“That’s no gold; it’s rubbish; worth nothing,” he blurted out.
Not gold? But not an Indian believed him; not one of them could see anything but jealousy or intentional insult in this frank piece of information; and the chief and his followers turned threateningly upon him. One and another took up the cry, and Froebel, who had left his only pistol in his holster, fancied that he saw death staring him in the face; for the excitement that he had created in the little community could not be quelled by a man who only knew about a thousand 210 words of the language. He dodged between two mules and into the open; but the crowd of loiterers there had already invented another version of his crime; he was running off with their gold! There was nothing for it but pure and undisguised flight, and he set off as fast as his legs could carry him to the spot where the Niquirans were awaiting him. Sticks, stones, and mud whizzed about his head, and he could hear swift feet pursuing him.
Luckily, it was a time of day when no Indian, however fleet of foot, will run very far or fast; his pursuers turned out to be only some mischievous boys who were not going to throw away an opportunity of pelting a fugitive; and, at sight of the grim-looking Niquiran horsemen, who began to move a step or two forward, even these returned to their camp. Mounting his horse again, Froebel looked back and saw that the villagers were making ready to repel any advance of the strangers; they were again collecting their weapons and shouting defiance at the Niquirans. Doubtless these would have had a very easy victory; for they were better armed and infinitely finer men, in the habit of fighting at a moment’s notice; while the simple villagers had had no quarrel with their neighbours for a quarter of a century.
“There is nothing to fight about; it was all my fault,” said Froebel; and he hastily explained the whole matter.
His companions laughed, and turned their horses’ heads; they were happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth folk, to whom the disappointment was far less bitter than to the German; and they rode away cheerily 211 enough, leaving the gold-diggers to bask in their happy ignorance.
As he had nothing better to do, Froebel threw in his lot with the wanderers, and, in this manner, spent many happy months in seeing the country. But, to a man of his restless disposition, even this roving life became wearisome; he returned to Granada and there fell in again with two of the Yankee traders with whom he had arrived. For the next year or so he travelled with them, visiting almost every town in Central America; and at last decided to return with them to the States by way of Mexico.
Mexico, as will be seen in a later chapter, was in a state of great unrest at this time (1853); and, in the wilder parts, it was unsafe for white men to travel without escort; but, as troops of soldiers were often scouring the country, the three strangers relied on being able to travel with one or other of these. They had a pleasant ride through Guatemala, visited the wonderful ruins at Uxmal in Yucatan: ruins nearly a thousand years old, that tell practically all that can be told of the civilisation of the ancient Mexicans; and at length entered upon the longer and more perilous portion of their trip.
But fortune was more favourable to them than to the generality of Mexican travellers in those days; for they covered the long journey, of over a thousand miles, from the frontier to Chihuahua in North Mexico, without a single misadventure. While in this city, Froebel discovered, first that he was leading too uneventful a life for his constitution, and secondly, that his purse was now empty, for while his companions 212 had been ants, he had been a cricket. It happened that the Mexican Commander-in-Chief, General Trias, was going north to put down a rising, and Froebel obtained from him the post of temporary transport-agent; he was to follow the troops with ten waggons and a hundred mules, and assist generally in the commissariat.
Every day, from the time of starting, horrible reports of atrocities committed by the Apache Indians reached him. In one place, fourteen women and children had been slaughtered; in another, a flock of sheep had been stolen and the shepherds killed; while in a third, the prairie had been deliberately set on fire at a time when the wind could not fail to carry the flames to a cluster of huts, many of whose occupants were burned to death. Yet the soldiers could not so much as get a sight of the culprits, who, on their fleet horses, made nothing of covering fifty miles in a few hours.
But one night, when Froebel and his muleteers were encamped some few hundred yards behind the main body, a volley of musketry sounded close at hand; and an attendant, who was in the act of handing the transport agent his supper, fell dead. The muleteers snatched up brands from the fire for torches, and, gun in hand, ran in search of the enemy.