Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  Bob’s beehives-to-Circlestone line, as measured by his GPS unit, ran due north through a thumb-shaped ridge of Picketpost Mountain (which has a heart-shaped topographic configuration around its peak and lies some four miles to the northeast of Reymert). The line’s southerly extension, he noted, ran through the center of Heart Mountain, at exactly the tip of the giant landscaped arrow that Gardner and MacLeod had studied for so long.

  Back at Gardner’s residence that night, Bob broke out his marked-up 1900 Florence quad. He asked his two friends to take a look at the plot points from the day’s findings. Noting the vertical alignment of key landmarks—the beehives, the Circlestone and Heart Mountain—Bob showed how this tangent most likely was the true central north-south line for the template, as opposed to the one running north-south through Reymert.

  This was the fine tuning, the subtle shift, that he had suspected was required for the proper solution. Now the question was: how to find a point on that vertical north-south tangent to center the two sloping northeast-southwest, northwest-southeast master lines of the template? That three-line nexus, he believed, would mark the true centerpoint of a master KGC depository in the barren Superstitions of south-central Arizona.

  When Bob shifted the Lucite grid’s centerpoint to Picketpost Mountain nearby—a logical first choice among nearby landmarks on the new vertical line—one of the dots on the circumference of the template’s outer circle aligned directly over Grayback Mountain. That, he knew, was a good sign. Grayback, by name alone, suggested KGC and Rebel intrigue.

  And there was other corroboration with regard to Picketpost, including a key hidden message from the stone tablets. Suddenly, the meaning of the odd equation, 18 = 7, which had been chiseled into one of the tablets, was clear. If Bob placed the template over Picketpost, the heartshaped mountaintop was entirely enclosed by the cutout square at the center of the transparent overlay. The north side of the square fell exactly on the boundary line between Sections 18 and 7. The peak of Picketpost Mountain happens to lie precisely where the two sections border each other on the 1900 Florence quad!

  14. The solution of the Lost Dutchman mystery: an expansive KGC depository, with a centerpoint at Picketpost Mountain. Notice the location of the horse and priest-templar figures from the stone tablets as seen in specific contour lines and suggested by KGC cipher. The priest-templar gazes through Grayback Mountain to Adamsville; the beehives align with the centerpoint at Picketpost up through the Circlestone.

  Bob was now persuaded that the southwesterly sloping master line of the properly aligned template no longer ran through Adamsville but instead shot just to the north of Adamsville. The initial northeast-southwest line had run through Adamsville and exited the 1900 Florence topo a few miles short of the spot representing the southwest corner of the old map. The new line, running southwest from Picketpost, not Reymert, jumped off the map at precisely 33 degrees latitude. That was also the case with the line connecting the priest-templar’s nose to Adamsville: it crossed precisely at 33 degrees. This was not a coincidence; it was cunningly neat.

  This was what Bob had expected would result with the proper overall alignment: all the clues would begin to make sense within a KGC-Masonic context. Perhaps the most fascinating (albeit certainly obscure) revelation was that the Circlestone proved to lie topographically at the top of an equilateral triangle or pyramid design. The two intersecting lines forming the apex of the triangle derived from the corner of the outer square of the template, properly aligned. It was not left to chance that this geometry had come together to make the KGC conspirators’ greatest symbol: the all-seeing eye atop a pyramid.

  The Masonic eye of the pyramid was, in fact, the Circlestone monument, which, in turn, was the physical circle-within-the-square representation of the template. The vertical line running through the center of the north-south pyramid was the Beehive–Heart Mountain–Circlestone line.

  Here was the total solution—he could do no better. The full menu of symbols on the stone tablets had been solved. Picketpost Mountain was the vortex of the template, from which all main lines radiated and intersected. Moreover, this peak as the centerpoint simply made good sense, not only on the basis of the esoteric geometric/topographic solution that he had developed from the cipher but also in practical terms. The peak of Picketpost provided a vast line of sight in many directions. This must have been an extraordinarily important factor when laying out the far-flung lines of a master KGC depository.

  Picketpost was not chosen arbitrarily. The need to construct the master depository layout as an exact duplicate of the KGC’s “key”—the template—required the utmost care in surveying the lines. Standard methods of surveying were adequate for land-division purposes and might well have sufficed for surveying a sprawling depository over hospitable terrain. But hostile Indians made travel through the canyons of the Superstitions extremely hazardous, and a KGC survey party large enough to accomplish the legwork and defend itself would have drawn unwanted attention from the U.S. Army, in control of Arizona Territory at the time. (Whether an undercover KGC unit would have been vulnerable to any such attack from indigenous Indians—with whom they may have been secretly allied—is uncertain. U.S. Army commanders in the region at the time would not have felt comfortable with any organized party of white men marching off into the mountains.)

  Compass headings for master and sub-lines throughout the depository needed to be accurate to within tenths of a degree to ensure that buried treasure could be recovered by retracing the exact method used for the cache burials. Errors of even a few feet between distant points might result in a true “lost treasure.” Since many of the reference points lay atop steep mountains separated by dozens of miles, the KGC most certainly sought a shortcut to design the depository grid for its major stockpiles. It so happens that there was an ideal tool for the job in Arizona Territory.

  In 1886, a novel overseas invention was imported into the American Southwest to aid Brig. Gen. Nelson A. Miles in his war against Geronimo and other renegade Apaches.9 The “heliograph,” which used large mirrors to flash messages between signal stations on mountain peaks separated by great distances, was meant to change the battlefield calculus of the Far West. (The term derives from the Greek helios for sun and graph for writing.) This innovative apparatus had been invented in France and used to some effect by the British Army overseas. It achieved some limited utility for the U.S. military in the mostly sunny Superstitions and their far-flung, often-impassable canyons. But rather than being helpful in capturing Geronimo and his followers (who quickly became wise to the system’s purpose and thus stayed away from specific areas), the mirrors were useful in other ways: in conveying information about friendly troop and supply movements, weather patterns and other workaday matters. Using reflected sunlight, the heliograph stations certainly were more efficient in the mountainous terrain than the traditional flags used by the Signal Corps. Yet, as an Army historian noted, the best method for communicating urgent intelligence about hostile Indian movements was the use of friendly Indian scouts in combination with the invisible telegraph!10

  After studying the history of the heliograph in Arizona, Bob had difficulty discounting its probable use by the KGC for its own clandestine purposes. It was a natural tool for setting up extensive depository lines in the years immediately after 1886. (Of course, use of the system would not have precluded KGC individuals or small groups from having hidden and guarded smaller caches within the same target area prior to 1886, when the initial design may have been sketched out.) Personnel likely would not have been a problem. The postwar KGC was believed to have placed agents in all branches of the U.S. government, including the Army. It would not have been difficult for the KGC to have planted a few men in the local Heliograph Corps to shoot the depository lines, say, under the pretense of sending official messages, or under the guise of conducting practice drills. As it turned out, the heliograph was employed through the 1890s, with at one point more than fifty relay stations active in
the West.

  With Picketpost as the centerpoint, Bob conducted an analysis (later corroborated by a topographical-mapping software program) of unobstructed lines of sight between various mountain peaks. It quickly became obvious that a heliograph stationed on top of Picketpost could have been the solution for surveying the template’s lines with absolute accuracy. In the handful of places where direct line of sight was precluded, simple triangulation between three stations would have generated survey lines almost as accurately. Moreover, the average distance between the referenced peaks is well within the range of the heliograph’s capacity. Even Adamsville, south of the Gila, is plainly within direct line of sight from Picketpost, as are Dinosaur Mountain, Comet Peak, Gray-back Mountain, Dromedary Peak, Crozier’s Peak, Ripsey Hill, Buzzard’s Roost, the Circlestone atop Mound Mountain and Hewitt Ridge (where the highest point marks the pupil of the topo horse’s left eye).

  Thus, while identifying Picketpost as the centerpoint remained a matter of informed conjecture, Bob recognized a simple fact: Picketpost Mountain, which had a heliograph station, is the only prominent spot in the region with a direct line of sight to each of the points on the circumference of the KGC’s topographical circle. And, with the power of the heliograph operating in such panoramic conditions, a forty-mile line could have been established in a matter of minutes. It might have taken weeks or months to survey the same line overland using traditional methods.

  The ever-resourceful KGC may have used another “basic” tool to survey its lines from peak to peak: fire. Near the middle of the zone of interest, Bob came across a lone hill called Poston Butte that lies near Florence and is visible from many miles in every direction. It once was the scene of a strange, long-standing fire ritual.

  Kentucky-born Charles Debrill Poston (sometimes called the “Father of Arizona” as he had served as the Territory’s first delegate to Congress) was a lawyer, explorer and entrepreneur who settled in Arizona (then part of New Mexico Territory) in the 1850s as the head of a mining enterprise. Poston was also a self-proclaimed “Sun Worshipper.” (Old photos of the eccentric businessman dressed in exotic garb recall the anachronistic attire worn by high-ranking members of the Scottish Rite’s Supreme Council.) As a tribute to the sun, Poston announced that he would keep a perpetual fire burning on the peak that would later be named after him. He built a road up the steep hill and had firewood hauled up the slope by the wagonload. A large blaze was set, and it burned continuously for several months.11

  Could Poston’s fire have served as a surveying beacon during nights when men worked on distant promontories to establish key lines for the KGC’s grid? Today, atop Poston Butte, stands a stone memorial to the enigmatic and widely traveled Poston, who reportedly died in abject poverty in 1902. It is in the shape of a pyramid.

  His mind churning with pride, tribulation and exhaustion, Bob late one night turned to Gardner and MacLeod and apologized for the complex hypothesis laid out before them. He said there just might be a big chunk of “Jacob Waltz’s lost mine”—U.S. mint gold coins confiscated by die-hard Rebels—stored in vaults underneath Picketpost Mountain and a handful of other sites. But, as far as he could tell, all were on government land or on posted mining-company property. Putting his pen and protractor down, he threw out a caveat: “It’s only map work. And who’s to say whether my call’s right, or whether the money’s still there.”

  Whether they could get to dig on site at Picketpost—whether such sites were accessible in terms of permitting, deep-excavation technology or other factors—were open questions. For the time being, he suggested, it was best to focus on Adamsville—a viable location on private property with an apparent Jesse James connection.

  17

  Evidence in the Ground

  THE mystery of Adamsville loomed large. It was time to lift the lid on possibilities there, and Bob resolved to do so with the participation of his HMP partners. Their information had helped generate lines to the ghost town, and his guiding principle was that if others had materially contributed to the solution, they were to participate in any recovered treasure. His collision with Griffith had not shaken his belief in doing others right—that is, if they proved straightshooters over time.

  Near the end of his spring 2000 trip, Bob surprised Gardner and MacLeod by showing them the KGC treasure waybill of what he now knew to be Adamsville, with its neat sketches of the adobe structures. Their curiosity grew when he revealed how several key lines cut through the center of that former stage post. Bob then demonstrated how one of the overlaid template master lines—from his initial alignment of the template—led precisely to the site from the northeast section of the 1900 Florence topo.

  Once on site, Gardner and MacLeod endorsed Bob’s hypothesis that the adobe remnants of Adamsville were the subject of the illustrated “JJ III” waybill. Their enthusiasm notwithstanding, Bob refrained from telling his two friends exactly where they should look. That small detail would have to come later, after efforts were made to see what the property owners’ response would be to the idea of a dig.

  Back in 1998, Bob had told Gardner and MacLeod that there might be something of historical significance buried in, or near, old Adamsville. At the time, he had been deliberately vague. He had asked Gardner to keep an eye on the general area and to try to find the owner of a stretch of private property on the north side of Old Adamsville Road, where the stage depot and post office had once stood.

  Gardner obliged, and, after making discreet inquiries and combing the Pinal County Recorder’s Office records, he found the owners. In a brief telephone conversation with one of them, he explained that there could be something of historical interest buried on the property. He asked whether a small group could do some initial probing with non-invasive detection tools. The owner said that he would ask his brother, a co-owner, and get back. Gardner waited for weeks, then months, for a call—to no effect. After the initial frustration wore off, he simply put Adamsville out of his thoughts.

  Bob’s trust in Gardner and MacLeod had solidified over the subsequent two years of adventure and discovery, and he resolved to put all that he knew about Adamsville on the table. Before any major move was undertaken, he wanted to be kept informed and, preferably, to be on the property. He would leave it to Gardner to arrange permission to get on the property for a possible recovery. Gardner immediately took up the challenge of trying to reach the owner, but with no more success.

  After several months awaiting a response, Gardner resolved to have a friend—a certified geologist—walk onto the property and do some above-ground surveying of a target area. The target was a section of the old stage road that Bob, by interpreting the information on the “Arizona Desert Treasure” waybill, had projected as the hot zone. The goal during those late summer weeks of 2000 would be to locate any major iron concretion (a safe, strongbox, metal chest) and then to estimate the depth of the target. If they received a positive reading, they would move to a higher level of planning.

  Using remote-sensing equipment, Gardner and his geologist friend conducted a quick survey of the area in front of two adobes and near what looked like an irrigation-pipe storage facility. The scan produced a definitive reading for a significant metallic target. Wanting to confirm its characteristics, Gardner decided to bring in a small vacuum drill to probe the soil below. The machine pulled up pieces of red brick, charcoal, broken china and scraps of rusted metal. Given these indicators, Gardner decided to bring in some heavy equipment.

  Not long after the preliminary survey (and unbeknownst to Bob in Arkansas) Gardner arranged for a team of trusted friends to come to the site to dig. The timing was coordinated with underground repair work being conducted in the immediate area. Gardner thought that his team would blend in. They did just that, working through the night, as the El Paso Gas team dug away, down the road, installing a new underground valve system.

  Gardner and his team dug with picks and spades, working in shifts, in the cool autumn night air. One person would pick and
shovel, another would grope for objects and a third would secure the sides of the deepening hole in the gravelly soil. It was slow going: each digger was trying to be meticulous, recording anything encountered in the subsurface and showing its approximate alignment.

  At just over a foot down, the men heard the clang of a pick striking iron. The metal target was an antiquated road-grader blade, about eighteen inches long.1 (Coincidentally, the Knights of the Golden Circle waybill to the site mentioned that the stolen money was meant to have been payment “to a RR grading contractor.”)

  Next, the diggers uncovered a couple of bricks, each cut in half, and some pieces of fine china pottery. (In an exquisite detail going unnoticed at the time, one of the distinct half-dollar-sized pieces of porcelain had a glazed circle of gold, a Golden Circle. Another piece of china was found with petite rose petals.)

  At three feet, the group struck a cross-pattern of two lengths of rusted cast-steel steam pipe, each three feet long. (The symbol of the third degree in Craft or basic Masonry, that of a Master Mason, is a skull and crossbones.)

  After six hours of hard effort, the men were both exhausted and exhilarated. They were mystified by their strange findings. Some swore that they had burrowed into an old junkyard.

  The group returned the next day, but this time with a mechanized post-hole digger. The experiment proved short-lived: exhaust from the machine reached dangerous levels inside the pit and made the diggers dizzy at their peril. With safety the priority, the group abandoned the approach.

  The following night, to Gardner’s delight, an eighteen-wheeler arrived carrying a Bobcat and a new backhoe. The excavating machine—owned by a friend who had volunteered for the adventure—was a four-wheel drive model, with floodlights and with an extender that allowed its bucket to dig deeper than a standard backhoe. After the digging resumed, a combination of handiwork and mechanized scooping, it became apparent to all that this was no random pit filled with contemporary debris. Old apothecary bottles, fine china, and horse bones were part of the eclectic haul.