The Aztec Treasure-House

by Thomas A. Janvier

  VI.

  THE KING'S SYMBOL.

  Fray Antonio was well pleased when I told him of the stout contingentthat I had secured; and when he had seen Rayburn and Young, and hadtalked with them--though his talk with Young did not amount to much, forYoung's Spanish was abominable--he was as thoroughly satisfied as I wasthat for our purposes we could not possibly have found two better men.

  In the course of this conference we made short work of our preparationsfor departure. Rayburn's experience in fitting out engineering partieshad given him precisely the knowledge required for putting our ownlittle party promptly and effectively in the field; and in this matter,and in all practical matters connected with the expedition, he took thelead. He and Young already possessed the regulation frontier outfit ofarms--a Winchester rifle and a big revolver--which they increased byanother big revolver apiece; and I armed myself similarly with a pair ofrevolvers and a Winchester: concerning the use that I should make ofwhich, in case need for using them arose, I had very grave doubtsindeed. Fray Antonio declined to carry any arms at all; and after he hadaccidentally discharged one of my pistols, which he had picked up toexamine, so that the ball went singing by my ear and actually cutthrough the brim of Young's hat, there was a general disposition toadmit that the less this godly man had to do with carnal weapons thesafer would it be for all the rest of us. Young's hat was a batteredDerby, and about as unsuitable a hat for wear in Mexico as possiblycould be found; but for some unknown reason he was very much attached tothat hat, and he was so wroth over having a hole shot through it in thatunprovoked sort of way that he manifested a decided coolness towardsFray Antonio for several days.

  In the matter of armament, the happiest member of our party was Pablo.He was a handy boy, and when he had demonstrated his ability to manage arevolver by doing some very creditable shooting with mine (at mark thatI had stuck up in the corral, in order that I might gain ease in the useof this unknown weapon), I delighted him inexpressibly by buying him apistol for his very own. I think that Pablo, upon becoming the possessorof that revolver, at once grew two inches taller. The way that hestrutted as he wore it, and his eager thrusting forward of his left hip,so that this gallant piece of warlike furniture might be the mostconspicuous part of him, were a joy to witness. For a time hismouth-organ was entirely neglected; and coming quietly into the corralone day, I found him engaged in exhibiting the revolver to El Sabio; whoregarded it with a slightly bored expression that I do not think Pablotook in good part.

  Rayburn decided that our expedition could be made more effectively witha small force than with a large one. He argued that unless we took intothe Indian country a really powerful body of men, we would be safer witha very few: for a few of us would feel keenly the necessity of keepingconstantly on guard; could be more easily managed and held together inrunning away; and in case a fight was forced upon us we would fight moresteadily because each of us would know surely that he could rely uponthe support of all the rest. Which reasoning we perceived to be so soundthat we promptly accepted it.

  Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two OtomiIndians of whom Fray Antonio gave a good account, and Dennis Kearney,who had served as axeman on the recently disbanded engineering corps.He was a merry soul, this Dennis, with a stock of Irish melodies in hishead that would have made the fortune of an old-time minstrel. He andPablo took to each other at once--though, since neither of them spoke aword of the other's language, music was their only channel ofcommunication--and Pablo presently presented us with a rendering on hismouth-organ, from a strictly Mexican stand-point, of "Rory O'More" thatquite took our breaths away. While Pablo played, Dennis would stand bywith his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention asclosely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and whenPablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted _bravura_passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisynow, me darlint! That's good enough Mexican, but it ain't good Irish atall, at all," and then would show him what good Irish was by singing"Rory O'More" in a fashion which made the old stone arches ring with avolume of music that could have given odds to an entire brass band. PoorDennis! Only the other day I heard an organ-grinder grinding forth "RoryO'More," and the memory of the last time I heard Dennis sing that song,and of what heroic stuff that merry-hearted rough fellow then showedhimself to be made, came suddenly over me, and there was a choking in mythroat, and my eyes were full of tears.

  Well, it was a good thing--or a bad thing, as you please to put it--thatwe could not see far into the future that morning when we packed ourmules in the corral of the hotel, and set out upon the march that wasto lead us through such perilous passages before we reached its end.

  PACKING IN THE CORRAL]

  That I might fill to the brim the cup of Pablo's happiness--for myconscience pricked me a little that I suffered him to go with us--I hadbought him the rain-coat of palm leaves for which his heart so long hadpined. What with this and his revolver, and the delight of going upon ajourney (for he had very fully developed that love of travel which is sostrong in his race), his wits seemed to be completely addled with joy.He insisted upon putting on his absurd rain-coat at once; and he did somany foolish things that even El Sabio looked at him reproachfully--thiswas when he tried to place on that small donkey's back some of the heavypack-stuff destined for the back of one of the big mules--and we gotalong much better with his room, as he presently enabled us to do, thanwe did with his company. When the time for starting came, we had quite ahunt for him; and we might not have found him at all had we not beenguided by the sound of music to the sequestered spot to which he hadretired in order to give vent to his pent-up feelings by playing on hismouth-organ "Pop goes the weasel"--an air that Young had been whistlingthat morning and that had mightily taken Pablo's fancy.

  We made rather an imposing cavalcade as we filed forth from the greatgate of the hotel, and took our way along the Calle Nacional, theprincipal street of the city, towards the Garita del Poniente. FrayAntonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed byDennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the twoOtomi Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing hisrain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabiowith a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablocertainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have toldhim so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, thisprivilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of theState as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It wasunderstood, indeed, that he now was going forth on one of his missionaryvisits among the mountain tribes, and simply rode with us, so far as ourways should lie together, for greater security. I had announced that Iwas going among the Indians again in order to increase my knowledge oftheir manners and customs; and Rayburn--to whom the rest of the partywas supposed to belong--had stated that he was taking the field in orderto make a new reconnaissance along the line of the projected railway. Itwas in order to maintain these several fictions that we went out by thewestern gate, and that we continued for two days our march westwardbefore turning to our true course.

  Of our progress during the ensuing fortnight it is not necessary that Ishould speak, for beyond the ordinary incidents of travel no adventuresbefell us. During this period we went forward steadily and rapidly; andat the end of it we had covered more than three hundred miles, and hadcome close to where--supposing our rendering of the Aztec map to becorrect, and that we had rightly collated it with the dead monk'sletter--the mission of Santa Marta had stood three centuries and a halfbefore. There was no possibility that any trace of this mission would befound; but every rock that we came to was most eagerly scrutinized, foron any one of them might we find the King's symbol engraved.

  For two or three days we had been travelling through a region very wildand desolate. Far away along the western horizon rose a range ofmountains whose bare peaks cut a jagged line along the sky. The countrybetween us and these
far-away mountains was made up of many parallelranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallowvalleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; andthe only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the mostdismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever hasbeen given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through thistangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which longpractice had developed to a high degree, was required to enable us topick a way through so thorny a wilderness. At times the Indians withtheir _machetes_, and Dennis with his axe, had to cut a path for us; anddespite all our care, our own hands were cut and torn, and the legs ofour poor beasts were red with blood.

  The deadly dryness of this arid waste added to our discomfort. A strongdry wind blew steadily from the north, building up out of fine dustwhich was over all the surface of the baked ground littlewhirl-winds--_remolinos_, as the Mexicans call them--which went dancingdown the valleys as though they were ghostly things; and occasionally,when one of these struck us, we were covered with a prickly dust thatfairly burned our skins. What water we got was to be had only by diggingin the _arroyos_ which traversed the centre of each valleylongitudinally; and although this water always was muddy, and had astrongly alkaline taste, it is the only thing that I remember withpleasure in all that weary land. Of animal life there was nothing to beseen, save a-plenty of rattlesnakes; and a few great buzzards whichwheeled above us from time to time as though with the intention ofkeeping track of us until we should fall down and die of thirst andweariness, and they should be able to feast upon us at their ease.

  At the end of the third day of this dreary travelling we had come closeto the great western range of mountains, and our camp that night wasmade in the mouth of a little valley that opened from among thefoot-hills. The night before we had made a dry camp, and for the wholeof the twenty-four hours we had had but a pint of water apiece. Pablo, Iam sure, had given half of his own scant allowance to El Sabio. Theother animals--it was all that we could do for them--had only theirdusty mouths and nostrils wiped out with a wet sponge. They werepitiable objects, with their bleeding legs, their haggard eyes, theirout-hanging tongues, and their quivering flanks. As Fray Antoniounsaddled his horse I saw that there were tears in his eyes; but therest of us, I fear, were too thoughtful of our own misery to feel muchsorrow for the misery of our beasts.

  I suppose that a man must suffer the lack of it, as we then did, inorder to know how precious a thing water is. And to give some notion ofits preciousness to those who not only are free at any time to drinktheir fill of it, but even can fill bath-tubs with it, and feel the joyof it on their bare bodies whenever they are so minded, I will say thatwhen a little digging gave us that night as much water as we wanted, ourjoy was far greater than it would have been had we there found thehidden city of which we were in search.

  Our well was sunk in the broad sandy bottom of the _arroyo_, in themidst of a narrow and delectably grassy valley between two foot-hills.And the abundance and the sweetness of the water, as well as thepresence of grass, showed us that but a little way up this valley theremust be an open stream. We drank, and our beasts drank, until all of ourskins were nigh to bursting; and the abundance of water was so greatthat we even could wash the dust at last from our parched faces andnecks and arms; and much like raw beef our skins looked when our washingwas ended, and the stinging of them was as though we had been whippedwith nettles. It was our intention now to leave the plains and to marchalong the edge of the foot-hills parallel with the main range, otherwisewe should not have ventured thus to wash ourselves. In a region wherealkali dust is in the air, washing is to be shunned; for each time thatthe skin is cleaned the new deposit of dust takes a deeper biting hold.

  It was rather that we might escape the misery of further travel on thearid plains than because we had any strong hopes of thus finding the wayof which we were in search that we had decided to change our line ofmarch. Young had begun openly to express his contempt for the Aztec map,and in the hearts of all of us had sprung up some doubts as to itstrustworthiness as a guide. After all, it was not in the least a map inthe true meaning of the word; and that it should show us rightly our waydepended not only upon our having interpreted correctly its curioussymbolism, but also upon the correctness of the interpretation thatMexican archaeologists had given to the map of the first Aztecmigration--of which map, as we believed, our map was a reserved andsecret part. If either interpretation were wrong, then we might behundreds of miles distant from the region in which the way marked bygravings of the King's symbol should be sought.

  Four or five hours of daylight still remained to us after we had dug ourwell, and with the delicious water flowing into it had satisfied ourthirst; but we had no intention of going farther that day. We had noneed to hobble the animals, for they could be trusted to stay near thewater-hole while they feasted on the grass, and we needed food and restquite as much as they did. Young and Dennis together got us up a famousmeal, and when it was ended we lighted our pipes and held a sort ofcouncil of war. That we might talk the more freely, in both English andSpanish, we drew away a little from where the two Otomi Indians andPablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennistake a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might knowsomething of what our way would be like when we started in the morning;for we were not as yet ready that the minor members of the expeditionshould know the purpose that we had in mind. We had decided that when,by the finding of the course indicated by the gravings of the King'ssymbol, our quest fairly had a beginning, being no longer a matter ofmere hope and conjecture, we then would give Dennis and Pablo and thetwo Indians some notion of what we intended doing; with the option ofdeciding for themselves whether or not they would have a part in it. Andthe thought never once occurred to our minds that circumstances mightarise of such a nature that neither they nor we would have any choice inthe matter at all.

  As we consulted together we had spread out before us a map of Mexico,and with this the map that the Cacique had given me, and a copy of themap showing the great Aztec march. Yet the more that we councilled theless could we come to any reasonable conclusion as to what was best forus to do. As nearly as we could tell from the strange guides that weneeds must be led by, we had beaten thoroughly the region where once themission of Santa Marta was; and not a trace of the gravings on the rockshad we found. To go over this region again, searching still moreminutely, was too great an undertaking even to be thought of; and yetthe only alternative to this painful course seemed to be that we shouldabandon our search altogether; in short, we were completely at sea.

  "What _I_ think," said Young, "is that that old dead monk, an' that olddead Cacique, have set up a job on us. They're both of 'em lyin' likefiddlers; that's what's th' matter with _them_. There ain't any hiddencity, or hidden treasure, or hidden d----n anything; it's all a fraudfrom beginnin' t' end. I vote t' pull up stakes an' go home."

  A cool refreshing wind was beginning to sweep down to us from themountains; but it was blowing only in puffs as yet, for the night wouldnot be upon us for several hours. Borne faintly and fitfully upon thisuncertain wind came to us the strains of "Rory O'More"; with whichmelody, as we inferred, Dennis was beguiling his solitude while heexplored the route that we were to take the next day. Pablo, sittingcomfortably on the grass, his back propped against the back of El Sabio,also caught the sound; and straightway began to play an accompaniment onhis mouth-organ to Dennis's distant singing. The strains gradually grewlouder, showing that Dennis was returning; but when they stoppedsuddenly we thought that he had only tired of the sound of his ownvoice, or, perhaps, did not think anything about the matter at all.

  But when a sound of hurried, irregular steps came down the wind to us,we all were on our feet in a moment and had our arms ready, for it wasevident that Dennis was running from something; and the danger waslikely to be a serious one, for running was not at all in Dennis's line.We wondered why he did not call out; but the expl
anation of his silencewas plain enough, ten seconds later, as he came around the shoulder ofthe hill, staggered in among us, and fell on the grass at our feet--withthe blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and with an arrow clearthrough his breast.

  "Indians!" he gasped, with an effort that brought a torrent of bloodspurting from his mouth; and he added, faintly, "But I've bate 'em, th'divvils, in their hopes of a soorprise!"

  These triumphant words were the last that Dennis Kearney uttered onearth. As he spoke, a fresh outburst of blood came from his nostrils andmouth, a quiver went over him--and then he was dead. I do not believethat many men would have done what Dennis did: run a good quarter of amile with an arrow through his lungs, and then die exulting because hehad succeeded in warning the camp.

  Rayburn had the situation instantly in hand. "Get the packs and saddleson quick!" he cried. "The Indians 'll come around that hill and try toscoop us here in the open. They won't close in; they'll keep off, andjust lie around for a week till we're played out, and then they'll stepin and finish us; they'll do that, likely enough, anyway. But our onechance is to get to a place up the valley here, where they can tackle usonly from in front. There's water up there, so we'll be all right, andwe may be able to shoot enough of them to make the rest give it up, orthey'll close in, and we'll have the comfort of getting the whole thingended without any useless fooling over it."

  All the while that he spoke he was working away, and so were we all, atsaddling and packing; and, luckily, the animals, although the water andthe food and the rest had put new strength into them, still were tootired to give us the trouble that animals give at such times when theyare fresh. In a surprisingly short time we were ready to start; and yetnot a sign had we had, save the warning that Dennis had brought us, thatthere was an Indian within a hundred miles of us. Indeed, but for hisdead body on the ground beside our camp-fire, we might have imaginedthat our scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality wasshown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gavea howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nipon my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer,faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good many arrowstogether will produce.

  Rayburn took the body of poor Dennis before him on his own horse; he'dbe d----d if the Indians should get Dennis yet, he said; and away wewent up the sandy bed of the _arroyo_, driving the mules before us, andthe Otomi Indians pelting along on a dead-run. The Indian who had beenhit coolly broke the arrow off short, and then pulled it out through thewound.

  Suddenly we saw Young, who was riding a little ahead of the rest of us,half pull up his horse and look earnestly at a great shoulder of rockthat jutted out from the mountain-side. "There's your King's symbol,and be d----d to it!" he shouted; and added, "What's the good of aKing's symbol when we're all goin' to lose our hair?"

  He was under full head-way again in a moment. As we shot past the rock weall turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-forsign.