Several years ago, Cicero Stewart, under sheriff of Eddy County, New Mexico, was up in the mountains hunting for the lost mine. He relates that “Grizzly Bill,” a cowboy, was in camp in the Russell Hills of the Guadalupe Mountains, and came across a gold deposit. He abandoned his cattle and went to Pecos, where he had a great spree, displaying his gold. While trying to ride a wild horse he was thrown off, breaking his neck.
F. H. Hardesty, residing in El Paso, was induced to relate his own experience as follows:
“About a year and a half ago, Lucius Arthur stopped at my place to get water for himself and pack animal, and remained over night. Becoming confidential, he divulged to me the secret that he was making a trip to a mountain range, three days’ journey due east, for the purpose of trailing two Mexicans who left Ysleta the night before.
“He said he had followed them at other times nearly to the mountain, but had been compelled to return before reaching it for want of ‘grub’ and water. He was known as ‘Frenchy’ in [[69]]Ysleta, being a native of France. He had been professor of athletics in Austin, Texas, and while there heard a story about these two Mexicans, and had come to find the gold mine they visited.
“One Mexican, he said, would come from down in Mexico, and meet the other (his brother-in-law) in Ysleta, and start out in the dead of night horseback. The one from Mexico belonged to a wealthy old family who had known for generations about the mine and had kept the location a secret. But some member of the family would go every year and bring back gold.
“I told Arthur he ought to be better equipped for the journey, and offered to stake him with all funds needed. He accepted my offer and agreed to take me as a partner. He left with two months’ supplies and good equipment. After an absence of a month and a half, he returned, saying that he had at last found the hidden mine, and brought me as a proof plenty of rich gold quartz broken off the ledge near the brink of a chasm, which he could not descend into, because its walls were perpendicular. He stayed with me a few days, and providing himself with a strong rope, set out for the mine. This chasm was 80 feet long, east and west, by 40 feet wide, he said.
“From his place of concealment, he said, he saw one of the Mexicans descend by a rope, and bring out several filled sacks. After their departure he slipped down to the place and saw a large opening like a cave in the vein, 60 feet down. The chasm appeared to have widened to 100 feet at that point. Loose broken rock in front of the cave showed that work had been done lately. He was unquestionably at the place where the Mexicans had for generations got their yellow gold.
“Frenchy never returned to me,” concluded Mr. Hardesty.
But the most realistic and marvelous story of gold, in comparison with which the stories of the lost “Cabin Mine” and “Nigger Ben Mine” and similar legendary mines pale into insignificance, is one familiar to nearly every one in Roswell and Carlsbad, New Mexico, and told by cowboys and ranchmen in the winter nights around their camp fires in the Guadalupe Mountain country.
It is the story of a mystery—that of a lost gold mine in the highest and most precipitous, canyon-rent, and rugged mountains in the Southwest, rising 5000 feet above the plains. The lost mine in the fastness of this range is a gold mine (as the story [[70]]goes) that is fairly bristling with the precious metal; its value is estimated at millions, and it is known in Texas and New Mexico as the “Lost Sublett Mine.”