MORO’S GOLD
By Fannie E. Ratchford
I heard the story of Moro’s gold first, when a very small child, from my mother, who herself remembered it from her tenth year, [[105]]and from my grandmother, who, except for its tragic outcome, would have forgotten the whole incident in her busy life as mistress of a large plantation. I heard it when several years older from my father, who knew it merely as a family and neighborhood legend, and I heard it again a few years ago from my mother’s cousin, Judge W. P. McLean of Fort Worth, who as a young man was living in my grandfather’s home at the time the incident occurred. The story as I give it here contains elements of all four slightly varying accounts.
Before the Civil War, my grandfather, Preston R. Rose, lived on a large plantation, called Buena Vista, lying along the Guadalupe River, seven miles from Victoria, near the Indianola road. Late one afternoon, two years before the Civil War began, he was sitting on the porch reading, when my mother, who was playing near, called his attention to the unusual sight of a stranger coming across the field from the direction of the river. The stranger was of small stature and dark complexion, evidently a Spaniard. When he had reached the porch, he addressed my grandfather in the easy, courteous manner of a gentleman and an equal, and requested hospitality for the night, explaining that his pack mule had gotten away from him and that he had exhausted himself in a fruitless search.
His request was granted without question, and Moro took up his residence at Buena Vista, which on one pretext or another lasted for several months, in spite of the suspicious and disquieting circumstances that soon arose. The first of these was the report brought in by the negroes the next morning after Moro’s arrival, that a mule with a pistol shot through his head had been found partially buried in the river bottom. Another was the fact that Moro was never seen without a glove on his right hand, not even at meal time. The negro boy who waited on him in his room reported that he once saw him without the glove when he was washing his hand, and described a strange device on his wrist that was probably a tattooed figure. But the most disturbing circumstance connected with Moro was his eagerness to get rid of money. He distributed gold coins (of what coinage, I never heard) among the household servants like copper pennies, until Grandfather rather sharply requested him to stop.
Though there was not much to be bought in the little town of Victoria, Moro never came back from a trip to town without the [[106]]most expensive presents that could be bought for all the family in spite of the fact that they were invariably refused. My mother seems to have been particularly impressed by a large oil painting which he once bought from a local artist at an impossible price, as a present for my grandmother. When she refused to accept it, he asked permission to hang it in the library, and there it hung as long as the house was in possession of the family.
Frequently Moro proposed the most extravagant things. Once he urged Grandfather to allow him to build a great stone house of feudal magnificence to replace the colonial frame house in which he lived. Again he proposed that he take the entire family to Europe at his expense, leaving the girls there to receive an elaborate education in the best schools to be found on the continent.
One day as Moro was walking about the plantation with Grandfather, the question of plantation debts came up, and Moro remarked in a significant tone that Grandfather was at that minute standing within fifty feet of enough gold to enable him to pay all the debts of the plantation and still be a rich man, even if he did not own an acre of land or a negro slave. Grandfather’s anger prevented his continuing the disclosure that he was evidently eager to make. The only landmark of any kind near was a large fig tree about fifty feet away.
In the meantime the negroes had caught the idea of buried treasures, and many were the tales they told of seeing Moro digging about the place at night.
A guest staying in the house one night reported that he had been drawn to the door of his room by an unusual noise, and had seen Moro painfully heaving a small chest up the stairway, step at a time.