Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  Even more intriguing was Griffith’s assertion that he had photocopies of what he believed to be authentic Jesse James maps, and that one of the Oklahoma “locations” possibly was associated with one of the maps.1 (These maps, Bob later learned, had been provided to Griffith by Hardcastle.)

  His imagination stirred by the Schrader-Howk book, Bob was intrigued but still not convinced. He knew that in the ever-important getting-to-know-you period he would need to remain detached. Recalling his earlier unhappy experience with Bob Smith, he was not prepared to share all that he knew with a stranger. Specifics in the treasure-hunting world were disclosed sparingly, if at all, and then only at certain milestones in a relationship. He could not let his innate mountaineer wariness be overtaken by the thrill of the chase with this upbeat outsider.

  After a series of late summer get-togethers at his home in Hatfield—mostly weekend visits by Griffith and his school-aged son—Bob concluded that he could do business with the enthusiastic schoolteacher. The two discussed a fifty-fifty partnership. Bob would bring his knowledge of finding treasure through decoding signs and symbols; Griffith would provide access to target locations and his collection of maps. Bob agreed, but he also reserved the right to work on his own projects and with others who might come forward with independent leads. Griffith shook on the deal and then asked to see some of Bob’s fieldwork.

  At the time, family obligations had narrowed Bob’s window for tracking treasure. He and Linda had been sharing duties with other family members looking after Landon Brewer, who was stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. Griffith, to Bob’s surprise, nonetheless repeatedly made the drive to Hatfield to talk treasure during those drawn-out mornings and afternoons when Bob was housebound looking after his father. In the ensuing months, Bob carved out time to show his visitor a thing or two about “lost treasures” on the Arkansas side of the border.

  On one occasion, while exploring along the banks of the Cossatot River, the two men responded to the faint calls for help from a teenage girl who had been swept downstream. The youngster was struggling for her life, half-submerged in the currents of the rain-swollen river. With another passerby, the men rescued the exhausted girl, who had been trapped in a whirlpool and was clinging precariously to a ledge. The incident would foster a growing trust and esprit de corps between Bob and Griffith.

  Over several subsequent outings around Hatfield, Griffith grew impressed at the number of carvings and buried markers embedded in the forest—and how well Bob seemed to be able to link the signs and symbols together in a pattern. He kept asking whether there was a way to apply what had been accomplished in Arkansas to a possibly related site more than 130 miles away, in southern Oklahoma. The site, Griffith suggested, perhaps correlated to one of his photocopied treasure maps, which, he said, appeared to have been drawn up by Jesse James himself. (Among other indicators, the map contained the initials JJ.)

  Not having seen anything to go by, Bob was noncommittal. He had worked a few Ouachita sites that extended just over the border into Oklahoma, but he had not ventured very far west into the neighboring state on any major cache hunt. But when Griffith got around to revealing the suspected cache site’s general location—a wooded, hilly area of south-central Oklahoma—Bob became focused fast.

  The nearest town of any size, Griffith said, was Atoka. Bob recalled that Jesse James Was One of His Names mentions Atoka “in the Indian Territory” twice: once where “Jesse and his friends were sitting around a campfire,” and again as a site where Jesse had left behind one of his wives.2 Griffith declined to show Bob the coded map, and Bob did not press the point. He was prepared to inspect the site on the basis of Griffith’s word and on the few other promising leads, such as the site’s proximity to Atoka.

  But how could Griffith be sure that the site corresponded to a possible KGC depository, Bob asked.

  The schoolteacher explained that a few years earlier he had heard about someone who had stumbled upon an odd series of rock carvings in the southern part of the state. When he asked to see a drawing of those carvings, he was struck by their correlation: the symbols appeared to be an exact match of the signs and code drawn on one of his “Jesse James” maps. He drove to the site, a hilly area near a limestone quarry. There, he was astonished to see an alphabet soup of chiseled signs and symbols. To his further amazement, the engraved symbols all appeared linked to those on his treasure map. While the grooved letters and symbols ultimately failed to lead to treasure in a subsequent three years of prospecting, he told Bob that he was persuaded there was Jesse James gold stashed on the site.

  Griffith also disclosed how he and Hardcastle had discovered an inscribed rock ledge near a spring in north-central Oklahoma. After decades of built-up layers of soil had been removed, the engraved slab revealed the counterpoised names Jesse James and Dalton, with the letter F etched inside the D of Dalton. The ledge (originally found by Hard-castle through leads derived from documents dating back to the late 1880s) was full of KGC treasure carvings, making it a coded map in its own right. In preparation for their treasure-hunting trip, Griffith took Bob to see the cryptic slab—a sight that reinforced the possibility that J. Frank Dalton and Jesse Woodson James were one and the same.3

  Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1993, Griffith and Brewer embarked on their first joint expedition to the southern Oklahoma locale.4 After a five-hour drive and brief stops at suspected KGC sites along the way (including the remains of a probable KGC meeting house, with a large underground “bunker” and escape tunnel), they arrived at a wooded area near the small town of Bromide. The town was named for nearby sulfur springs, which, according to local lore, may have attracted a convalescing Jesse James.

  Griffith parked his pickup next to a pasture fence blocking a dead-end road. There, he pulled out the Jesse James map for a few seconds to check his orientation, oddly refusing to let Bob see it. The Arkansan brushed off the slight, knowing how guarded treasure hunters can be about their “information.” Bob mentally noted “strike one” in his silent strategy of testing his “partner.”

  Within minutes of passing through an old barbwire fence and arriving at a crossing on Delaware Creek, Bob spotted a characteristic set of axecut “blazes” high on a big, two-foot-diameter pecan tree. The engravings suggested an upside-down heart—two fishhooks facing each other at a slight westerly tilt. A KGC heart symbol, he thought. It hinted that something important lay nearby, to the west. Griffith apparently had no idea. Bob turned to his partner and asked if he had ever been to that exact spot and if he had ever dug treasure there. Griffith said no, on both counts. “Well, let’s go dig it up then,” Bob suggested, to the Oklahoman’s astonishment.

  Bob paced due west a few hundred yards until he spied a big red oak with characteristic carvings. The cryptic markings were similar to those that he had seen back in Arkansas. He told Griffith that he believed something was buried in the immediate vicinity and asked him to scan around the oak, near the creek bank. But the schoolteacher’s rudimentary detector and his excited, ad hoc searching method hindered his ability to pick up a signal. Soon, Griffith was yards away, heading into a muddy cotton field.

  Bob swung his own, more sophisticated detector over the area and, within seconds, received a strong signal. It indicated that an iron object was just inches below the black gumbo earth. The two men dug down about half a foot into the sticky soil. There, lying flat, was an old capand-ball revolver. Bob identified it as a .44-caliber 1858 Remington, a U.S. Army model. The rusty gun was in good shape, although the wooden grips had rotted off. Bob carefully and silently noted the compass bearing indicated by the tip of the gun barrel before plucking the “six-shooter” from its earthen mold. He had recognized the rusted artifact as a directional marker, one deliberately planted just beneath the surface—and thus an important clue to finding buried money.

  Griffith, fondling the antique weapon, was at a loss for words. Within minutes of setting foot on the site, Bob had unearthed something significant by readin
g the tree carvings—coded markers all but invisible to the untrained eye. Griffith’s elation and impatience for more, for shiny yellow metal, were palpable. Bob merely grinned and said that, because of an approaching snowstorm and the late hour, it was best to head back. They would have to plan for another day.

  The schoolteacher could hardly argue. Bob held all the cards. When he and Griffith parted ways after the long drive north, the Oklahoman said he was going to keep the revolver because it was found on his site. To avoid confrontation, Bob said nothing. Besides, old guns and other trail markers already littered the grounds around his home. Access to new sites and to potentially valuable information was more important than quibbling over an old pistol, even if it had connections to the fabled Jesse James. Still, it was “strike two.” When Bob told his old friend Bob Tilley about the incident, Tilley counseled him to leave the “snake” alone.

  A month later, Bob returned with Griffith to the Delaware Creek site, this time accompanied by Griffith’s father and son. He was amused at the sudden change in the senior Griffith: a month earlier, Charles Griffith wanted no part of treasure hunting; he said that he would rather stay home and watch football. But, following the discovery of the revolver, Michael’s father had been transformed into a full-fledged “cache hunter,” sporting a half-grown beard, a hunting cap and camouflage jacket. On the long drive to the site, the elder Griffith repeated nearly word for word what his son had told him about the possible Jesse James connection to the Bromide area.

  Once on site, it took only minutes to find the covered-up hole where the Remington revolver had been recovered, and then a few seconds to obtain the correct compass bearing. Bob was set. He handed Griffith his Garrett metal detector and directed him to check along the creek bank, behind a large tree where the revolver had pointed. Almost immediately, the detector sounded its unique belltone, one familiar to Bob, who declared, matter-of-factly, “That’s money!”

  The men grabbed their shovels and dug a hole a little over a foot deep behind the tree. As soon as Michael reached in and said that he felt a glass jar, Bob announced: “It’s payday.” Michael handed his father the jar.

  Charles Griffith could not believe his eyes. He kept repeating, “Golly, well, golly,” as he counted out silver dollars, half-dollars and other silver coins dated from 1812 to 1880. Many were Morgan silver dollars from 1878–80. Michael Griffith, no less excited, grabbed his video camera and videotaped the scene in the minutes after the find.5 “This was the location on the map. This was found right here at the one location on the map, where we found a pistol,” he said while filming. “Just below where we found the ol’ cap-and-ball pistol, we finally got one. And this worked out on the map,” he continued, repeating himself amid the thrill of the find.

  The muddied silver coins, totaling several thousand dollars in current market value and including a rare 1853-O half-dollar piece, were divided evenly between Bob and the Griffiths. The latter were stunned, this being their first recovered treasure. And it had been found by following a scavenger-hunt trail on the ground that, according to Griffith’s own words, had corresponded to a general location indicated by the James Gang map of the area. Bob was convinced that the pint jar was a marker for a much larger KGC cache. To have a chance of finding it, he said, he would need to see all the symbols—particularly those that corresponded to the map, which Griffith continued to conceal.

  Impressed with Brewer’s work so far, Griffith agreed at the end of December that it was important for Bob to see everything. He finally showed him the copied map of the area, which had JJ, 1880, and a backward and misspelled reference, FIND GUN BERREL NEAR CREEK, in a schematic rendering. Although Griffith declined to give Bob a copy of the map, he handed him a copy of another probable KGC treasure map, this one far more complicated and obscure. It had a wolf or dog-like figure drawn in the middle, amid a flurry of lines, dotted lines and stick figures. Griffith said he had no inkling as to the map’s geographic reference point but, after what had just happened, he expressed full confidence in Bob’s ability to crack the code.

  Months later, in April 1994, the Griffiths and Brewer returned to the area of their treasure strike. This time, the group set out about a mile and a half due east, in a remote section of wooded bluffs along the Old Leavenworth Trail. Known as Wapanucka, the picturesque area is named for a Delaware Indian chief. Its rugged limestone hills teem with wild boar, deer, duck, quail and wild turkey. Delaware Creek at the base of the bluffs is home to bass, perch and catfish. With its wooded bluffs providing long lines-of-sight over the surrounding flatlands, the area must have been ideal for crafting outlaw hideouts and mountain redoubts. From various promontories thick with buzzards and venomous snakes, Jesse James, Frank James, the Dalton brothers and other KGC “fugitives” would have been able to see oncoming lawmen well before any raid. As Griffith would point out, the initials JJ—resembling those in the black book and on Griffith’s map—were inscribed inside the walls of a cave and on top of a cliff face in the area.

  The sprawling property contained the ruins of the former Chickasaw Rock Academy, a school for orphan Chickasaw children built in the 1850s. The school, also known as the Wapanucka Academy, later served as regional headquarters for Confederate Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Cooper and his Chickasaw and Choctaw brigade. It then became a Confederate Army hospital. Cooper, who eventually rose to command all Indian troops, was a colleague of Cherokee KGC leader and Confederate brigadier general Stand Watie. He had been placed in charge of all Indian troops in the territory by Albert Pike. Once again, KGC symbols, Albert Pike, Confederate Indians and the promise of buried gold seemed to intersect.

  At the Wapanucka Academy site, near the line separating Johnston and Coal counties, the group arrived at the entrance of a large ranch. Noticing that the iron front gate appeared locked, Bob asked Griffith if they had permission to treasure hunt on the site. Griffith said yes, and then drove off to the home of an old-timer who seemed to be the overseer. The man returned with the group and let the visitors in with a nod, after exchanging a few pleasantries with Griffith.

  True to his word, Griffith showed Bob the mysterious symbols that had been chiseled into a bluff, near a quarry of bleach-white limestone. The view—atop the highest point in the area—was breathtaking. The carvings were no less dramatic. Bob ran his fingers over the grooves in the hard stone. The engravings included the letters JJ, alongside the numbers 1880 and 11,000 and a stick-figure turtle whose head pointed across the valley. Below the ledge was a box-shaped carving with a cross on top and two smaller, inverted crosses protruding from the bottom corners. This was powerful corroborative evidence: the apparent chiseled-in-stone signature marks of Jesse James, in the same mold as those shown in the black book.

  4. This is a photocopy of what appears to be an authentic Jesse James treasure map. It led to the recovery of several KGC treasure caches in south-central Oklahoma. Bob Brewer and Michael Griffith located the various landmarks on the map, as well as specific symbols and captions (JJ, 1880, the turtle, gun barrel etc.) on site in Wapanucka, Oklahoma. These guideposts pointed to small caches of gold and silver coins. The original map is believed to have been found at another Jesse James/KGC cache site uncovered decades ago.

  Something troubled Bob, though. The carvings had been all but rubbed out, and it looked as though the vandal had acted fairly recently. On close inspection, it appeared as if someone had poured acid over the limestone etchings, hoping to obscure them. He could barely contain the thought that Griffith may have been the one to deface the delicate inscriptions, to keep others off the trail. Could that explain why the schoolteacher had insisted on keeping the treasure map and its representations of the symbols in his sole possession? When Bob asked what had happened to the signs, Griffith said that local kids must have done it.

  Able to see enough of the symbolism to recognize the potential KGC orientation of the site, Bob moved on. The turtle alone was a well-recognized treasure symbol. Dating back to Spanish colonial days,
the turtle symbol had appeared many times in the Ouachitas—and here it was juxtaposed with JJ! He recalled how Howk had made specific, albeit unexplained, reference to “seeing a turtle go by” to identify kin to Jesse James.

  There was more to see, Griffith said, but it was best to head to a cleared hilltop on the other side of Delaware Creek to camp for the night. At the campsite, Griffith pointed out a few other chiseled symbols, including a large turkey track engraved in a slab just yards away from where the men had set up their tents. Again, images from the pages of the black book came rushing back to Bob. The phrase “turkey track,” representing a known KGC directional treasure-marker, had been used as code to identify Jesse “Dingus” James—Jesse Woodson James’s cousin—in the book. While Bob had seen several carved turkey tracks in the mountains of Arkansas, that distinct symbol’s location among others possibly left behind by Jesse Woodson James was unforgettable. And there was more.

  Near the campsite was the cave with a set of JJ initials cut into its limestone wall. Above the cave, a large boulder was inscribed with numerous KGC symbols. Some thirty yards from the boulder lay a slab with chiseled lettering. Bob carefully traced his fingers along its grooves and, after chalking them in, could read the following: JW PicKeNS. The N and the S were written backwards and the K had a weird arrow-like flourish. Bob interpreted the combination to mean “Jesse Woodson’s Pickings.” The N and the S were directional indicators, he assumed. Below was the lettering: S. A. PARKER. Bob was unsure of its meaning but noted that the second A was made out like a Masonic square-and-compass configuration. To the left of PARKER could be seen a tiny turtle, its head pointing west while its crooked tail slanted southeast. Next to the turtle was a carving of a hand, with its index finger aiming east and its thumb pointing south—along the same north-south line indicated by the NS in PicKeNS.