The Lost Gold of the Montezumas: A Story of the Alamo. Stoddard William Osborn

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СКАЧАТЬ whirled again toward the gulf, but the rock-floor at his left was vacant. The withered old devotee had not hesitated for a moment, but had plunged down headlong.

      During a number of slow seconds no word was uttered, and all the while the booming roar from below diminished in volume until it nearly died away.

      "The gods are satisfied," said Tetzcatl.

      So seemed to think and say his associates, and they turned away to walk slowly toward the altar, as if nothing noteworthy or unusual had occurred.

      It is not always easy to give satisfactory explanations of the sounds which are to be heard, more or less intermittently, among the chasms and recesses of great caves. The flow of subterranean waters, the rush of air-currents, the effects of echoes, and many other agencies have been taken into account. As for Tetzcatl and his friends, they had but formed and expressed an idea which was anciently universal. This voice from the deep was but one of the oracles which have been so reverenced by the primitive heathenisms of many nations.

      As for the treasure, from whatever placers it had been gathered, its presence in such a place required no explanation. The Aztec kings had but exhibited commonplace prudence in choosing for it so secure a hiding.

      The cave was not at all more mysterious than might be the underground vault of a great city bank or a United States Sub-Treasury. It was as safe even from burglary, if the vault-entrance was well guarded.

      More than a score of the grisly, blanketed shapes were now gathered at the altar. Its fire was blazing high, and shed its red, wavering radiance upon their faces, while Tetzcatl stood upon the lower of the steps and addressed them. He spoke altogether in their own tongue, and they listened without reply or comment.

      When at last he ceased speaking, they all sat down upon the rock-floor, and not one of them turned his head while their exceptionally vigorous and active leader strode swiftly away in the direction opposite to the chasm and the treasure.

      It was an ascent, gradual at first and then more rapid, until his walk became a climb and there were broken ridges to surmount at intervals. Before long he reached a ragged wall of rock, where the great hall of the cave abruptly ended. Farther progress would have been shut off but for a narrow cleft at the left, into which he turned. This still led upward until it became little better than a burrow. He was compelled to stoop first, and then to go, for several yards, on all-fours. Then there was an increasing sunlight, and he stood erect amid a tangled copse of vines and bushes.

      Above him arose a craggy mountain-side. Below him, a thousand feet, was a wooded valley through which a narrow river ran. Along the mountain-side, not far below where he stood, there wound a plainly marked pathway. With a quickness that was cat-like, he descended to this path, and, as he reached it, he looked back toward the now perfectly concealed burrow he had emerged from.

      "He has gone down to the gods!" he exclaimed, aloud. "He must have Spaniards to follow him. Tetzcatl will bring upon them the scalpers of the plains and the riflemen of the North. He will lure the Texans with the gold they will never find. Ha! They will gather none of the treasures of the Montezumas, unless the gods come up to tell them of the sands in the secret watercourses beyond the mountains and toward the sunset. Huitzilopochtli covered the gold gullies when the Spaniards came."

      He had a foundation of fact for his declaration. Up to that hour no search had succeeded in accounting for the quantities of yellow metal captured by Cortez, or for the larger deposits declared to have been hidden from him by the obstinate chiefs whom he had slain for refusing to tell.

      CHAPTER II.

      THE ALAMO FORT

      "Ugh!"

      Two paths came out within a few yards of each other from the tangled mazes of a vast, green sea of chaparral. For miles and miles extended the bushy growth, with here and there a group of stunted trees sticking up from its dreary wilderness. It was said that even Indians might lose themselves in such a web as that. Not because it was pathless, but because it was threaded by too many paths, without way-marks or guide-boards.

      At the mouth of one of these narrow and winding avenues sat a boy upon a mustang pony. At the mouth of the other path, upon a mule not larger than the pony, sat one of the strangest figures ever seen by that or any other boy. He was short of stature, broad-shouldered, but thin. His head was covered by a broad-brimmed, straw sombrero. Below that was a somewhat worn serape, now thrown back a little to show that he also wore a shirt, slashed trousers, and that in his belt were pistols and a knife, while from it depended, in its sheath, a machete, or Mexican sabre. He carried no gun, but the saddle and other trappings of his mule were very good. He wore top-boots, the toes thrust under the leather caps of his wooden stirrups, and from his heels projected enormous, silver-mounted spurs. His hair was as white as snow, and so were the straggling bristles which answered him for beard and moustaches.

      He may have been grotesque, but he was not comical, for his face was to the last degree dark, threatening, cruel, in its expression, and his eyes glowed like fire under their projecting white eyebrows. He had wheeled his mule, and he now sat staring at the boy, with a hand upon the hilt of the machete. He did not draw the weapon, for the boy was only staring back curiously, not even lowering his long, bright-bladed lance.

      As for him, his clothing consisted of a breech-clout and fringed deerskin leggings. His belt sustained a quiver of arrows, a bow, and a knife, but he seemed to have no fire-arms. Neither did he wear any hat, and he rode his mustang with a piece of old blanket in place of a saddle.

      The most remarkable thing about him, upon a closer study, excepting, perhaps, his brave and decidedly handsome face, was his color. Instead of the tawny darkness common to older Indians, he had retained the clear, deep red which is now and then to be seen among squaws and their very young children. He was a splendid specimen, therefore, of a young red man, and he had now met an old fellow of a race which had never been red. He seemed to know him, also, for he spoke to him at once.

      "Ugh!" he said. "Tetzcatl. Mountain Panther. Young chief, Lipan. Son of Castro. Heap friend."

      The response was in Spanish, and the boy understood it, for he replied fairly well in the same tongue.

      "Good! Tetzcatl go to the Alamo," he said. "All chiefs there. White chiefs. Lipan. Comanche. Castro. Mexican. Heap fighting birds."

      At the last words the face of Tetzcatl lighted up, and he touched his mule with a spur. It was time to push forward if there was to be a cock-fight at the fort, but he asked suspiciously how the young Lipan knew him. Had he ever seen him before?

      "Ugh! No!" said the boy. "Heard tell. No two Panther. Heap white head. No tribe. Ride alone. Bad medicine for Mexican. Stay in mountains. Heap kill."

      He had recognized, therefore, the original of some verbal picture in the Lipan gallery of famous men.

      "Sí!" exclaimed the Panther, looking more like one. "Tlascalan! People gone! Tetzcatl one left. Boy, Lipan, fight all Mexicans. Kill all the Spaniards."

      From other remarks which followed, it appeared that the warriors of the plains could be expected to sympathize cordially with the remnants of the ancient clans of the south in the murderous feud which they had never remitted for a day since the landing of Cortez and his conquistadores.

      Moreover, no Indian of any tribe could fail to respect an old chief like Tetzcatl, who had won renown as a fighter, even if he had taken no scalps to show for his victories.

      The mustang had moved when the mule did, with a momentary offer to bite his long-eared companion, while the mule lashed out with his near hind hoof, narrowly missing the СКАЧАТЬ