Here are some sixteen legends out of a comparatively small section of
one county. They will illustrate the fertility in buried treasure
legend of all that stretch of Texas, for the most part yet unploughed,
lying towards the Rio Grande and populated by Mexicans and by Texans of
frontier stock. McMullen County itself has as yet neither railroad nor
bank. The people are as yet unhackneyed by the plow or commercial
secretary. They still talk a language seasoned with Mexican idiom and
honest with the soil’s honesty; they have their old-time dances; they
welcome heartily any decent stranger. On the whole, they are as
enlightened as the populations that have their ideals molded by real
estate agents. Just now oil boomers and railroad promoters threaten to
bring their “progress.” Until they bring it, the people will remain
individual.