Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  Bob invited Griffith to the show, and the history teacher wrote back to say that his classes would be over by May 26 and that he eagerly awaited the trip to Tennessee in June.2 In the letter, Griffith mentioned that he wanted to sell a booklet at the show—a collection largely of photo copied published references that he had put together on the KGC—that, he hoped, would offset the expenses of attending.

  With London and Vickery present on the eve of the conference, Bob told Griffith that he had solved the Wolf Map after putting in more than a thousand hours on the job. Griffith, caught off guard, was all ears as Bob announced that he knew the precise location of the Wolf Map treasure. “Linda and I have been to the general area and seen enough to give me a precise line to the spot,” he said to a small group that had gathered on the front porch of the cabin where he was staying with London, Vickery and Griffith. Flushed with anticipation, Griffith urged an immediate trip to the site, which Bob had yet to name or describe. A trip was in order, Bob acknowledged, but on his schedule and only to meet with the ranch owner. As a starting point, he stressed, they would offer the rancher a one-third stake of the find in exchange for signed permission to attempt a recovery. What was clear to all was that Griffith had no knowledge as to where the Wolf Map pointed.

  By this time, Bob’s knowledge of the map’s hidden location had grown exponentially. For one, he had discovered that, among his collection of photocopied letters from Howk, one illustrated waybill stood out. The site map drawing, signed by Jesse Lee James, contained a detailed sketch of what looked like the prominent hill—Monument Hill—at the suspected KGC depository site. In the background was a gradually sloping valley, a match for the pastoral environment of Addington that Bob and Linda had observed during their recent outing.3 The sketch did not include a rendering of the Chisholm Trail monument nor, for that matter, any mention of any kind of geographic location. It did indicate that the area in question contained one or more KGC treasures (one of which apparently had been buried deep in a tunnel-and-shaft network on the central hill, where a house had evidently stood). When combined with the other information he had gleaned, Bob had little doubt that the letter pertained to the Wolf Map’s precise location. In effect, this was the third map of the site.

  Even more exciting than the visual corroboration provided by the drawing was the notion that the material depicted in Jesse Lee James’s letter had been dictated from memory by J. Frank Dalton (or, perhaps, J. Frank Dalton had taken Jesse Lee James [Orvus Howk] to the site itself). The centenarian had disclosed privately to his understudy that there was a major treasure buried at the exact spot that Bob would independently locate decades later. Bob had relied upon both the Wolf Map (found independently in the Buzzard’s Roost kettle said to have been buried by Jesse James) and the Madrugada map (said to have trickled into the public domain through someone formerly associated with the James gang). If the Wolf Map site in the Addington area proved a KGC cache location, would the waybill from Jesse Lee James/Orvus Lee Howk—confidant of J. Frank Dalton—not go far in proving that J. Frank Dalton was the real Jesse Woodson James, or at least someone high up in the hierarchy of the KGC?

  There was yet another potential source of corroboration. After obtaining topo maps of the precise spot near Addington, Bob managed to begin orienting his version of the KGC depository template on the basis of the handful of clues that he had seen. He did not have much on-site information to go by, other than the carved boulder with its three circular grooves, as well as a disfigured pointer, or “hoot owl,” tree that he had spied along another line. Any directional target indicated by the template at that early stage was merely suggestive, given the lack of additional information. To align the template correctly would require an extensive field survey.

  Bob felt prepared to return to Addington to seek landowner permission and, with that in hand, to attempt a recovery with Griffith. In fact, he was so confident that no one else could figure out the overall layout without specific instructions that he decided to write to Griffith to tell him a little about his plan.

  In an exchange of letters, Bob explained how he had arrived at the general location through the decipherment of such landmarks as Arbuckle, Stinking Creek, Beaver Creek, Wolf Creek, Kiowa-Comanche, Chisholm Trail and others. Griffith enthusiastically wrote back, noting that, according to his own research, Frank James reportedly had been looking for a James gang treasure near the Chisholm Trail. “So, I think we’re on to something that no one else has figured out. Frank [James] said it was just to the side of the trail and not buried very deep. I think all we need is some luck to get to the spot. Am looking forward to getting a chance to go and check it out. Keep in touch and let me know how you are doing on your layout. Keep up the good work!” Griffith closed his letter, “Your Old Buddy, Michael.” A subsequent letter from Griffith contained a page full of “Notes About Monument Hill,” based on an interview Griffith had with his neighbor, a Mr. Allen, who reportedly had grown up seven miles from Monument Hill. “Mr. Allen said he was told by his grandad in the 1930’s that Frank and Jesse James was at Addington and Monument Hill area several times. They stayed and had conversation in Grandad’s house,” the letter said.

  But Bob knew that getting “to the spot” of the cache-burial in Addington was not a matter of “luck.” It was a matter of science and math, of cryptanalysis and geometry, and he did not want to rush into it. He first wanted to decompress, and the best way he knew to do that was to return to the surrounding Ouachitas at home.

  It had been nearly a year since the bizarre spectacle of the headless effigy in the Ouachitas. Yet his curiosity kept pulling him back to the same general area, in a densely wooded valley some ten miles from home. That earlier freakish incident, in October 1993, had deeply impressed Bob. But it did not prepare him for what transpired in late July 1994, within firing range of the spot where the suspended, bullet-ridden dummy had hung.

  While investigating some partly developed leads, Bob noticed that his fiercely loyal guard dog, Lady, was agitated. The rottweiler was letting loose a low, deep growl and the hair on her back bristled. Bob immediately turned off his metal detector, and the dog’s continued growling confirmed what he thought he had heard: a tire slowly rolling over gravel. The noise came from the ridge above him. Lady suddenly began to snarl. Crouching low, Bob could see two physically fit men, sporting short military-style haircuts, patrolling the ridge with their handguns held high. His heart pounding, he grabbed Lady and slid under a fallen oak tree that had settled at the bottom of the ravine. For several minutes, he kept one hand over Lady’s muzzle, the other on his .357 Magnum. He was prepared to use the weapon if the two men approached with weapons brandished and failed to identify themselves. As it turned out, he could see the pair confer atop the hill after patrolling both sides of the valley. They left shortly thereafter.

  Crawling out from under the foliage, he was shaken, and it took a while for his heartbeat to settle down. Nothing like that had ever happened. Who were those guys? What were they doing with their weapons drawn, not saying a word, not calling out? Were they a government counter-drug unit, or some special-ops military team in training? A local militia? Could their presence be connected to the effigy incident?

  Such thoughts rushed through his head as he drove to the sheriff’s office in Mena to report what had happened. The sheriff was at a loss to explain what Bob described. No, there would have been some notification if the Drug Enforcement Administration were conducting training exercises or real-time operations, Sheriff Mike Ogelsby said. The same for the military, he added.4 In any event, Bob did not tell Linda, not wanting to frighten her.

  Bob resumed his focus on the Wolf Map. Around the first week in August 1994, he telephoned the ever-anxious Griffith to announce that the hunt was on. On their long drive to the as-yet-undisclosed site, Bob made perhaps the biggest mistake of his life. He showed the school-teacher the page from Steve Wilson’s Oklahoma Treasures book, the one that contained the Madrugada map under the h
eading “Jesse James’ $2 million Treasure.” In that naively unthinking moment, Bob let the rabbit out of the bag.

  The equation was fairly straightforward. If one knew the reference point for the Madrugada map (with its three circles drawn next to the “200.000 gold”) it would not take a mathematics PhD. to find the buried money. It would take someone who had been trained to follow KGC symbolism.

  In a matter of hours, Bob stepped out of the car with Griffith in the trail-veined area that he so painstakingly had discovered. Standing atop Monument Hill, he described to Griffith the matrix of intersecting paths and creeks below. He showed him the grooved pumpkin-faced boulder propped up against the barbwire fence. Pointing due north along the line running from Monument Hill through the boulder, he said that the treasure should be just a few yards to the east of the Chisholm Trail, near the tree-lined gully. He also noted that the target area was in plain sight of the ranch foreman’s house, which stood just a few hundred yards due north.

  Griffith, by this point, was full of nervous energy. Bob, wanting to temper his partner’s raw enthusiasm, stared at the younger man sternly. He emphasized that nothing was going to happen until they had written permission from the landowner to go onto the property. Any treasure found would be split three ways, with the rancher getting his share. Following Bob’s lecture—and nods and expressions of agreement from Griffith—the two headed off to find the rancher. But they were disappointed to discover that the owner was away for the weekend.

  Back at the car, the two men discussed what to do. Bob proposed that since Griffith taught school relatively close by he should take the lead: he would return with a contract for treasure recovery and obtain the rancher’s signature. Griffith readily agreed and promised to keep Bob posted.

  When they shook hands, Bob peered into the schoolteacher’s eyes and wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. His stomach was in knots all the way home.

  The phone call never came.

  Over the next several months, Bob received a handful of letters from Griffith, each one saying how things around home and school had tied him up and prevented him from going to Addington.5 Subsequent letters said family problems were keeping him from doing any treasure work for the time being: first it was his brother being injured, and then his mother-in-law having health problems. In one correspondence, Griffith went so far as to say that he had determined that J. Frank Dalton could not be Jesse James and that the whole treasure theory was probably a hoax—thus completely abandoning his long-cherished beliefs. And then, to top it off, Griffith wrote another letter with an illustration of what he claimed was a stone map with Confederate code inscribed. Bob could tell that the “code” was fake; for one thing, it did not include the required keyword for such codes or cryptograms to work between sender and receiver.

  He had a raw feeling that Griffith had backtrailed him—that he had returned to Addington, raided the site and recovered the treasure.

  In the fall of 1994, Bob made a couple of return trips to the Oklahoma ranch but still failed to connect with the owner. Once, he was told that the rancher had gone to Dallas on business but that he might be home that evening. Bob slept in his car waiting for him to return. When the man had not arrived by two o’clock the next day, it was time to pack it in. He phoned several times over the next several days, but the owner was never there. The whole Addington experience left him uneasy and restless for months.

  To try to dispel the sinking feeling in his gut, Bob hit the trail close to home. He desperately needed to put Addington and Michael Griffith out of his mind. On a frosty morning in April 1995, he set out with Linda along a key directional line that ran for four miles past Smoke Rock Mountain. It was marked with a bewildering array of buried clues, tree carvings, blazes and disfigured oaks. The compass bearing happened to run toward the site where the effigy had been hoisted and near to the area where Bob had encountered the armed heavies—so he led the way with a mix of caution and anticipation.

  At one point, the couple arrived at a spot laden with clues. Linda walked ahead with the detector as Bob took various readings off a marked beech and then off a large diamond-shaped rock.

  Pointing to an open area that appeared extremely promising, he directed Linda to scan near the base of several large pines. In front of one of the trees, she quickly uncovered a semi-buried muleshoe that had been anchored to the ground. The muleshoe’s placement suggested that a directional line ran up the incline. On that indicated tangent, some forty yards away, Linda received a strong signal: an iron rod, twisted into the shape of a snake, was buried about six inches deep. The place was hot; Bob knew it, viscerally.

  It was not long before Linda found something significant on the line indicated by the head of the metal snake. It was a rusted, rectangular frame, but beyond that, she could not identify it. She called excitedly for Bob, who immediately recognized it for what it was: the blown-apart top of a Wells Fargo strongbox.

  On close inspection, the couple could discern a subtle, discreet trail of rusted scrap leading off from the frame. The pattern and the spacing of the small parts were too linear to be a coincidence. Walking a few yards beyond the end of this line of “scrap,” Linda received a powerful signal. Something large was buried below. Bob’s quick probe of the soil indicated a big metal target at about eighteen inches down. When he dug deep, he discovered the rest of the strongbox, turned upside down.

  Had he not become wise to the ways of the KGC, he may have taken the feint and headed home. No, the upturned box was designed specifically for the uninformed, to throw “cowans” off the trail, to make them think that whatever treasure might have been there was now long gone. As it happened, one of Howk’s letters specifically mentioned the need to keep shoveling when encountering a buried upside-down container.

  Bob felt complete confidence as he began to dig deeper. He waved the detector over the exposed site, and it all but honked its odd-sounding electronic signal.

  At five feet, he hit metal. This was it. A big cache, buried deep, he knew it.

  Peering down into the hole, he could see the outline of a large iron teakettle. He lifted its lid and his heart raced: pounds of pristine gold coins, many of them $20 double-eagles! He took a deep breath to settle his pounding chest.

  For a few minutes, he stood there motionless, head bowed, trembling slightly, with Linda at his side. Neither uttered a word. The moment of victory was almost religious, a time of reflection and awe. There was no giddiness. No outburst of emotion. For Bob, there was just the supreme satisfaction a scientist feels when a hypothesis is shown to be valid, repeatedly.

  The system had worked, once again. First fruit jars then teakettles, all filled with gold coins from the previous century. All methodically recovered.

  His mind galloped ahead, his thoughts aswirl with the notion that he was on to something of mind-boggling proportions. The immense thrill was hard to pin down, but it went beyond the valuable coins and their promise of material comfort. To him, the spectacular glistening currency was powerful confirmation of something bigger, a complex ciphered network that had yet to be fully explored and understood.

  Collecting their wits, Bob and Linda were confronted with the question of what to do about the found money.

  It had happened so fast—they did not know quite what move to make. Bob felt queasy. He did not know if the area was safe from armed interlopers, who might arrive at any time.

  The pair elected to do what was prudent and the least disruptive to their modest way of life.

  In a few crisp seconds of deliberation, Bob and Linda resolved to take several handfuls of the gold coins with them. The rest would be reburied in a new, concealed spot. It would be their secret, theirs alone. They quickly found a fresh location in the woods, buried the container and departed.

  11

  The Empty Pit

  IN June 1995, the Brewers visited the Griffiths at the Oklahoma family’s residence, a white trailer home, in Poteau. Griffith immediately showed Bob and
Linda the stone “treasure map” that he had described in his letters. In a few seconds, Bob realized that his hunch about Griffith’s rock map was correct. It was bogus: the rock seemed to have been engraved with a high-speed rotary tool. The stone was covered with thick lichen and moss; the carving was new and clean. The power tool had cut through the lichen covering without a hint of damage to the surrounding vegetation, and the bottom of the grooved lettering was as smooth as machined metal. Bob suspected that Griffith was trying to set up a recovery (or, perhaps, had already completed one) such that it would appear that the schoolteacher had executed the recovery on his own—with the spurious rock “map.”

  Yet, what should he do? Should he call Griffith’s bluff? Or should he meet with the rancher and warn him that someone was about to undertake a treasure hunt there (or may already have done so) without his knowledge? To do the latter, he worried, would appear to others that he was the one trying to cut his associate out of a deal with the landowner. That was out of the question. Then again, what if Griffith had contacted the rancher and the two had decided to cut him out of the deal. Not Griffith’s style, he concluded. It was a confusing mess. So he resolved to take the high road—to wait for Griffith to make his move.

  The wait was not long. In mid-September 1995, Bob received a letter from a dentist friend of his from Oklahoma City who knew of Bob’s passion for the Old West, Jesse James and treasure hunting. Enclosed was a newspaper clip, a feature article by local reporter Tamie Ross, entitled “Jesse James Remains Mysterious,” from the back pages of the September 4 issue of the Daily Oklahoman. To the right of the headline was a large photo of Michael Griffith holding up some Jesse James memorabilia.