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.