The Lost Gold of the Montezumas: A Story of the Alamo
"That's what he's done, then," said Crockett, confidently. "He's a critter that 'll take no end of killing. He had the right sort of men with him. What I want is to see him back ag'in, gold or no gold, and to have him with us when the Greasers come for the Alamo. I mean to be thar myself."
"Crockett," replied Bowie, "Sam Houston is mistaken. He can't raise a dollar. All we've got to depend on is the men. We'll take our pick, though, and we can hold that fort against all the ragamuffins south of the Rio Grande."
On they walked, talking as they went, but if they could have had a look at some of Santa Anna's "ragamuffins" they might not have felt so confident.
In the great plaza of the city of Monterey, in front of the church, a regiment of infantry was at that hour paraded for inspection. Their arms were good, for they had just been imported from across the Atlantic. Their uniforms were new. Their drill was fair. They seemed to be well handled. They were not by any means, in appearance at least, the kind of soldiers to be despised by a half-armed garrison of an old adobe fort. Even the stone part of the Alamo defences might be in danger, for a battery of heavy cannon was drawn up near them. In front of the line were halted a dozen or so of officers on horseback, brilliant in equipment, whose bronzed and bearded faces wore a very warlike look.
Encamped near the city walls, outside, were other regiments and other batteries. What could the Texans mean by their contempt for the forces which were to come against them? What hope had their poverty-stricken little state in a struggle against such numbers and such resources as now were gathering to conquer it?
The review was over. A salute was fired by the battery. The troops cheered. The name of Santa Anna mingled loudly with the cheering, and the general, sending his splendid horse forward, raised his hat gracefully in response. But then he turned to his attendant officers and remarked, —
"It is well, gentlemen. The troops are in fine condition. We shall sweep the Gringos out of Texas. Now for the cock-fight, and then we will have a quiet game of monte at the palace."
He had pretty fairly condensed into his remarks one feature of the situation. The sturdy riflemen of the American border were strongly impressed with the worthlessness of the Mexican military organization; with the dissipated, lazy character of its men and their commanders; and they confidently expected that a Mexican invasion of Texas would be little more than a campaign of wasteful blunders.
"If we can stand their first rush," had been said by General Houston, "they'll break all to pieces before they make another."
If Travis and his friends were beginning to be anxious concerning the fate of Bowie, he was all the while growing more and more anxious about it himself. He would have been more so if the region of country he was pushing his way through had not been so very nearly unoccupied. Here and there a fortified town or village needed to be given a wide berth. Strongly built haciendas were to be avoided, if they were not already deserted. Most of them were so by reason of the recent civil wars, and yet more on account of the destructive raids of the red men. It was a nearly ruined country, and it was not altogether impossible for even a considerable band of prudent men to travel across it without attracting too much attention.
The men discussed the probabilities again and again, and their leader was studying them carefully, but from time to time he shook his head.
"Boys," he remarked, as they sat around their camp-fire in the woods that evening, "you're only half right. We could march an expedition along by this route and not find a soul to hinder us, but there'd be a whole brigade of lancers riding this way before we could get the bullion and set out for home. I reckon they'd meet us somewhere about here. They could pen us in."
"Colonel," replied Jim Cheyne, "I've thought of that. This is the shortest road to come or go on, isn't it?"
"By all odds the shortest," said Bowie.
"Then it's our road to come back, and we can choose a roundabout road to go there by. They'll foller our trail, and we kin make one we'd jest as lieve they would foller. We kin beat 'em."
It was a kind of relief to their present anxiety to sit there and make plans for the future. They were never tired, moreover, of hearing again and again a description of the cavern, the idol, the sacrifices, the plunges into the chasm, and the heaps of gold and silver. Some day they were to see it all for themselves, and they were to take the treasure out of the cave and pack it upon their mules and ponies. Then they were to go home with it. They could buy plantations, build houses, "live like gentlemen," as Joe was fond of saying, and all the while they could strengthen Texas and help its riflemen to drive out Santa Anna.
One of their number, however, did not care a button for anything that they were saying. Not any of it belonged to him. All that he knew about was the present, and all that he could feel were his keen instincts as a young Lipan warrior with a party of white men upon his hands. They were friends of his, and it was his duty to take care of them. He had gone to sleep at once that evening, after eating his supper at sunset, but not long after the weary rangers spread their blankets and lay down their very red associate was up again.
Joe was acting as sentry at the foot of a tree, with his rifle across his lap, but he paid no attention to Red Wolf when he saw him walking toward the nearest underbrush.
"Indian!" he muttered. "Let him rip."
"Red Wolf heap look," said he, a few minutes afterwards, as he came out into a place where the trees were widely scattered.
A white man might not have seen anything, for all around him was as dark as a pocket, but upon a cloudy gloom above the forest beyond him there rested a faint, yellowish glow.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Fire burn."
He had brought no weapons with him excepting the knife and pistols in his belt, but he was now armed better than were most Indian boys, and Bowie had promised him a rifle.
From tree to tree, keeping among the shadows, on he went, and all the while the glow grew brighter, until at last he could see the flashing of fires and the forms of those around them.
"Ugh!" said Red Wolf. "Mexican. No Comanche. Heap sleep."
In every direction lay the prostrate forms of men. Standing erect or walking hither and thither were a few who might be acting as a night watch. A group of these were gathered at the end of the camp nearest the young scout or spy, and he crept toward them, for they were jabbering loudly in Spanish. They carried weapons, bows and arrows, escopetas, or short muskets, machetes of all sorts and sizes, knives, lances, hatchets, clubs. They were not regular soldiers, but their numbers made them sufficiently dangerous.
"Eat up Texan," thought Red Wolf. "No catch him. Go back."
He went rapidly enough, until Joe, at the foot of his tree, was startled by a hand upon his shoulder. A few swift words told him what was the matter, and the other rangers were at once roughly stirred up.
"Do you s'pose, colonel," asked Cheyne, "that we've been followed?"
"Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Bowie. "These chaps got their cue from Tetzcatl somehow while we were on the way. He never meant we should find out this thing and get home again. They don't know the secret either. All they know is that we're a squad of Gringos, and that we must be chopped up. Most likely they heard of us to-day, and mean to strike us in the morning. We must git! That's all."
"Bully for Red Wolf!" seemed to express the general opinion of the rangers, but the half-rested, half-fed animals were untethered at once.
"If it hadn't been for you they'd ha' corralled us," remarked Cheyne to Red Wolf, but all the response he obtained was "Ugh!"
"We have everything in our favor," said the colonel, "now we've passed 'em. Such a crowd as that won't stir out early. They'll all lie around and jabber and smoke cigarettes and drink pulque and gamble and boast, and then they'll swarm in to find that we've stolen a march on 'em."
For once he was mistaken in his estimate of his enemies. It was in the very dawn of the day, when he and his comrades might have been supposed to be asleep, that the miscellaneous militia from the Mexican camp "swarmed in" to slaughter the too adventurous Gringos. It was a sudden rush, made at a signal, a musket-shot, and it was made with wild shouts of anticipated triumph. It would have been entirely successful but for the fact that Bowie and his men had been pushing northward during four long hours, at a rate which had compelled them to abandon one more of their over-driven horses.
"We've learned one lesson," said the colonel, when at last they halted on the northerly bank of a stream which had proved barely fordable. "When we come again we can make sure that all the Greasers will gather behind us to cut off our retreat."
"That's what I was saying," replied Cheyne. "We mustn't try to go and come by the same road."
"Ugh!" said Red Wolf. "Bring heap Texan. Mexican run."
"There's a good deal in that," laughed Bowie, "but we don't want to have to light at all. We must work it as sly as so many horse-thieves. We shall be carrying too much plunder to want a battle with Bravo's lancers."
They were safe for the present, however, and after only a brief rest they went on again – for life.
CHAPTER XV.
THE RETURN OF THE GOLD HUNTERS
"Well, boys, we got in like woodchucks by the same hole we came out of," said Colonel Bowie to his men.
"Reckon the lancers are scouting the south prairie after us yet," replied Jim Cheyne.
"They didn't knew about the ravine, Jim," said another ranger. "But ain't I glad we're safe in among the bushes."
Here they were, at all events, plodding along one of the sandy avenues of the chaparral. Both the men and their horses had a worn and jaded look.
"Our tramp's nearly ended," continued the colonel. "The lancers made it a close shave from the Rio Grande to the Nueces, but we've beaten 'em. We know now that Santa Anna is in Texas, and we're back in time to take our part in the fight. We've had good weather to travel in, but so will he. It's getting on into the spring."
"Ugh!" exclaimed Red Wolf, pausing before a tree. "Heap Comanche in bushes. Great Bear sign."
There was a gash upon the tree, such as might be made with a knife. It was a curved line with a notch in the middle, for a bow with an arrow, it might be.
"Made to-day," said Bowie, as he studied the mark. "The sap is running. We'll have to keep a sharp lookout if we mean to get through, but they can't know we're here."
It was a warning of an unexpected danger, but it did not seem to depress them. On the contrary, their faces were bright and hopeful, in spite of the fact that they had left so many tired-out horses by the way that they now had only one mount left for each man.
"We haven't lost a man," remarked Jim, cheerfully, "and we've kept every pound of the rhino. We're going back after the rest of it, too."
"We are!" said Bowie, with almost an appearance of enthusiasm. "We'll set out as soon as Texas is clear of Santa Anna."
"That's it," said Joe; "but you see, as soon as he's well whipped the coast 'll be clearer than it ever was before."
On they pushed, and Red Wolf rode in the advance as a kind of guide. Part of the time he was hidden from his white friends by the crooks and turns of the path by which he was leading them, and now and then he had to ride back to indicate the right way.
"It takes a redskin," they said more than once, "and he's jest the reddest Indian there ever was."
That was so, for the sun had not appeared to have any power over the peculiar tint of his skin, but all the while he had seemed to be growing older. If he had been a boy when he joined them at the Alamo, Red Wolf was now a warrior, tested by the emergencies of a very uncommon "war-path."
The hours went swiftly by and there was no haste to be made.
"Go slow," had been the repeated injunction of Bowie. "The main thing is to get there."
It must have been about noon when Red Wolf came riding back with a hand lifted in warning.
"What is it?" asked Bowie.
"Ugh!" he said. "Great Bear in bushes. Heap Comanche. Big Knife heap snake."
He wheeled his mustang to the right and they followed him.
"It's awful!" exclaimed Cheyne. "Colonel, the Comanches have joined the Mexicans. What about the Lipans?"
"Fighting the Comanches," responded Bowie. "The trouble is that they seem to be expecting us. If we can ride around 'em, though, we'll get in."
"All right," said Jim, "but things are looking a little squally. I'd like to give 'em a shot or two."
"Not a shot if we can help it," said Bowie. "Wait till I show you something. It's only a short ride now."
It was much longer because of the detour, and Red Wolf was now once more out of sight.
"What's that?" exclaimed Bowie. "What on earth made him whoop? They've got him! Gallop, men! Save him if we can!"
They went forward at a swifter gait, but there was no saving to be done. They were already nearer than they had supposed to the pond and the ruins. The young Lipan had pressed on also, with a pretty clear idea in his head. He had even ridden to the border of the open, and had been looking out and around it searchingly.
"Ugh!" he said, "Great Bear no come!"
"Ugh!" exclaimed a deep voice from a thicket near him. "Castro!"
"Whoo-oo-oop!" burst from the lips of Red Wolf, and he wheeled his pony right into the thicket. "Castro!"
He could not have held in that burst of surprise and joy, nor could the chief himself have done otherwise than to come out from his hiding-place with a great bound. Swift, indeed, were the explanations which were exchanged. Only a brief outline could be given by Red Wolf of his wonderful campaign in Mexico. The particulars would have to wait. Castro himself could do but little better at that moment.
"Tetzcatl heap liar!" contained the root of the matter.
He had said very little more than that when they heard hushed voices in the pathway near them.
"Jest about yer it was," said one.
"Look out sharp now!" said another.
"I'll find his carkiss if I can," came from Joe. "He was a buster. But what did he whoop for?"
"He ort not to," remarked Jim, "but I s'pose he couldn't help it. Now they'll all know we've come. But I just liked that young feller."
"Ugh!" said Castro. "Heap friend of Red Wolf. Boy talk."
Out darted Red Wolf, and in a moment more there were hearty hand-shakings all around.
Castro had ghastly tokens to show of the blows he had stricken upon his Comanche enemies, but now he gave also a better account of the manner of his separation from his friends on the night after they went over the Rio Grande.
There had been, as Tetzcatl had reported, a sharp brush between the Lipans and a party of Comanches. The old Tlascalan had only overstated the affair in order that he might carry off the Texans with him.
"All gone" had been partly true, nevertheless, for the Lipans, losing a few braves, had been forced to retreat toward the north. They had thereby been compelled to give up any idea of trying to join Bowie's party.
Ever since then, believing that his son and his friends had been "wiped out," the revengeful chief had been hanging upon the movements of Great Bear's band wherever they went or came. He was now informed somewhat more fully of what the adventurers had been doing, but it was no time for too much talk.
"Forward now," exclaimed Bowie, at last. "Our next business is to get the cash and push on to the Alamo. We're pretty nigh out of powder ourselves. We couldn't stand a long fight."
On they went, therefore, cautiously enough, but when they reached the open it seemed entirely deserted. They halted in the bushes while Castro and Red Wolf made circuits to the right and left.
"Men," said Bowie, with emphasis, while they waited, "we'll go in and get it. We must take almost any risk to carry it off. But don't you forget, if I go down, that this cash belongs to Texas. 'Tisn't yours nor mine, except each man's fair allowance for taking it in. None of you fellows found it, in the first place."
"All right, colonel," responded Joe. "Hurrah for Texas. I don't want any dollar that isn't mine."
"Don't hurrah quite yet," said Bowie. "We don't know how near we may be to a hundred scalping-knives. Hullo! Here they come."
It was the two Lipans and not the Comanches that he referred to.
"Big Knife walk along," said Castro, as he came nearer. "No Comanche."
"I'd like to give 'em a hit," growled Bowie, "but this isn't the time for it. Come on, boys. We mustn't waste a minute."
Even now he seemed perfectly cool, but none of the other Texans failed to show how strongly the "hidden treasure" fever had taken hold of them. It grew manifestly hotter after they had ridden to the ruined adobe house, dismounted, and followed their leader in. It was almost impossible to believe that he was about to show them anything like actual gold and silver.
"You don't mean to say," said Joe, "that such a feller as old Tetzcatl left anything behind him up here?"
"No, he didn't," replied Bowie. "This isn't any Montezuma money. My notion is that it's old Spanish funds. If so, all the more does it of right belong now to the State of Texas."
"Of course it does!" said Cheyne, and the others heartily echoed him.
"Out it comes, then!" shouted the colonel, with the first external flash of the excitement which had all the while been smouldering within him. "You'll see what it is now. You didn't more'n half believe me, did you? Look at that!"
Over rolled the adobe fragments which concealed the cash, and out came bag after bag, cast down with a chink to be at once caught up by eager hands and opened. It was a breathless kind of work to make those bags tell what was in them.
"It's a pity so much of it's only silver," remarked Jim, regretfully; "but silver's better'n nothin'."
"Every feller wants more than he's got," said Joe, "but you'd kinder ought to be satisfied this time."
Red Wolf and his father had looked on in silence, but now the chief beckoned to his son and walked out.
"Ugh!" he said. "Red Wolf tell story. Talk Mexico. Long trail? Heap fight?"
All that remained to be told of the trip with Tetzcatl came out rapidly, until the mountain pass was reached and the doings in the cavern.
"Ugh!" sharply exclaimed Castro. "Shut mouth! Montezuma bad medicine! Texan all die. Big Knife go under. Red Wolf? No! Red Wolf Indian. No hurt him. Lose hair if he talk."
He said more, but his entire meaning seemed to be that it was a well-understood doctrine that any white adventurer learning the secrets of the Aztec gods was a doomed man. They would surely follow him up and kill him. It was not so bad for a full-blooded Indian, but even a Lipan would do well to forget anything he had heard or seen that belonged to the bloody mysteries of the evil "manitous" of the old race. It was evidently a deeply rooted superstition, and Red Wolf was quite ready to accept it fully. They returned to the ruin in time to hear Bowie remark, —
"Two hundred thousand, pretty nigh, dollars and doubloons. Now, boys, a thousand apiece for taking it in. All the rest goes to fight Santa Anna."
"That's the talk!" said the rangers, and the horses were led up to receive their loads.
It was not very easy to pack the ponderous stuff, even at the sacrifice of all the blankets on hand. After it was done, moreover, another fact was evident.
"Boys," said Joe, "it's a walk for us all the way to the Alamo."
"That 'll just suit the critters," replied the colonel. "It's all the're fit for. But we mustn't fail to get there. I kind o' feel as if Texas was getting safer."
They were themselves by no means safe and it was time to go forward. The horses had picked a little grass. They had been watered, and so had the feverish, anxious rangers, but rest for either was not to be thought of.
Slowly, cautiously, the devious avenues of the seemingly endless thickets were traversed, and at last the little cavalcade, with its precious freight, emerged among the scattered trees on the border of the prairie.
"'Tisn't time for us to whistle yet," said Bowie, "even if we're out o' the woods. Hullo! Men! There they come! Forward! Double lines. Horses outside."
"Whoop! Whoop!" came fiercely from Castro and his son.
"I reckon we've been watched for somehow," growled Jim. "We'll show 'em a good fight for the pewter, but don't I wish thar was more of us!"
It seemed as if the loads of dollars added to the desperate courage of the men, and they made ready for the coming fight as if more than their own lives were depending upon it.
The horses were ranged in parallel lines, and the riflemen walked on in the space between. It was a kind of travelling breastwork, and it must have had a dangerous look to an outsider. A number of wild horsemen, therefore, contented themselves, for the present, with whooping loudly and riding around at safe distances. There were a great many of them, but Castro declared that the entire force under Great Bear had not made its appearance.
"It looks bad for our side," said Bowie. "It's a long time since any Comanche war-parties have ventured in as far as they have this season. Santa Anna was quite enough for us to handle without the redskins."
He hardly knew, at that moment, how dark a cloud seemed to be hanging over Texas in those closing days of the winter of 1835-1836. All things had been going wrong. There were quarrels among leaders, and even Houston had lost, apparently, a great deal of his popularity. As Crockett expressed it, —
"The cusses expect the old man to do some things that can't be did."
There were a great many things that he could not do. Nevertheless, he worked unceasingly. He made visits of inspection here and there. He made speeches, printed patriotic appeals in the newspapers, and argued with timid or disaffected settlers.
It all seemed to be of little use. The Indians were busy on the borders. Reports of the feeling in the Congress of the United States were discouraging. All the while, moreover, every arrival from south of the Rio Grande told of the extensive preparations which the Mexican president was making for an invasion. He was said to have gathered a force that would prove overwhelming, and he had declared death to all rebels.
"If we don't look out," said Crockett to Travis that afternoon, as they stood together in the open gate-way of the Alamo, "the Greasers 'll catch us all in bed. But don't I wish I knew what had become of Bowie and his men?"
"They won't fetch back any gold," replied Travis; "but I'd like to see them if they rode in as bare as redskins."
"Colonel," exclaimed Crockett, "give me a dozen men and let me take a scout over the south prairie. I might have some kind o' luck. Might knock over a Comanche."
"Let you have 'em?" said Travis, with sudden energy. "Take 'em! I'll come right along with you. I'm dog tired of loafing in this coop. Get your men."
The rangers of the garrison were as weary of inaction as was their commander, and double the number called for almost insisted upon mounting for the proposed scout.
"The fort 'll keep till we git back," remarked Crockett; "but if I don't git out of it and shoot something I shall spile."
There were very good military reasons for precisely such an errand of inquiry. The vicinity of prowling savages was pretty well known, and it was desirable to learn as much more as possible.
The party from the fort rode out, therefore, and they were well upon their way, but they were not near enough to hear the whoops of Great Bear's warriors nor the cracking of the first rifles which replied.
There had been a steady onward march of Bowie's men, without any other change in the situation than an increase in the number of their enemies.
"Boys," the colonel said, "we've gained about a mile and a half, but they're closing in on us a little. Let 'em have a pill first chance you get. Halt!"
There they stood, their rifles levelled across the saddles. It was hardly worth while to waste their small stock of powder upon swiftly careering horsemen, although now these were frequently within range.
