Tilden (old Dog Town) is, remember, the county seat of McMullen County.
Not far from it is what is still known as the “old Tolbert Ranch,”
though a man named Berry bought it years ago. I have heard the
following story so many times in so many places that I have halfway
come to believe it true.
Tolbert was a miser in early days when men kept their money about them.
It is said that he would never kill a maverick no matter how hungry he
was but would always brand it. He never bought sugar or molasses; bacon
was a rare luxury; he and his men lived principally on jerked venison
and javelin meat. When he “worked” and had an outfit to feed, he always
told the cocinero to cook the bread early so that it would be cold and
hard before the hands got to it. When he died none of his money could
be found. So, even till this day, people dig for it around the old
ranch house. One man who was working on the place some fifteen years
ago saw two men in a wagon go down a ravine that runs near the ranch.
He thought that they were hunters; but when the strangers passed him on
their way out the next morning, he noted that one of them had a shotgun
across his knees. When the ranch hand rode down into the ravine a few
days later, he found that the wagon tracks led from a fresh hole under
a live oak tree and that near the hole were pieces of old steel hinges
that looked as if they had been cut off with a cold chisel. However,
not many people think that the two strangers got Tolbert’s money.
Berry got that, and he never hunted for it either. He had moved on to
the ranch when he bought it and a number of years had passed. One day
when he had nothing else for his Mexican to do, he told him to put some
new posts in the old corral fence, which was made of pickets that were
rotting down. The Mexican worked along digging post holes and putting
in new posts until about ten o’clock. Then at about the third post from
the south gate he struck something so hard that it turned the edge of
his spade. He was used to digging post holes with a crowbar and a tin
can, and so he went to a mesquite tree where the tools were kept and
got the crowbar.
But the crowbar would no more dig into the hard substance than the
spade would. The sun was mighty hot, anyhow; so the Mexican went up to
the house where el señor Berry was whittling sticks on his gallery, and
told him that he couldn’t dig any more, that at the third post hole
from the south gate it looked as if the devil himself had humped up
into a rock that nothing could get through. Berry snorted around
considerably at first, but directly he seemed to think of something and
told his man, very well, not to dig any more but to saddle up and go
out and bring in the main remuda. Now, only the day before they had had
the main remuda in the pen and had caught out fresh mounts to keep in
the little horse pasture. By this time the other horses would be
scattered clear away on the back side of the pasture. The Mexican
wondered what the patrón wanted the remuda for again. But it was none
of his business. Well, the ride would take him all the rest of the day,
and at least he would not have to dig any more post holes before
mañana.
After the Mexican had saddled his horse and drunk a cafecita for lunch
and fooled away half an hour putting in new stirrup leather strings and
finally got out of sight, Berry slouched down to the pens. He came back
to his shade on the gallery and whittled for an hour or two longer
until everything around the jacal, even the Mexican’s wife, was taking
a siesta. Then he pulled off his spurs, which always dragged with a big
clink when he walked, and went down to the pen again. The spade and the
crowbar were where the Mexican had let them fall. Berry punched the
crowbar down into the half-made hole. It almost bounced out of his
hand, and he heard a kind of metallic thud. No, it was not flint-rock
that had stopped the digging.
Berry went around back of the water trough to the huisache where his
horse was tied and led him into the pen. Then he started to work. He
began digging two or three feet out to one side of the hole. The dry
ground was packed from the tramp of thousands of cattle and horses. He
had to use the crowbar to loosen the soil. But it was no great task to
get out a patch of earth two or three feet square and eighteen or
twenty inches deep. Berry knew what he was about, and as he scraped the
loosened earth out with his spade he could feel a flat metal surface
that seemed to have rivets in it. It was the lid of a chest, and when
he had uncovered it, Berry drew up one of the firm, new posts to use as
a fulcrum for the crowbar. With that he levered up the end of the
chest. As he suspected, it was too heavy and too tightly wedged for him
to lift out. He kicked a chunk under the raised edge and then looped a
stout rope about the exposed end. He had dragged cows out of the bog on
his horse, and he knew that the chest was not so heavy as a cow. He had
but fifty yards to drag it, and that down grade, before he was in the
brush, where he could prize the lid off.
When the Mexican got back that night his mujer told him that Señor
Berry had gone to San Antonio in the buckboard, and that he had left
word for the remuda to be turned back into the big pasture and for the
repair of the corrals to be continued. “They say” that the deposit that
Berry made at the Frost National Bank was a clean $17,000, nearly all
in silver.