The Aztec Treasure-House Part 4

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

All the while that he spoke he was working away, and so were we all, at saddling and packing; and, luckily, the animals, although the water and the food and the rest had put new strength into them, still were too tired to give us the trouble that animals give at such times when they are fresh. In a surprisingly short time we were ready to start; and yet not a sign had we had, save the warning that Dennis had brought us, that there was an Indian within a hundred miles of us. Indeed, but for his dead body on the ground beside our camp-fire, we might have imagined that our scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gave a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip on 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 arrows together will produce.

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

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 rock that 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 a King'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 we all turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-for sign.

VII.

THE FIGHT IN THE CAnON.

As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely occasional pa.s.sion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial science of archaeology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among us----the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my forehead----I should a.s.suredly have ceased at once the building of that city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently well-built city, that would have delighted archaeologists of the future, would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely: here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting archaeological discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of archaeology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might take my life--an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined.

These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them.

And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's horse.

It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. The valley up which we had been riding had narrowed by this time into a strait way shut in between high and nearly perpendicular walls; and the place that Rayburn had chosen for us to make our stand in was the mouth of a canon setting off from the valley nearly at right angles. The walls of this canon came almost together above, far overhanging their bases, so that a.s.sault from overhead was impossible; some fragments of fallen rock made a natural breastwork for us to fight behind; and a little stream of pure, sweet water flowed at our feet. Had this place been made for us expressly it could not better have suited our purposes; and finding it so opportunely put fresh heart into us. There was not, of course, a shadow of resemblance between the two, but, somehow, I fancied that the place where we stood resembled my old cla.s.s-room at Ann Arbor; and I actually found myself repeating the opening sentence of the address that I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well ill.u.s.trates the tendency towards illogical a.s.sociation that is so curious a characteristic of the human mind.

I was not able to observe this phenomenon attentively, for Rayburn hustled us all about so sharply that I had no available time just then for abstract thought. The mules and the horses and El Sabio were driven into the canon, and we were ranged behind the fragments of rock almost in a moment. Each man had his Winchester and revolvers in readiness, and a couple of cases of cartridges had been broken out from the packs and put where we all had easy access to them. While this work was going forward we could hear the Indians coming hotly up the valley, and we were barely ready for them when the foremost of their party came in sight.

"Wait a little," said Rayburn, quietly. "They don't know which turn we've taken, and they'll probably get into a bunch to do some talking, and then we can whack away right into the flock."

While we were thus making ready I could see that Fray Antonio was in great distress of mind. He was a very brave man, and I know that his strong desire was to fight with the rest of us. And yet, just as the Indians showed themselves, he deliberately turned his back upon them and walked away into the canon's depths. His very lips were white, and there were beads of sweat upon his brow, and I saw that his fingers twitched convulsively. I know what he wanted to do, and I saw what he did. If ever a man showed the high bravery of moral courage, Fray Antonio showed it then. Even Young, in whom I did not look for appreciation of bravery of that sort, said afterwards that it was the pluckiest thing he ever saw.

As Rayburn had expected, the Indians halted--but keeping more under cover than he had counted upon--and held some sort of a council. But it did not seem, from what we could see of their gestures, to relate to the way that we might have taken so much as to the canon in which we actually were concealed. They pointed towards the mouth of the canon repeatedly, and it struck me that in their motions there was a curious indication of dread or awe. One old man was especially vehement in gestures of this unaccountable nature; and when at last the younger men in the council seemed to revolt against his orders, this man, and all the older men with him, retired down the valley whence they had come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIGHT IN THE CAnON]

The young men, left to themselves, hesitated for a moment, and then with a cry--as though for their own encouragement--came charging towards us in a body. As we got a full view of them we perceived with much satisfaction that their only arms were bows and arrows and long spears, and that there were not more than twenty men in the lot. And then Rayburn gave the order to fire. I confess that my hand so trembled as I pulled the trigger of my rifle that I was not at all surprised to find that the man whom I had fired at--a very tall, powerful young fellow, who seemed to be in command--was not hit; but a man just behind him dropped, and I had a queer feeling in my throat, and certain odd sensations in my stomach, as I realized that I had shot him. Indeed, I was so engrossed with meditations upon the curious ease with which a man's life is let out of him, that I quite forgot for some seconds to continue firing. The others, luckily, conducted themselves in a more practical manner; and the little whirlwind of b.a.l.l.s which sped from the Winchesters made it wonderful, not that so many of the Indians fell dead or wounded, as that any of them remained alive and unhurt. But eight of them did survive their charge in the face of the storm of bullets that we pelted at them; and these--headed by the tall fellow, who seemed bullet-proof--came rus.h.i.+ng at us over our breastwork of rocks, shouting and flouris.h.i.+ng their long spears.

I cannot say very accurately what happened during the next five minutes or so, for one of the Indians came directly at me, and before I could at all stop him--for I found that shooting at him with my revolver did him no harm at all; and this struck me as odd, for I had repeatedly hit the mark while practising in the corral--he had prodded his spear through the fleshy part of my left arm. It hurt severely. He had aimed his thrust, doubtless, at my heart, and he certainly would have penetrated that vital organ had I not at that moment slipped, and so disarranged his aim. He pulled the spear out of my arm, which action also gave me great pain, and his manner indicated that he was about to thrust it into some other part of me; which he surely could have done, for I was wholly at a loss as to what measures should be taken to a.s.sure my own safety.

Indeed, I was very well convinced that my life was as good as ended, and a curious flash of thought went through me that I cannot coherently remember, but that was in the nature of a query as to whether or not in a future state the many scientific truths which as yet are but imperfectly understood will be wholly revealed to us.

However, the opportunity that I confidently expected would be given to me in a moment to obtain an answer to this interesting question did not then occur. Just as the Indian was lunging at me--I can see his ugly face now, as I close my eyes and let my thoughts turn backward to that critical moment--there was a flash of some bright object before me, and then the Indian's entire head seemed to shut up suddenly, something like an opera-gla.s.s, and he went down to the ground like a stone. As I turned, I saw that my deliverance had come from Pablo, and even in that very exciting moment I observed with astonishment that the weapon with which he had slain the Indian was a great jagged sword--if the _maccuahuitl_ can be called a sword--such as the Aztecs used in ancient times. I could not then conveniently stop to question him whence he had obtained that very interesting weapon, for there was another Indian already close upon me; and I am pleased to say--for I do not wish the belief to go abroad that scientific men are worse than useless in practical emergencies--that, without a.s.sistance from Pablo or from anybody else, I managed to pick up my rifle, and with the heavy iron barrel of that weapon, used clubwise, I mashed the head of that Indian into a perfect pulp. I know positively that I mashed it into a pulp, for I tried afterwards to measure it, and found that for craniological purposes it was utterly valueless.

Even had I required Pablo's aid in this encounter he could not possibly have given it to me, for he was himself just then very hotly engaged.

Indeed, but for a.s.sistance that come to him from an unexpected quarter his life a.s.suredly would have been lost. He was in the act of hauling back to strike at the fellow facing him, and he did not at all know that he was in imminent danger of a thrust in the back from a wounded wretch who, having struggled upon his knees, was using what little life was left in him to deliver yet another blow. Just at this critical instant it was that Fray Antonio dashed into the thick of the fighting, and covered Pablo's body with his own against this a.s.sault in the rear; so that, as the Indian struck, the knife only cut through the monk's habit and slightly scratched his arm, instead of making a hole between Pablo's shoulder-blades that would have let the life out of him. Young, who was close beside Pablo, saw what was going on, and checked it before further harm was done by turning quickly and shooting off the top of the wounded Indian's head; and then Fray Antonio retired out of the fighting in which, without himself striking a blow, he had taken so gallant a part.

So far as I was concerned, the fight was at an end when I had so cleverly mashed the head of my second a.s.sailant. No more Indians came at me, and as I looked around I perceived that this was for the excellent reason that there were no more to come. Two were just advancing on Young; who had them covered with his revolver, and dropped them, one after the other, in less time than is required to tell about it. The only other survivor among the enemy--at least the only one able to keep his feet--was the tall young chief, and he and Rayburn were just finis.h.i.+ng the last round of what probably was as fine a fight as ever was fought. They were well matched in size and in weight; and if the Indian was any stronger than Rayburn, I can only say that he must have been a most wonderfully strong man. They were fighting on even terms; for the Indian was armed only with a short club, that he held in his left hand--and this left-handed method made him all the more awkward to deal with--while Rayburn, having emptied his revolver, was using as a club its heavy barrel.

As I caught sight of them, the Indian was in the act of springing forward and delivering a tremendous blow; but Rayburn most skilfully parried this blow by throwing out his rifle, still retained in his left hand, in such a manner and with such force that the Indian's arm--at the same time striking and being struck with the iron barrel--was broken just above the wrist. He gave a yell of pain, as he well might; but he was a plucky fellow, and instead of dropping his club he only s.h.i.+fted it to his right hand. He never had a chance to strike again with it; for in that same instant Rayburn swung his revolver at arm's-length through the air and brought it down on his head with a sound so m.u.f.fled and so hollow that I can liken it only to the staving-in of the head of a full cask. For a moment, while Rayburn drew back to strike again, the Indian's body swayed heavily; and then all his muscles relaxed, and he fell heavily and limply to the ground--while his brains spurted out from the ghastly trench made by that mighty blow from back to front across the entire top of his skull.

VIII.

AFTER THE FIGHT.

Rayburn stood panting for a moment over the Indian's body; and then, having satisfied himself by a look around among our fallen enemies that every one of them was either dead or dying, he stooped down beside the stream to drink from it, and then to bathe an ugly gash in his forehead made by a spear thrust that luckily had glanced aside.

Indeed, we all had wounds or bruises by which we were likely to remember our fight for a good many days to come. In addition to the cut on his forehead, Rayburn had an arm badly bruised by a crack from a club; Young had a cut in the calf of his leg that must have been made by one of the Indians after he had fallen wounded; Fray Antonio had the slight cut in his arm that he received in rescuing Pablo; a blow from a club on my shoulder had completely disabled my left arm, and my head was beginning to ache from the wound in my forehead where the arrow had nipped me; and Pablo, by a square knock-down blow on the head that tumbled him among the rocks, had a bad gash in his cheek and was bruised all over. And yet the very first thing that boy did when the fight was ended--being still dazed, no doubt, by the blow on his head--was to play a bit of "Rory O'More" on his mouth-organ in order to make sure that his beloved "instrument.i.to" had not been injured by his fall. The sound of this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose gallant race with death a.s.suredly had saved all of us from dying without a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otomi Indians were dead too.

But while we had suffered thus severely we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had inflicted a most signal punishment upon our enemies.

Of the whole company that had attacked us--eighteen in number, as we found by counting their bodies--only two remained alive when the fight ended; and these two speedily relieved us of all responsibility concerning them by dying of their wounds. As Young tersely expressed it, we had "given the whole outfit a through bill of lading to Kingdom Come!"

Notwithstanding the pain that I was in, the first thought that came to me after we had achieved peace (by the effective yet somewhat radical process of killing all of our enemies) was concerning the strange weapon with which Pablo had been fighting; and by his prompt use of which in my defence my life had been saved. He had laid it upon a rock--while testing the integrity of his mouth-organ--and as I now carefully examined it I found that my glimpse of it as Pablo had mashed the Indian's head had not deceived me. It truly was a maccuahuitl, the primitive Aztec sword, but very unlike any description of that weapon that I had ever seen. The maccuahuitl, as described by the Spaniards at the time of the conquest and as shown by the Aztec pictures of it preserved in various museums, was a wooden blade from three and a half to four feet long and from four to five inches wide. Along its two edges, like great saw teeth, fragments of obsidian, about three inches long and two inches wide, were inserted; and as these were keenly sharp the weapon was a most ferocious one. The sword that I held in my hand was identical in its essential features with this primitive design; but it was shorter, narrower, and thinner. What was still more extraordinary about it was that, while it seemed to be made of bra.s.s, it had the bright glitter of gold and the temper and the elasticity of steel. Being tested by bending, it instantly sprung straight again; and notwithstanding the vigorous use that Pablo had been making of it on the bones of several Indians, the thin edges of the projecting teeth were only nicked a little--as the edge of a steel sword would have been nicked under like circ.u.mstances--and not one of these teeth was bent out of place, as a.s.suredly would have been the case had the metal been ordinary bra.s.s.

Fray Antonio, by this time, had returned to us again--looking rather shamefaced because of the part that he had taken in the fight--and I eagerly showed him this strange weapon that had been so strangely found; for Pablo's account of it was simply that, just as his revolver was emptied upon the Indians charging towards us, when there was no time to reload, his eyes were caught by the glitter of the sword as it stuck in a cleft in a rock; whereupon he most gladly seized it--and instantly used it to good purpose upon the Indian was so close to ending me with his spear, and subsequently contrived with it to send two more Indians to their account.

Fray Antonio's knowledge of the matter having a wider practical range than mine, for he knew well the contents of the several Mexican museums in which specimens of the primitive weapons are preserved, I thought it possible that he might be able to match this curious maccuahuitl with an account of another like it which he somewhere had seen. That there was no record in the books of this weapon made of metal I knew very well.

But Fray Antonio's surprise over it was greater than my own; and he certainly found more in it to please him than I did; for this metal maccuahuitl, supposing it to belong to ancient times, settled in his favor a controversy that for some time past we had been amicably but earnestly carrying on. I had adopted the ingenious theory of my friend Bandelier that the serrated edge of the Aztec sword was accidental; resulting from the breaking away in use of portions of what at first was a continuous edge of obsidian. Fray Antonio, on the other hand, had held firmly to the ordinarily accepted opinion that the sword was such as I have described above (I must confess regretfully) the primitive weapon to have been.

My contention therefore was that the sword that Pablo had found was not an antique; and I fortified my position, as I considered impregnably, by the fact that while Aztecs, before the Spanish conquest, did make some slight use of copper and gold, they a.s.suredly had no knowledge whatever of either bra.s.s or steel. And my natural irritation very well may be imagined, by any one familiar with controversies of this nature, when I add that Fray Antonio endeavored to cut the ground from under me by a.s.serting that, inasmuch as the weapon obviously was not made of bra.s.s or steel, my argument was based upon false premises and consequently led to illogical conclusions. I am afraid that I showed a little temper on this occasion; for Fray Antonio manifested a persistence in his defence of what I regarded as his wholly untenable position that amounted to what I held to be downright pig-headedness. And so, for a considerable length of time, we stood there, among the bodies of the dead Indians, and first one of us and then the other handled the sword, and expressed with increasing warmth our views respecting it and each other; and we might have stood there much longer had not Young--with the best of intentions, no doubt, but in a way the certainly was not agreeable--taken upon himself to bring our controversy for the time being to an end.

"I don't exactly know what you and the Padre are jawing about at such a rate, Professor," he struck in; "but as well as I can catch on, it's about things which happened three or four hundred years ago. I don't want to interrupt you, of course; but I do want the Padre--he knows something about surgery, as I saw the other day when he took that cactus thorn out of Pablo--to do something to plug up this hole in my leg. It's bleeding a good deal, and it hurts like the very devil. And I guess Rayburn'd be glad to have that slit in his forehead tied up too."

To do Fray Antonio justice, he took this interruption in better part than I did; for I was deeply interested in the argument in which we were engaged, and wished to continue it. But when I explained what Young wanted, he turned to him at once, and very tenderly as well as very skilfully dressed his wound; and then bandaged the gash in Rayburn's forehead, and the cut in Pablo's cheek. Pablo decidedly objected to this bandaging, for it put a peremptory stop for a while to his playing on his mouth-organ. For me no surgery was required. Fray Antonio carefully felt my shoulder while he moved my arm--thereby hurting me most horribly--and as the result of his investigations he a.s.sured me that the bones were neither broken nor out of place.

Rayburn also examined the maccuahuitl with much interest. "Of course it is not bra.s.s," he said, "and of course it cannot possibly be phosphor-bronze. But, if such a thing were a metallurgical possibility, I should say that it was gold--treated in some manner that gives it as great a hardness as bronze receives when treated with phosphorus, but with some chemical change wrought in its const.i.tution that gives it also the tempered quality of steel. Nothing but gold, you see," he added, "could lie around out-of-doors this way and not get tarnished by oxidization."

"What's the reason that it's not some queer thing belonging to the folks we're looking for?" Young asked; and his question expressed a thought that already had found a lodging in my own mind. For such good-luck as this would be I was quite willing to concede that Fray Antonio was right in his unpleasantly positive views in regard to the shape of the Aztec swords. And what Young said also put me sharply in mind of the graving on the rock of the King's symbol, that we had found only in the same moment to lose it again. To this matter I now adverted; and I said some very unpleasant things about the Indians who had prevented us from following the trail, that we had sought for so laboriously, when we did find it at last--and who still, for we doubted not that the main body was in wait for us lower down the valley, prevented us from returning to the spot where we had seen the sign and thence systematically continuing our search.

"If I was you, Professor," said Young as I ceased speaking, "I wouldn't be so everlastin'ly down on these poor devils of Indians for what they've done. They killed Dennis, an' that's a pretty bad business; an'

they got away with our two _mozos_, too; an' they've pretty well battered th' rest of us. But I take it that we've about evened things up by killin' eighteen of 'em--or six of their crowd dead for each one dead in ours. I guess we can call that part of th' business about square. But what I'm gettin' at is, if it hadn't been for the Indians we'd never have come up this valley; an' so we'd never have struck th' King's symbol trail at all."

"But what good did it do us to find it, when we could not follow it?" I asked. "We cannot go back to examine the sign without risking our lives; and unless we do examine it we cannot know where the next one is, and so the trail is lost."

"I've just been waitin'," said Young, "t' see if I was th' only man in this party that G.o.d-a-mighty'd given a pair of eyes to. I guess I am.

Suppose you just get up, Professor, an' turn around, an' take a look at that place where there's a brown mark on th' side of th' rock; an'

suppose th' rest of you look there too. If that isn't th' King's symbol, just as plain as th' noses in all your faces, I'll eat every dead Indian in this canon."

And Young spoke the truth. Just above the cleft whence Pablo had taken the sword, graven so deeply in the rock that after all the weathering of centuries it still remained distinct and clear, was identically the same figure that Fray Francisco in the far past time had represented in his letter, and that was repeated also on the far more ancient piece of gold. Above it was cut an arrow that pointed directly up the canon.

It was a good thing that something came to cheer us just then; for what with the death of Dennis and of our two poor Indians, and our own hurts, and the melancholy feeling that must oppress men always--save those of cruel and hardened natures--when a fight is ended in which they have spilled freely human blood, we all were oppressed sensibly by a consuming sadness.

But here was cheer indeed. Not only had we surely found the trail at last, but we found it leading in precisely the direction that at that moment we desired to go. For us to return down the valley to the open country, we knew was full of most signal danger; for the Indians who so unaccountably had declined to take part in attacking us a.s.suredly were lying in wait for us by the way. Our only chance to escape them was to strike into the mountains; and the sign that we now had gave promise that we should find some sort of a path along which we might go.

Therefore it was with good heart that we set about getting as far into the depths of the canon as possible before night should be wholly upon us; trusting, in regard to possible pursuit, somewhat to the superst.i.tion of the Indians which so unaccountably yet so obviously had been aroused, and also to the wholesome dread that they must have of us upon finding that every one of their companions had been slain. The bodies of our poor Otomis we placed in a deep fissure in the rock, and there heaped stones upon them, while Fray Antonio said over them the briefer office; but the body of Dennis we carried with us, that we might give him a more tender and reverent burial in grat.i.tude for his brave struggle to save our lives when he knew that his own life was lost. As for the eighteen dead Indians--who had invited the death that so promptly had come to them--we did not bother ourselves about them at all. We left them to the coyotes.