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

"Guess not!" exclaimed Jim Cheyne. "Colonel, if thar isn't that thar old cuss Tetzcatl on his mule."

Here he came, plodding along as calmly as ever, but there was very little news that he could tell them. He could not even explain the presence of General Bravo's regiment of lancers.

"The general said, at the Alamo, that he was going after the Apaches," remarked the colonel, "but here he is."

"Whoop!" rang out from the lower ground easterly. "Who-o-o-oop!"

"Red Wolf!" exclaimed Castro. "Boy no lose hair! Ugh! Heap young brave!"

On he came, and there was no one following him. How could he have escaped? He tried to tell how when he reached them, but before he had finished his story of the Comanches and the lancers Tetzcatl turned his mule toward the river.

"Bueno!" he said. "We can cross here. The lancers are busy. So are the Comanches. The Lipans are on the other side and we can find them. Come!"

"All right!" shouted Bowie. "Forward! Boys, Great Bear is our best hold just now. He got in just in the nick of time."

The chief himself had not said so, nor had the beaten lancers. Both sides of that fight had been severely surprised.

It seemed to the Comanches that their long chase had reached a stopping-place, and what to do next they could not say, except to rest their horses. As for the lancers, what was left of the fighting party was now safe at the hacienda.

The Texans had no choice but to follow their white-headed guide. Not one of them heard him say, as his mule waded into the river, —

"Bueno! The Comanches got them. It is a great satisfaction. I will take the Texans into the mountains and give them to Huitzilopochtli. They shall go down to him when he calls for them. The gods are hungry."

There had, indeed, been vast changes in the manner and amount of worship paid them since the landing of Cortez. There had been a time of fanatical devotion before that, when from twenty thousand to fifty thousand human victims had been sacrificed annually to the terrible divinities of the Mexicans. The scattered remnants of the old, dark tribes, who still clung to their heathenish faith, might be as ready as their fathers had been to offer sacrifices, but the offerings were not so easily to be provided.

"The days have been too many," grumbled Tetzcatl, "in which not one Spaniard stood before the altar. We have had to give them mission men, women, children. They shall have six white men from the North."

Those Mexican Indians who, from time to time, had nominally accepted the religion brought to them by the missionaries of the Church of Rome were not to be classed as Spaniards exactly, but they would answer as less valuable substitutes. Perhaps they were really as available for sacrificial purposes as had been the yearly prisoners of war, entirely unconverted heathen, who had been slaughtered at the teocallis, or idol temples, before any Spaniards were to be had.

Altogether ignorant of the religious fate intended for them, the Texans gained the southerly bank of the river, but their guide did not pause there. He spurred his mule, waved his hand to them, and pushed onward. He was upon ground that he knew, and their weary day's journey ended in a dense forest, where they could believe themselves safe, for the time, from their enemies.

"Night come," said Castro to his son. "Red Wolf go see Mexicans. No take horse."

"Ugh!" replied the young warrior. "Find lancers. See hacienda. Where great chief go?"

"Castro find Comanches," replied his father. "Big Knife keep camp. Tetzcatl hunt Lipans. Texan sleep."

It was a time for vigorous scouting, but the condition of the horses required that the scouts should use their own legs. No one went out at once, however. After a hearty supper they all lay down for a while. All but Tetzcatl. Nobody could say just at what moment the old Tlascalan disappeared, leaving his mule behind him.

"Boys," remarked Joe, "we're all here and we ain't corked up, but thar isn't a blamed thing we can do. It's been a pretty tough kind of spree far as we've gone."

"Wall, ye-es," drawled Jim Cheyne, "and thar's no tellin' what 'll turn up next."

"Jesso," came from another ranger, "and we needn't crow loud. Thar wouldn't ha' been a head o' ha'r left among us if it hadn't been for that cub o' Castro's; he's a buster."

"So's his dad," remarked Jim; "but whar are they now?"

He was looking, as he spoke, at the spot where he had seen them spread their blankets. Those were there, but neither a young Lipan nor an old one.

"They ain't in this camp," said Joe, after a wider search. "Gone visitin'?"

They had not gone together. A very little later the chief was wading into the river at a place somewhat below where Tetzcatl had led them across, and he was alone.

His son was at the same time slipping along among the bushes and trees toward the Hacienda Dolores. He was making rapid headway, and his bright, black eyes were dancing with excitement. Fatigue was a thing he seemed to know little about. Probably it had rested him to sit down long enough to eat his supper.

The old hacienda had a number of lights burning in it that night, and there were campfires kindled here and there outside of the wall for the lancers. There were a few tents, but the greater part of the force was compelled to bivouac upon its blankets. The Comanches were known not to have crossed the Rio Grande, and there was no fear of a night attack, so that only the ordinary sentries and patrols had been posted. The most important of these were in charge of the "corral," where the cavalry horses were picketed, and with them a large drove of half-trained mustangs which had been gathered to fill the places of such animals as were from time to time used up by reckless riders. The rancheros are horsemen, but they are almost horse-killers in their merciless spurring.

"Heap pony!" said Red Wolf to himself, when at last he was able to crawl along the ground, within watching distance of the corral. "Mexican bad eye. Lose pony. Great Bear send brave. Ugh!"

An indistinct shadow was moving along not many yards from him. Another lay very still a little farther off, but this latter shadow was the body of the sentry who had gone to sleep on his post. There was no one there now but Red Wolf to note the passage of several more shadows, not in uniform. He crept a little farther and lay still in a hollow. He hardly breathed, for it was equally dangerous to retreat or to go forward.

"Lie down heap," he thought. "See what come. Ugh! Comanche bring horse. Pin pony. Go back for more."

That was precisely what had been done by the daring and expert red horse-thieves. They were unsurpassed in that line of business, and they had made their selections with care. Only the best of the animals tethered near that point by the lancers had been selected for removal.

Nevertheless, the red men were few. They could not spare a sentry. They did but secure their first string of prizes by lariats and pins before they went in for another lot.

"Big Knife want horse," remarked the young Lipan to himself. "Red Wolf take. Comanche lose pony."

It was short creeping, and then the pins were out and the string of stolen quadrupeds was once more in motion. Their feet hardly made a sound upon the sand as they went. They were led on to the shelter of some bushes, and there Red Wolf left them that he might once more snake his way back to his perilous post of observation. It seemed like going to almost certain death, but he worked his stealthy way along until he could see a tall warrior, leading several ponies, come to a sudden halt at the place where the first captures had been left.

"Ugh!" exclaimed the warrior. "Heap pony gone. More braves come take 'em. Good. Take more pony."

He believed, therefore, that his own tribesmen had been there, but at that moment a shrill "Who-o-o-op" sounded from the darkness near him. Almost unconsciously, or from the force of habit, he replied to it with his own war-cry. Following that came a dozen more from within the corral. One after another, in quick succession, every Mexican sentinel fired off his musket in sudden alarm. A bugler caught up his bugle and began to blow it loudly. It was a hubbub of mingled sounds, but the warriors in the corral sprang each upon the back of the nearest pony and plied his whip savagely upon the frightened animals around him. Horses neighed, mules brayed, red men whooped, cavalrymen shouted, and the net result was a wild stampede of every brute that was loose or that could break his tether. Of course, they all ran after the first to get away, and these had struck out into the open country.

It was no time for Red Wolf to care what became of the drove, the hacienda, or the Comanches. He had retreated after sounding his mischievous whoop, and he was now on the back of one of the stolen horses, with the others following patiently in a string behind him. They at least had escaped being stampeded, and at the same time a large number of their four-footed comrades were on their way to the river under the care of the successful warriors of Great Bear.

There was no danger that General Bravo's crack regiment would be in pursuit of anybody very early the next morning.

The night was indeed nearly gone when Jim Cheyne, standing sentry for the Texans, was hailed from among the bushes, —

"Red Wolf! Want Big Knife. Bring pony."

"Colonel," shouted Jim, "here's that buster boy again. He's been stealing ponies from the Greasers. He'll do."

"He will!" exclaimed Bowie, springing to his feet and coming forward.

In a few minutes more he said it again, and so did they all with emphasis, but the colonel added, gloomily, —

"It's almost sun-up, boys. What I want is to hear from Tetzcatl and Castro and the Lipans."

"Glad we've a lot of fresh mounts, anyhow," said Joe. "What we need most is to be able to git away."

"We will go to the river-bank first," said Bowie. "Castro is to meet us there. Even Tetzcatl believed the Lipans had gone across the river."

"If they did it's all day with them," replied Cheyne, but Red Wolf did not at all understand him. He was just then, under Colonel Bowie's instructions, selecting for his own use the very best of the fine animals he had so daringly captured and brought to camp.

The camp-fires were soon blazing, but little time could be given to breakfast. Their present position was too perilous. Parties of lancers would surely be out, and there were too many of them. Besides, there were the Comanches, and no man knew when or where they might make their appearance.