“Something like the same thing happened down at the old Carmel place
below Lagarto. You know it’s only about two or three miles north of
Casa Blanca, what they tell so much about. I don’t know what the truth
is about that Carmel place, but as sure as you’re bawn, things has
happened there. Some says that Spanish priests buried money there what
they was trying to get back to Mexico with. And Mr. Ed Dubose, once
when I was cooking for him and some other gentlemens that was looking
for buried money, said that he saw the print of an iron box in a hole
close by. The rust was still on the ground all ’round the hole where
the box used to be, and they was jest a day late getting down there.
Some other feller had beat ’em to it—but it’s a good thing, I speck.
There’s an old grave made out of rock and cement at that Carmel place.
“Some says that there’s a mine for silver or gold down there too what
the Spanish used to work, but now it’s hid so nobody can’t find it.
“Some says that there was a man drug to death what was traveling
through with both saddlebags full of money. He was sleeping on his
saddle for a piller and the Mexicans supprised him and roped him and
drug him to death. Old Captain Cox used to have a house close down
there, you know, and sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night
hearing what sounded like a wagon rumbling. He’d get up and go to the
door and couldn’t hear nothing. Then maybe he’d hear d’reckly sounds
like somebody galloping on horses and dragging an old dry cowhide.
Sometimes this dragging and rumbling would go on all night so he
couldn’t sleep. Some Mexican cotton-pickers that was camped there heard
that hide being drug all around their camp one night, and next day they
left.
“Old man Miller was always projecking round trying to get his hands on
that money. He tried to get his pastor what kept a herd of goats down
on the south side of the ranch next to the Carmel place to look out for
signs. One time that pastor discovered that he’d lost a big billy goat
outen his herd. He set out to look for him, and he tramped around for
three days before he comed across ary a track. Then one evening nigh
about sundown he saw the old billy goat standing off on one side of a
ravine and nibbling grass jest as nach’ral as life. He set out to where
the goat was, but when he got there, there wa’n’t nothing but two dead
hackberry trees. It was a nach’ral clearing and there wa’n’t no other
hackberry trees in a mile. He said he knowed those trees was not there
when he started. And he couldn’t find not even a sign of the billy
goat, not even a track.”