Riverside Ranch is in Nueces County on the Nueces River. Fifty years
ago while the owner was putting up a house near a ford, said to have
been used by Indians of the most remote times, a Mexican with three
pack burros came into camp. He and his beasts were travel worn and he
asked permission to camp and rest his stock. The permission was readily
granted, and true to class the Mexican hobbled his burros and then lay
up in the sun and took life easy for several days.
Then the men working on the house noticed that he was apparently
hunting after various herbs and plants and making a close study of the
ground. After he had investigated for about two weeks in his solitary
manner, the Mexican seemed very much depressed. One night he came to
the camp of the Texans and asked for the owner of the land. Then he
told his story. He and his burros had come over the long trail from the
interior of Mexico to seek a buried chest of treasure. His trail had
ended; he had not found the treasure. The history of that treasure he
gave thus:
“When my father was a boy, he left home to go with a party of Spaniards
to the seacoast. They had three big wagons and a grand carriage, the
carriage for the captain, one wagon for the cook, and two wagons for
the guard. They started at midnight from a mine belonging to the
captain, and as they set forth they made a great show to the stars.
They traveled to and across the Rio Grande without trouble, and then,
señor, the sands, [63] the terrible desert. They were days getting
across, and then, with the tough Spanish mules worn to the bone, they
camped in the nearest spot where there was water.
“They prepared to rest for a week, but in the night the Indians
charged, killed one man, and got off with two mules. The party started
again at dawn, the Indians following. The Spanish captain decided to
leave one wagon; so he took out the heavy boxes and put them in the
carriage with himself. Thus the pobrecitos traveled till they came to
the Nueces, on this very trail, and here on this bank they camped. That
night they got out the heavy boxes, and the captain and three men dug a
great hole and buried them, while the rest of the party stood guard.
“At dawn they crossed the river at the ford, hoping somehow to escape
and make it back to Mexico for more guards. Five days later the Indians
came on with a great whoop and every soul was killed except the boy, my
father. He slid out into the tall grass, and after many months got back
home. Now he is muy, muy viejo (very, very old), and he has sent me to
get as much of the gold as I could pack on three burros. They buried
the gold, he says, at the foot of a tree and put some stones above it.
But the tree is gone and there are stones everywhere. I go tomorrow. If
you find the Spanish gold, it is yours. Adios!”
Needless to say, for a few days the woods were full of treasure
hunters, but so far as is known not one was successful. Yet the story
that there is a chest of gold buried on Riverside Ranch has held from
those early days to this time.