“As I told you, we were expecting the Texans at any time. As a precaution against their coming we dug a hole right beside the wagon. Then we went off a way and cut two posts, in case one turned out bad. After we had got them back to the wagon and were at work, we all at once heard a galloping as if a whole troop of cavalry was coming down the hills. Pronto, pronto (quickly, quickly), we threw the new logs into the pit we had dug, spread a few skins down, piled the load of coin into them, covered the pit up, turned the wagon upside down over the fresh dirt, and set fire to it. It blazed up; we mounted our horses and rode westward. I don’t know whether what we heard was Texas cavalry or not. I am inclined to think now that it must have been a herd of mustangs. Anyway, we left confident that signs of our digging would be wiped out by the fire and that the Texans would think we had burned our baggage to keep it from falling into their hands.
“So far as I know, I am the only survivor of that escort of Mexicans. I know that no Mexican has ever been back to get the money. I am come now with my old compadre to get it. You [[33]]see how we are. We started out poorly prepared. Now we are afoot and without provisions. If you will help us, we will share with you.”
The next morning, according to Russell, all five of the men started out with the camp ax and spade. They went to the old crossing, then out a few rods down the river. The old Mexican led them to a row of three little mounds—the knolls common in that country along the river valley. Beyond those three knolls was a stump, and beyond the stump was another knoll.
“That is the place,” whispered the ancient Mexican. He was so eager that he was panting for every word.
The white men rode on slowly, for the Mexicans were on foot and the older was walking in a kind of stumble. When they got fairly around the mound, they saw a pile of fresh dirt. Pitched across it were two old logs. Mesquite lasts a long time, you know, when it is under ground. The men looked down into the hole. It was not very deep and apparently it had not been dug a week. The prints of the coins were yet plain on some of the dirt, and a few tags of rotted skins were about.
Russell said that the Mexicans did not say anything. They were a week too late. When he last saw them they were tottering back to Mexico with what provisions the cowboys could spare.
The Chest at Rock Crossing on the Nueces
General Santa Anna was going from Laredo to Goliad.[1] While he was fording the Nueces at the old Rock Crossing in the Chalk Bluff Pasture, once a part of the George West Ranch, the Rock Crossing being about twelve miles below the Shiner Crossing, his “pay cart” broke down and a very heavy iron chest filled with gold fell into the river. The river was up; Santa Anna was in great haste to reach Goliad; there was little travel in the country. He decided to leave the chest in the river; so he had it chained to a tree, intending to get it on the way back, for he expected to make short work of subduing the insurgent Texans.
In after years, Pate McNeill, the same man that tied down the [[34]]maverick heifer in one of the Rock Pens, found a piece of chain tied around an elm tree on the east bank of the river. Still later Dubose found the tree bearing the marks of a chain, but the chain itself was gone. Encouraged by the markings, he, with Stonewall Jackson Wright and Wright’s brother-in-law, Albert Dinn, went to Beeville, about fifty miles distant, and got a four-horse load of tongue-and-groove lumber. They sank a shaft about eighteen feet deep in the middle of the river, a little below the crossing itself, accounting for the push of water. They were able to wall out the water but made poor way with the boiling quicksand.