The Aztec Treasure-House Part 5

IX.

THE CAVE OF THE DEAD.

Very dismal was our procession of faintly see figures moving cautiously through that wild solitude. At its head went Rayburn, leading his horse, on which was Dennis's dead body; all of us, being bruised and cut and bleeding, walked slowly and painfully; and behind us, ghastly forms torn by bullets and crushed by blows, lay the slain Indians in all manner of unnatural att.i.tudes, made yet more hideous and fantastical by the gathering gloom of night. Indeed, night now was so close upon us that had not the canon in which we were run east and west, we would have been for some time past in darkness. As it was, though shut off from the west by the great range of mountains, a faint light came down into its depths from the still bright eastern sky, where lingered ruddy reflections of the sunset: and so we could see to pick our way, along the edge of the little stream, among the rough ma.s.ses of rock and trunks of trees which had fallen from above.

Our march ended sooner than we had counted on. Before we had accomplished more than half a mile of this rough travelling, there loomed before us a wall of rock which shut in the end of the canon, and which rose as high and as sheer as did the canon's sides. Our hearts sank within us, for we perceived that we were in a cul-de-sac; whence escape was possible only along the way by which we had come--and so to return, with the Indians still in wait for us, was to walk straight into the jaws of death. And, further, if our course in this direction was cut off, it was evident that the King's symbol graved upon the rock at the entrance of the canon was a useless and misleading sign.

In the hope that we might find a sharp turn, not to be perceived until we were close upon it, we pressed on through the dusk until we came to the very end of the canon, and the dark wall of rock that barred our way rose directly above our heads. And then we found, not a turn in the canon, but a narrow opening (through which came forth the little stream) into the body of the mountain itself. Yet we hesitated about entering this black gap--for who could tell what depths, unseen in that dense darkness, we might not plunge into headlong?

Much dry pine wood, branches and whole trees, lay about us in the canon; and of this apt material Rayburn presently constructed a great torch.

Lighting this in the open canon was not to be thought of, for while we felt tolerably certain that the main body of our enemies had not followed us, we could not be wholly certain that they were not close upon our heels and ready to open upon us with a volley of arrows and spears. Rayburn therefore struck a wax-match--with which excellent article of Mexican manufacture we were supplied plentifully--and with this to light his way, entered the narrow pa.s.s; and in his wake the rest of us followed. Almost in a moment the walls on each side of us spread out beyond the reach of the narrow circle of light, and we perceived that we were come into a cave. But before we could at all discern our surroundings the match was blown out by a sudden suck of wind setting in from the entrance, and we were in thick darkness. The air around us was so sweet and so fresh that we knew that the cave must be large, and with more than one opening--as, indeed, the suck of wind inward through the pa.s.sage by which we entered clearly showed. While Rayburn struck another match, wherewith to light the torch, we all stood still in our places; and certain tremors went through our b.r.e.a.s.t.s because of the eeriness of our surroundings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAVE OF THE DEAD]

When the great torch blazed up, and threw everywhere save towards the high roof a flood of light, a real and rational fear took possession of us. The cave was nearly circular, and at its back, directly facing the entrance, was a roughly hewn ma.s.s of stone on which rested a huge stone figure--identical with the figures in the Mexican National Museum to which Le Plongeon, the discoverer of one of them, at Chichen-Itza, has given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this impa.s.sive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause, as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows, facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly, considering that our rifles were outside the cave and that we had with us only our revolvers, our momentary thrill of terror was highly natural.

Yet it was only momentary. The Indians, undisturbed by our presence and by the sudden blaze of light, remained unmoved in silent wors.h.i.+p of their G.o.d; and Rayburn, the first of us to recover equanimity, set all our fears to flight as he exclaimed: "These are not the fighting kind.

Every man Jack of 'em is as dead as Julius Caesar. We've struck an Indian bone-yard."

Here, then, was the reason why a part of the force that had attacked us had drawn off when we made our stand at the mouth of the canon that led to this home of the dead. Yet when, by the light of the torch, we examined our silent fellow-tenants of the cave, it did not seem that they had been placed there in recent times. Indeed, the more that Fray Antonio and I looked closely at their wrappings and noted the way in which their mummied forms had been ranged before this idol--that certainly belonged to a primitive time--the more were we inclined to believe that this weird sepulchre belonged to the very far back past.

But for the moment it mattered not to us whence these dead forms came: the essential matter was that while we remained in the cave with them we were in absolute safety.

"Well," said Young, when we had reached this comforting conclusion, "since it's a sure thing that we're all right here, I move that we make ourselves comfortable. Let's bring in th' stock, an' get th' packs off; an' then we'll build a fire an' eat another supper. Fightin' Indians is hungry work, an' I feel as if I hadn't had anything to eat for a week"--which suggestions were so reasonable that we at once proceeded to act upon them.

It was hard work for us, wounded and sore and tired as we were, to unfasten the pack-cords; and still harder work to collect the wood for our fire. But we managed to accomplish it all at last; and most comforting and refres.h.i.+ng was our supper amid those extraordinary surroundings. There was even cheerfulness about our meal--and yet over in the shadows at the back of the cave, touched now and then by a brighter flash of firelight, lay before the heathen altar of old the body of our poor Dennis; and close beside us were the long rows of dead Indians. I sometimes have thought that it was strange that we then had any heart to eat at all, surrounded by so desolate a company. But there is that about killing one's fellow-creatures, and being in imminent peril of being killed one's self, I have found, that blunts for a while the souls of those who survive and makes them careless of death's awful mystery. As the fire crackled and blazed, giving out a plentiful warmth that in that chill place was most grateful to our aching bodies, our spirits seemed to brighten with its brightness; and when the rich smell of strong coffee mingled with the smell of stewing meats told that Young's cooking was nearly ended, we sniffed hungrily and eagerly; and when we actually fell to upon our meal I remember that we even laughed over it.

Yet it is but just to Fray Antonio to say that his fine spirit did not fall to the level of grossness that ours were brought to by what, as it seems to me, was an instinctive gladness on the part of our fleshly bodies that, for a while longer, they would not return to the dust whereof they were made. Through our meal he sat gravely silent, yet with so sweet and so tender an expression upon his gentle face that in his silence there was no suggestion of reproof. And when our meal was ended, and we were for stretching out upon our blankets before the fire and smoking our pipes comfortably, he reminded us, with no touch of harshness in his voice, that a last duty was claimed of us by our dead companion.

And, truly, the funeral ceremonies over Dennis in that strange place of burial made the most curious ending of a man that ever I saw. In the fine dry sand wherewith the cave was bedded, directly in front of the altar on which was the heathen idol, we dug his grave--toilsomely and with pain, for all of our bodies were hurt and sore. While we labored, two great torches flared upon the altar, propped against the idol; and long, flickering rays of light shot out to us across the mummied bodies of the dead Indians--striking across their gleaming teeth, so that they seemed to smile at us--from the huge blaze of the fire.

From our stores Fray Antonio took out a little salt, and from the clear spring that bubbled up within the cave a cup of water, which elements he blessed and mingled as the rites of his Church prescribed; and with the water thus consecrated he sprinkled the body lying before the heathen altar, while his strong, sweet voice chanted the _De Profundis_ so that all the cave rang with the rich melody of the holy strain, and our own b.r.e.a.s.t.s were thrilled by it. Gently we bore the body of poor Dennis from its resting-place before the altar to its last resting-place in the grave that we had dug there, while Fray Antonio said the _Miserere_; and as with our pack-ropes we lowered the body into the earth, the priest sang the _Benedictus_, with its promise of a better life to come; and then a prayer ended all, and we filled in the grave.

"I'm Congregational, myself," Young said, when our work was finished; "at least I was brought up that way; an' I'm down on th' Scarlet Woman from first t' last. But I go in for lettin' folks believe what they've got a mind to; an' when it cornea t' buryin' 'em it's only square t'

give 'em th' sort of send-off that they'd really like. For a Catholic, I guess Dennis was a pretty good one; an' I must say I think it would 'a'

done him good to see th' way we've given him a first-cla.s.s funeral, just in th' shape he'd 'a' fixed things up for himself. But I guess what we've been at would have everlastin'ly shook up these dead fellows here, if they could have come t' life for about five minutes while it was goin' on!"

There was an element of grim humor in this suggestion of Young's that tickled my fancy; and it was, indeed, allowing for the quaintness of his phrasing of it, but an expression of my own thoughts. But my reflection was upon the curious incongruity of it all, and upon the way in which religious faiths supplant each other; even as the different races of men who formulate them and believe in them supplant each other upon the face of the earth. Together in this same cave were now the dead of two faiths and two races. Who could tell what dead of other faiths and races yet unborn would lie here also before the end of time should come?

When all was ended we were glad enough to lie down to give our battered bodies rest in sleep. We felt sure that no attack would be made upon us; yet we rolled some fragments of rock into the narrow entrance to the cave, arranging them in such a way that they would fall with a crash should any attempt be made to move them from outside. And, this precaution having been taken, we lay down upon our blankets thankfully, and never troubled ourselves to keep any watch at all.

It was brilliantly light when we awoke, for the rays of the just-risen sun were striking strongly into the cave through its entrance-way; and much light came also through a crevice higher up, and through a great hole in the vastly high roof. Viewed in this clearer light, there was a horrible ghastliness about the mummies ranged in their orderly rows, and presided over by the coa.r.s.ely carved, coa.r.s.ely conceived stone figure that in life they had wors.h.i.+pped as their G.o.d. On this image the suns.h.i.+ne fell full, and we perceived that its position evidently had been chosen carefully, so that the very first ray of light from the rising sun would strike upon it. No doubt, in ancient times, this cave had been a temple as well as a place of sepulchre.

We were well rested by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds, and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament of Fray Antonio s.h.i.+ne out by contrast with our coa.r.s.er make; for while he also suffered pains of the body, his mind was filled with a serene cheerfulness that found expression in kindly, comforting words, by which our flagging spirits were strengthened and upheld. There was in Fray Antonio's nature, surely, a fund of gentle lovingness the like of which I never knew in any other man.

And, in truth, our plight was such that we stood in much need of comforting. Not only were we sick with our many hurts, but we were also prisoners. By the full light of day we examined carefully the cave, and found no outlet to it; and we examined carefully, also, the walls of the canon throughout its full length, and made sure that there was no path leading upward whereby a man could go. And escape down the valley was cut off, for the Indians--who knew, no doubt, the manner of place we were caught in--were on guard and watching for us; which fact came sharply to our knowledge with a half-dozen arrows that dropped among us as we went out a little way beyond the mouth of the canon to see if the way was open to us. Had we been whole, we might have made a dash and fought our way through; but even this poor plan was not possible when our bodies were stiff and sore. Our one comforting thought was that, as we had an abundance of provisions and an ample supply of water, we could hold out for so long a time that the Indians at last would get tired of waiting for us. If they ventured to attack us in the cave, we knew that we could defend ourselves against any number of them successfully. If they simply abandoned the siege, then we would be free without fighting at all. But it was dismal work waiting in that dismal place for one or the other of these two ends to come.

And the fact that the King's symbol had proved a false guide also was a source of deep concern to us. By the full strength of daylight we again examined the graving at the entrance to the canon, and there was no mistaking the way in which the arrow pointed. And, what was even more perplexing and disheartening, we found the graving repeated at the entrance to the cave, and the arrow pointing directly towards the statue of Chac-Mool. It was impossible that this cave, with mummies only for inhabitants, could be the walled city wherein the reserve force of men and treasure had been hid; and yet here, obviously, was the end of the trail. Of this we convinced ourselves by searching the cave exhaustively for another outlet--even sounding the walls in the hope that we might find a pa.s.sage that had been artificially concealed. As Rayburn tersely put it, we were no better than so many rats in a trap with terriers waiting for us outside.

X.

THE SWINGING STATUE.

Four more days went by very wearily. Our wounds were healing--for we all were in good condition as the result of our vigorous life in the open air--but they still kept us in constant pain, and so tended to increase our melancholy. Out in the valley, beyond the mouth of the canon, the Indians maintained their watchful guard. Rayburn tried the experiment of holding a hat and coat out on a pole, standing himself under cover of the rock, and in an instant a pair of arrows went through the dummy; and as one of these came from the right and the other from the left, it was evident that in both directions the valley was picketed.

We were safe enough for the time being, of course. Even should the Indians overcome their superst.i.tious dread and enter the canon--which was not probable, for they had not even ventured to remove their dead--they could not possibly make a successful attack upon us in the cave. Behind the breastwork that we had built in the narrow entrance, and armed with our repeating rifles and revolvers, we were absolutely secure.

"It's not a bad thing that we're safe," said Young, "an' that we've got plenty of grub an' water, an' even lots of firewood; if we've got t' be shut up here we might as well be comfortable. But what I want is a through ticket for home. This treasure business has gone back on us th'

worst kind. That old Fray Francisco had his eye shut up by th' tall talk of th' fellow who pretended to be converted; and th' Cacique just promiscuously lied. That's about the size of it. An' for bein' fools enough to swallow their stuff, here we are, as Rayburn says, like rats in a cage."

There was so much probability in what Young said that I did not attempt to argue with him; yet was I convinced that in what Fray Francisco had written, and still more in what the dying Cacique had said to me, there was a substantial element of truth.

Finding that n.o.body replied to him, for all of us were sore at heart and so disposed to silence, Young turned to the statue of Chac-Mool and proceeded to abuse it vigorously, on the ground that it was an idolatrous product of the Aztec race that was at the root of all our troubles. For, as he truly said, had there been no Aztecs to begin with, our departure on a wild-goose chase after an Aztec treasure-house would have been an impossibility. His attention having been thus fixed upon the idol, his habit of investigation got the better of his ill-will towards it, and he mounted the altar to examine it more closely--continuing the while to address it in language that was eminently unparliamentary.

"A pretty-looking sort a specimen _you_ are!" he said, in a tone of vast contempt. "But you're about what I'd expect folks like that friend of th' Professor's, th' Cacique, t' wors.h.i.+p. It takes a low sort of a heathen, even in his blindness, t' bow down to a stone like you--with your twisted head, an' your stubby legs, an' your little fryin'-pan over your stomach. Why, where I come from they wouldn't have you even for a stone settee in a park. No, you're not fit even t' sit on--unless, maybe, it's on th' flat top of your crooked head;" and by way of testing this possibility, Young seated himself on the head of Chac-Mool.

And then a very extraordinary thing happened. The idol, and the great slab of stone on which it rested and of which it was a part, slowly moved; the head sinking, and the other end of the slab, on which the legs were carved, rising in the air! Young sprang up with a cry as he felt the stone sinking beneath him; and the figure, relieved of his weight, settled back into its former position with a slight jar. In a moment that the slab was in the air there had come from under it a gleam of light.

In the excitement wrought by this strange accident our hurts were forgotten; and we eagerly clambered upon the altar to investigate the matter further, while hope and wonder thrilled our hearts.

"Now, then, Young," said Rayburn, "try it again. It looks as though this idol wasn't all the blackguard things you've been calling it, by a long shot."

"No, I'll be hanged if I'll try it again," Young answered. "Try it yourself, if you want to. How do I know what's goin' t' happen with a stone thing that goes tippin' around that way? I don't mind sayin' that I'm a good deal jolted, an' don't feel like foolin' with it any more.

Try it yourself, if you want to, I say."

"All right," Rayburn answered. "You and the Professor stand here where you can grab me if anything goes wrong. It looks to me as though there was a chance for us of some sort here, and I mean to see what it is."

Young and I stood on each side of Rayburn and held him by the arms as he seated himself on the idol's head. Borne down by his weight, the head slowly sank, the whole fore-end of the stone slab falling away into the rock, and the after-end correspondingly rising and disclosing a squared opening, through which came a strong burst of light. When the head was down to the level of the rock, and the slab stood up at an angle of nearly fifty degrees, the movement ceased. Looking into the opening we saw a flight of a dozen stone steps. On the bottom step the sun shone brightly, and in our faces blew a draught of fresh, sweet air. On the rock, beside the stair-way was carved the King's symbol, with the arrow pointing downward.

"Hurrah!" cried Young. "Here's a way out--an' it looks as if that old monk an' th' Cacique weren't such a pair of blasted liars after all!"

Rayburn jumped up to have a look with the rest of us; but before he could see anything the statue had fallen into place again and the opening was closed. "No matter, we know how to work it, now," he said.

"We must prop it up somehow; that's all. I want to have a look at this thing. There's some mighty good engineering shown in the way the centre of gravity of that stone has been calculated; and there's a good mechanism in the way it's hung. Here she goes again. Just chock it with a bit of rock when I swing it open."

"Well, what I'm interested in," said Young, "is findin' out what sort of a place it'll get us into. It looks to me as if we might be goin' to strike the treasure right smack here."

Much the same notion was in all of our heads by this time, and we were full of eagerness--the statue having been swung again, and propped in place with a fragment of rock--as we went down the little stair. But what we found was only a continuation of the canon--as though, by some curious freak of nature, the thin walls of rock enclosing the cave had been left thus in the very middle of it. Rayburn drew our attention to the fact that we were on the crest of a divide, for a spring that bubbled up here flowed away from us; and this also was a cheering sign that the canon had an outlet. How far away the outlet might be we could not tell; for the canon, half a mile or so from where we stood, bent sharply to the right. But being thus a.s.sured that a way of some sort out of our prison was open to us, we turned to examine the work of the skilled mechanics who in some far past time had set this swinging statue in its place. From below, the simple apparatus, that yet for its fitting required so high a grade of scientific knowledge, was plainly disclosed to us. Into the great slab of stone, presumably running through it from side to side, was set a round bar of metal--the same bright metal of which the sword was made--more than a foot in diameter; and this worked in two concave metal sockets in much the same manner that the sockets of a gun-carriage hold the trunnions of a gun. What struck Rayburn as especially remarkable was the trueness to a circle of both the sockets and the bar; both showing, as he declared, that they had been worked upon a lathe. And he was puzzled, as in the case of the sword, as to the composition of the metal that thus defied oxidization through long periods of time. "Gold is the only thing that fills the bill," he said; "but a bar of gold, even of that size, would bend double under such a strain. I'd give ten dollars for a chance to a.n.a.lyze it--for there's a bigger fortune in putting a metal like that on the market than there is in finding this treasure that we're hunting for: especially if it turns out that there isn't any treasure to find."

"Now, don't you go t' runnin' down that treasure," Young struck in.

"Just now treasure stock is up. Me an' that idol have just boomed th'

market. I'm sorry I called Jack Mullins, or whatever his name is, such a lot of cuss-word names. I take 'em all back. He isn't just th' sort of an idol that I'd pick out t' wors.h.i.+p myself, at least not as a steady thing; but there are good points about him--especially th' way he tips up. I always did like an idol that tipped up. He's done th' square thing by us in gettin' us out all right from th' worst sort of a hole; an' I guess th' best thing we can do is t' yank our traps out of that cave an' get started again. Why, for all we know, th' treasure may be right around that corner."

There was no doubt as to the soundness of Young's suggestion in regard to resuming our march; but the very serious fact confronted us that we now must do our marching on foot. To get the horses and mules down through the narrow opening was simply impossible, and there was nothing for us but to leave them behind. Rayburn looked very grave over this phase of the matter, for leaving the mules meant also that we must leave the greater part of our ammunition and stores. That these things would be abundantly safe in the cave, for any length of time, was not to the purpose; the essential matter was that we would be deprived of them. It was hard, too, to think that our animals would fall into the hands of the Indians--for our only course with them must be to turn them loose in the canon, whence they certainly would go out in search of pasture into the valley, and so be captured; but it was still harder to think that we must go ourselves on foot and with a scant outfit of supplies.

It was not very cheerfully, therefore, that we went back into the cave and began to sort out from our packs the articles which would be absolutely necessary to our preservation in the rough work among the mountains that probably was before us; and our shoulders already ached a little in antic.i.p.ation of the heavy loads which they must bear.