The Lost Gold of the Montezumas Part 18

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 G.o.ds.

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 pa.s.s, partly natural and partly artificial. In places which would otherwise have been difficult the narrow roadway had been solidly constructed of ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.s 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-G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+ppers. 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, hoa.r.s.e 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.