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

In the course of this conference we made short work of our preparations for departure. Rayburn's experience in fitting out engineering parties had given him precisely the knowledge required for putting our own little party promptly and effectively in the field; and in this matter, and in all practical matters connected with the expedition, he took the lead. He and Young already possessed the regulation frontier outfit of arms—a Winchester rifle and a big revolver—which they increased by another big revolver apiece; and I armed myself similarly with a pair of revolvers and a Winchester: concerning the use that I should make of which, in case need for using them arose, I had very grave doubts indeed. Fray Antonio declined to carry any arms at all; and after he had accidentally discharged one of my pistols, which he had picked up to examine, so that the ball went singing by my ear and actually cut through the brim of Young's hat, there was a general disposition to admit that the less this godly man had to do with carnal weapons the safer would it be for all the rest of us. Young's hat was a battered Derby, and about as unsuitable a hat for wear in Mexico as possibly could be found; but for some unknown reason he was very much attached to that hat, and he was so wroth over having a hole shot through it in that unprovoked sort of way that he manifested a decided coolness towards Fray 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 a revolver by doing some very creditable shooting with mine (at mark that I had stuck up in the corral, in order that I might gain ease in the use of this unknown weapon), I delighted him inexpressibly by buying him a pistol for his very own. I think that Pablo, upon becoming the possessor of that revolver, at once grew two inches taller. The way that he strutted as he wore it, and his eager thrusting forward of his left hip, so that this gallant piece of warlike furniture might be the most conspicuous part of him, were a joy to witness. For a time his mouth-organ was entirely neglected; and coming quietly into the corral one day, I found him engaged in exhibiting the revolver to El Sabio; who regarded it with a slightly bored expression that I do not think Pablo took in good part.

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

Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two OtomÍ Indians 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 his head that would have made the fortune of an old-time minstrel. He and Pablo took to each other at once—though, since neither of them spoke a word of the other's language, music was their only channel of communication—and Pablo presently presented us with a rendering on his mouth-organ, from a strictly Mexican stand-point, of "Rory O'More" that quite took our breaths away. While Pablo played, Dennis would stand by with his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention as closely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and when Pablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted bravura passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisy now, me darlint! That's good enough Mexican, but it ain't good Irish at all, 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 a volume of music that could have given odds to an entire brass band. Poor Dennis! Only the other day I heard an organ-grinder grinding forth "Rory O'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 showed himself to be made, came suddenly over me, and there was a choking in my throat, and my eyes were full of tears.

Well, it was a good thing—or a bad thing, as you please to put it—that we could not see far into the future that morning when we packed our mules in the corral of the hotel, and set out upon the march that was to 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 my conscience pricked me a little that I suffered him to go with us—I had bought him the rain-coat of palm leaves for which his heart so long had pined. What with this and his revolver, and the delight of going upon a journey (for he had very fully developed that love of travel which is so strong 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 so many foolish things that even El Sabio looked at him reproachfully—this was when he tried to place on that small donkey's back some of the heavy pack-stuff destined for the back of one of the big mules—and we got along much better with his room, as he presently enabled us to do, than we did with his company. When the time for starting came, we had quite a hunt for him; and we might not have found him at all had we not been guided by the sound of music to the sequestered spot to which he had retired in order to give vent to his pent-up feelings by playing on his mouth-organ "Pop goes the weasel"—an air that Young had been whistling that morning and that had mightily taken Pablo's fancy.

We made rather an imposing cavalcade as we filed forth from the great gate of the hotel, and took our way along the Calle Nacional, the principal street of the city, towards the Garita del Poniente. Fray Antonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed by Dennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the two OtomÍ Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablo certainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have told him so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, this privilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of the State as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It was understood, indeed, that he now was going forth on one of his missionary visits among the mountain tribes, and simply rode with us, so far as our ways should lie together, for greater security. I had announced that I was going among the Indians again in order to increase my knowledge of their manners and customs; and Rayburn—to whom the rest of the party was supposed to belong—had stated that he was taking the field in order to make a new reconnaissance along the line of the projected railway. It was in order to maintain these several fictions that we went out by the western gate, and that we continued for two days our march westward before turning to our true course.

Of our progress during the ensuing fortnight it is not necessary that I should speak, for beyond the ordinary incidents of travel no adventures befell us. During this period we went forward steadily and rapidly; and at the end of it we had covered more than three hundred miles, and had come close to where—supposing our rendering of the Aztec map to be correct, and that we had rightly collated it with the dead monk's letter—the mission of Santa Marta had stood three centuries and a half before. There was no possibility that any trace of this mission would be found; but every rock that we came to was most eagerly scrutinized, for on 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 wild and desolate. Far away along the western horizon rose a range of mountains whose bare peaks cut a jagged line along the sky. The country between us and these far-away mountains was made up of many parallel ranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallow valleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; and the only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the most dismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever has been given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through this tangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which long practice had developed to a high degree, was required to enable us to pick a way through so thorny a wilderness. At times the Indians with their machetes, and Dennis with his axe, had to cut a path for us; and despite all our care, our own hands were cut and torn, and the legs of our poor beasts were red with blood.

The deadly dryness of this arid waste added to our discomfort. A strong dry wind blew steadily from the north, building up out of fine dust which was over all the surface of the baked ground little whirl-winds—remolinos, as the Mexicans call them—which went dancing down the valleys as though they were ghostly things; and occasionally, when one of these struck us, we were covered with a prickly dust that fairly burned our skins. What water we got was to be had only by digging in the arroyos which traversed the centre of each valley longitudinally; and although this water always was muddy, and had a strongly alkaline taste, it is the only thing that I remember with pleasure in all that weary land. Of animal life there was nothing to be seen, save a-plenty of rattlesnakes; and a few great buzzards which wheeled above us from time to time as though with the intention of keeping track of us until we should fall down and die of thirst and weariness, 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 close to the great western range of mountains, and our camp that night was made in the mouth of a little valley that opened from among the foot-hills. The night before we had made a dry camp, and for the whole of the twenty-four hours we had had but a pint of water apiece. Pablo, I am sure, had given half of his own scant allowance to El Sabio. The other animals—it was all that we could do for them—had only their dusty mouths and nostrils wiped out with a wet sponge. They were pitiable objects, with their bleeding legs, their haggard eyes, their out-hanging tongues, and their quivering flanks. As Fray Antonio unsaddled his horse I saw that there were tears in his eyes; but the rest of us, I fear, were too thoughtful of our own misery to feel much sorrow for the misery of our beasts.

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

Our well was sunk in the broad sandy bottom of the arroyo, in the midst of a narrow and delectably grassy valley between two foot-hills. And the abundance and the sweetness of the water, as well as the presence of grass, showed us that but a little way up this valley there must be an open stream. We drank, and our beasts drank, until all of our skins were nigh to bursting; and the abundance of water was so great that we even could wash the dust at last from our parched faces and necks and arms; and much like raw beef our skins looked when our washing was ended, and the stinging of them was as though we had been whipped with nettles. It was our intention now to leave the plains and to march along the edge of the foot-hills parallel with the main range, otherwise we should not have ventured thus to wash ourselves. In a region where alkali dust is in the air, washing is to be shunned; for each time that the 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 the arid plains than because we had any strong hopes of thus finding the way of which we were in search that we had decided to change our line of march. 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 its trustworthiness as a guide. After all, it was not in the least a map in the true meaning of the word; and that it should show us rightly our way depended not only upon our having interpreted correctly its curious symbolism, but also upon the correctness of the interpretation that Mexican archÆologists had given to the map of the first Aztec migration—of which map, as we believed, our map was a reserved and secret part. If either interpretation were wrong, then we might be hundreds of miles distant from the region in which the way marked by gravings of the King's symbol should be sought.

Four or five hours of daylight still remained to us after we had dug our well, and with the delicious water flowing into it had satisfied our thirst; but we had no intention of going farther that day. We had no need to hobble the animals, for they could be trusted to stay near the water-hole while they feasted on the grass, and we needed food and rest quite as much as they did. Young and Dennis together got us up a famous meal, and when it was ended we lighted our pipes and held a sort of council of war. That we might talk the more freely, in both English and Spanish, we drew away a little from where the two OtomÍ Indians and Pablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennis take a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might know something 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 expedition should 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's symbol, our quest fairly had a beginning, being no longer a matter of mere hope and conjecture, we then would give Dennis and Pablo and the two Indians some notion of what we intended doing; with the option of deciding for themselves whether or not they would have a part in it. And the thought never once occurred to our minds that circumstances might arise of such a nature that neither they nor we would have any choice in the 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 the map showing the great Aztec march. Yet the more that we councilled the less could we come to any reasonable conclusion as to what was best for us to do. As nearly as we could tell from the strange guides that we needs must be led by, we had beaten thoroughly the region where once the mission of Santa Marta was; and not a trace of the gravings on the rocks had we found. To go over this region again, searching still more minutely, was too great an undertaking even to be thought of; and yet the only alternative to this painful course seemed to be that we should abandon our search altogether; in short, we were completely at sea.

"What I think," said Young, "is that that old dead monk, an' that old dead Cacique, have set up a job on us. They're both of 'em lyin' like fiddlers; that's what's th' matter with them. There ain't any hidden city, or hidden treasure, or hidden d——n anything; it's all a fraud from beginnin' t' end. I vote t' pull up stakes an' go home."

A cool refreshing wind was beginning to sweep down to us from the mountains; but it was blowing only in puffs as yet, for the night would not be upon us for several hours. Borne faintly and fitfully upon this uncertain wind came to us the strains of "Rory O'More"; with which melody, as we inferred, Dennis was beguiling his solitude while he explored the route that we were to take the next day. Pablo, sitting comfortably on the grass, his back propped against the back of El Sabio, also caught the sound; and straightway began to play an accompaniment on his mouth-organ to Dennis's distant singing. The strains gradually grew louder, showing that Dennis was returning; but when they stopped suddenly we thought that he had only tired of the sound of his own voice, 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 was evident that Dennis was running from something; and the danger was likely 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 explanation of his silence was plain enough, ten seconds later, as he came around the shoulder of the hill, staggered in among us, and fell on the grass at our feet—with the blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and with an arrow clear through his breast.

"Indians!" he gasped, with an effort that brought a torrent of blood spurting 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 on earth. As he spoke, a fresh outburst of blood came from his nostrils and mouth, a quiver went over him—and then he was dead. I do not believe that many men would have done what Dennis did: run a good quarter of a mile with an arrow through his lungs, and then die exulting because he had succeeded in warning the camp.

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 OtomÍ 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 OtomÍ 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.