The Lost Gold of the Montezumas Part 27

"Fellow-citizens!" shouted the angry officer. "Heroes of Mexico!

Yonder is the Alamo! In a few days we will ride into it and teach the Gringo rebels a lesson they will remember. Forward, right wheel!

Gallop!"

Gallop they did, but Travis's order to save ammunition had already put them entirely out of danger.

Miles away to the westward rode Castro and his son, but the chief had now gone far enough for the purpose which had taken him away from the fort. He drew his rein and Red Wolf imitated him.

"Ugh!" said Castro, holding out a hand. "Rifle!"

The splendid present was handed over, but other commands followed, and the young warrior was stripped of his bow and arrows, his lance and his pistols. His only remaining weapon was the knife in his belt. There was not a shadow of disobedience, not even of dissatisfaction, upon his face, but he was evidently waiting for an explanation.

"Red Wolf no lose rifle," said Castro, at last. "Great chief take it to lodge. Hide it with tribe."

"Ugh?" said Red Wolf, but he knew there was something more to come.

"No bad medicine," said Castro, holding out his hand again.

The three gold bars allotted to Red Wolf were tightly secured to his saddle. They were now untied and handed over. The chief dropped from his pony and walked to the nearest oak, one of three by which they had halted. He took out his knife, dug a pretty deep hole, and dropped the precious but dangerous prizes into it.

Red Wolf had followed him in silence, and now, when the earth and sods were replaced, Castro stood erect and pointed at the spot under which lay the gold.

"All Texan lose hair," he said. "Red Wolf hide bad medicine. Find some day! Die then. Montezuma wicked manitou."

"Ugh!" exclaimed Red Wolf.

Nevertheless, a deep "sign" was cut upon the oak-tree before they remounted. Then the chief went on to explain to his son the further duties required of him.

It did not take a great many words, but the meaning of it all was simple.

The Mexicans and the Lipans were now nominally at peace. Any Lipan was fairly safe among them, unless he should seem to be on a war-path against them. At the same time, Mexican cavalry would surely disarm a mere boy,--that is, they would steal his rifle, even if they then should let him go unharmed.

So far, so good, but Castro raised his arm and pointed eastward.

"Boy hear!" he said. "Travis send Texan to friend? Mexican catch ranger. Shoot him. No catch Red Wolf. Go! Ride hard! Tell great Texan chief Santa Anna here! Say he camp around Alamo. Say Travis want more Texan. Ugh! Go!"

It was an errand of importance, therefore. It was worthy of a warrior.

It was a message of life and death, but it called for cunning, caution, hard riding, rather than for sharpshooting. A few further instructions as to where to go and whom to find were all that was needed, and away went the ready messenger.

Castro himself rode away, laden with the precious shooting-irons. He too had need for caution and for cunning if he was ever to rejoin his tribe, but Red Wolf, riding northward now, was saying to himself,--

"Ugh! Heap young brave. Bring Texan to Big Knife. Heap fight Mexican."

He may have been perfectly aware that Colonel Travis was the white chief who was in actual command of the rangers and the fort. To his mind, however, the Texan armies, if not the republic itself, were best represented by the stalwart hand-to-hand fighter who had given him the knife which he now so carefully concealed under his buckskins. Having done so, he transferred his old, half-despised butcher-knife from his leggings to his belt, and remarked concerning it, "Mexican take? Ugh!

No lose heap knife. Take Mexican hair."

There was a menacing look in his face, and he rode on with the air of an adventurer who was quite ready for mischief, if a chance for any should be given him.

The region of country he was to go through was supposed to be peaceable, as yet. It contained only scattered ranches and small settlements, but it might speedily contain almost anything else, for perils of all sorts were pouring in upon the Texas border.

Matters at the fort were quiet, but the rangers in their quarters, even while running bullets, and the officers in their hammocks, not one of them asleep, seemed to have const.i.tuted themselves a kind of general council of war. At least they were discussing every feature of the situation, and were talking themselves more and more into a state of mind that bordered closely upon contempt for Santa Anna and his five thousand men.

The most undemonstrative man among them all was Colonel Bowie. He had slung his hammock near one of the embrasures, with a cannon at his side, and, like the cannon, he was continually peering out. Even after it grew darker and only moonlight remained to show him anything, he every now and then seemed to take an inquiring look at the surrounding country.

"I can see that cave," he muttered to himself, "as clear as if I were in it. What if the fate of a young nation should depend upon our getting into that hole again? If those old rascals knew we were coming, they'd pitch it all down the chasm. I'd like to know, just for curiosity, what fellows and how many of them have been butchered before that altar. In the old times they used up whole tribes and regiments of captives that way. Then I'd like to know where all that bullion came from. I don't believe they mined for it. They didn't know how.

They got it out of river-beds, I reckon, just as they do in Asia and Africa."

He had hit the mark, for there was no other way imaginable. But where were the riverbeds, and how much more gold-dust and nuggets might there be remaining in them?

He could dream and speculate there in his hammock, but that was all he could do. His young republic was indeed to come and go. Mexico was to lose Texas and her other northern provinces. The pioneers among whom he was so daring a leader were to accomplish even more than they were planning. Beyond all his dreams, however, would be the solution of his gold problem. Only a few years later the slopes and gulches of the California mountains were to swarm with hardy miners, and the treasures of the Montezumas were to sink into insignificance in comparison with the wealth to be taken out, not by the Aztecs or the Spaniards, but by the "Gringos."

Would anybody then be found to take note of the fact that Bowie and his comrades were the advance-guard, the skirmish-line, almost the "forlorn hope" of the armies of Taylor and Scott? The United States, the world at large, and even Mexico, owe their memories something of recognition, and they were not even much "ahead of their time."

"Crockett," said Travis, just before they went to sleep, "Bowie can't get that cave out of his head."

"It's t'other way," replied Crockett. "He can't get his head out of the cave, and I'll be glad, you bet, when we all get our heads out of the cave this push of Santa Anna is putting us into."

CHAPTER XVIII.

CROCKETT'S ALARM GUN.

February 24, 1836, and a splendid winter morning for a parade.

Altogether unmolested as they came, the Mexican army marched into position around the Alamo fort. Not a shot was fired at them. Not a man of the garrison was in sight. There was a sullen air about the whole concern. Upon the church wall, indeed, Colonel Travis with a field-gla.s.s studied and estimated the a.s.sailants he was to contend with.

"No heavy guns, Davy," he said to Crockett, standing near him. "Castro was right about everything else. We shall get a message from Santa Anna pretty soon. Hullo! There he comes now. Let's go down."

"You've only jest one thing to do," replied Crockett, dryly, at the head of the stairs they were to go down by.

"What's that?" said Travis, getting ready for a joke. "Out with it."

"Well," chuckled the bear hunter, one stair down, "you know what he's goin' to ask for. Just you demand the immediate, onconditional surrender of Santa Anna and all his chickens."

"Crockett!" exclaimed Travis, "I can tell you one thing. I know him.

If we should surrender, no matter what conditions he might give, the old murderer would have every man of us shot before sunset."

"Not a doubt of it," said Crockett; "and between you and me and the gate-post, I'd ruther do a small chance of hard fighting first. That's about the way the men feel, too."

That was the kind of reputation the Mexican general had won for himself, and he was shortly to add to it by his conduct of his campaign in Texas.

By the time the two friends came out through the church door-way, the officer of the guard at the gate was loudly responding to a sonorous bugle summons. A mounted officer, attended by the bugler only, had halted outside.

"A cartel from His Excellency General de Santa Anna!" he shouted, in response to the hail of the sergeant. "I am accredited to Senor Travis."

"Colonel Travis, you mean!" shouted back the sergeant, angrily; but the clear, ringing tones of Bowie called out,--

"Let him in, Daly. Never mind his nonsense."