II
The legend that I grew up knowing was that the “fort” had been the ranch of a Mexican or Spaniard named Ramirez who became immensely wealthy raising sheep. He is supposed to have lived there more than a hundred years ago. Ramirez had a tunnel connecting his house with the creek. One time the Indians surrounded him. After withstanding the siege for days until he saw that he must leave or starve, he buried his money somewhere within the rock walls, and left by the tunnel. He was cautious and left in the night, but the next day he was captured, together with his small household, and all were put to death, leaving the place of his hidden thousands a secret.
Some people will tell you that it is useless to hunt for the treasure any longer. They say that fifty years ago Tol McNeill, who owns a fair-sized ranch adjoining the pasture in which the fort is situated, found $40,000 there and with the money bought and stocked his land. But I am sure that hunters for riches around the place are increasing in number.
Years ago I remember that a white man with a Mexican beside him drove up to our house in a buckboard. He had come from Runge, seventy miles northeast. He told my father what he was after and asked permission to dig at the fort, which was readily granted. His Mexican claimed to have been digging at the south wall some ten years before when all of a sudden, just as he was sure that his telache had struck the lid of a chest, he heard an unearthly yell behind him. He did have enough presence of mind to kick a few clods back into the hole, which was a small one; but he had been too much frightened ever to return to the scene or even to tell anyone of his experience before he found the patrón that was with him now. I guided the buckboard through the prickly pear to the fort; when the Mexican got there he appeared never to have seen it before.
A field was put in near the place and a Mexican jacal built about half a mile down the creek. The Mexicans living there tell of seeing lights play around the hill at night, and to them, as to folk of other races, the lights are a sign of precious metal under the ground. [[47]]
Last summer a Mexican, named Genardo del Bosque, who has been on the ranch for a quarter of a century, gave me considerable information about “la casa de Ramirez.” Antonio de la Fuente, now dead, came to the country years and years ago as a child with his parents. They had a little money and as land was then very cheap and as the old fort was yet in tolerable condition, the walls all standing, and all that it needed to make it habitable being a roof of thatched beargrass, they considered buying it. One day while they were approaching it, a white lion, or perhaps it was a white panther, leaped out, and when they came within Antonio saw many and various coins on the walls and on the floor. But he was afraid and so were his parents to touch the coins, and of course they would no longer consider a purchase. The white animal was the soul of the dead owner of the treasure there to watch over it.
However, it is rather strange that Antonio and his parents took none of the money, for a white object (un bulto blanco) is a good spirit, and a white cat, a white calf, a white dog, or a white mule, or a woman dressed all in white may appear to people to lead them to buried treasure. But if un bulto negro appears, let them look out! The established Spanish custom in old times was to bury the treasure first and then over it a dead man. If this dead guardian was not the owner, then often the spirits of the two are in conflict. Hence, if a man digs close to the treasure, he is usually frightened away by outlandish noises heard behind him. The noises are generally as of many chains (cadenas) rattling and clanking. Since Antonio saw the white panther so long ago, no strange animals have been observed near the fort, only lights, lights, always between the fort and the creek, never at the fort itself.