Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  10. (overleaf) Arizona Desert Treasure waybill, a pictogram to an undefined spot where Jesse James is alleged to have hidden treasure. Bob Brewer located the ghost town, Adamsville, as the likely target for the map, based on code-breaking efforts. The structures shown on the waybill appear to correspond to old adobe buildings still standing on the site. An excavation on the property led to the discovery of a 22-foot shaft filled with an odd assortment of carefully laid metal and porcelain objects, as well as a horse skull.

  His pulse racing, Bob felt an enormous thrill—a heady mix of elation and relief. The reference point of an indeterminate treasure map—one that well could have fit anywhere within many thousand square miles of “Arizona Desert” territory—had been found with reasonable certainty by using coded messages devised by the KGC. From this point forward, he proceeded on the now plausible premise that the Lost Dutchman, the stone tablets and Jesse James–KGC operations were somehow linked in what appeared to be an enormous KGC depository covering many hundreds of square miles.

  As for the buried gold indicated on the Jesse James map—two caches, one put at $440,000 in coins, the other at $65,000—any attempt at recovery would have to wait. For starters, he had to solidify his relationship with the Heart Mountain Project and then contact the Adamsville property owners. Such a recovery no doubt would require substantial resources: the waybill indicated that the treasure cache was buried “12 feet deep” in “hard gravel” and that the surrounding soil was at an “elevation 20ft above the river stage.” According to the pictogram, one of the chests seemed to be buried near or on the stage road, the other was buried in the “corner of a corral.” The loot, it said, came from “an inside job” in which “JWJ got revenge against a former Union Army General who was manager of a leading New England Insurance Co.” The Connecticut-based firm, it said, had insured the money chests on a western-bound train from New York in the winter of 1896. There was an ironic twist: the waybill stated that Jesse James and his KGC cohorts had robbed the train, stealing Jesse’s own gold and making the insurance company pay for the theft!

  And there were other hints pointing to an Adamsville-KGC link. The Adamsville-Florence Masonic cemetery down the road contained numerous graves of ex-Confederates and an odd formation of rocks in the shape of an eight-spoked wheel. There was no explanation for the man-made monument. Bob guessed that it represented the KGC template and, thus, the likely overall shape of the depository layout. The spoked-circle pattern reminded him of the Texas stone spiderwebs and the mysterious drawing in Isom Avants’s diary. Within hours on site, he was convinced that his trip out West would not be in vain.

  Bob’s first order of business was to meet the two men from HMP and examine the giant intaglios. His primary task had nothing to do with the Adamsville site; it was to evaluate prospects for his Florida investor acquaintance at what HMP called “Heart Mountain,” an intaglio-laden peak some fourteen miles east of Florence and just north of the Gila. Certainly, after all those long months of map work, he was eager to examine the “rock art” and decide whether that far-off site could be developed.

  When he met Gardner and MacLeod the next day, along with the Florida investor, he found the two men congenial. They seemed to be soft-spoken, understated types. He sensed they were devoid of the “I know better” arrogance that he quickly recognized in some members of the treasure-hunting community and that he so despised. Physically, the chubby, garrulous Gardner and the rail-thin, pensive MacLeod resembled Laurel and Hardy.

  The pair, in turn, sized up Bob as an unassuming straightforward character with a certain “worldliness” that they had not expected. They made it clear how eager they were to hear his impressions and interpretations, particularly of Heart Mountain, which, like proud parents showing off their child’s creative scribblings, they dubbed “a thirty-six-square-mile work of art.”1 Their world revolved around solving the puzzle behind five man-made earthen signs—three giant hearts, a horse and a large arrow—which they had discerned on Heart Mountain’s slopes.

  Gardner, a mechanic turned insurance salesman, said that his father had spent tens of thousands of dollars over two decades investigating the “Heart Mountain” mystery but had died before any concrete results were produced. The project’s aim was to recover any Spanish treasure associated with the location and to preserve the Spanish Colonial site for “future generations and research.” There was a hint of impatience in his voice as he recounted how he had taken up where Elwin Gardner, Sr., had left off, about nine years earlier, and how, after nearly a decade, he was hoping for a breakthrough. The notion of Ellie’s continuing a legacy appealed to Bob.

  The conversation then turned to how the Heart Mountain Project had been working with the state of Arizona and the Arizona State Museum to obtain “special land use” permits for historical research and for “treasure trove” recovery.

  [Treasure-trove recovery is traditionally defined as discovering money, coin, gold or silver bullion buried by an unknown owner—as distinct from recovering antiquities and artifacts, or, a separate category altogether, recovering minerals through prospecting or mining. In fact, treasure-trove hunting and recovery, if done under the guise of mining, is illegal.

  A treasure-trove recovery attempted on state property, according to Arizona law, must be overseen by the Arizona State Museum’s archaeological division and by a consultant in possession of a state antiquities permit. Any recovered treasure trove in HMP’s project-specific undertaking would have to be turned over to the state. Subsequently, HMP would need to go before the state courts to appeal for their share in the “disposition of the trove.” All costs involved—including the archaeological work and the restoration of the land—would need to be assumed by HMP, according to state procedure.

  A similar, more involved permitting process would be required for any recovery being planned on federal land, where treasure-trove hunting and recovery is technically allowed—in certain limited areas—with proper paperwork. National Park land is strictly off-limits for treasure-trove recovery. Depending on the prospective site’s location, permitting would need to be undertaken with the Bureau of Land Management; part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, for any site on BLM property, or with the Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for sites on National Forest property. (Wilderness areas within the National Forest program are the most restrictive within the USDA. Indeed, the last time such a permit was granted within the 124,000-acre Wilderness Area in the Superstitions was more than fifteen years ago. Mining for gold ore within the Superstition Wilderness Area was banned in 1984.) Finally, the U.S. General Services Administration would have the final say in any agreement to recover the suspected treasure on federal land: the GSA would issue a contract to carry out the search, including provisions on safety, safeguarding of recovered items, and division of proceeds between the treasure-hunting party and the government.2 Final disposition of recovered treasure would also be subject to various claims.]

  Whatever treasure might exist at Heart Mountain (which lies south of what is considered the Superstitions proper and outside the Wilderness Area supervised by the U.S. Forest Service) dated from the Spanish Colonial occupation, or so Gardner said. Bob listened to every word, nodded respectfully and asked to see the sites.

  With the Florida investor at the wheel in a rented four-wheel drive, the four men began a three-day off-road tour of some of the most rugged terrain in the Southwest. As they headed into the canyons in the cool early-morning hours, Bob was struck by the natural beauty of the place: wildflowers, prickly pear and giant saguaro cacti dotted the landscape; pungent sagebrush scented the air; the cackle of cactus wrens and the warble of desert doves echoed off the exposed cliffs. As a woodsman and naturalist, he felt at ease and inspired. Yet he realized that the desert and the looming mountains could kill mercilessly just the same—simply by swallowing the unprepared in their vastness, under the broiling midday heat.

  He soon recognized that finding physic
al clues to the larger puzzle was going to be both physically taxing and mind-bending. Ironically, his investor acquaintance from Florida, sitting next to him in the Jeep’s driver’s seat, seemed to think that it was just a matter of going out and digging one up—all in a day’s work!

  Not his style at all, Bob thought. He realized, then, that he might have erred in getting involved with the strike-hungry character. For the moment, he could much more easily relate to Gardner’s more measured refrain that this was the land of elusive Spanish treasure—and that as a team, they were bound to figure it out in good time. Well they might, Bob said diplomatically.

  Later that day, he and the others examined multiple rock carvings in two remote arroyos known as Box Canyon and Martinez Canyon. “Spanish treasure signs,” Gardner asserted. Bob quietly scrutinized each incision in the cliff face and made quick sketches in his journal. He registered each location’s GPS coordinates and marked the spots on his topo. He then videotaped every chiseled sign and symbol with his small hand-held video recorder.

  Finally, the group arrived at its prime destination: a wide valley surrounded by long, sloping hills. Halfway up one of them, Bob recognized the giant landscaped heart intaglio that he had seen in the photos. The subtle figure on the slopes of Heart Mountain covered thousands of square feet of soil and vegetation. At first blush, the earthen valentine appeared unquestionably man-made.

  While walking the lines of the mysterious intaglio, Bob could see that the shape of the heart was created by removing boulders, rocks, trees and other large objects from the interior of the pattern. Some group must then have replaced whatever had grown inside the perimeter with a particular form of fast-growing, nonnative vegetation. The result: with summer rains, the interior of the landscaped heart, arrow and horse figures quickly become bright green, in contrast to the surrounding parched-brown terrain.

  Gardner explained that the enormous stick-horse pattern measured some eight hundred feet long, tail to nose; the largest of the three landscaped hearts extended some eight hundred feet along the slope of the hill; and the arrow stretched some five hundred feet from stem to tip. He said that he could not be sure of the intaglios’ origins (a mystery, as well, to local scientists brought in to evaluate their authenticity).3 But he held out the possibility that the patterns predated the Spanish. Again, Bob kept his opinions to himself. Yet his guess was that the hallmark ciphers and symbols of the KGC had been magnified in an almost unimaginable way in these Arizona mountains.

  Back at Apache Junction, Bob spent hours alone, quietly analyzing what he had seen. He had brought along his transparent template and had begun to use it with limited initial success atop the old topo maps. His hosts marveled at his ability to go off for hours at a time (and there was lots of downtime because of the broiling heat) and simply stare at his topos and plot points.

  The group repeated the early-out, early-return pattern on the second day of the expedition, which allowed Bob to take additional field data. After a third full day of reviewing HMP’s sites, he told the group that the signs on the canyon walls and the giant intaglios on Heart Mountain’s slopes showed promise. Nevertheless, he added, he was not prepared to say whether the project merited large-scale investment on such short notice. There was no way of predicting whether this was a lucrative high-risk venture or a “money pit”; it was best to opt for caution. (Speaking privately to Gardner afterwards, Bob explained that he was reluctant to proceed especially because the fellow from Florida seemed to have unrealistic expectations about the time involved to recover a treasure that had eluded everyone else for more than a century. Gardner and MacLeod, with whom he had developed a rapport, heartily agreed.) The Florida investor took Bob’s counsel, declined the opportunity and thanked everyone for the adventure. The next day, he headed back east, with Bob driving him to the Albuquerque airport on his way back to Hatfield.

  It was only a matter of weeks before Bob heard from Gardner and MacLeod by phone. They chatted for a while. Bob said that he would like to keep in touch and had enjoyed their company. The two HMP partners reciprocated by saying that the group seemed to have bonded and that one of the things they liked best was Bob’s coolness to the idea of rushing out to dig up an improbable, quick fortune. For all three, it seemed more a question of determining whether they could put together the pieces of an elaborate historical puzzle—and prove, to begin with, that a puzzle even existed in the desolate mountains. They also appreciated Bob’s declining to ask for payment for services.

  Bob, in turn, said that they were on to something big: they unfortunately had no idea what they were chasing! It wasn’t Spanish; it was Rebel, post–Civil War treasure. And the treasure was not likely hidden near Heart Mountain but elsewhere, miles away, in various locations in and around the Superstitions.

  Gardner and MacLeod were stunned. They had never heard of the Knights of the Golden Circle, much less the notion that this clandestine group had hidden gold and other fortune in coded underground depositories, not just in the old South but in the Far West. Bob had anticipated their response and told them that the best way to begin to grasp what he was attempting to explain was to see his sites in Arkansas. He liked the duo’s modesty, their passion for history and their “underdog” status. So he invited them out. They took up the offer, visiting Hatfield in fall 1997, another step in what would become an ongoing friendship and partnership.

  On Bob’s return trip to the Superstitions in January 1998, he made clear that his was not some farfetched scenario that he was chasing in Arizona. Gardner and MacLeod were still not entirely convinced and maintained a “show-me” posture. But they were open to suggestions, and if “Hillbilly Bob” had proof to back up his claims, they were ready to participate in his quest, and on his terms.

  Unlike the first trip, in July 1996, in which Gardner and MacLeod had taken the lead, showing what they had discovered in and around the Superstitions, Bob now took charge and directed an intensive search for points of interest, based on his mapwork. If they could get to certain remote spots—seemingly inaccessible places that he had plotted with the use of his intersecting lines—they would stand a good chance of encountering other highly important carved symbols, he predicted. He placed a current topo map on the hood of Gardner’s Jeep Cherokee and pointed to four spots that he had selected. They would be looking, he said, for distinct symbols on site: a large cross, a double J (back-to-back fish-hooks), an elephant head, and a figure eight (infinity symbol), all indicated on the stone tablets. “These are the four locations. Can you get me there?” he asked. “Sure thing,” Gardner nodded.

  To Gardner and MacLeod’s astonishment, Bob was right, on all four counts. He found the cross carved into the side of a canyon, an incision stretching some eighty feet; he spotted the JJ about a mile and a half to the east of the spot, also engraved in hardrock bluffs; he discovered the elephant profile on a butte a quarter-mile west of the JJ; and, lastly, he spied a small infinity symbol carved into an old saguaro cactus, about 1,000 feet west of the elephant. (Saguaro are known to live 150 or more years and to grow fifty feet tall.)

  Gardner and MacLeod didn’t know how Bob came up with this stuff, but they had become believers. They were, at a minimum, open to the theory that something extraordinary—beyond the usual suspects of the Spanish or the Lost Dutchman himself stashing away gold—had taken place in the arid mountains of south-central Arizona.

  The evidence kept building. The following day, while the three were driving out into the flats south of the Gila, Bob suddenly asked Gardner to stop. They had driven about a quarter of a mile from a dirt-road intersection, with Bob watching the odometer and his GPS unit over the entire distance. (He always insisted that Gardner and MacLeod drive slowly so they wouldn’t miss anything, otherwise they might as well “just pack it in.”) His request to stop seemed to come out of the blue; there was nothing around. Using his compass and GPS handset to confirm his location, Bob asked the other two to keep their eyes peeled for an unusual object or sign
in the barren dusty expanse, distinguished, as it were, by one out-of-place white boulder. Within thirty feet of the parked Jeep, the group discovered a five-pointed star formed out of unused shotgun cartridges. The shells had been neatly arranged in the desert floor. “That’s a KGC sign right there—definitely not left by the Spanish,” Bob said.

  “ That’s plain weird,” Gardner opined.

  At yet another stop, on a high-elevation trail near Grayback Mountain, Bob alerted the others: “ There’s supposed to be something here. We need to look for a sign.” Gardner burst into a laugh, saying that he had just seen a Halloween “pumpkin face” carved into a cactus leaf. When Bob blurted excitedly, “Where, Ellie? Where did you see it?” Gardner realized that it was no joke. Bob recounted how a similar face, albeit carved in stone, had led to the recovery of a safe full of gold coins back in Oklahoma. The spooky face on the prickly-pear leaf, found just off the trail amid an enormous cactus cluster, corroborated their line of investigation—a welcome relief after hours of back-and-forth searching.

  The next day, the group headed for the northeastern section of the Superstitions. On a large outcrop known as Buzzard’s Roost (no relation to the Oklahoma site), Bob detected a colossal carving—measuring thousands of square feet in area—in the shape of a five-pointed star and, next to it, a massive ever-familiar jack-o’-lantern face. He had been focusing his video camera’s zoom lens on the distant crag when the enormous carvings came into focus. The crag lined up precisely with a recently discovered clue.

  This was no mere landscaping on a sloping hill, as with Heart Mountain: this was the product of hardrock drilling and chiseling on a sheer cliff—most likely done by men dangling from long ropes—and on a monumental scale. A fascinating aspect was that the huge star and skull images (signature markers of the KGC) showed up best as shadow signs—distinct against the backdrop at a certain time of day and visible from several miles away.