drawn his knife and had taken a heavy belt-pistol in his left hand, cocking it. He had not halted for an instant, and he was now half-way down the cavern. Here, however, he almost lay down, with Red Wolf at his side, in so deep a shadow that there was little danger of their presence being speedily discovered. At that moment, moreover, the cave-dwellers were giving all their attention to Tetzcatl, as he stood haranguing them at the highest pitch of his sepulchral voice. If he were giving them an account of his journey into Texas, only those who understood his dialect could tell, and before long he turned and walked away toward the lower end of the cave, still talking and gesticulating fiercely. All the others moved when he did, and they were dragging with them the lifeless forms of the victims that had been slain in front of the altar.

"This is a terrible piece of work," muttered Bowie to himself. "I'd like to kill every one of those fellows. I knew they were still doing this kind of thing in Africa, wholesale and retail, thousands on thousands, all the while, but I'd reckoned it was long ago played out on this continent. There are loads of things that we don't know. Anyhow, this must be about the last of it."

Not even Africa itself exceeded some parts of America in the bloody nature of their old-time idol-worship. There could be, moreover, no sound reason for supposing that altogether unreclaimed heathen, here or there, would change their ways or cease from observing their rites merely because other men had become civilized.

Tetzcatl and his companions reached the level at the brink of the chasm, and the booming sound came loudly up.

"What can it be?" thought Bowie. "I'll see what they're going to do, cost what it may. There isn't a shooting-iron among 'em. Some of 'em are stark naked. If it's got to be a fight, I believe I could wipe out the whole crowd, but I don't mean to run any risks. What I want is to learn all I can this trip and get out alive."

Red Wolf went forward at his side, lance in hand, with the crouching, springing step of a young panther rather than the gliding of a wolf.

"Big Knife strike!" he said. "Heap kill. Ugh! Red Wolf! Son of Castro!"

The chanting began again, and Tetzcatl seemed to be leading it, gesticulating furiously, while body after body was lifted from the floor and hurled into the chasm to go down to the gods. As the last offering disappeared, he turned and pointed at the planks. In an instant these were raised and slipped across the chasm.

"Bridge," muttered Bowie. "I've been in caves before, but this is a pretty big one. There's more of it, I suppose, away in yonder. Best kind of hiding-place. Now, what are they going to do?"

Up to this moment Tetzcatl had exhibited the strength of the hot fever which was consuming him. Now, however, he tottered and reeled as he walked out to the middle of the bridge. Standing here, staggering back and forth, he shouted a few words in his own tongue and then plunged down, head foremost.

"That's the last of him!" exclaimed Bowie.

"Ugh!" whispered Red Wolf. "Heap look!"

The chanting began again, as if a sacrifice had been offered. One after another the withered guardians of the cave of Huitzilopochtli walked slowly across the bridge, and their torches speedily disappeared in a vast and vaulted gloom upon the other side.

"Now!" exclaimed Bowie.

He sprang to the altar and snatched from it a branch of blazing pine. Red Wolf did the same, and they were without other company when they stood together at the brink of the chasm.

"We won't go across," said Bowie; "but what's this? God in heaven! It's the treasure!"

There they lay, the stacks of ingots and the heaps of nuggets. He could not even roughly estimate their value, but he exclaimed, —

"Enough to pay the entire debt of Texas; equip an army; build a navy; buy out Mexico from all the land, west, to the Pacific."

It was the golden dream of a new empire, and he stood as still as a statue for a half-minute, dreaming it, while Red Wolf lifted his torch and peered into the yawning gulf and across the bridge.

"Just as old Tetzcatl said," remarked Bowie, when his thoughtful fit ended. "But we can't take it now. There may be a hundred men in yonder. What's more, if we tried it on we might be caught in the pass by a swarm of 'em. It won't do. There are not enough of us this time. We'll have to come again. I'll take along some samples, but gold is heavy."

He began at once to cut off long strips from the serape which Tetzcatl had thrown upon the floor. They answered for straps with which to tie up for himself and Red Wolf as many gold bars as they could conveniently carry. They worked rapidly, for time might be precious. Not merely for the present matter of their own life or death, but that no returning idol-worshipper might know that the secret of the cavern had been discovered.

"Out now," said Bowie. "This is all we can do this time, but I don't want to see any more high old Mexican religion."

"Ugh!" said Red Wolf. "Tetzcatl gone. Heap fool jump!"

"Well," replied Bowie, coolly, "the old rascal was about dead anyhow."

After that he was silent and so was his companion, while they hurried out of the cave. They hardly uttered a word until they stood among their comrades in the pass.

"Hurrah!" shouted Jim Cheyne. "We've been up and we've been down huntin' ye. What kept ye so long, colonel?"

The fagots of golden bars were held up before the astonished eyes of the rangers, and they crowded around to see and to feel the wonderful yellow metal.

"Colonel," gasped Joe, "I don't believe a word of it, but just tell us what it is."

"The Montezuma treasure!" shouted Bowie. "Heaps on heaps of it in the cave."

"We'll go right in," responded voice after voice, in feverish eagerness.

"Not to-day, we won't," he said, and then, while they listened in awe-struck silence, he told them all there was to tell and what he intended doing.

"Your head's level," said Jim, at the conclusion of it. "We mustn't go in. We'd be followed by an army of 'em all the way to the Rio. Not one of us 'd git thar."

"Just so," said the colonel. "Now I'll swear you all in to keep the secret, and then we must be moving. We can come back with three hundred men, and even then nobody must know we're coming till the job's done clean."

Every man was ready to be sworn to secrecy, but the Texan patriot made them swear to one thing more. One full half of all that might be recovered from the cave, over and above the expenses of an expedition to obtain it, was to go into the treasury of Texas, to be spent in fighting for its freedom. They were of one accord as to that, without a dissenting voice, but Bowie was a liberal man as well as patriotic and prudent, and as soon as the future was duly cared for, he saw that it was right and wise to provide them with a sufficient reward for their services in the present expedition.

"You've done well this first time," had come from Jim Cheyne.

"Well," said the colonel, "these things are near of a size. We'll divide 'em, share and share alike, every fellow to tote his own winnings. It 'll be the best four weeks' work any of you were ever paid for – "

"Half to Texas anyhow!" shouted Jim, as he handled the bars that fell to his lot. "The republic can have my whole pile if I'm knocked on the head. Hurrah! Now for home! We've done enough!"

As for Red Wolf, he hardly knew what to do with three long, heavy, dingy sticks of metal that were assigned to him. He fastened them behind the saddle which now adorned his mustang, but he did so out of respect for Big Knife. The saddle itself was a kind of paleface emcumbrance, but he had won it at the hacienda, and he rode in it for the sake of glory, as a prize of war.

As for regarding a gold bar as a silver dollar, he had not yet climbed as high as that. The nearest he came to an understanding was when Joe held up one of his own bars and shouted, —

"I say, colonel, just what we've got here would buy another eighteen-pounder as big as the one in the Alamo."

"Two of 'em," replied Bowie, "and a dozen rounds apiece of powder and ball. That's what we want, – powder and ball. Boys! One more secret! I'm going to take you right thar! We'll go home with cash enough to put the Alamo in first-rate order, rations, rifles, and all. Forward, march!"

On they went, down the mountain, carrying with them the secret of the treasures of the Montezumas.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PERILOUS PATH

Can the mere possession of a secret turn a brave man into a coward? One would think not, and yet the entire demeanor and conduct of Colonel Bowie underwent a change. It seemed to be growing upon him, as he led the way down the pass and out into the valley. His men, too, hardened frontiersmen and Indian fighters as they were, responded almost nervously to his every suggestion of extreme watchfulness.

There were good reasons for it all. They had reached the valley in peace, but no one could guess by what eyes their arrival had been noted, or what forces might be gathering to strike a blow at them.

The dark clans of the Mexican mountains were known to be courageous. No other men had a greater disregard for either the lives of other men or their own. They had succeeded in protecting their fastnesses so perfectly that the Spanish and then the several Mexican governments had consented to let them alone. As to the latter, indeed, the short history of Mexico as an independent state had been, thus far, little better than the record of struggles for power between warring chiefs and factions. Whoever at any date had been temporarily in authority had had quite enough to do to maintain his own supremacy. There had been few troops to spare for operations against the red men of the North, and none at all for the penetration of the really undiscovered country which contained such remnants as Tetzcatl and his comrades of the cave.

"They could wipe us out, boys," was the freely expressed opinion all around, and they were ready, as Joe expressed it, "to just sneak all the way back, if we've any idee of comin' this way ag'in after that pewter."

Bowie's own calculations continually went on beyond the dangers of the road.

"I've got to reach Houston," he said, "and set him at work with those dollars. We can make up a force to come again with. I can trust Crockett and Travis. We can have our pick of men. But we needn't let the rank and file know the whole thing. One of 'em might let it out too soon. If we work still enough, we can ride across all this country and hardly stir up the Mexicans. One big mule train 'll carry all there is in the cave. We can get it across the Rio Grande, perhaps, without having to fire a shot. Not that I mind fighting, if it comes to that, but as soon as it's all landed as far as the Alamo, the republic of Texas is a made nation. We can arm all the men we can raise, and we can whip Santa Anna out of his boots."

It was the fate of the future that was in his mind and on his shoulders. If he should now get himself killed, with his little band of rangers, who would ever know where to come for the treasures of the Montezumas?

As for Red Wolf, the secret did not trouble him. It did not seem to belong to him at all. Nevertheless, it was entirely in accord with his ideas that a war-party, returning through an enemy's country, should travel as stealthily as so many wild animals.

That first night no fire was kindled, and the march began again before the sun was up. Before the end of the next day one worn-out horse had to be left behind.

"We'll use 'em all up if need be," remarked Bowie. "All I want is to get to the chaparral with critters enough to go home from there on a walk."

It was on one of those days of watchful, tiresome pushing for the men who had the secret to carry and the ingots of gold from the cave, but it was hundreds of miles away from them that a group of very serious-looking men sat around a table in a log farm-house. If it were any kind of council, the conversational part of it had momentarily ceased and they all were thinking silently.

A heavy step sounded outside the door; it swung suddenly open, and a voice not at all loud but very much in earnest startled them to their feet.

"Here I am, Houston! They're coming!"

"Crockett!" shouted the astonished general. "I thought you were in Washington."

"Well, I ain't, then," responded the grim bear-killer, throwing his coonskin cap violently upon the table. "I didn't git beyond New Orleans. I found a heap of letters thar, and thar was all sorts of deviltry in 'em. It's no use to look for anything from Congress this session, and that ain't the wust of it."

"Out with it, colonel," came from across the table. "Let's have it all. We were having a blue time anyhow."

"Stingy! stingy! stingy!" roared Crockett. "Everybody's afraid to put in a cent. Not a dollar to be had, nor any pound of stuff without the dollars. You see, boys, the trouble is the news from Mexico. Santa Anna was at Monterey gathering his best troops and getting ready to come after us. Thar are several regiments already down near Matamoras on the coast getting supplies by the sea. Every friend of ours seems to be skeered. They reckon we'll be chawed up."

"Not so easy," came again from across the table. "I reckon the Greasers have got their work cut out."

"Travis," said Crockett, "I'm glad you're here. Have you heard from Bowie?"

"Not a word," replied Travis, "except that he and Castro had some kind of a brush with the Comanches, and another with Bravo's lancers. Reckon it was all right. He's just the kind of fellow to pull through."

Even while he spoke, however, the bright-faced ranger colonel caught Crockett's eye and sent him a look that prevented further questioning.

"Time for us to be moving," said Houston, steadily. "We'll gather what forces we can. The first thing is the Alamo. We can send a pretty good lot of rations."

"Powder!" said Travis, with energy, "What the Alamo needs is powder. And we want men enough to handle guns."

"You shall have them," said Houston. "Texas won't leave you in the lurch. Go and put things in as good condition as you can."

"All right," said Travis; but Crockett was eager to learn whatever news might be had around the table, and he lingered to get it all. At last he and Travis walked out into the open air, and they were no sooner alone than the latter turned and looked his friend in the face.

"Crockett," he said, "either Bowie is wiped out, or he and his men have ridden down into Mexico after that gold of Tetzcatl's."