hours of injuries sustained during the wreck, and a second was slain by roving
Karankawa Indians while struggling through the brush just back from the shore.
The three who reached a settlement were more thirsty than wise. Staggering
exhausted into the tiny village, rain-soaked and bedraggled, coming from out of
nowhere, they hurried to the cantina, where they proceeded to get roaring drunk
on the gold they carried in their pockets.
They woke up in prison.
The commandant at the village was both a greedy and a cruel man, and the three
drunken sailors carried in their pockets more than three hundred dollars … a
veritable fortune at that place and time.
Upon a coast where tales of buried treasure and lost galleons are absorbed with
the milk of the mother, this gold could mean but one thing: the three sailors
had stumbled upon such a treasure and could be, by one means or another,
persuaded to tell its location.
The commandant had no idea with what kind of men he dealt, for the three were
pirates and tough men, accustomed to hardship, pain, and cruelty. They were also
realistic. They knew that as soon as the commandant knew what they knew, he
would no longer have any need for them. They wanted the gold, and they wanted to
live, and both these things were at stake. So they kept their secret well. They
denied knowing anything of pirate treasure … they had won the money playing
cards in CaMao, in Peru.
Much of what they were asked could be denied with all honesty, for the
commandant was positive they had stumbled upon gold long buried, and never
suspected that they themselves might have brought the gold to the shores of
Mexico. Under the torture one man died, and the commandant grew frightened. If
the others died, he might never learn their secret. Torture, then, was not the
answer.
He would get them drunk. Under the influence, they would talk.
The trouble was, he underestimated their capacity, and overestimated that of
himself and his guards. He judged their capacity by the effect of the first
drinks, not realizing they had been taken on stomachs three days empty of food.
The result was that he got drunk, his guards got drunk, and the prisoners
escaped. And before they escaped they cleaned out the pockets of the commandant
and his guards, as well as the office strongbox (their own gold had been hidden
elsewhere), and then they fled Mexico.
The border was close and they nearly killed their horses reaching it. Splashing
across the Rio Grande, alternately wading or swimming, they arrived in Texas.
The year was 1816.
Texas was still Mexico, so they stole horses and headed northeast for Louisiana.
En route one of the three men was killed by Indians, and now only two remained
who knew exactly where the gold lay, and each was suspicious of the other.
Knowing where a treasure is, is one thing; going there to get it, quite another.
Financing such a wildcat venture is always a problem; moreover, a “cover” is
needed in the event the authorities ask what you are doing there. And there is
always the question: who can be trusted?
Both men intended to go back at once, either together or each by himself, but
neither could manage it. Both were out of funds, which meant work, and their
work was on the sea. So they went to sea, on separate ships, and neither ever
saw the other again. Each knew where there was a vast treasure in gold, but it
lay upon a lonely coast where strangers were at once known as such, and the
local commandant was greedy … and aware of the treasure’s existence.
Then the year was 1846, and General Zachary Taylor had invaded northern Mexico
and was winning victories, but was desperately in need of supplies. Steamboats
were active on the Rio Grande, ferrying supplies across from the anchorage at
Brazos Santiago to the waiting steamboats at Boca del Rio. The steamboats that
could navigate off the coast drew too much water for the river, so all goods
must be transferred.
In command of one of those waiting boats was Captain Falcon Sackett.
The war with Mexico offered opportunity for any number of adventurers, outlaws,
and ne’er-do-wells, who came at once to the mouth of the river to Matamoras,
Brownsville, Bagdad, and the coastal villages. Two of these were men with one
idea: under cover of the disturbance and confusion of war, to slip down to the
coast and get away with the gold.
One was the last actual survivor of the original five; the second was the son of
the other survivor. The first, Duval, was an old man now. He found his way to
Boca del Rio, where he sought out and secured a job as cook on Falcon Sackett’s
steamboat. Duval was a tough old man, and luckily for the men on the steamboat,
an excellent cook.
Eric Stouten was twenty-four, a veteran of several years at sea, and a fisherman
for some years before that. But when he found his way to Mexico it was as an
enlistee in the cavalry assigned to the command of Captain Elam Kurbishaw.
Striking south on a foraging expedition, Captain Kurbishaw led his men into the
village where once, long ago, the survivors from the treasure ship had come.
That night, just before sundown, Trooper Stouten requested permission to speak
to the commanding officer.
Captain Elam Kurbishaw was a tall, cool, desperate man. A competent field
commander, he was also a man ready to listen to just such a proposal as Stouten
had to offer.
Within the hour the commandant of the village was arrested, his quarters
ransacked, and the old report of the interrogation of the prisoners found. With
it was a single gold piece … kept as evidence that what was recorded there
had, indeed, transpired.
The old commandant was dead. The report and the gold piece had been found when
the present man took over. A long search had been carried on, covering miles of
the coast. Nothing had been found. The commandant was released; and as he walked
away, Elam Kurbishaw, who left nothing to chance, turned and shot him.
A coldly meticulous man, Elam Kurbishaw was fiercely proud of his family, and
its background, but well aware that the family fortune, after some years of
mismanagement, was dwindling away. He and his two brothers were determined to
renew those fortunes, and they had no scruples about how it was to be done.
Alone in his tent, he got out his map case and found a map of the shore line.
Military activities concerned inland areas, and his map of the coast was not
very detailed. But, studying the map, Kurbishaw was sure he could find the spot
from the trooper’s description. Laguna de Barril, he was sure, would be the
place. But, as was the case of LaFitte’s men, he placed the shipwreck too far
north.
One other thing Kurbishaw did not know: his bullet had struck through the
commandant, felling him, but not killing him. A tough man himself, he survived.
In the quiet of Jonas Locklear’s study I heard the story unfold. How little,
after all, had I known of my father! How much had even my mother known? That he
had gone from the mountains I knew; how long I had never known. Now I learned he
had sailed from Charleston in a square-rigger, had been an officer for a time on
a river boat at Mobile, and then on the Rio Grande, when Taylor needed river men
so desperately.
“Elam never had a chance to look,” Jonas explained. “His command was shipped
south to General Miles. The way I get it, the trooper remembered the offhand way
Kurbishaw had shot the commandant, and again and again he saw Kurbishaw’s
ruthless way, and he began to regret telling him what he had, and that gave him
the idea of deserting. But first he meant to kill Captain Kurbishaw, to let what
Elam knew die with him.”
After all, why did he need Kurbishaw? Eric Stouten was a good hand with a boat,
a fine swimmer and diver, and the vessel lay in relatively shallow water. The
night before Chapultepec he took his knife and slipped into Kurbishaw’s tent. He
was lifting the knife when a voice stopped him. He turned his head, to see two
Kurbishaws staring at him … another lay on the bed. He cried out, lost his
grip on his knife, and started to turn for the door, and the two men shot him.
“How do you know they didn’t find the gold themselves?” I asked Locklear.
“They didn’t know where to look. The Laguna de Barril is only one of many coves
and inlets along that coast.
“The difficulty was, that young trooper had talked far too much. He had, among
other things, told of the other man who was still around, the other pirate who