NATIVE TREASURE TALK UP THE FRIO
By Fannie Ratchford
His name was Zeno, but he answered with equal indifference and slowness to Bruno, Juno, and Zero. He was a goat-herder who had been hired to help with the fall shearing, and though he was not more than fourteen years of age, long following after flocks of goats along dusty roads had given him the slow, shambling gait of an old man and fixed on his small, wizened face an expression not unlike that of the patriarchs of the flocks he drove.
One night at the supper table my cousin expressed disgust that a certain Mexican, upon whom he had been depending for help with the shearing, had seen some sort of supernatural light on the mountains, and had betaken himself off to hunt for the buried treasure that such a light indicates. As the conversation turned upon the subject of this superstition, I saw Zeno’s face light up with an expression of interest and intelligence altogether new to it. But he said nothing. Indeed, I think, up to that time I had never heard him speak.
After supper, when he and a small boy who lived on the ranch had withdrawn to the darkness of the lawn, I heard a thin, shrill, defiant voice saying, “That’s the truth, and anybody can laf that wants to.”
Scenting an interesting story, I joined the boys on the grass, and asked, “What’s true, Zeno? Tell me the story that you were telling Wayne.”
“’Tain’t no story, hit’s the gospel truth, and if you’ll take me up there, I’ll show yer,” was the defiant answer.
After several more questions, I got this story. Near the head of the Frio River, between Leakey and Concan, there is a mountain with a rather steep, bald face. Anyone who has the temerity [[58]]to linger in the vicinity until night begins to fall will see the tall, willowy figure of a woman all in white moving slowly down the mountain-side, carrying a lighted torch in one hand, while with the other she strikes about her with a rod or switch.
“Where does she come from,” I asked, “from behind the mountain or from out of the top?”
“She don’t come from nowhere,” was the indignant reply. “She just—just—”
“Just appears,” I suggested.
“Yeh, just ’pears,” Zeno agreed.
“But what is she striking at?” I persisted.
“At ever’thing, and if she hits yer, you don’t feel no lick. Yer just have a shivery feeling like a puff of cold, wet wind had struck yer.”
“What is she doing there?” I insisted. “Was there a murder committed there?”
“She’s a-watching all the money that’s buried in that there mountain, of course,” was the pitying reply. “Once on a time some Spaniards were going along there with a lot of money packed on mules, when the Indians came along, and they had a big fight, and they wus all killed, but first they had buried their money, and nobody hain’t ever been able to find it, ’cause they is always a spirit guarding it. Grandma Christmas, she can tell yer all about it; she’s ’most a hundred years old, and she’s lived up there ’most since the time of the fight.
“Paw and me, we found some arrerheads up there, and Paw, he’s seen the spirit with the light and ever’thing.”
“Has your father ever dug for the money?” I asked.
“No, he ain’t never dug on that mountain, but he’s dug in another place, I ain’t saying where, but not more’n a hundred miles from there,” he answered mysteriously.
“My uncle, he first seen a light in this here place where Paw dug—a funny sort of light that didn’ burn anything up—”
“Like Moses and the burning bush,” I suggested, but he ignored my interruption, and went on.
“—and he first shot through it with his pistol, and then he tried to touch it with his hand, but he never could get near enough to it. It always moved away as he went toward it.
“But anyway him and Paw found the right place to dig. They knowed it was the right place, ’cause they found two machete knives stuck way down in the ground. They found a funny sort [[59]]of place, like a well all walled up with rocks that had been filled in with dirt, and had grass and everything all grown over it.
“Paw and my uncle taken time about digging and watching, and once when Paw was digging, he come to the bottom of the well. The bottom was covered with pieces of flat rock like pieces of pie with their points together in the middle. Paw started to prize one of these pieces up, when a bright light flashed right in his face, and he heard a terrible noise like a hundred men a-running on horses, and fighting, too. He got out of there quick as he could, but it took him a long time to catch up with my uncle, who had heard the noise first.
“No, he never did go back there, but he told another man, who did go, and found the place too, but the man what owned the place run him away.
“Not long after that, Paw went to a fortune teller, and he told him that they was a whole lot of money right there in that hole, an’ if he had just lifted the rock on the other side he would a found it, but it wouldn’t do him any good to go back, for the spirits were watching that money, and they wusn’t no man on the green earth that could get it until he could lay them spirits.”
Zeno was now thoroughly warmed up to his subject, and as soon as this last story had had time to soak in, he started again.
“They’s another place, too, up on the Frio where they’s money buried. Ever’body knows hit’s there, but nobody ain’t ever been able to find it. My uncle was hunting up there once, when he found a funny piece of old, old iron chain, and after a while he saw some rocks with the funniest kind of marks on them, that wusn’t put there by no white man, either. He come back to get Paw, and they hunted and hunted for the place, but they never could find the rocks ner the marks ner nothing. The fortune teller told Paw that the spirits always turned them away just when they were about to find the right place.”
“I am sorry you can’t tell me exactly where those places are, Zeno. Do you suppose your father could tell me?” I asked.
“He kin tell yer all right if he wants to,” was the canny answer. “He knows where just about all the money in Texas is buried, I guess.”
Needless to say, I took occasion to go to Paw’s place of business not long after, but found to my disappointment that Paw had gone to California to pick grapes. [[60]]