Chapter II: Part 2

No further attempt was made to locate the furnace till 1878, when a man named Medlin, hearing the story, engaged to herd sheep for a ranchman whose ranch was situated in that section of the country. Every day while herding sheep he prosecuted his search for the furnace. Within the year his search was rewarded with success. He found the ruins of the old furnace, the spring, the tree with the rock in the knot hole, and also the high hill half a mile due north, but he did not find the treasure.

He did find, however, on digging into the furnace, the skeleton of a man, and by its side a “miner’s spoon” made of burnt soapstone, used for amalgamating minerals with quicksilver. Nancy Evans Bower, who told this story in the News, says that Medlin, while showing her the spoon, told her the story substantially as related above. Shortly afterwards Medlin left for South America. She, too, from Medlin’s description, found the furnace and the tree with the rock in the knot hole. She believes that the story is true; that the treasure is there; and that anyone who will take the trouble to procure a copy of the chart from the archives of Mexico can easily find it.

LOST MINES OF THE LLANO AND SAN SABA

By Julia Estill

I

A LEGEND OF THE BLANCO MINE

[There seems to be some dispute as to whether or not the famed Blanco really existed. Tradition has it that the Blanco River was named for him. However, Z. T. Fulmore in his History and Geography of Texas as Told in County Names, page 270, says that the name Blanco, which means white, “was given to that stream” because it flows “almost its entire length through a white, chalky limestone region.” Almost the same story as that related here is told concerning the Bowie Mine. One treasure hunter told me of “the magic circle,” which is reproduced herewith, as belonging to the Bowie Mine, and in my possession are copies of letters from the R. J. Roland referred to by Miss Estill, describing the site of the Bowie Mine.—Editor.]

Some time before the Mexican War, a Mexican, Blanco by name, discovered a silver and lead mine somewhere in the Llano country, so the story goes. My grandfather, J. W. Wiley, a pioneer of this section of Texas, now an old gentleman of eighty-four, declares that he has been on the verge of discovering the lost mine several times. Even now, he is certain, were he in the hill country and given leave by his “tyrannical relatives” to climb Packsaddle Mountain alone, he could go to the very spot where the richest vein of silver and lead ore in Texas lies hidden.

Packsaddle Mountain is in Llano County near Kingsland, close to the junction of the Colorado and the Llano rivers in the red granite section of Texas. The mine is said to be in a cave somewhere on or near Packsaddle.

Many years ago, a man by the name of R. J. Roland found the mine, but in order to conceal its whereabouts he placed a huge flat stone over the entrance and covered the stone with loose soil, which in time became so overgrown with grass that no one has been able to locate it. Roland, however, was careful to leave his own marks so that at any time he might return to take from his treasure cave all the ore he wanted.

One day he did return with a pal named Chaney, who was so anxious to locate the mine that he offered Roland one thousand dollars if he would disclose the secret.

It was agreed. The two men wandered over Packsaddle searching in vain. Finally, Chaney, becoming weary and impatient, told Roland emphatically that he was “tired of foolin’”; and his wary companion answered, “Show me the money, and I’ll show you the mine!”

Chaney, however, refused to produce the price unless he was shown the whereabouts of the mine; whereupon Roland turned shortly on his heel, and saying tersely, “Go to hell!” strode angrily down the mountain trail.

That night Roland spent with Mr. Wyatt, on old pioneer living in a cabin surrounded by cedars in a gap at the foot of Packsaddle. Of course, the guest related the incident to his host that evening as they smoked their pipes by the huge fireplace. And when it was time to “turn in,” Roland rose nonchalantly from his seat by the dying embers and, wearily stretching his arms to their full length while yawning portentously, drawled: “And do ye know, Mr. Wyatt, at the very time I tole Chaney to hand me over them thousand dollars, I was a-standin’ right on top uv that there mine!”

A day or so after the stranger’s departure, Mr. Wyatt climbed Packsaddle. In his explorations he found a cave with a wild animal skin upon the floor. In the center of the cave on the skin lay a huge nugget of silver.

Needless to say, mining enthusiasts who were let into the secret came from far and near to search for the lost mine; but, to this day, no one has discovered the hidden vein of metal.

II

THE MYTHICAL BOWIE MINE

In the fall of 1876, when my father, J. T. Estill, and a lawyer friend, D. Y. Portis, who had both been attending district court in Mason, were on their way in a two-horse buggy to court in Menardville, Mr. Portis related to my father “the true story” of the fabulous Bowie Mine. Mr. Portis, an elderly man of perhaps seventy years, was a typical old Southland planter who owned a large farm in Brazoria County. He was a learned man and splendid at repartee; so the two companions, jogging slowly along the long trail to Menard, kept up a lively conversation; while now and then the woods resounded with their hearty laughter.

About fifteen miles from Mason, the soil suddenly changes from a light color to a deep red; and, as the travelers approached this “divide,” father remarked: “This is the beginning of the Red Hill region of the San Saba. We must be in the neighborhood of the old Bowie Mine.”

Quick as a flash his companion answered: “The Bowie Mine is all a myth. I was personally acquainted with a man who, I knew, had been with Bowie on his expedition into the San Saba hills. One evening when a crowd of us young fellows were smoking our pipes around the fire, this old adventurer related unusually marvelous tales of the Bowie Mine and its rich silver ore, which, he said, could just be ‘hacked off with a hatchet.’ The entire crowd became wild with enthusiasm in consequence of his tales, and immediately resolved to fit out an expedition to search for the lost mine. Wagons, teams, and supplies to last several months were gathered, guards were hired to protect us from the Indians, and we set out confidently to seek the mine.”

About this time my father and Mr. Portis reached a place on the road overlooking the valley of the San Saba River; whereupon Mr. Portis expressed surprise that the country had changed so little and pointed out several places where the searching party had camped. Presently he continued: “The old guide would tell our party where to camp; and when camp had been pitched, he would go out into the woods, sometimes remaining all day, presumably hunting for the lost mine. Then we would move and the search would begin all over again.

“Thus the search continued for four or five days without any results. Finally, the party concluded either that the old man knew nothing whatever of the Bowie Mine, or that he would not tell. So the leaders of the expedition took him aside and forcibly expressed their opinions to him, saying that now if he knew where the mine was located, he must tell them—or hang.

“The old guide then broke down and cried: ‘There is no Bowie Mine! It is true that I was with Bowie on his expedition into the hill country, but, candidly, we found no mine. The Indians attacked our party, and I was one of the few that escaped. Then I commenced telling the story of the fabulous mine. And I’ve told it so often that I have actually got to believing it myself. Gentlemen, I have told you the truth. Hang me if you will.’

“Needless to say, the foolish young silver seekers returned to the Brazos bottom, disappointed, yet determined never to tell of their failure to find the famous Bowie Mine.”

TREASURE LEGENDS OF McMULLEN COUNTY

By J. Frank Dobie

Here are some sixteen legends out of a comparatively small section of one county. They will illustrate the fertility in buried treasure legend of all that stretch of Texas, for the most part yet unploughed, lying towards the Rio Grande and populated by Mexicans and by Texans of frontier stock. McMullen County itself has as yet neither railroad nor bank. The people are as yet unhackneyed by the plow or commercial secretary. They still talk a language seasoned with Mexican idiom and honest with the soil’s honesty; they have their old-time dances; they welcome heartily any decent stranger. On the whole, they are as enlightened as the populations that have their ideals molded by real estate agents. Just now oil boomers and railroad promoters threaten to bring their “progress.” Until they bring it, the people will remain individual.

THE ROCK PENS

Excepting the Bowie Mine and the Nigger Gold Mine, no other purported lost treasure in Southwest Texas has caused so much discussion or enticed so many seekers as that of the “Rock Pens.” These “Pens” are variously placed in Live Oak, La Salle, and McMullen counties, generally in McMullen. The “way-bill” quoted below was given me by Mr. E. M. Dubose of Mathis, Texas, who has spent months, perhaps years, in trying to follow out its directions. Many of the details as I give them are also due to him, but the legend has been so familiar to me from my childhood up that I can hardly say to whom I owe it.

The story is that thirty-one mule loads of silver bullion, together with various fine images and other precious articles, were being brought from the mountains of Mexico by Texas bandits who had made a great robbery. They had crossed the Rio Grande in safety and were proceeding north to their rendezvous at San Antonio when they found that the Indians were closing in on them in the rough country west or south—for the river often changes its course—of the Nueces. They knew that an attack was imminent, and they picked the best place they could find in which to make their stand. It was by a small ravine in which was a spring of water, and here they threw up some crude breastworks in the form of two rock pens. In one of the pens they buried the bullion, and then, in order to hide all signs of their secret work, they ran the mules around and around over the disturbed earth. The fight soon followed, and in it all of the Texans but one are supposed to have been killed. He, Daniel Dunham, on his deathbed in Austin, fifty-one years ago, dictated the following “way-bill.”

Austin Texas
April 17th 1873

About six or seven miles below the Laredo Crossing, on the west
side of the Nueces River near the hills, there is or was a tree in
the prairie. Due west from that tree at the foot of the hills at
the mouth of a ravine there is a large rock and under the rock,
there was a small spring of water coming from under the rock, due
east from that rock there is a rock pen or rocks laid around like a
pen and due east a few yards there is another pen of rocks, in that
pen is the spoils of thirty one mule loads.

[Signed] DANIEL DUNHAM

This remarkable document was at his death, which occurred during the eighties, in the possession of a man named X. He had shown it to his sons a few times, but there was an accompanying paper that he had never shown. This accompanying paper he destroyed shortly before his death, or else his wife destroyed it immediately thereafter. One of his own sons conjectured, and certain circumstances have led others to conjecture, that X himself was one of the Texas bandits who invaded the Mexican mines and robbed a rich Mexican church. It is known that X held the way-bill as peculiarly veracious but that he had an overwhelming feeling against undertaking to follow out its directions.

Whether any attempts to find the Rock Pens were made before his death I do not know. A fact is that not long after his death an expedition, of which one of his sons was a member, set out to find the pens. Other “gold hunters” are known to have gone on the search. Therefore it must be that there were other directions in existence than those left by X. Men yet living claim to have seen the pens years and years ago before they knew that there was any significance to them, but though various old rock heaps have been found since, none has ever been found to answer to Daniel Dunham’s description.

The Laredo Crossing mentioned in the way-bill is supposed to be the Nueces crossing on the old San Antonio-Laredo road. That is generally conceded to be on the Henry Shiner Ranch in McMullen County. Nearly all the land in that part of the country is still in large pastures. Much of it is rough, the San Caja, Las Chuzas, and other so-called mountains being in the vicinity. Where it was once open, the country during the last fifty years has grown up in brush so that no man can be sure the pens do not exist until thousands and thousands of acres of uneven land covered with prickly pear, mesquite, black chaparral, “gran haney,” and other thorned brush have been combed. The rocks were never piled high. They have been scattered, perhaps covered over with soil washed down from the hillside. In time of drouth it is a desolate country, and many a tale tells of early travelers perishing in it of thirst. Before the advent of the automobile one treasure-seeking expedition lived for days on jack rabbit meat, so remote were they in that region from supplies.

Sixty or seventy years ago Pate McNeill was coming from Tilden, or Dog Town as it was then called, down to Lagarto with his young wife. They were in a buggy, leading a horse, saddled. Somewhere in the Shiner country they saw a fine looking maverick cow. McNeill got out of the buggy, jumped on his horse, and took after her. When he had roped her and tied her, he looked around and saw that he was right in a kind of pen of rocks. At that time he did not know that great riches appertained to rock pens; so he calmly ran his famous brand of P A T E on the cow and went on down the country. Years later when the story of the Rock Pens came out, he went back and tried to locate the rocks, but the country had changed so much with brush and “washes” that he could never find anything.

“Uncle” Ben Adkins, a veteran of Beeville who guarded the western frontier during the Civil War days to keep cow thieves from driving cattle off to California, tells of a hunter who once stumbled into the pens and thought that he was in a deserted goat camp. Like others, he did not know at the time how close he was to millions.

Pete Staples, an old negro trail driver, tells how, when he was once hunting wild turkeys with Judge Lowe of McMullen County, they stumbled into some curiously placed rocks. “Huh, what’s this?” he said. “Looks mighty funny to me for rocks in this place. Where’d they all cum from and how cum this way? Ain’t no other rocks like thesen for a mile.”

“Natural rocks all right,” said Judge Lowe, “but this is an old pen.” Judge Lowe died something more than a year ago. I have heard that he afterwards tried to find the pens, but failed. Pete, having a firm conviction that it is dangerous to “monkey” with money that some man now dead buried, has never been back to look for the pens, though he declares that men have tried to hire him as a guide and that he could find them, but “ain’t a-guine to.” The pens, according to Pete, are in the Guidan Pasture, which joins the Shiner and comprises some twenty or thirty thousand acres of land.

Another time, a good many years earlier, says Pete, a Mexican who was being chased by an Indian in the Las Chuzas country leaped over a spring of water and as he leaped saw a bar of silver shining in it. Later he went back and hunted for six months without ever finding the spring, much less the silver. It does look, as Pete expresses it, as if that money “ain’t meant” for any of the people who have looked for it. When the man comes along for whom it is “meant,” he will just naturally find it without even trying. Nevertheless, some people are still trying.

The cheering thing about looking for the Rock Pens is that even though the search for them be fruitless, one may stumble upon some other treasure at almost any time, for the whole San Caja Mountain country is rich in lost and buried treasure. Some of the legends follow. For much of the material I am indebted to that interesting tale-teller and one-time eager treasure-hunter, Mr. E. M. Dubose, of Mathis, already referred to. For material not derived from him I try to give specific sources. However, some of it is such common talk in the country and has for so long been a part of me that I cannot always cite exact sources.

A WEEK TOO LATE AT THE LAREDO-SAN ANTONIO CROSSING

Neal Russell was out with two other cowpunchers on the Nueces River. They had extra mounts and a pack outfit and were well supplied. One day while they were hunting cattle they came up on two very old Mexicans. The Mexicans looked scared and acted peculiarly, but they were so old and worn and thin that Russell paid little attention to their secret manner. Finding that they were out of something to eat, he told them where camp was and invited them up for a fill and a rest.

Well, after Russell and his men had come in and waited around a while, the Mexicans appeared. They ate and then, evidently feeling at ease with the Texans, who were talking Mexican like natives, they asked if anyone knew where the old San Antonio and Laredo crossing was.

“Why, yes,” replied Russell, “it is not two hundred yards from here, right down the river. I’ll show it to you in the morning.”

The Mexicans now seemed to think that they had as well take the Texans into confidence, and what seemed the older of the two made this explanation. “I was through this country the last time in 1836. I was with a small detachment of the Mexican army taking a load of money to San Antonio to pay off General Cos’s men. We had gotten a day’s ride north of here when we heard by courier of Santa Anna’s defeat. We knew that it was foolish to go on and so turned back, expecting at any hour to hear the Texans coming up on us. Just before we reached the east side of the Nueces, the front axle of our wagon broke square in two. There wasn’t anything to do but to cut a tree down and from a post hew into shape another axle. We managed to pull out of the road a little way, and set to work.

“As I told you, we were expecting the Texans at any time. As a precaution against their coming we dug a hole right beside the wagon. Then we went off a way and cut two posts, in case one turned out bad. After we had got them back to the wagon and were at work, we all at once heard a galloping as if a whole troop of cavalry was coming down the hills. Pronto, pronto (quickly, quickly), we threw the new logs into the pit we had dug, spread a few skins down, piled the load of coin into them, covered the pit up, turned the wagon upside down over the fresh dirt, and set fire to it. It blazed up; we mounted our horses and rode westward. I don’t know whether what we heard was Texas cavalry or not. I am inclined to think now that it must have been a herd of mustangs. Anyway, we left confident that signs of our digging would be wiped out by the fire and that the Texans would think we had burned our baggage to keep it from falling into their hands.

“So far as I know, I am the only survivor of that escort of Mexicans. I know that no Mexican has ever been back to get the money. I am come now with my old compadre to get it. You see how we are. We started out poorly prepared. Now we are afoot and without provisions. If you will help us, we will share with you.”

The next morning, according to Russell, all five of the men started out with the camp ax and spade. They went to the old crossing, then out a few rods down the river. The old Mexican led them to a row of three little mounds—the knolls common in that country along the river valley. Beyond those three knolls was a stump, and beyond the stump was another knoll.

“That is the place,” whispered the ancient Mexican. He was so eager that he was panting for every word.

The white men rode on slowly, for the Mexicans were on foot and the older was walking in a kind of stumble. When they got fairly around the mound, they saw a pile of fresh dirt. Pitched across it were two old logs. Mesquite lasts a long time, you know, when it is under ground. The men looked down into the hole. It was not very deep and apparently it had not been dug a week. The prints of the coins were yet plain on some of the dirt, and a few tags of rotted skins were about.

Russell said that the Mexicans did not say anything. They were a week too late. When he last saw them they were tottering back to Mexico with what provisions the cowboys could spare.

THE CHEST AT ROCK CROSSING ON THE NUECES

General Santa Anna was going from Laredo to Goliad. [56] While he was fording the Nueces at the old Rock Crossing in the Chalk Bluff Pasture, once a part of the George West Ranch, the Rock Crossing being about twelve miles below the Shiner Crossing, his “pay cart” broke down and a very heavy iron chest filled with gold fell into the river. The river was up; Santa Anna was in great haste to reach Goliad; there was little travel in the country. He decided to leave the chest in the river; so he had it chained to a tree, intending to get it on the way back, for he expected to make short work of subduing the insurgent Texans.

In after years, Pate McNeill, the same man that tied down the maverick heifer in one of the Rock Pens, found a piece of chain tied around an elm tree on the east bank of the river. Still later Dubose found the tree bearing the marks of a chain, but the chain itself was gone. Encouraged by the markings, he, with Stonewall Jackson Wright and Wright’s brother-in-law, Albert Dinn, went to Beeville, about fifty miles distant, and got a four-horse load of tongue-and-groove lumber. They sank a shaft about eighteen feet deep in the middle of the river, a little below the crossing itself, accounting for the push of water. They were able to wall out the water but made poor way with the boiling quicksand.

The first night after the shaft had been started, Stonewall Jackson Wright and Dinn got to arguing as to what disposition should be made of the chest. Wright was in favor of taking it to his ranch, twenty or thirty miles down the country, before opening it. Dinn declared that he would open it at once and that the prize should be divided then and there. The argument waxed so hot that only Dubose’s reminder that they had not yet found the chest prevented a collision.

There is a possibility, some claim, that a part of Santa Anna’s army may have passed back over the same route and have taken the chest with them. However, there is in existence a Mexican way-bill to the treasure. Mr. Whitley of McMullen County says that the chest was buried on the bank under a tree that had a limb straight out over the water, and that the chain around the tree trunk was a piece of log chain from an ox cart. But the tree caved in long ago, the water changed its course, and now there is no sign to go by, though doubtless the chest is somewhere in the vicinity of what is still known as Rock Crossing, a mere name, for it has been decades since a road ran that way.

SAN CAJA MOUNTAIN LEGENDS

The name “San Caja” is significant, though its meaning is in dispute. Some people who should know say that it means Holy, or Sainted, Box; that the word caja, meaning box, alludes to the chest, or chests, of treasure hid in the mountain. But a white man who is native to the San Caja country told me that a very old Mexican once told him that the name was originally Sin Caja, sin meaning without, and caja also meaning coffin; hence, Without Coffin. [57] According to the Mexican, the name was derived from the fact that a man had once been buried on or in the mountain without a coffin, perhaps not buried at all but left out in the open. Either interpretation is appropriate to the legends of the mountain.

Under the mountain is a cave, the entrance to which is on the west side halfway up the mountain. Mexican bandits who preyed on the wagon and mule trains that traveled the San Antonio-Laredo road were accustomed to ride their horses into that entrance. They had a great room underground that they used for a stable. Back of it was their treasure room, “el aparto [apartado] del tesoro,” in which were heaps of gold and silver coins, Spanish doubloons and old Mexican square dollars, golden candle-sticks, silver-mounted and jewel-studded saddles, bits and spurs of precious workmanship, plated firearms, all manner of costly plunder meant for the grandees and the cathedrals, as well as the bullion of mines near at hand—for there were rich mines in that country in the old days of the Spanish.

According to Mexican tradition, after the bandidos had accumulated all this treasure, a terrible dragon came and killed some of them and ran the others away. The dragon had a spiked tail and two heads, and at night one might see fire flashing out of his nostrils. He came to be called el celador del tesoro—the warden of the treasure; and there are Mexicans today who would not think of violating the premises that he still guards.

An addition to the legend was told me by Mr. Whitley. Years ago, as he had heard the story, a certain white man who bore the marks of a borderer was visiting the penitentiary at Huntsville when he suddenly heard himself called in Mexican. He paused. At his side appeared a Mexican, begging to talk to him. The guard consented, and then in his own language the Mexican poured out his tale. [58] He was serving a life sentence in the penitentiary, the sole survivor of a band of murdering brigands. All their booty was still in a cave to the south of the San Caja. If the white man would get it, he might have half, using the other half to free the prisoner. He gave directions about as follows: Go to the southeast side of the mountain; thence go about a mile to two little knobs, then on down a kind of ravine about the same distance, where an opening will be found that enters into the booty hall. The white man set out to follow directions, but he was already old, and death overtook him before he could search out the treasure.

“There are,” says Mr. Whitley, “two knobs on the southeast side of the mountain, but two miles down instead of one, which shows that a Mexican has no sense of distance. In giving directions he always says un (s)pedacito—a little piece—which may mean a half mile or five miles.” Anyhow, the country does not seem to fit the Mexican’s measurements.

To the northwest of the San Caja are the San Cajitas (Little San Cajas); where, according to Mr. Whitley, is another robbers’ cave stored with fine saddles and other plunder left by Mexican bandidos. In it are ladders that were used to descend a hundred feet to the treasure floor. But no man has since the days of the bandits been down into this cave. It is said to be “alive” with rattlesnakes.

While Joe Newberry was bossing a ranch “down in the Sands” twenty-five years ago, an old Mexican who was headed west to hunt for the Rock Pens gave him a chart to nine jack loads of silver bullion buried on top of the San Caja, a certain number of pasos west of a chapote, or persimmon tree, and covered over with a great rock. The Mexicans who buried it were on their way to the City of Mexico from up the Nueces canyon, where the Spanish operated mines long since lost. It was during a terrible drouth; the Nueces had dried up, and the travelers had missed finding the lakes that they had vaguely heard of; they and their animals were perishing of thirst, and they realized that their nearest water was the Rio Grande seventy miles away across a desert of rocks and sands. To reach it they must lighten their loads as much as possible. Their mistake was in not having buried the bullion earlier, for they were so exhausted and the way was so hard that all but one man perished in the attempt to reach the Great River. This solitary survivor for some reason did not return, but he made out a chart, which must have been fairly well circulated, for another Mexican coming north in search of the famed Casa Blanca cache also had directions to this San Caja treasure.

Dubose and his fellow explorers blasted a certain likely looking rock off and found under it a tinaja (rock hole) six feet deep, but no bullion in it.

According to “Uncle” Ben Adkins of Beeville, the San Caja treasure consists of money that was buried by Mexicans who were on their way to San Antonio. Just as they got to the Rock Crossing they heard that the Mexican army was being slaughtered in the Alamo and turned back in such haste that they left their precious freight on top of the loneliest “mountain” in Southwest Texas. A Mexican in Austin told me something like the same tale. He said that a detachment reached the river in winter time when a big rise was on, were unable to swim their treasure-laden mules across the flood, and while they were waiting for the waters to go down, heard that a band of Texans was close on their heels. They hastily took their freight to the mountain and left it there.

On the south side of the San Caja are said to be two cowhides of gold doubloons. Travelers out of the City of Mexico headed for the San Antonio missions lost their road and, perishing of thirst, began to look for water in the tinajas and crevices of the rocks. They found a little, enough for themselves, but not any for their poor beasts, which were in greater need than the men, for the men had had canteens of water for a day or two this side of their last watering. The party really had not traveled a great distance in coming from the Rio Grande, but they had been wandering lost over a rough country for days, keeping no general direction. The burros finally played out and the Spaniards hid their cowhides of doubloons in a crevice and placed over them a flat rock on which they marked with pear-apple juice a red cross. Over that they placed a second rock. Joe Newberry got the facts as to this treasure from a Mexican bandit on the Rio Grande who had come over on this side in hiding. Dubose actually found two flat rocks stacked up as if by hand, and under the first he found an Indian arrow-head, but nothing more.

THE MINES

Five or six miles to the southwest of the San Caja, the Spanish are believed to have operated a silver mine by the name of Las Chuzas, called so from its proximity to Las Chuzas Mountains. In later times Texas pioneers found that Indian bullets lodged in the spokes and felloes of their wagons were almost pure silver, and the Indians are supposed to have got their material for bullets from the Chuzas ore. The Indians would never tell where they got it. While Dubose and a man named Wallace McNeill were riding the country in quest of the Rock Pens they found the shaft of the mine at the foot of one of the Chuzas Mountains. That shaft is said to be lined with silver bars covered over with clay, but as the men were looking for the “thirty-one mule loads” and fully expected to find them, they did not investigate the shaft.

Some ten miles away, in the Guidan Pasture, and about six miles from the Nueces River, is what is known as the Devil’s Water Hole, and there the smelter is supposed to have been located. Burnt rocks to this day evidence its existence. In the vicinity of White Creek, in the foothills below the Devil’s Water Hole, were some other silver mines that used the same smelter.

Somewhere between the old Las Chuzas Mine and the Nueces River there is said to be a pile of silver bullion, crude, unformed, in the very hue and shape of the rocks around. How it came there or why, nobody knows. It just came there, so the Mexicans still say.

Fifteen or twenty miles beyond the San Caja in a westerly direction on what is now known as Los Picachos (The Peaks) Ranch, an early settler named Crier, according to John Murphy, a ranchman of the vicinity, actually used to operate a silver mine that yielded about twenty dollars to the ton of ore.

LOMA DE SIETE PIEDRAS

In the same general direction from the San Caja as Los Picachos is the Loma de Siete Piedras, or Seven Rocks Hill, on which the Mills Ranch is located. Near this hill, as I have the tale from Mr. Whitley, the Mills boys unearthed some human bones while digging post holes. They themselves had never dug for treasure, for though they had always heard that there was treasure stored away somewhere in their country, they had never been able to get the details that would guide them to it.

Naturally they talked of the rather unusual find, and not long after the event a gang of eleven or twelve Mexicans rode up to the Mills Ranch. Now, the San Caja country is in all ways a border country, and in many places one can cross the Rio Grande without meeting a river guard or seeing a customs officer; nowadays it is the rendezvous of tequilleros and mescaleros with their smuggled liquor from the other side. When the Mills boys saw the horses that the Mexican gang were riding, they knew at once from the brands that they were smuggled; and the saddles, ropes, bits, and other paraphernalia showed that the riders were fresh from old Mexico.

The spokesman of the band began by saying that one of their number was a descendant of a Mexican who, with his entire party, had been killed by Indians in that vicinity years ago. Their mutilated skeletons, scattered by the coyotes and buzzards, were known to have been buried months later by a Mexican freighter who came across them while he was hunting a mule that had broken away. The freighter had put a cross of mesquite sticks over the bones, but the cross was doubtless rotted away a long time ago, and now these men were come to put up another, if, by the will of God, they could find the place where the bones lay. Could anyone in the country give them the necessary information?

From the number, equipment, and general looks of the Mexicans, it appeared to the Mills boys that the mission of the gang might not be so altogether pious. They smelled a nigger in the woodpile, and told the Mexicans as much.

The Mexicans beat around the bush a while longer and consulted with each other for a few hours while their horses picked up mesquite beans down in the hollow. Then their leader came back to the Mills boys and let out that they were looking for the bones of men who had been killed while they were escorting seven jack loads of silver bullion from above—de arriba—to Mexico. If they could find the battle ground marked by the bones, they had a plata (plat) that would take them to the treasure.

At that the Mills brothers offered to show the bones provided they should get half the find. True to their nature, the Mexicans refused to go in on halves, and they left, trusting no doubt to come back some mañana and find the bones and bullion.

THE METATE ROCKS OF LOMA ALTA

Just west of the Hill of Seven Rocks towers in primeval roughness Loma Alta, the highest point of the whole country. John Murphy told me this story connected with it. An early settler named Drummond had a squat near the foot of the mountain. One time an old Mexican came to him looking for some bullion that he claimed had been buried in the vicinity by ancient parientes (kinsmen) in flight from the Indians. His plata called for a mesquite tree on the southeast slope of Loma Alta marked by a certain sign. Murphy thinks that the sign was a cross but does not well remember. The plata called also for a line of smooth, oblong rocks that bore a resemblance to the stones used for grinding corn on the metate. They had been culled from the hillside and laid to point to the hidden bullion. Drummond and the Mexican found the tree but rode around for days without being able to find the rocks. They finally decided that generations of horses and cattle had scattered them so that they could no longer be recognized as forming a line, and gave up the search.

The Mexican left, Drummond died, and years passed. Then one day while Murphy was holding down a wormy calf out in the pasture to doctor it, he raised his eyes and saw three or four of the metate-like rocks lined up in some thick chaparral. He was down on his knees, so that he could see under the brush. He thought of the tale that Drummond had told him, and looking about further, he found, badly scattered, yet preserving a kind of line, other such rocks. But he could never settle on a place to dig, and so far as he knows no one has ever dug on that side of Loma Alta.

WHEN TWO PARALLEL LINES INTERSECTED

An old-timer of McMullen County, Kenney by name, tells of a fellow county-man, named Snowden, who was led by a negro to believe that a certain boulder out on a plain ten or fifteen miles from the San Caja marked the site of buried money. In the first place, the boulder really did look to have been placed where it was by human agency, for there was not another rock of its kind within miles. Snowden went to San Antonio to consult a fortune teller. The fortune teller, without ever having seen the country, drew up a chart of the whole territory, marking down on it the position of the boulder. He told Snowden to draw two parallel lines from the northwest and southeast corners of the boulder, respectively, and to dig at the intersection of the lines. Snowden paid a nice fee for the information and came back to Tilden and organized an expedition.

When they came to draw the parallel lines, they found that they would not meet and sent back the chart for correction. But it was not returned, and becoming impatient for the treasure, the gold diggers twisted about the directions somehow so that the “parallel” lines would intersect. There they dug and dug. Finally, one of the party in disgust swore that he would sell out his interest “for two-bits’ worth of Bull Durham tobacco.” Snowden took him up. Presently all the other members had sold out on the same terms, leaving Snowden to pay the expenses of the whole work.

A LUCKY POST HOLE

Tilden (old Dog Town) is, remember, the county seat of McMullen County. Not far from it is what is still known as the “old Tolbert Ranch,” though a man named Berry bought it years ago. I have heard the following story so many times in so many places that I have halfway come to believe it true.

Tolbert was a miser in early days when men kept their money about them. It is said that he would never kill a maverick no matter how hungry he was but would always brand it. He never bought sugar or molasses; bacon was a rare luxury; he and his men lived principally on jerked venison and javelin meat. When he “worked” and had an outfit to feed, he always told the cocinero to cook the bread early so that it would be cold and hard before the hands got to it. When he died none of his money could be found. So, even till this day, people dig for it around the old ranch house. One man who was working on the place some fifteen years ago saw two men in a wagon go down a ravine that runs near the ranch. He thought that they were hunters; but when the strangers passed him on their way out the next morning, he noted that one of them had a shotgun across his knees. When the ranch hand rode down into the ravine a few days later, he found that the wagon tracks led from a fresh hole under a live oak tree and that near the hole were pieces of old steel hinges that looked as if they had been cut off with a cold chisel. However, not many people think that the two strangers got Tolbert’s money.

Berry got that, and he never hunted for it either. He had moved on to the ranch when he bought it and a number of years had passed. One day when he had nothing else for his Mexican to do, he told him to put some new posts in the old corral fence, which was made of pickets that were rotting down. The Mexican worked along digging post holes and putting in new posts until about ten o’clock. Then at about the third post from the south gate he struck something so hard that it turned the edge of his spade. He was used to digging post holes with a crowbar and a tin can, and so he went to a mesquite tree where the tools were kept and got the crowbar.

But the crowbar would no more dig into the hard substance than the spade would. The sun was mighty hot, anyhow; so the Mexican went up to the house where el señor Berry was whittling sticks on his gallery, and told him that he couldn’t dig any more, that at the third post hole from the south gate it looked as if the devil himself had humped up into a rock that nothing could get through. Berry snorted around considerably at first, but directly he seemed to think of something and told his man, very well, not to dig any more but to saddle up and go out and bring in the main remuda. Now, only the day before they had had the main remuda in the pen and had caught out fresh mounts to keep in the little horse pasture. By this time the other horses would be scattered clear away on the back side of the pasture. The Mexican wondered what the patrón wanted the remuda for again. But it was none of his business. Well, the ride would take him all the rest of the day, and at least he would not have to dig any more post holes before mañana.

After the Mexican had saddled his horse and drunk a cafecita for lunch and fooled away half an hour putting in new stirrup leather strings and finally got out of sight, Berry slouched down to the pens. He came back to his shade on the gallery and whittled for an hour or two longer until everything around the jacal, even the Mexican’s wife, was taking a siesta. Then he pulled off his spurs, which always dragged with a big clink when he walked, and went down to the pen again. The spade and the crowbar were where the Mexican had let them fall. Berry punched the crowbar down into the half-made hole. It almost bounced out of his hand, and he heard a kind of metallic thud. No, it was not flint-rock that had stopped the digging.

Berry went around back of the water trough to the huisache where his horse was tied and led him into the pen. Then he started to work. He began digging two or three feet out to one side of the hole. The dry ground was packed from the tramp of thousands of cattle and horses. He had to use the crowbar to loosen the soil. But it was no great task to get out a patch of earth two or three feet square and eighteen or twenty inches deep. Berry knew what he was about, and as he scraped the loosened earth out with his spade he could feel a flat metal surface that seemed to have rivets in it. It was the lid of a chest, and when he had uncovered it, Berry drew up one of the firm, new posts to use as a fulcrum for the crowbar. With that he levered up the end of the chest. As he suspected, it was too heavy and too tightly wedged for him to lift out. He kicked a chunk under the raised edge and then looped a stout rope about the exposed end. He had dragged cows out of the bog on his horse, and he knew that the chest was not so heavy as a cow. He had but fifty yards to drag it, and that down grade, before he was in the brush, where he could prize the lid off.

When the Mexican got back that night his mujer told him that Señor Berry had gone to San Antonio in the buckboard, and that he had left word for the remuda to be turned back into the big pasture and for the repair of the corrals to be continued. “They say” that the deposit that Berry made at the Frost National Bank was a clean $17,000, nearly all in silver.

LEGENDARY SPANISH FORTS DOWN THE NUECES

By J. Frank Dobie

Many people of pioneer stock in Southwest Texas speak of “a string of old Spanish forts” that extended from a fortification near Point Isabel in Cameron County to another near what is now “Old” Pleasanton in Atascosa. The names of these two extreme “forts” I cannot recall, but southward toward Laredo from the Pleasanton location was Fort Ewell, on the Nueces River, in La Salle County. Fifty miles to the east as the crow flies, but double that distance as the river runs, was El Fortin, otherwise known as Fort Merrill; next, not more than twelve miles to the south, and some five or six miles off the river, came Fort Ramirez, on the Ramireña Creek; sixteen miles southward, again on the Nueces, was Casa Blanca; near it on the Bluntzer Ranch was Fort Planticlan; next, due south, Petronita; then, Las Animas; last, the “fort” near Point Isabel. In such a string the first three so-called forts made a kind of crescent, and the remainder a long, almost straight, line, the whole figure resembling an old-fashioned wagon axle-wrench, or gancho. History, so far as I have read, has nothing to say about this fine “string of old Spanish forts,” but its existence is often a premise to legends connected with the several stations. Of the forts in the string Casa Blanca and Ramirez seem to be the most fertile in legend. As best I can gather from oral tradition, Fort Ewell and Fort Merrill were built about 1840 and used by the early settlers and rangers for protection against the Indians and Mexicans. Both places are mentioned by the historian Brown, though he has nothing definite on the origin of either. [59] Other not well identified ruins in Southwest Texas are frequently pointed out as the sites of old Spanish missions or presidios. [60]

FORT RAMIREZ ON THE RAMIREÑA

Fort Ramirez is in the southern part of Live Oak County on my father’s ranch. When I was a boy some of the old rock walls were ten or twelve feet high, though they were crumbling. As far back as I can remember or have heard men tell, there were holes that had been made by treasure seekers all along the walls, inside the room, and for hundreds of yards out from the place. When I revisited the location last summer, I found the walls all down, most of the rock lugged to one side, and indeed a large part of the foundation dug out. Some of the excavated stones weighed, I dare say, two hundred pounds. The ruins are on the point of a hill that overlooks the immense but dry bed of Ramireña Creek, which, nevertheless, back in the days of the open range was nearly always running, men of that time say. A deep but short gorge called Ramirez Hollow runs up near the hill.

I

There are two distinct legends about the old place: in one it is a fort; in the other, an old sheep ranch. Of later years, the fort idea seems to have gained ground. Mr. E. M. Dubose of Mathis says that he first got “the straight” of the matter from an old Mexican who was looking for the Casa Blanca site. According to this Mexican, a band of bandidos had in early days captured the fort from Spanish priests who were using it as a kind of ungarrisoned mission. The bandits pillaged the place of a cross of precious metal, golden candle-sticks, and other costly paraphernalia, and took up their headquarters in a secret cave a short distance east of the building. Later they were run out of the country by the Texans, leaving in the cave all their churchly plunder as well as much money that they had robbed from freighters and ranchmen. The problem with treasure seekers has been to locate the cave, of which there is now no sign.

In trying to make the location, Dubose and his party used at first a “gold monkey,” or mineral rod. This “monkey” was supposed to oscillate towards rich mineral until it got over it, then to halt. It oscillated all right, and under its guidance the treasure seekers dug two holes, both to the west of the fort.