The Mountain of Gold.
After so fatiguing a march, it was necessary to make a longer halt than usual. We stayed by the arroyo all that day and the following night. But the hunters longed to drink from the Prieto itself; and the next morning we drew our pickets, and rode in the direction of that river. By noon we were upon its banks.
A singular stream it was, running through a region of bleak, barren, and desolate mountains. Through these the stream had forged its way by numerous cañons, and rushed along a channel at most places inaccessible. It was a black and gloomy river. Where were its sands of gold?
After riding for some distance along its banks, we halted at a point where its bed could be reached. The hunters, disregarding all else, clambered eagerly over the steep bluffs, and descended to the water. They hardly stayed to drink. They crawled through narrow interstices, between detached masses of rock that had fallen from above. They lifted the mud in their hands, and washed it in their cups; they hammered the quartz rock with their tomahawks, and pounded it between great stones. Not a particle of the precious metal could be found. They must either have struck the river too high up, or else the El Dorado lay still farther to the north.
Wet, weary, angry, uttering oaths and expressions of disappointment, they obeyed the signal to march forward.
We rode up the stream, halting for the night at another place where the water was accessible to our animals.
Here the hunters again searched for gold, and again found it not. Mutinous murmurs were now spoken aloud. “The gold country lay below them; they had no doubt of it. The chief took them by the San Carlos on purpose to disappoint them. He knew this would prevent delay. He cared not for them. His own ends were all he wanted to accomplish. They might go back as poor as they had come, for aught he cared. They would never have so good a chance again.”
Such were their mutterings, embellished with many an oath.
Seguin either heard not or did not heed them. He was one of those characters who can patiently bear until a proper cue for action may offer itself. He was fiery by nature, like all Creoles; but time and trials had tempered him to that calmness and coolness that befitted the leader of such a band. When roused to action, he became what is styled in western phraseology a “dangerous man”; and the scalp-hunters knew it. He heeded not their murmurings.
Long before daybreak, we were once more in our saddles, and moving onward, still up the Prieto. We had observed fires at a distance during the night, and we knew that they were at the villages of the “Club” Apache. We wished to pass their country without being seen; and it was our intention, when daylight appeared, to “cacher” among the rocks until the following night.