Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  The sunburst was perhaps the most important factor for solving the Wolf Map and locating pay dirt. From his time spent roaming the Arkansas hill country and rummaging through dusty archives, Bob realized that the rising sun symbol was central to the solution of the obscure treasure chart. The beaming sun depicted in the upper right corner of the Wolf Map threw off a long dotted line—a symbolic ray—that intersected a small circle in the lower-left quadrant of the page. The line extended to a point near the lower-left corner, where two initials, IC, were barely visible. Bob sensed the letters’ importance, for along this same line, in the upper right quadrant of the map, was a hand pointing in the direction of the IC, about one-third of the way down the slope from the rising sun symbol. Halfway between the hand and the IC were the neatly drawn letters KC. These were positioned next to a circle that had several lines running through it. On the other side of the circle was a large Indian pictograph (the figure with the turkey feet).

  Bob, versed in Native American history (his mother’s parents were of Cherokee and Choctaw heritage), had a hunch that KC stood for the Kiowa-Comanche Nation bordering the Chickasaw Nation to the west. His mind raced with excitement as he realized that the KC might designate the line where the two nations abutted each other, not far from the Chisholm Trail. The famous old cattle trail—where Texas longhorns were herded up to Abilene, Kansas, and other points north—ran alongside, and at times across, the north-south boundary line running between the Kiowa-Comanche and Chickasaw lands.

  6. U.S. military survey map of the Oklahoma (Indian) territory, produced 130 years ago and showing the old Stinking, Beaver and Mud creeks. Bob Brewer determined that this map, and others of the period, formed the geographical basis for the Wolf Map treasure grid.

  Bob thought that this would fit logically with the KGC’s modus operandi, given the group’s close association with the Chickasaws and other Indian nations during and after the Civil War. Unlike the information provided by the general location of the three creeks, this was a specific, vertical line: a documented border.

  The Wolf Map would yield three more critical lines that would lead Bob into the cache zone. A second anagram combination, involving the M in MTS and two dotted-circle symbols shown in the upper left-hand corner of the map, provided MOO. This, paired with a second decoded word TRAIL (whose letters derived from The greave is a wittnesd and a floating L), had given him the Cattle Trail, or “Chisholm Trail.” Thus, three creeks and two north-south running lines (the KC Indian boundary line and the Chisholm Trail) were indicated for those able to follow the hidden messages.

  The geographic coordinates, if one could detect them, were even more specific in defining the correct acreage. One of the most important, and certainly among the best-camouflaged directional clues on the Wolf Map, was R7W, short for Range 7 West. Bob derived this from subtle indicators appearing in the upper right-hand corner of the map. The R flowed from the double R indicated in BEAVER. The 7 was gleaned from the top deck of the E (the east indicator in a compass-rose, shown below the rising sun and the R). Lastly, the W proved a fascinating twist on that same E: an attached 3 on the bottom deck of the E was a KGC reversal sign, thus implying that East must be made West.

  Range 7 West, part of a baseline grid for what is known as the Public Land Survey System of ranges and townships, was precisely where Stinking Creek and Beaver Creek straddled a divide, according to the antiquated map of the area that Bob was using. (The so-called “rectangular” public land survey system was launched in the late 1700s. The survey township—typically a six-mile-square grid—forms the basis of the system. Such “townships” are numbered in “ranges”—vertical, north-south running columns—that lie east or west of a designated “principal meridian.” They are also measured in horizontal tiers that lie north or south of a designated “baseline.” Townships can be further divided into thirty-six “sections,” each one square mile or 640 acres. Taking it one step further, sections can be carved into quarters [160 acres], eighths [80 acres], sixteenths [40 acres] and so on.)5

  On close examination, Bob could see that the Chisholm Trail passes over the ridge dividing Beaver and Stinking Creeks, very near where the baseline appears to cross those two streams. Moreover, he realized that the DAT inscription at the top of the Wolf Map was not solely intended as an abbreviation for “date” as the KGC cryptographer might have wanted the uninformed to believe. It was more likely an indicator for the Dona Ana Trail, a lesser-known route running parallel to the Chisholm Trail in the same general area.

  7. Another map of Indian territory, showing the important Kiowa-Comanche/Chickasaw border, as well as the Chisholm Cattle trail—all determined by Bob to be key landmarks denoted in code on the Wolf Map.

  Inspecting a modern map of the region, Bob noticed that there was a Chisholm Trail Lookout Monument erected on a hill. The hill appeared to overlook a valley where all of the key landmarks and lines seemed to merge.6 This would be the starting point for his field investigation.

  Bob spent the next few days reviewing his library of books on Oklahoma history, particularly those relevant to treasure hunting. One volume proved especially valuable: Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales, by Steve Wilson, published some two decades earlier.7 In the chapter titled “Jesse James’s Two Million-Dollar Treasure,” Bob was captivated by a hand-drawn diagram for buried treasure, one of the more alluring maps that he had seen. The map, according to Wilson, had been in the possession of a Wells Blevins, who allegedly had inherited it from a “member of the outlaw band” of Jesse James.

  At the top of the map, written in uppercase, were the words MADRUGADA ESTRELLA MAPA ORO, which translates loosely to “Early Morning Star Map of Gold.” Below the Spanish lettering was a childlike rendering of a fort with a flag on top and a dotted trail extending down from the fort and along the right side of the page. At the top of the trail was written, 3J loDS 2020#goLD. The trail led to a point at the lower right-hand corner of the page that had the words CAMP, SPRING, goLD, and DER, written in a cluster next to two identical symbols: isosceles triangles with a small accent mark coming off the top of each.

  A second trail, running from the word CAMP to a spot designated by 200.000 GoLD and by a group of three small circles, flowed up the left side of the page and formed the other side of a large U. Running vertically through the U was some kind of divide, shown by two narrowly spaced parallel lines. On each side of this dividing line was a bust profile of a man wearing a hat, with each gazing at the other (a dotted line running from head to head seemed to indicate that the two figures were connected in some way). Using a magnifying lens, Bob noticed that one of the figures had what appeared to be shoulder-length hair or braids, while the other did not.

  The cunning author of the map was making the ever-so-subtle distinction between the Civilized Tribes (Chickasaw) and the Plains Tribes (the braided-haired ones). Here in abstract pictorial form was confirmation that the two reputed treasure maps—the Wolf Map and the Madrugada map—corresponded! The divide running north-south on the Madrugada map was the KC line: the Kiowa-Comanche border with the Chickasaw Nation in south-central Indian Territory.

  8. The Madrugada map shows in primitive pictographic form clues to an Oklahoma gold cache marked by three boulders. This map is a microcosm of the site identified by Bob through his decipherment of the Wolf Map. It comes from Steve Wilson’s Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales.

  It all framed up powerfully: The fort in the upper right-hand corner of the Madrugada map, Bob surmised, was almost certainly Fort Arbuckle. That would make sense as the source for the gold. He had read, in Wilson’s book and elsewhere, the story of a stolen Fort Arbuckle military payroll. The freshly minted coinage reportedly was nabbed from a federal paymaster unit by “a band of Missourians” in 1869, just a short distance from the fort. That band of Missourians, many assumed, was led by Jesse James.

  If the crude drawing in fact depicted Fort Arbuckle, then the right half of the U-shaped trail designated on the Ma
drugada map might represent the Fort Smith (Ark.) stagecoach trail. The trail led to Fort Arbuckle and then further along into Indian Territory to the Kiowa-Comanche Agency, where the U.S. Army’s Fort Sill stands today. And it follows that the left half of the U represents a stretch of the south–north-running Chisholm Trail. The trails crossed near the KC-Chickasaw divide and the indicated Indian camp, as suggested by the symbolism and coded drawings on both the Wolf and Madrugada maps.

  The meaning of the two triangles next to the word CAMP was now obvious: teepees, the centerpiece of an Indian camp in the area, near a spring. Bob now understood the meaning of the IC lettering that he had seen in the bottom left-hand corner of the Wolf Map and how it corresponded exactly with the Indian camp drawing of the Madrugada map. With one exception, the relative position of the camp IC to the KC divide on the Wolf Map had to be viewed in reverse or as a mirror image, as indicated by the vice-versa code. (Bob’s research into the history of the region turned up an old Comanche camp near the exact site shown on the map. He would later learn that the Indian campsite, next to the spring, was used in the early 1900s for Confederate veterans’ reunions!)

  Bob recognized that the Madrugada map’s rendering of Fort Arbuckle—the likely source of the “luminous” buried gold—equated precisely with the topographic location of the radiant sun on the Wolf Map. The Madrugada map in Wilson’s book even had the R7W, albeit in masterful disguise. Bob detected the symbolism in two small checkmarks shown next to the three circles, near where 200.000 GoLD was written. The M in MADRUGADA (which is actually an upside-down W, if one notes the long extension of the middle line) points to the upside-down 7 that is depicted just outside the left corner of the triangle’s base. The long leg of this upside-down 7 points back to the R in MADRUGADA at the top of the page. These three points combine to yield R7W, the same placement marker as on the Wolf Map and an essential vector point for anyone seeking the treasure.

  He had critically narrowed the search.

  The two treasure maps complemented each other beautifully. The Wolf Map was on a much larger scale, perhaps a couple hundred square miles, and provided clues for perhaps multiple treasures within an extensive KGC depository. The Madrugada map, on the other hand, was a specific sketch, likewise rendered in code, cipher and other abstraction, but pointing to a small area that appeared to hold a specific cache. The map indicated that $200,000 in gold coins (at face value, that is—but perhaps as much as $10 million to $15 million in current numismatic value) lay buried just east of the old Chisholm Trail next to three circular figures. The circles, Bob guessed, were some topographic feature in triplicate. Moreover, according to the Madrugada map printed in Wilson’s book, the treasure’s location was due west of the KC-Chickasaw divide.

  Here was the opportunity: the Wolf Map—if properly deciphered—brought one to the correct stadium; the Madrugada map put one in the end zone. Bob knew the near exact location of the gold and which group had put it there. Their intellectual signature was unmistakable.

  Without any real ability to determine whether the stories were apocryphal, Bob by this time had learned a thing or two about the Wolf Map’s provenance. The original map, according to local historical accounts and the research of Bud Hardcastle, had been buried in a cast-iron teakettle north of a geological oddity—a solitary hill called Buzzard’s Roost, near Cement, Oklahoma. The teakettle, allegedly buried by Jesse James in the late 1800s, had been unearthed in the 1930s by Joe Hunter, a former city marshal from Rush Springs, Oklahoma, according to the Lawton Constitution and other newspaper reports in the late 1940s.8 Hunter, an avid treasure hunter, was said to have obtained—via suspicious circumstances that may have involved foul play—certain other reputed Jesse James maps before the teakettle discovery. These had led him to the Buzzard’s Roost find. In the Buzzard’s Roost teakettle were a handful of rolled-up maps, including both the Wolf Map and the map to the Wapanucka site, according to Hardcastle.

  The original Wolf Map reportedly was etched on a soft, elongated copper sheet rolled up to fit neatly inside the teakettle. But it was not just the map that was found inside the rusted teapot: gold bullion and signature KGC symbols were discovered there as well.9 Among the symbols: a large U.S. copper penny, dated 1841 (the big pennies were worn as emblems by KGC members and so-called Copperhead supporters); a small, nickel-sized five-pointed bronze star (the official KGC emblem, as found in the Bickley paraphernalia at the time of the KGC frontman’s capture by federal forces); a large key-winder watch.

  What precisely had led Bob to the Wolf Map’s probable location, he did not know: experience, intuition, stubbornness, or some combination thereof. What he did know was that if the buried money were still there, he was going to find it.

  The thrill of discovery was almost too much to handle. He came out of his room in a daze that night, in early May 1994, after weeks of incessant study and gently awoke Linda. It was after midnight. “It’s done. I know exactly where it’s buried,” he whispered. He told her that he would set out the next morning to prove he was right.

  Linda could sense her husband’s hunger for the hunt, and so she helped pack the car that night. They were on the road before dawn. In the five-hour drive to the small town of Addington, some twenty miles south of Duncan, Oklahoma, Bob said little, his mind working over the complex formulas from the two maps.

  When the couple arrived at the suspected site, near the Chisholm Trail Monument, just east of Addington, Bob’s adrenaline was pumping. He and Linda climbed to the top of Monument Hill, where the memorial pillar stood atop the highest point in the surrounding grassland. Built in the 1930s, the memorial had an odd, smokestack shape and was adorned with plaques telling the colorful history of Jesse Chisholm and the thousands of other cowboys who herded longhorns to market until 1880. Below, rutted grooves from the old cattle trail could be seen running in a northerly direction through the bucolic expanse. Some several hundred yards due north the sloping prairie met a tree line bordering a small creek. Bob pointed to a tree-lined spot in the valley below, where the erstwhile Beaver Creek intersected the Chisholm Trail.

  “That’s the place.”

  On the way down the dirt road from the monument, Bob was stunned to see a large boulder leaning against a barbwire fence. It had three large pick-driven holes carved into its smooth surface, like a jack-o’-lantern. He recognized the sculpture as a KGC line marker. Was it suggesting that the three circles on the Madrugada map lay directly ahead, on that specific bearing?

  Through a deliberate method that was part science, part art, he had found what he was seeking. He had intended to find two major trails that crossed at the headwaters of the erstwhile Beaver and Stinking Creeks. The trails and creeks had to be near the old Kiowa-Comanche/Chickasaw Indian boundary line. Moreover, the location should be found in Range 7 West, a short distance south of the baseline. He had discovered all of these physical landmarks, as well as the survey lines on the topographical maps, and they neatly conformed with the two abstract treasure maps.

  Bob was euphoric. He had begun to think like the grid makers. The code breaking had clicked. Nonetheless, he and Linda could see that a huge hurdle lay ahead of any recovery: the location of the suspected cache site was in the middle of a private, fenced-in ranch and several hundred yards from the access road. He wanted to call Griffith and tell him the news—but at the right moment and place.

  For an instant, Bob contemplated the alternative: telling Griffith that his map had proved too difficult and that he was abandoning the effort. For an instant, he envisioned going down the slope and recovering the gold himself. But he set such painfully tempting thoughts aside. The first order of business was to prepare to meet the landowner to seek permission to dig up the suspected Wolf Map cache.

  10

  The Wolf Emerges

  IT was with a mix of pride and dread that Bob readied himself to tell Griffith about breaking the Wolf Map. The pride came from a quiet satisfaction at having delivered on the task: unlockin
g the seemingly indecipherable code and arriving at a precise location in the vast United States of America. No one other than Linda knew that he had taken on such a challenge. Having succeeded, he wanted to share his victory with someone who could appreciate the effort in this highly confidential, and thus lonely, pursuit. Griffith, whatever his faults, was one such person—someone who knew something of the diabolical ingenuity of the KGC and the background to its hidden riches.

  Still, Griffith had his clear shortcomings as a “partner.” Bob believed that Griffith had misled him about having the owners’ permission to be on the Wapanucka property—and then had apparently circled back to the site shortly after eviction. Moreover, Griffith had denied him any claim to the ill-gotten gold and silver coins found during the Oklahoman’s secret return trip to what appeared to be the Gillespie property. Not that Bob would have wanted treasure obtained that way, but the point was, Griffith simply had claimed it as his own.

  Nevertheless, Bob felt morally obligated to tell Griffith that he had solved the Wolf Map because Griffith had provided the map as a starting point for the investigation. But precautions were in order. To protect his claim to any cash that might be found, he resolved to tell Griffith about the map’s solution in front of witnesses. This way, Griffith could make no plausible assertion that he had independently discovered this out-of-nowhere spot—culled from the 3,678,890 square miles that constitute the United States.

  Bob decided to set his plan in motion at a treasure-hunting conference in Wear’s Corner, a small town in the Smoky Mountain region of Tennessee. He had been invited to speak on treasure-sign interpretation and the possible connection between the KGC and suspected treasure sites in the South and Southwest.1 He would attend this once-in-a-lifetime conference with his friends, John London and Stan Vickery. They could serve, he thought, as witnesses to the revelation that had to be made to Griffith.