Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  A huge calm flowed through him. He felt deeply satisfied. He had acted out a dream. Challenged as a child by a mystery, he had applied his physical, mental and emotional energy toward its solution and, in the end, he had achieved his goal. His true quest, he had always sensed, had been to solve the puzzle hinted at by Grandpa and Ode. It was not just a narrow search for gold; it was a much wider search for answers. In that exploration into the unknown, he grew to understand that the simple answer is not necessarily the most likely answer. He now knew that the Confederacy did not die in 1865; it went undercover.

  Having come this far in the unceasingly complex process of decipherment, he felt a powerful respect for the machinations, the ingenuity, the dedication of the code-makers and their modern-day adherents—right or wrong in their obscure beliefs. And he knew that it was not right for him to take the money.

  The incontrovertible knowledge that Grandpa, Ode and their associates had placed the treasure markers in and around Smoke Rock was worth far more to Bob than any amount of hard cash. After years of undiverted mental focus and physical exertion, he was in possession of the outline of an impossibly complex master plan used to harbor treasure in the mountains of western Arkansas.

  Now, in his sixties, Bob realized the enormity of what had been going on, beyond his comprehension, in those days of adolescent abandon: it had been an unknowing, silent pre-initiation into an immensely powerful underground society. He realized why the old-timers had pointed out the carvings, had taken him to remote spots and recounted elaborate hunting tales. He now felt as if Grandpa and Uncle Ode were speaking to him from the grave, beseeching him to retrace the steps they had made before. Whatever the eerie, inscrutable purpose behind the secret treasure grid, he knew that he had linked the key pieces together in a coded calculus. Oddly, he felt almost as if he had become one of them, insofar as he had begun instinctively, if not automatically, to understand the layouts—as if there were some readily recognizable and eminently solvable mathematical equation.

  He knew that the golden grid inside the Ouachitas was now nearly fully revealed. His discoveries along the deer trail were variables in a much larger equation—all hinted at by Grandpa’s photo. The equation led, ultimately, to a master cache. Not only did the symbolism in the photo (and in other prints of Grandpa’s) correspond to the many carved and buried directional markers that he had long since found, but it was also consistent with the location of mining claims held by Wiley, Grandpa, Dobson and others. Most significant, the cryptic photo-map and its associated clues from Bob’s fieldwork corresponded with another photocopied J. Frank Dalton waybill (from Orvus Howk–Jesse Lee James’s collection), one describing an apparently vast “Solomon’s Temple” treasure.6

  The cryptogram, of course, did not mention a state or specific location. But it did prove—through Bob’s investigation—to be a dramatic KGC and Masonic connection to Arkansas and the backcountry woods of his youth. (As mentioned, one of the core Masonic legends is that of Hiram Abiff, the mythical architect/builder of Solomon’s Temple.)

  The “Solomon’s Temple” waybill, which specifically refers to the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” contains a sketch of the template. The scale is one inch to one mile—far different from that of most of the coded maps. The illustrated waybill states:

  The Confederate Government leaders were powerful, rich influential men of the deep South who saw that the War Between the States did not settle all of the issues or problems of that era. So finances were raised, Gold Bars, Gold Nuggets, Gold Dust, coins, silver, platinum, diamonds, were hoarded then buried in what they termed to be Military-Strategic locations all over North America. …

  The bulk [of Solomon’s Temple] treasure was said to hold a few tons of gold, plus over $1,000,000 in old coins—Buried less than 30 feet deep. Twelve other treasures of less value represents 13 Southern states of USA—Those sympathetic toward the cause of the Old South…. These treasures were hauled into this wild area between the years 1869–1890.

  15. Textual waybill for King Solomon’s Temple Treasure depository, located in Brushy Valley, Arkansas and protected by Bill Wiley, W. D. Ashcraft, Odis Ashcraft, Isom Avants and other KGC “sentinel” families dating back to the late nineteenth century. (Note the turtle figure.)

  This survey pattern fits in with USGS maps of this particular area. …

  We learned that there was no North door in King Solomon’s Temple. So to enter the secret chambers of the secret workmen, we should by any and all means commence in the South and work our way towards the Northwest. Jesse James saw to it that dead folk are on guard—watching over these great treasures.

  The Worshipful Master sits in the East. The Senior Warden sits in the West.

  Methodical fieldwork eventually led Bob to the location of the Solomon’s Temple layout. In a remote corner of the Ouachitas, he and his friend Tilley found a cluster of coded engravings and buried clues that suggested construction of a rectangular grid, forty yards by sixty yards. The layout was cornered by a small pine knot, which had been splotched with red paint and carved subtly into the shape of a horse’s head. The durable pine marker—full of pitch that provides protection from rotting and pests—was disguised to look like a land-surveying corner marker. Yet it was in an area where the land had never been subdivided. Inside the conceptualized rectangle, the two men found carefully placed stone markers, which Bob interpreted to represent the stations of a Masonic temple. (The temple lodge is said to replicate the architectural design of Solomon’s Temple. In a Masonic Lodge room, the Worshipful Master sits in the east, as do the treasurer, the senior deacon and the secretary. The senior warden and junior deacon sit in the west.)

  They had found the symbolic intimation of a Masonic lodge hall along a trail suggested by clues gathered for decades and on a path subtly intimated by Will Ashcraft and his co-devotees to a cause. All these clues had provided the centerpoint for the alignment of the template, which, in turn, led to this precise spot indicating the burial of a KGC master cache. Solomon’s Temple treasure, one of the KGC’s mastercache sites, was in Arkansas, buried deeply and, as it turns out, on government land.

  Those secreting the treasure left nothing to chance or coincidence. After all, “the Worshipful Master sits in the East,” and none other than Albert Pike, the world’s highest ranking Mason for decades, had lived due east of where the two men now stood.

  The ultimate secret behind Grandpa and Uncle Ode’s devotion to the woods was no longer a mystery. Bob, with his devoted friend by his side, sat down near the red horse marker. The two men had a good laugh: even if they could recover the treasure from the deep underground, what would they do with it!

  After fifty-odd years, Bob Brewer had fulfilled his quest. He felt wiser, and not without battle scars. He looked at his lanky, soft-spoken partner, whose forebears, likewise, had fulfilled the sentinel’s zealous mission in privation and with no complaints. The two shook hands on a pledge: they might reveal the subject of their discovery but never its precise location. The pair of mountainmen then carefully replaced all of the clues they had found and restored the site just as they had found it, with one small exception. The markers were placed slightly below ground so that anyone looking for them would need to know exactly where they were.

  After finishing their work, the two Bobs sat down on the forest soil and ate a lunch of Vienna sausages and cheese crackers. It was the same meal that they had eaten years ago, as young men working the timber on the slopes of the Ouachitas for seventy-five cents an hour. Now they were the old-timers. The other players in the game were all dead: the Ashcrafts, Isom and Ed Avants, Bill Dobson, the Hatfields and others, all gone. Men in whose shadow they had lived as youth, and whose names would show up in Isom Avants’s cryptic illustrated diary from the 1920s. A diary that they both now realized was a work ledger for faithful members of the KGC, committed sentinels charged with protecting buried money over the course of their adult lives.

  As a result of what might best be
described as discriminating wisdom, Bob knew that he had found the final path to the sentinel’s master treasure, to the gold overseen by W. D. Ashcraft. More than forty years after the old man had offered to “dig up” some “cash money,” Bob realized that Grandpa had meant it. The gold, independent of its intrinsic value, was the anchor of the system, a system bound up, it seemed, in politics, philosophy, religion, sociology, math and science.

  Despite all that he had read about the KGC and its rumored caches of gold, silver and arms, not to mention all that he had seen firsthand, it still seemed incredible that large quantities of precious metal had been left in the ground. It was even more incredible, Bob thought, considering that those involved lived at or below the poverty line. But KGC gold—ever more valuable since its interment—was hidden in a network of depositories stretching across the lower section of the country, just as J. Frank Dalton—via Orvus Howk and Del Schrader—had asserted. He just did not know how much. That had never been a concern of his.

  The old mountaineers who guarded Solomon’s Temple and other KGC sites gained no wealth or fame from their vigil; they all had lived hard lives and had little if anything to show for it when they died. But they each had appeared content. They were men who stood for a cause and were not tempted by the likely millions in gold they protected: men who could be trusted, who loved their families and neighbors but would unhesitatingly kill intruders should the need arise.

  It was a difficult story to understand, but true. And, at this later stage of his life, Bob resolved to get the story out, realizing that he was perhaps one of the very few individuals alive who had obtained knowledge about this camouflaged segment of American history. While the Solomon’s Temple treasure would remain sealed, he vowed that he would—for the sake of history—try to locate and aid in the recovery of a master KGC treasure, buried thirty to forty feet deep, either in Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma or one of the many other states where he had been on the trail. This recovery would have to be conducted under government supervision, with heavy equipment, and with a stipulation that all money recovered would be put toward a good cause, one supporting education for underprivileged children across the nation.

  No doubt, some of the caches likely were “forgotten”: lost in the telling from one generation to the next in an underground movement that relied almost entirely on oral tradition and unwritten communication. Others unquestionably were lost to natural forces: wind, fire and ice that would destroy engraved, centuries-old trees; and erosion that would erase chiseled KGC markings on outcroppings. But what about caches that were not forgotten, that were deliberately left buried—some apparently still guarded?

  Whatever the motivation behind such lifelong devotion to a cause, Bob knew that the cause was bigger than the War Between the States, that it went beyond politics, beyond the Confederacy and a romantic notion that the South would rise again. There was no question that it went beyond the notion of state, period. If gold were knowingly left in the ground and protected well into the twentieth century, then the motivating force behind such concealment would have to verge on the religious—a higher calling, an article of faith.

  Based on his intensive research into the roots of the KGC, Bob imagined a third-way belief system, lying somewhere between Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam and mysticism. Indeed, he thought, nothing short of religion or some form of spiritual allegiance could have fused a bond among men that would endure for so many decades, if not centuries. The buried gold, perhaps, was meant to be the financial underpinning of that new “religious” order. Gold, unlike paper money, maintains its value as a world-recognized medium of exchange and serves as a safe haven in times of economic and political turmoil.

  Soon after the men’s return from the Solomon’s Temple locale, Tilley received a visit from an ailing Bob Smith, his old treasure-hunting pal, who was near death from cancer and would soon spend his last days in Granbury, Texas, the same small town where J. Frank Dalton had died. Smith left behind a package. In it was a smooth, gray triangle-shaped rock. It had been neatly inscribed with a carving tool. In the salutation, the o in “to: Bob Tilley” happened to fall neatly into the uppermost corner, the apex, of the pyramid—the all-seeing eye. On the back was a silhouette of an Indian, wearing a necklace of sorts. The chain of the necklace, in fact, was nothing more than an inverted drafting compass: as in “compass and square,” the other world-renowned emblem of Freemasonry.

  Epilogue—The European Connection

  FOR years, Bob had sensed a powerful European dimension to the KGC mystery. The links seemed to reach across a spectrum of shared symbolism, esoteric communication and, perhaps, an obscure anti-authoritarian philosophy. It was a bold, tantalizing concept.

  There were some obvious pointers to a trans-Atlantic connection. To begin with, there was the Scots-Irish ancestry of many in his own family and that of die-hard former Rebels, such as Jesse James, who had formed the KGC’s core. Then there was Pike’s trip to Europe during the Civil War to attend a “Rosicrucian” conclave. At war’s end, there were safe-haven flights to London and other European capitals by Breckinridge, Benjamin and other Confederate-KGC exiles. Further, there were abundant allusions in the KGC underground literature to “the chivalry” and, specifically, to the European Knights Templar.

  What of these medieval Templars—monastic “bankers” to the world during their peak period of influence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? During their long-running confrontation with the Church of Rome, these monk-warriors allegedly moved “underground” and placed their vast wealth in subterranean vaults. In considering the longevity of the Templar saga, Bob wondered about the longevity of the KGC in America: What was the powerful force or idea that held it together? Was it fundamentally political, or was it something powerfully philosophical or theological, a faith-based secret creed imported from Europe?

  Indeed, what should one make of the religious-spiritual-philosophical references suggested by the veiled scripture on the Arkansas Bible Tree, by the priest figures on that same tree and on the Arizona stone tablets, not to mention numerous other KGC symbols with Biblical connotations—crosses, hearts, skulls (as in Golgotha, the “place of the skull”)—at sites across America’s southern tier?

  The best Bob felt he could do, as he had been told as a youth, was to follow the symbols and look for parallels.

  By happenstance, the prospect of an intricate European connection to the KGC’s underground grid came into focus in the spring of 1998. One of his sons, a former U.S. Marine firearms instructor who had taken part in one of his Arizona expeditions, sent him an intriguing book as a present that year. Living in San Diego at the time, the younger Brewer came across the title while browsing at a local bookstore, where he had been thumbing through a section of books associated with the Knights Templar. Little did he know how much impact his gift would have on his father.

  Entitled The Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2,000-Year-Old Mystery, and written by British authors Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, the book describes a mysterious, geometrically defined grid in southern France that allegedly points to a hidden, buried secret of enormous import.1 Their book is based, in part, on earlier research and analysis published in Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

  The provocative book engrossed Bob from the moment he opened it. He was startled to see vivid, graphic parallels to the geometric/geographic layouts that he had uncovered in America, though the book, to be sure, makes no mention of the Knights of the Golden Circle, has nothing to do with the United States and reveals no treasure recoveries. The Tomb of God’s photographs, maps, diagrams and other visual components were but half the story. The authors’ evocative description of a strange sequence of events—following a widely reported discovery of ciphered parchments in a church in the historic village of Rennes-le-Château in southern France in the 1880s and 1890s—pulled Bob in and never let him go. The blurb on the front jacket caught
his eye.

  The parchments, the authors demonstrate, point toward a secret tradition—a hidden geometry of lines and angles apparent in certain maps, tombs and artworks over the centuries…. This geometry corresponds to a map of the region surrounding Rennes-le-Château, with the lines intersecting at a precise point. …

  While rejecting the authors’ speculation as to what lies at the core of the Rennes treasure grid, Bob sensed that a new window into his quest had been opened. There were striking parallels between the late-nineteenth-century intrigue in the small French village of Rennes-le-Château near the Pyrenees mountains—a former Knights Templar stronghold—and the late-nineteenth-century KGC intrigue in mountainous parts of the American South and Southwest.

  Surrounding the Rennes was a pattern of encrypted markers, which, in turn, yielded conceptual topographic lines for some esoterically conceived geometric pattern. Moreover, the topographic/geographic pattern—based on a circular map of medieval Jerusalem—involved a master circle, a square, pyramids, and comet-like “fans” with required degrees of rotation! It looked like a blueprint for what Bob had painstakingly uncovered over five decades of investigation in remote parts of America, beginning in the Ouachitas.

  Not only did Tomb of God’s authors describe an analogous integration of directional lines with landmarks and subtle features on topographic maps; they also showed how enciphered text from the parchments found by a local Rennes priest, François Bérenger Saunière, hinted at those topographic features, in both cipher text and allegory.