"Man alive!" he said. "Where are you hurt? Tell us the rest of it while I fix you up. Jim, get that plaster and scissors out of my saddle-bags. We mustn't lose him just now."
Off came the serape from the old man's shoulders and an awful gash was discovered. His left arm told of an arrow, and there was a deep cut on his head. He was tough indeed to have carried all those hurts with him across the Rio Grande.
"I'm surgeon enough," remarked the colonel. "I don't believe he can live, boys, but we must do the best we can. Put him on his mule."
The wounds had been dressed with much care and skill, but the wounded man had hardly seemed to think of them. Briefly and clearly he told of his scouting beyond the river; of a meeting with Castro and then with the party of Lipans. There had been an attempt to rejoin the Texans, but in making it the entire force of Great Bear, called out by the return of the horse-thieves from the hacienda, had suddenly swarmed around them. Tetzcatl had escaped mainly because he was on foot, but a lance-thrust in the dark and the arrows that fell like snow had done their work upon him. Here he was now, to say as persistently as ever,—
"Gold! The treasure of Montezuma."
"What do we care for gold just now?" grumbled Jim Cheyne. "I'm thinkin' of the ha'r on my head."
Tetzcatl raised his uninjured arm, as he sat upon his mule, and pointed toward the hacienda.
"Bravo's lancers," he said, "sweeping the whole country."
"Fact!" said Jim, but Tetzcatl now pointed northward.
"Great Bear and his Comanches all the way to the Alamo."