by Jack L Knapp
I began to get hits from the metal detector almost immediately but soon realized that the hits came from trash. Remains of old metal cans, bottle caps from beers drunk by long vanished cowboys or prospectors, unknown bits of whatever; all caused the detector to beep. Before long I learned what the tones in my headset meant and I ignored trash signals after that.
But I never got a signal indicating a deposit of valuable metals. No gold, no silver; just country rock and occasional minerals such as quartz or pyrite.
T wasn’t reporting any better luck. He reached the mouth of the canyon before turning south into the highlands between the two canyons we’d explored. He scanned the highlands on the way back while I moved high up the wall of the canyon and checked the ridgeline as I returned.
We talked about our day’s work while having our supper of MRE’s, also known as Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. Well, some like them; there’s no accounting for tastes, I suppose.
“Ray, the legends say that there are several lost mines in this range of mountains. Supposedly those mines produced gold nuggets in great numbers. I don’t believe it. I did get a feel once that there might be gold and possibly silver deposited here, but it was far too deep for us to reach. It’s down about half a mile along the contact zone, part of the fault line where the volcanic rocks bed against the limestone. Someone may find that deposit someday, but it’s no good to us.
“I think I want to have a look at the area around Victorio Peak. We can pack up tomorrow, go back to the truck, and be there by late in the afternoon. If that doesn’t work, we can look into the Datil Mountains and the eastern slopes of the Black Range. There have been rumors associated with the Datils, but the Black Range has produced a lot of gold and silver over the years. Further south, there was a chamber lined with almost-pure silver. Miners called it the Bridal Chamber. It’s been mined out now, of course, but there might be others like it. The miners found the Bridal Chamber by accident. They tunneled into the side of it while following a vein of ore.
“There’s a small problem with Victorio Peak. It’s on the White Sands military reservation and the post authorities won’t allow anyone in there now. There’s no mine there, according to what was reported when it was first located. It’s a cache, gold bars, jewels, even jeweled swords and a crown. Those last items were reportedly taken out by the fellow who found the cache, Doc Noss.
“I think it’s got to be part of Emperor Maximilian’s treasure. He sent items worth billions out of Mexico before he was killed. I can’t think of anyone else who would send a crown or swords out by mule train. Whoever transported the treasure stashed it in a cave. Victorio Peak is actually a hill, not a mountain. The discoverer got some of the treasure, his investors got some of it, and the Army may have gotten some of it too. There were rumors that claimed the Army got the last of the treasure and didn’t want to share it with Doc Noss’ widow.
“If there’s anything still there, I’ll find it. Then I’ll come out and you and I can figure how to get at the stuff, whatever Doc Noss didn’t get out. I doubt he got it all. He had a partner who killed him while they were trying to figure the best way to bring the rest of the gold bars out.
“You can drop me off at the border of the missile range about dark, and I’ll go in and snoop the area, see if I get any hunches. If I do, I’ll have a shovel with me just in case. But I won’t plan on doing more tonight than finding out if the treasure is still there.
“I’ll comm you when I’m done and you can pick me up before daylight, same place along the fenceline. There are helicopter patrols and horsemen that patrol the fence, but I won’t be leaving tracks and it’s tough to spot a man who’s drifting ten or twenty feet above the ground. Nobody will see me, and if they do, I’ll buzz out of there like a space shuttle taking off!
“Anyway, I think it’s worth a try.”
We got a fairly good night’s sleep. I listened, but T didn’t seem to have any problems with nightmares. Maybe they only came back when he wasn’t tired…and we were both tired after our trips through the canyons.
After breakfast we packed up and headed north along Water Canyon. We finally began hiking about a mile from the campground to avoid detection if anyone was parked there.
T’s truck was where he’d parked it, dustier, but otherwise as we’d left it. Our packs went into the back and we headed east to Socorro. Both of us were ready for a change of diet and real coffee. The MRE’s would keep the body alive, but I really missed having a good cup of coffee with breakfast!
We rented rooms at a motel and showered before turning in to catch up on sleep. We could return to the motel tomorrow, after T’s reconnaissance of Victorio Peak, and sleep through the day.
T sorted out the things he wanted to take with him and left the rest of his pack in the motel room. I wasn’t certain of the wisdom of his plan, but I doubted he’d have a problem evading detection. I did have another concern, so I asked.
“You’re sure you can travel that far and have time to look around, T?”
“Ray, I can travel a lot further and faster now than you’d believe. I’m no longer using ground images in quite the same way I was before. I was walking at first, then running as I learned to use levitation. I’ve continued to improve.
“I can get higher now, and when I do I scan larger areas of the surface though not in detail. I still push or pull at the ground, but as I begin to move faster I start using the surface that’s anywhere from a hundred yards ahead to maybe as much as half a mile, depending on altitude. But when I’m that high up and looking that far ahead, I’m moving too fast to do anything but travel in a straight line.
“I can’t do rapid course changes at that speed, so I need to make sure there’s nothing in front of me! I could use the bubble at the last second before I hit something, but if I had to do that I’d begin to drop. I’d have to catch myself, collapse the bubble, before I hit the ground. I can be maneuverable or I can go fast, but I can’t do both.
“Bird strikes in an airplane are bad enough. If I run into one before I can form the bubble it might be fatal!
“I’ll keep the speed down tonight, stay low and slow enough to get to the peak before midnight but high enough to avoid ground objects. I’ll plan on spending no more than three hours in the area and then I’ll meet you on US 380 where you drop me off.”
We got to the Owl Bar and each had a green-chile cheeseburger with fries. A short time later we left, me driving.
“Just slow down when I tell you, Ray. Keep it to about twenty or twenty-five until I’m away, then find a place to park. Maybe Bingham, that’s not exactly a hub of activity nowadays so you should be able to get turned around and park until I’m finished.”
“Turning around won’t be a problem, T. I’ve gotten a lot stronger too.”
“You think you can lift the truck while you’re inside it, Ray?”
“If I can’t, I’ll just get out and lift it while I’m outside. This road is narrow, there are dropoffs to each side so there aren’t many places to park or turn around, but it’s also mostly deserted. Nobody will be watching, in other words. I’ll be where you want me when you’re ready to be picked up.”
I was probably forty minutes east of the Rio Grande when T decided he was ready. Slowing down to twenty miles an hour, I glanced at T as he picked up the shovel and bag containing water bottles, book of maps, and the GPS unit.
“Hold the door open, Ray?”
Not a problem; I lifted the door latch and pushed the door wide, using my Talent to hold it open against the pressure of the moving air. I concentrated on driving and when I next glanced over, T had slipped out of the truck. He was moving fast across the desert, course south or perhaps a bit southeast.
I let the door swing closed and latch before pushing the truck’s speed up to just under the speed limit. There was a parking spot at the outskirts of Bingham, one of several that were occupied now by large semi-trailer trucks. They too found this a good place to stop overnight. I turned t
he truck around and settled in for a long wait. I snoozed after a time while I waited for T to comm me.
The call came just after two in the morning.
I started the engine and soon pushed the speed limit as I drove west. Half an hour later, perhaps a bit more, I felt and heard something thump against the truck’s bed. I automatically glanced in the rear view mirror but saw nothing.
So I did. T slid into the seat and reached for his seat belt. I let the door swing closed, and when it was latched I asked how the trip had gone.
Chapter Eighteen
Ray:
Both of us wanted to see what was in that heavy chest, but we decided to wait.
“T, I want to know what’s in the box, probably at least as much as you do. But there’s no way we can force that box open without making a lot of noise and leaving a mess in the room. I think we need to take it somewhere else. Out into the desert, maybe a roadside park somewhere, anywhere but a motel room.”
“I agree, Ray. Let’s check out of here. We can get breakfast from a drive-through and head south. I’ll leave the Datil Mountains for later. I suspect the geology is going to be pretty much the same as what I found in the Magdalenas, and that wasn’t any help to us at all.”
I took my credit card to the desk and finished the checkout process while T carried our gear out to the truck. Packs and such went into the cargo bed and then he brought out the chest. That went in the front center of the bed, just beneath the cargo lamp, and the rest of our stuff, piled around the box, concealed it from casual observation. I looked at the arrangement, decided it was good enough, and we headed for McDonald’s.
One thing we didn’t want to do was attract attention. T kept the speed down, and we ate while parked in a section of the parking lot where there were no other vehicles.
A few miles south of Socorro is a roadside park by the Interstate. This one has no restroom or other facilities, so it serves primarily as a location for long-haul truckers to park overnight while they slept. Today it served our purposes equally well.
Fences line the interstate on both sides, serving to keep cattle from wandering into traffic. I lifted over the western fence, moved a hundred yards out into the desert, then slowly levitated until I was about two hundred yards up. No one looks for a motionless man floating two hundred yards above the ground!
I watched for a break in the traffic…I-25 is usually quite busy, although not the kind of ‘busy’ that one finds along the east coast freeways…and as soon as I saw a gap in the line of cars I commed T. He lifted the box over the fence and by the time I could join him, trying not to attract attention, he had wrenched the locking hasp off the box.
We watched together as he reached out and forced the rusty hinges to move. The top of the box finally gave way and we could see inside.
The bottom of the box was lined with metal bars, each about the width and length of a standard construction brick but not so thick. I picked up one of the bars and discovered a second layer below the top one.
The metal bar was heavy, although I didn’t think it was as heavy as gold was reported to be. I had a pocketknife, so I tried to shave a bit of the metal. It was heavy going, again not what I expected gold to be like. Gold is known to be very heavy and soft enough to be cut with a knife.
“T, if this is gold, it’s not very pure. At most, it’s an alloy. Maybe it’s half gold and half something else.”
While I had been puzzling over the bar of metal, T had been looking at other objects in the chest. He had two leather bags in his hands now.
One of the bags might have been buckskin, based on the kind of thin leather it had been made from. It was held closed at the top by a drawstring, pulled tight and knotted securely. The other was likely cowhide, probably half of a pair of saddlebags at one time. If that was indeed what it had been, the other half of the pair was missing. The one in T’s hand was simply a heavy, flat leather bag with a cover flap that was held closed by buckled straps.
T put down the saddlebag and began working at the knot holding the buckskin bag closed.
“Careful, T. If that’s a poke of gold dust, you don’t want to spill it.”
“It’s not dust, Ray. I can feel lumps through the leather.”
He finally got the bag opened and carefully poured the items the bag contained into his cupped palm.
“Jewels, T?”
“I think so, Ray. No way for us to tell, of course. If this is Maximilian’s treasure, we need to remember that some of those old crowns contained jewels made of glass. Some of the other stones that were valuable then are only considered to be semiprecious now. But this one…” He held up a stone that was almost an inch in diameter, “…this one might be a ruby. If it is, and if we can sell it, our money concerns are over. Rubies of this dark-red color are as valuable as diamonds, sometimes more valuable.”
“We should probably put them back in the bag, T. If they really are valuable, we don’t want to drop one out here in the desert.”
T carefully put the stones back in the bag and retied the drawstring.
“Let’s see what’s in the other bag, Ray.”
T began unbuckling the fasteners that held the saddlebag closed.
“Oh, ho! Check this out, Ray!”
T had reached into the bag and now held a handful of gold coins.
“Those look new, T.”
“I don’t think they’ve ever been circulated, Ray. Look at the picture.”
On one side of the gold coin was a profile view of a bearded and mustachioed man. Letters around the circumference of the coin on this side read “Maximiliano Emperador”. The reverse side of the coin said “Imperio Mexicano” and had a representation of what appeared to be an eagle and beneath this a date, 1865.
“Are they all like that, T?”
“All the ones I’ve seen are, Ray. I’d say this settles the question. It’s Maximilian’s treasure.”
“Part of it, anyway, T. We’ll have to figure out what to do with the bars. If they’re not pure, and I don’t think they are, they’ll need to be refined. We’ll need to have those gemstones examined by a gemologist too, and see whether the coins are worth something to collectors. T
hey might we worth more than the value of the gold, although that’s probably a considerable amount.”
I looked at the box. The wooden top had cracked while being forced open.
“I’m guessing that’s a Wells Fargo box, T. I think Doc Noss got the box in Socorro at the stage stop, carried the things we’re looking at out of the cavern they were stored in, put them into the box and then buried them in the desert. That’s what the legend said he did, and I’d say it’s confirmed. You said you felt other hunches around the area, just not as big as this one?”
“I did, Ray. There’s a problem, though. I couldn’t get the hole completely filled in, and there’re tracks in the area where I was digging. If one of the range riders passes through there before the next dust storm or heavy rain, he’ll know something was dug up.”
“If the Army knows that, T, they’ll have the authorities looking for people trying to sell the metal bars. I doubt they can identify the coins or the jewels, but those bars are a problem.”
“You’re right, Ray.”
T looked carefully around. “See that hilltop to the west?”
“Hard to miss, T. It’s the biggest one around here.”
“Bring a pen and a piece of paper, Ray. We’ll need the shovel and the GPS too. Meet me on top of the hill.”
I went back and got the items T wanted. By the time I reached the hilltop, T had found a spot he liked. He’d brought the old strongbox with him.
“Pick up that slab of rock, Ray. Put it over there someplace for now. I’ll dig, you can spell me if I need it. Meantime, get four GPS readings, one to the north, the others to the south, east, and west of where I’m digging.”
“Four readings, T?”
“Yes. Readings from the GPS aren’t pinpoint-accurate. We take four readings at opposite sides and record those. When we decide to come back and get the gold bars, we find the four points we’ve found on the GPS, draw a line connecting them, and where that imaginary line crosses will be very close to where the bars are buried.”
“Clever, T.”