All these measures having been carefully taken, the horses and their riders rested. Fresh and of good cheer, the next morning, at daybreak, the little troop started in the direction of the desert. We will say nothing of the journey, save that it was successful and accomplished under the most favourable auspices: no incident occurred to mar its monotonous tranquillity. The Comanches and their friends crossed the desert like a tornado, with that headlong speed of which they alone possess the secret, and which renders them so dangerous when they invade the Mexican frontiers.
On arriving in the prairies of the Sierra de los Comanches, Eagle-head ordered the Jester and his warriors to await him in a camp which he formed on the skirt of a virgin forest, in an immense clearing on the banks of an unknown stream, which, after a course of several leagues, falls into the Rio del Norte, and then departed with his comrades. The sachem foresaw everything. Although he placed entire confidence in the Jester, he did not wish, through prudential motives, to let him know the site of the placer. At a later date he had cause to congratulate himself on this step.
The hunters pushed on straight for the mountains, which rose before them like apparently insurmountable granitic walls; but the nearer they approached the more the mountains sloped down. They soon entered a narrow gorge, at the entrance of which they were forced to leave their horses. It was probably owing to this apparently futile circumstance that this placer had not yet been discovered by the Indians, for the redskins never, under any circumstances, dismount. It may justly be said of them, as of the Guachos of the Pampas, in the Banda Oriental and Patagonia, that they live on horseback.
By a singular accident during one of his hunts, a deer which Eagle-head had wounded entered this gorge to die. The chief, who had been following the animal for several hours, did not hesitate to go in quest of it. After traversing the whole length of the gorge he reached a valley, a kind of funnel formed between two abrupt mountains, which, except on this side, rendered access not only difficult, but impossible. There he found the deer expiring on a sand sprinkled with gold dust, and sown with nuggets winch sparkled like diamonds in the sunshine.