Excepting the Bowie Mine and the Nigger Gold Mine, no other purported
lost treasure in Southwest Texas has caused so much discussion or
enticed so many seekers as that of the “Rock Pens.” These “Pens” are
variously placed in Live Oak, La Salle, and McMullen counties,
generally in McMullen. The “way-bill” quoted below was given me by Mr.
E. M. Dubose of Mathis, Texas, who has spent months, perhaps years, in
trying to follow out its directions. Many of the details as I give them
are also due to him, but the legend has been so familiar to me from my
childhood up that I can hardly say to whom I owe it.
The story is that thirty-one mule loads of silver bullion, together
with various fine images and other precious articles, were being
brought from the mountains of Mexico by Texas bandits who had made a
great robbery. They had crossed the Rio Grande in safety and were
proceeding north to their rendezvous at San Antonio when they found
that the Indians were closing in on them in the rough country west or
south—for the river often changes its course—of the Nueces. They knew
that an attack was imminent, and they picked the best place they could
find in which to make their stand. It was by a small ravine in which
was a spring of water, and here they threw up some crude breastworks in
the form of two rock pens. In one of the pens they buried the bullion,
and then, in order to hide all signs of their secret work, they ran the
mules around and around over the disturbed earth. The fight soon
followed, and in it all of the Texans but one are supposed to have been
killed. He, Daniel Dunham, on his deathbed in Austin, fifty-one years
ago, dictated the following “way-bill.”
Austin Texas
April 17th 1873
About six or seven miles below the Laredo Crossing, on the west
side of the Nueces River near the hills, there is or was a tree in
the prairie. Due west from that tree at the foot of the hills at
the mouth of a ravine there is a large rock and under the rock,
there was a small spring of water coming from under the rock, due
east from that rock there is a rock pen or rocks laid around like a
pen and due east a few yards there is another pen of rocks, in that
pen is the spoils of thirty one mule loads.
[Signed] DANIEL DUNHAM
This remarkable document was at his death, which occurred during the
eighties, in the possession of a man named X. He had shown it to his
sons a few times, but there was an accompanying paper that he had never
shown. This accompanying paper he destroyed shortly before his death,
or else his wife destroyed it immediately thereafter. One of his own
sons conjectured, and certain circumstances have led others to
conjecture, that X himself was one of the Texas bandits who invaded the
Mexican mines and robbed a rich Mexican church. It is known that X held
the way-bill as peculiarly veracious but that he had an overwhelming
feeling against undertaking to follow out its directions.
Whether any attempts to find the Rock Pens were made before his death I
do not know. A fact is that not long after his death an expedition, of
which one of his sons was a member, set out to find the pens. Other
“gold hunters” are known to have gone on the search. Therefore it must
be that there were other directions in existence than those left by X.
Men yet living claim to have seen the pens years and years ago before
they knew that there was any significance to them, but though various
old rock heaps have been found since, none has ever been found to
answer to Daniel Dunham’s description.
The Laredo Crossing mentioned in the way-bill is supposed to be the
Nueces crossing on the old San Antonio-Laredo road. That is generally
conceded to be on the Henry Shiner Ranch in McMullen County. Nearly all
the land in that part of the country is still in large pastures. Much
of it is rough, the San Caja, Las Chuzas, and other so-called mountains
being in the vicinity. Where it was once open, the country during the
last fifty years has grown up in brush so that no man can be sure the
pens do not exist until thousands and thousands of acres of uneven land
covered with prickly pear, mesquite, black chaparral, “gran haney,” and
other thorned brush have been combed. The rocks were never piled high.
They have been scattered, perhaps covered over with soil washed down
from the hillside. In time of drouth it is a desolate country, and many
a tale tells of early travelers perishing in it of thirst. Before the
advent of the automobile one treasure-seeking expedition lived for days
on jack rabbit meat, so remote were they in that region from supplies.
Sixty or seventy years ago Pate McNeill was coming from Tilden, or Dog
Town as it was then called, down to Lagarto with his young wife. They
were in a buggy, leading a horse, saddled. Somewhere in the Shiner
country they saw a fine looking maverick cow. McNeill got out of the
buggy, jumped on his horse, and took after her. When he had roped her
and tied her, he looked around and saw that he was right in a kind of
pen of rocks. At that time he did not know that great riches
appertained to rock pens; so he calmly ran his famous brand of P A T E
on the cow and went on down the country. Years later when the story of
the Rock Pens came out, he went back and tried to locate the rocks, but
the country had changed so much with brush and “washes” that he could
never find anything.
“Uncle” Ben Adkins, a veteran of Beeville who guarded the western
frontier during the Civil War days to keep cow thieves from driving
cattle off to California, tells of a hunter who once stumbled into the
pens and thought that he was in a deserted goat camp. Like others, he
did not know at the time how close he was to millions.
Pete Staples, an old negro trail driver, tells how, when he was once
hunting wild turkeys with Judge Lowe of McMullen County, they stumbled
into some curiously placed rocks. “Huh, what’s this?” he said. “Looks
mighty funny to me for rocks in this place. Where’d they all cum from
and how cum this way? Ain’t no other rocks like thesen for a mile.”
“Natural rocks all right,” said Judge Lowe, “but this is an old pen.”
Judge Lowe died something more than a year ago. I have heard that he
afterwards tried to find the pens, but failed. Pete, having a firm
conviction that it is dangerous to “monkey” with money that some man
now dead buried, has never been back to look for the pens, though he
declares that men have tried to hire him as a guide and that he could
find them, but “ain’t a-guine to.” The pens, according to Pete, are in
the Guidan Pasture, which joins the Shiner and comprises some twenty or
thirty thousand acres of land.
Another time, a good many years earlier, says Pete, a Mexican who was
being chased by an Indian in the Las Chuzas country leaped over a
spring of water and as he leaped saw a bar of silver shining in it.
Later he went back and hunted for six months without ever finding the
spring, much less the silver. It does look, as Pete expresses it, as if
that money “ain’t meant” for any of the people who have looked for it.
When the man comes along for whom it is “meant,” he will just naturally
find it without even trying. Nevertheless, some people are still
trying.
The cheering thing about looking for the Rock Pens is that even though
the search for them be fruitless, one may stumble upon some other
treasure at almost any time, for the whole San Caja Mountain country is
rich in lost and buried treasure. Some of the legends follow. For much
of the material I am indebted to that interesting tale-teller and
one-time eager treasure-hunter, Mr. E. M. Dubose, of Mathis, already
referred to. For material not derived from him I try to give specific
sources. However, some of it is such common talk in the country and has
for so long been a part of me that I cannot always cite exact sources.