Over rolled the adobe fragments which concealed the cash, and out came bag after bag, cast down with a chink to be at once caught up by eager hands and opened. It was a breathless kind of work to make those bags tell what was in them.
"It's a pity so much of it's only silver," remarked Jim, regretfully; "but silver's better'n nothin'."
"Every feller wants more than he's got," said Joe, "but you'd kinder ought to be satisfied this time."
Red Wolf and his father had looked on in silence, but now the chief beckoned to his son and walked out.
"Ugh!" he said. "Red Wolf tell story. Talk Mexico. Long trail? Heap fight?"
All that remained to be told of the trip with Tetzcatl came out rapidly, until the mountain pass was reached and the doings in the cavern.
"Ugh!" sharply exclaimed Castro. "Shut mouth! Montezuma bad medicine! Texan all die. Big Knife go under. Red Wolf? No! Red Wolf Indian. No hurt him. Lose hair if he talk."
He said more, but his entire meaning seemed to be that it was a well-understood doctrine that any white adventurer learning the secrets of the Aztec gods was a doomed man. They would surely follow him up and kill him. It was not so bad for a full-blooded Indian, but even a Lipan would do well to forget anything he had heard or seen that belonged to the bloody mysteries of the evil "manitous" of the old race. It was evidently a deeply rooted superstition, and Red Wolf was quite ready to accept it fully. They returned to the ruin in time to hear Bowie remark,—
"Two hundred thousand, pretty nigh, dollars and doubloons. Now, boys, a thousand apiece for taking it in. All the rest goes to fight Santa Anna."
"That's the talk!" said the rangers, and the horses were led up to receive their loads.