If the Old Dutchman was with Hughes, he should have known, of course, the spot at which the plunder of the robbery had been cached. But evidently he did not know or he would not have spent two years hunting for it. But, at any rate, one day the Old Dutchman was gone. He had vanished into the mystery out of which he had come, and nothing more has been heard of him from that day to this.
But a half mile below the Devil’s Kitchen under a group of three live oaks on the bank of the creek, he had left a deep hole—the deepest and largest of all the holes ever dug by treasure-hunters in the canyon—and many believed that in this excavation he had at last found the treasure. The ruins of the Old Dutchman’s cabin still stand at the forks of the canyon; the scars of his industry with pick and shovel still pit the ground, and the last hole he dug is still wide and deep. But whether he lifted any treasure is a riddle that remains unanswered.
Though it seems fairly certain that the outlaws themselves removed all their booty from Skeleton Canyon, the story persisted that they had left at least part of it behind. Wherefore, treasure-hunters without end swarmed for years to the canyon. Some were equipped with divining rods. Some placed their faith in the magic of willow wands. Some had taken counsel of old Mexican crones who claimed the power of second sight. Some had consulted Indian witch-doctors. Others still had learned the exact spot at which the treasure could be found from spirit mediums who declared they had received the information direct from the ghosts of the Mexicans murdered in the canyon by the outlaws. But if any of these industrious delvers ever came away from Skeleton with anything more than sore muscles from unwonted work with pick and shovel, no one ever heard of it.
Porter McDonald, long chief of police of Tombstone, aided and abetted in the enterprise by James T. Kingsbury, Tombstone lawyer, received from a secret source several years ago information that he deemed worth investigating. He was led to believe that the treasure was buried on a ledge of the canyon wall within sight of the great hole dug by the Old Dutchman. On his prospecting trip to the canyon, however, he found no more than the others, but he was convinced that a violent earthquake that shook all that part of Arizona in had hopelessly entombed the hiding place of the treasure under tons of rocks toppled from the canyon wall.
Davis Mountain, far-off peak of purple mystery, begins now to loom imposingly through the haze of this buried treasure romance.
But before the story starts off on the trail for this rounded, bald, granite sugar-loaf, a murdered man must rise from the dead. Zwing Hunt, dangerously shot in the Stockton ranch fight in which Billy Grounds was killed, escaped, it will be remembered, from a Tombstone hospital, and a little later, Hugh Hunt, his brother, reported his death by Indians. The body was identified by men who had known him, and some dead man is sleeping today in a lonely Arizona canyon with a juniper tree for headstone, on which is carved Zwing Hunt’s name.
But Zwing Hunt, risen in marvellous resurrection, appeared in his proper person a few weeks afterward, according to his uncle, at his old home in San Antonio. He lived, it is said, only a short time after his return and died from the old wound he had received in the fight at the Stockton ranch. But he lived long enough, apparently, to set going the strange story of Davis Mountain and its buried outlaw gold.
When Zwing Hunt was about to die, he telegraphed, it is said, to his uncle, who lived in some other part of Texas, to come to him. His uncle, whose name has not survived in the tale, arrived.
“We came out of Mexico with two four-horse wagons loaded with plunder.”—This is Zwing Hunt’s deathbed story as related by his uncle.—“Our raid had lasted three months. We numbered twenty-nine men when we went in. Only eighteen of us got out alive. In Monterey, while Billy Grounds and I sat on our horses shooting up and down the street, our partners robbed the bank. They brought out two gunny sacks filled with money and a cigar box full of diamonds. We took possession of Matamoras and sacked the town. From the cathedral there we brought away statues of the Virgin Mary and the Saviour. These figures are lifesize and of pure gold. When we got back on this side of the Rio Grande, we got rid of some of our loot. The rest we hauled to Davis Mountain.
“One of our men who had been shot in Mexico died at Davis Mountain and we buried him by Silver Spring. Five hundred dollars in gold had fallen to his share. He had risked his life for that money, and at last he gave his life for it. We decided to let him keep it forever, and we buried the dead man’s money in a tin can at the head of the grave.”
When he had finished his story, Hunt, it is said, wrote out instructions as to how the treasure could be found. Then he drew a map on a piece of writing paper, and on this map he set down in their relative positions Davis Mountain, Silver Spring, Gum Spring, the wreck of the burned wagon, the rock of the two crosses, and the spot at which the treasure was buried. This old map is still in existence, and several copies of it are owned in Arizona.
Hunt, as his uncle declared, added several
