The Lost Gold of the Montezumas Part 2

"There isn't any gold to be found in Chihuahua," laughed Travis, "or the Mexicans would ha' scooped it in long ago. I don't bite."

"Colonel," broke in a bearded, powerful-looking man, stepping forward, "I know what he means, if you don't. He said something to me about it, once. The old tiger is full of that nonsense of the hidden treasure of the Montezumas. It's the old Cortez humbug."

"Humbug? I guess it is!" laughed the colonel. "I can't be caught by such a bait as that. The Spaniards hunted for it, and the Mexicans, too. No, I won't go, Bowie. You won't, and Crockett won't. We should only lose our scalps for nothing. We'll stay and fight the Greasers on our own ground."

"Tell you what, colonel," responded his friend, "let's have him talk it out. You just hear what he's got to say."

"Well, Bowie," he said, "I don't object to that, but we've all heard it, many a time. I don't believe Cortez and his men left anything behind them. If they found it, they just didn't report it to the king, that's all. That's about what men of their kind would ha' done.

Nothing but pirates, anyhow. Talk with old Tetzcatl? Oh, yes. No harm in that."

"I'd kind o' like a ride into Mexico," remarked Bowie, thoughtfully, "if it was only to know the country. Somehow I feel half inclined to try it on, if we can take the right kind with us."

A ringing, sarcastic laugh answered from behind him, and with it came the derisive voice of another speaker.

"Not for Davy Crockett," he said. "I'd ruther be in Congress any day than south o' the Rio Grande. Why, colonel, that part o' Mexico isn't ours, and we don't keer to annex it. What we want to do is to stretch out west-'ard. But we're spread, now, like a hen a-settin' onto a hundred eggs, and some on 'em 'll spile."

There was sharper derision in his face than in his words, aided greatly by his somewhat peaked nose and a satirical flash in his blue-gray eyes. It was curious, indeed, that so much rough fun could find a place in a countenance so deeply marked by lines of iron determination.

Very different was the still, set look upon the face of Colonel James Bowie. The celebrated hand-to-hand fighter seemed to be a man who could not laugh, or even smile, very easily.

Colonel Travis was in a position of official responsibility, and he was accustomed to dealing with the sensitive pride of Indians. He now turned and held out a hand to the evidently angry Comanche.

"Great Bear is a great chief," he said. "He is wise. He can count men. Let him look around him and count. How many rifles can his friend take away to go with the Comanches into Mexico?"

"Ugh!" said Great Bear. "Fort no good. Heap stone corral. Texan lie around. No fight. No hurt Mexican. Sit and look at big gun. Hide behind wall. Rabbit in hole."

He spoke scornfully enough, but the argument against him was a strong one.

"Great Bear," said Crockett, "you're a good Indian. When you come for my skelp, I'll be thar. But you can't have any Texans, just now."

The Comanche turned contemptuously away to speak to one of his own braves.

"Castro," said Travis, "it's of no use to say any more now, but you and I have got to talk things over. All of us are ready to strike at Santa Anna, but we must choose our own way. When the time comes, we can wipe him out."

"Wipe him out?" growled Bowie. "Of course we can. He and his ragam.u.f.fins 'll never get in as far as the Alamo."

"Colonel," replied Travis, "take it easy. It's a good thing for us if the tribes are out as our allies."

"Hitting us, too, every chance they git," remarked Crockett. "All except, it may be, Castro. We can handle the Greasers ourselves."

Other remarks were made by those around him, expressing liberal contempt for the Mexican general and his army. They seemed to have forgotten the old military maxim that the sure road to disaster is to despise your adversary.

Tetzcatl had heard all, but he had said no more. His singular face had all the while grown darker and more tigerish. The wild beast idea was yet more strongly suggested when he walked away with Great Bear. All his movements were lithe, cat-like, very different from the dignified pacing of his companion and of other Comanche chiefs who followed them.

In the outer edge of the group of notables there had been one listener who had hardly taken his eyes from the faces of the white leaders. He had glanced from one to another of them with manifestly strong admiration. It was the Lipan boy who had ridden to the post with Tetzcatl.

At this moment, however, his face had put on an expression of the fiercest hatred. He was looking at a man who wore the gaudy uniform of the Mexican cavalry. He was evidently an officer of high rank, and he had now strolled slowly away from the completed c.o.c.k-fight, as if to exchange ceremonious greetings with Colonel Travis and his friends.

They stepped forward to meet him with every appearance of formal courtesy, and no introduction was needed.

"Si, senor," he replied, to an inquiry from the fort commander. "I have seen Senor Houston. I return to Matamoras to-morrow. Our Mexican birds have won this match. We will bring more game-c.o.c.ks to amuse you before long."

His meaning was plain enough, however civilly it was spoken.

"You might win another match," responded Travis, "if all the Mexican birds were as game as General Bravo."

The Mexican bowed low and his face flushed with pride at receiving such a compliment from the daring leader of the Texan rangers.

"Thanks, senor," he said, as he raised his head. "I will show you some of them. I shall hope to meet you at the head of my own lancers."

"I know what they are," laughed Travis, "and you can handle them. But they can't ride over those walls. Likely as not Great Bear's Comanches 'll find you work enough at home. I'm afraid Santa Anna will have to conquer Texas without you."

General Bravo uttered a half-angry exclamation, but he added,--

"That's what I'm afraid of. They are our worst enemy. There is more danger in them than in the Lipans. Among them all, though, you must look out for your own scalp. You might lose it."

Travis laughed again in his not at all pleasant way, but he made no direct reply. It was said of him that he always went into a fight with that peculiar smile, and that it boded no good to the opposite party.

There seemed to be old acquaintance, if not personal friends.h.i.+p, between him and General Bravo, and neither of them said anything that was positively disagreeable.

Nevertheless, they talked on with a cool reserve of manner that was natural to men who expected to meet in combat shortly. The war for the independence of Texas had already been marked by ruthless blood-shedding. General Bravo, it appeared, was even now on his return from bearing important despatches, final demands from the President of Mexico to the as yet unacknowledged commander-in-chief of the rebellious province of Texas. He was therefore to be considered personally safe, of course, until he could recross the border into his own land.

For all that, he might not have been sure of getting home if some of the men who were watching him could have had their own way, and when he mounted his horse a dozen Texan rangers, sent along by Houston himself, rode with him as an escort.

"Bravo may come back," said Bowie, looking after him, "but all the lancers in Mexico can never take the Alamo."

The iron-faced, iron-framed borderer turned away to take sudden note of a pair of very keen, black eyes which were staring, not so much at him as at something in his belt.

"You young red wolf!" he exclaimed. "What are you looking at?"

"Ugh! Heap boy Red Wolf! Good!" loudly repeated the Lipan war-chief Castro, standing a few paces behind his son.

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! followed in quick succession, for every Indian who heard knew that the boy had then and there received from the great pale-face warrior the name by which he was thenceforth to be known, according to established Indian custom.

"Big Knife," said the boy himself, still staring at the belt, but uttering the words by which the white hero was designated by the red men of many tribes, north and south. "Red Wolf look at heap knife."

"Oh," said the colonel. "You want to see Bowie's old toothpick? Well, I guess all sorts of redskins have made me pull it out."

"Heap medicine knife," remarked Castro. "Kill a heap. Boy see."

Bowie's own eyes wore a peculiar expression as he drew out the long, glittering blade and handed it to his young admirer.

It was a terrible weapon, even to look at, and more so for its history.

Originally, its metal had been only a large, broad, horse-sh.o.e.r's file, sharpened at the point and on one edge. After its owner had won renown with it, a skilful smith had taken it and had refinished it with a slight curve, putting on, also, a strong buck-horn haft. It was now a long, keen-edged, brightly polished piece of steel-work, superior in all respects to the knives which had heretofore been common on the American frontier.

"Ugh!" said Red Wolf again, handling it respectfully. "Heap knife."

He pa.s.sed it to his father, and it went from hand to hand among the warriors, treated by each in turn as if it were a special privilege to become acquainted with it, or as if it were a kind of enchanted weapon, capable of doing its own killing.

"Bowie, knife!" said Castro, when he at last returned it to its owner, unintentionally using the very term that was thenceforward to be given to all blades of that pattern.