The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures (17 page)

Unaware that the Apaches had exhausted their supply of ammunition, Baylor ordered his men to hold their position and wait for a chance to attack. During the night, however, using only the illumination of a quarter moon, the Indians crept from the rocks and made their way past the Rangers and out of the Eagle Mountains. All night long they hiked and rode. The following day they reached the Sierra Diablo Mountains several miles to the north. They were ascending the foothills toward the higher elevations and another favored campsite with a spring when they were overtaken by the Rangers. A brief gun battle ensued, but the outnumbered and out-armed Indians had no chance. All were killed.

Following the skirmish, Peacock searched the faces of the victims trying to ascertain if Juanita was among them. She was not. For years, Peacock puzzled over what might have happened to the girl. He never saw her again.

More time passed, and Joe Peacock, now an old man, continued to raise cattle on his ranch not far from the Eagle Mountains. Though suffering from arthritis and finding it difficult to get around, he continued to return to the range to search for Victorio’s lost cave of gold.

During one of his trips to the Eagle Mountains, Peacock encountered a young man named Race Compton. Compton, traveling on foot, had decided to spend some time in the range prospecting for ore. Compton invited Peacock to join him in his camp, and over the next few days the two men became friends and shared stories of their pasts. Peacock told Compton about his capture by the Apaches and learning about Chief Victorio’s cave of gold. The two men decided to search for the cave together. Compton took up residence at Peacock’s ranch. Enthused with having a partner to help him look for the gold, Peacock ignored his ranch as the two men spent more and more time in the mountain range. Peacock and Compton prowled the Eagle Mountains in search of the cave of gold for the next fifteen years. They never found it.

Joe Peacock died in 1915. Compton continued to live on Peacock’s ranch while he pursued his search for the gold-filled cave. Compton raised a few head of cattle. From time to time he would sell one to raise money to purchase supplies for another foray into the mountains.

One day while Compton was in the mountain range, he was forced to lie up under a rock overhang for several hours during a heavy thunderstorm. When the clouds passed, Compton came out to continue his search. A short distance down the trail he noticed that runoff from the storm had washed away a portion of the rock debris on a particular slope. Climbing up to get a closer look, Compton came upon the outline of what appeared to be the entrance to a cave. After removing some of the covering debris, he found that the entrance had been closed off with heavy boulders. He labored for hours trying to remove them, but he lacked the strength to budge any but the smallest.

Compton decided to employ some men to remove the boulders, but then discarded the idea when he considered that, after seeing the store of gold inside, they might try to take it from him. Instead, he decided to travel to El Paso to procure some dynamite to blow the rocks out of the opening. On his way to El Paso, Compton mentioned his discovery to a neighboring rancher but offered no details regarding the location.

On his return trip, Compton hitched a ride from El Paso to Sierra Blanca, a small town several miles to the west of the Eagle Mountains. After being dropped off, he started walking along the highway. Some miles to the east, he knew he would come to a dirt road that would lead him into the Eagle Mountains. The knapsack he carried on his back was filled with sticks of dynamite he would use to open the cave. Compton was beginning to wonder what it was going to be like to be rich.

Race Compton never made it back to Victorio’s cave. After hiking only a few miles out of Sierra Blanca, he suffered a heart attack and died. When he was found hours later, he was lying on the side of the road, his head resting on the knapsack filled with explosives.

Compton left no notes or maps regarding the location of the cave of gold. His few meager belongings were searched, as was the Peacock ranch house, but nothing of import was ever found. Compton owned nothing but the clothes on his back, a few cooking utensils, and a pistol that had not been fired in years.

Today, the Eagle Mountains can be seen by travelers motoring down U.S. Interstate 10 between Van Horn and Sierra Blanca. This rugged range is rarely visited except for a few hunters during deer season and an occasional rancher searching for cattle that may have strayed into one of the canyons. Near the old stagecoach station, the state of Texas has placed a historical marker containing only a few words.

The gold of Victorio, estimated to be worth an untold fortune, still lies concealed in a small cave somewhere in the range. From time to time, a treasure hunter will arrive in the area and conduct a search, but invariably comes away discouraged. This rugged, arid, harsh, rattlesnake-infested environment discourages all but the most determined and hardy adventurers.

19

The Lost Billy Bowlegs Treasure

The pirate William Rogers, who came to be known as Billy Bowlegs, was born in England. Part of his legend states that he was of noble blood but this has never been verified. Another part of the legend claims he was forced to flee his homeland because he was caught in a series of crooked business deals.

Whatever the truth, it is known for certain that he showed up in New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1810. He arrived with enough money to purchase a plantation seventy-five miles north of the Crescent City where he operated a profitable sugarcane farm. When asked about his origins and his past, Rogers remained very secretive and refused to divulge any information whatsoever. He eventually married a Choctaw woman who, over the years, provided him with four sons and two daughters.

William Rogers apparently tired of the tedium of farming and engaged in business with two men, Jean and Pierre Lafitte. The two Lafitte brothers made significant profits fencing the stolen goods that, as Rogers later learned, were plundered by the two men. Rogers eventually discovered that Jean Lafitte had his own fleet of pirate ships and raided and robbed across the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1812, Rogers joined up with Lafitte’s band of brigands and participated in a number of raids. When Lafitte chose to join General Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson’s forces and fight against the British, Rogers did not hesitate to accompany him. He fought with valor at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. As a result of his contributions, Rogers, along with Lafitte and several other crewmen, was granted a pardon by President James Madison for earlier crimes committed on the high seas.

When Lafitte shifted his pirating operation to Galveston Island in 1818, Rogers, reluctant to return to farming and attracted by the promise and potential for adventure and riches related to plundering merchant ships, remained behind and assembled his own fleet. For the next twenty-eight years, he was the scourge of the high seas. Somewhere along the way, Rogers acquired the nickname “Billy Bowlegs,” the moniker taken from a Seminole Indian chief that Rogers resembled. The identity stuck, and before long no one could remember his real name. In fact, some have suggested that William Rogers may not have been an accurate identification.

From an unknown location somewhere on the Gulf Coast, Bowlegs and his fleet attacked and plundered Spanish ships throughout the area until 1838. All ships were fair prey for Bowlegs, regardless of their country of origin. He soon learned that Spanish vessels carried more gold and silver than those of France, England, or the United States. During that time, the Spanish normally carried precious metals and other valuable cargo from Mexico, South America, and Panama across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain. The so-called plate ships, so named because they were plated with sheets of metal that served as armor, were often escorted by one or more armed frigates to guard against depredation.

Most of the pirates prowling the Atlantic Ocean avoided the escorted treasure ships. Bowlegs, however, viewed them as a challenge, and attacked them with impunity. Every ship Bowlegs seized and plundered was either burned or scuttled after all of the crewmen were slain. The pirate wanted no survivors to return to shore and implicate him in his deeds.

By this time, Bowlegs and his compatriots were old men and the work of running ships and pillaging grew to be too much for them. Bowlegs retired, but after two years began to miss the thrill and adventure of piracy. In 1840, he reassembled several of his comrades along with some new crewmembers and returned to plundering merchant ships.

It has been rumored that Bowlegs had cached chests of pirate treasure in several different locations along the Gulf Coast, but the one that he is most associated with is a shipload of gold that went down in the shallow waters of Choctawhatchee Bay in the Florida Panhandle.

For one of his last raids, Bowlegs traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and robbed a pack train, along with a number of cargo wagons, of an immense fortune in gold. The account relates that Bowlegs had accumulated so much gold, tons of it, that he ordered the ship’s cannons thrown overboard to allow for easier transportation of the loot.

On returning to his hideout on the Gulf Coast, Bowlegs encountered a storm. While he was fighting strong winds and high seas, he spotted a heavily armed British Man-of-War that had taken up pursuit of the pirate’s vessel. Since Bowlegs had no cannons, he was defenseless. With his options limited, he attempted to outrun his pursuers.

By the time Bowlegs reached the Florida coast and the location of Camp Walton near Choctawhatchee Bay, the British were almost upon him. The pirate steered his vessel, the
Mysterio
, through East Pass and into the shallow bay, knowing that the Man-of-War’s hull was too deep to pursue. As he sheltered in the bay, Bowlegs decided he would wait there until the British grew frustrated and sailed away.

Much to the pirate’s surprise, however, the commander of the British ship lowered longboats filled with marines who continued the pursuit. Fearful that the British would confiscate his treasure, Bowlegs sailed his ship as close to Alaqua Bayou as he could, then scuttled it in the shallows. When the waters were up to the deck of the sinking ship, Bowlegs had the masts sawn off so the vessel would be totally submerged and not easily located. As the masts were being removed, Bowlegs had four cypress chests filled with gold and silver coins and jewels loaded into a rowboat and transported to the shore. As Bowlegs and his crew rowed and swam to safety, the ship, containing the bulk of his Mexican treasure, settled onto the sands below.

A short time later, the pirates stood along the shore and watched as the marines turned the longboats around and returned to the Man-of-War. When he was convinced they weren’t being observed, Bowlegs and his crew unloaded the treasure chests from the rowboat and buried them nearby. After watching the British vessel sail away, Bowlegs decided to leave his crew at the location to guard the treasure while he set out overland for New Orleans where he hoped to obtain another ship and return with equipment to be used to retrieve the treasure in the sunken ship.

Bowlegs arrived at the bay a few weeks later in a small schooner. He brought along some diving equipment to assist in the recovery of the treasure. He also brought his wife and children. When Bowlegs arrived on the shore, he discovered that all but four of the crewmen he left near the bayou to guard his wealth had died of fever or Indian attack. The four survivors were weak and sickly and in no condition to help bring up the sunken treasure.

Bowlegs had a crude cabin constructed nearby. He was determined to wait for his men to recover from their sickness before undertaking a recovery operation. When they were well, Bowlegs intended to recruit others to assist him in bringing the treasure up from the bottom of the bay. A few weeks later, however, fever struck the area again, this time claiming additional crewmembers as well as Bowlegs’s wife. Discouraged, the old pirate lost interest in the sunken treasure and began to believe it was cursed.

Years passed, and Bowlegs built a more substantial house not far from the point where the
Mysterio
sank. In time, Bowlegs was the only man left alive who knew the location of the scuttled treasure ship, as well as the four buried cypress chests filled with coins and jewels.

Bowlegs’s children, having grown weary of living close to the edge of poverty, once approached the ex-pirate and requested he inform them of the locations of his buried treasures. Bowlegs refused, flew into a rage, and chased them away at the point of sword. For the rest of his life, he never revealed to them any of the secret locations of his buried caches.

For forty-eight years, Bowlegs lived more or less as a pauper even though he was only a short distance from several treasures. Before Bowlegs died at ninety-three years of age in 1888, he provided information on the location of the treasure ship, as well as where the four chests were buried, to a close friend and neighbor, a man named Moses Hudson.

A few months after Bowlegs died, Hudson found the sunken vessel. Unable to salvage the treasure by himself, he hired seven men to assist in the recovery. As the hired hands worked at trying to bring gold and silver up from the sunken ship, Hudson, in a moment of poor judgment, revealed to them the locations of the four cypress chests filled with gold and silver coins and indicated he also needed their help to dig them up. The far-too-trusting Hudson was double-crossed in a matter of days. The men dug up the chests and fled, leaving not a single coin for Hudson.

The deception caused Hudson to be more cautious. As a result, he never revealed the location of the sunken treasure ship to anyone again. For years, he kept the secret to himself. One day, however, he mentioned the site to his son, Ed. Ed, along with a friend, attempted to recover the treasure but had only a modicum of luck. They were able to locate a few gold coins in the area of the wreck, but the main treasure eluded them.

With the passage of more time, the story of the sunken treasure ship of Billy Bowlegs made the rounds throughout much of Florida. Strangers arrived in the region from time to time to try to find the sunken ship. One of the arrivals with a keen interest in recovering the pirate treasure was a retired physician named H. H. Humphreys. Humphreys spent weeks exploring various parts of Choctawhatchee Bay. With the aid of a Texas oil field engineer, Humphreys constructed a dam and partially drained the bay. At a point where Alaqua Creek forms a bayou that enters the bay, he found what he was convinced were the remains of the
Mysterio.

The partially rotted vessel was seventy-five feet long and held together with wooden pegs. Parts of the stern were visible but the rest of the ship was buried under a thick layer of silt. Humphreys’s state-of-the-art detecting equipment found evidence of a quantity of dense metal beneath the sands but nothing was ever recovered except for an anchor chain. Given the comparatively primitive equipment available during that time, removing the sand and silt from the bulk of the wreck proved to be an insurmountable task.

Dedicated research leaves little doubt that the pirate Billy Bowlegs sank his ship, the
Mysterio
, with what is estimated to be in excess of sixty-five million dollars’ worth of gold aboard. The remains of the ship have been found where Alaqua Bayou enters Choctawhatchee Bay. It is possible, with modern recovery equipment, that the pirate’s long-lost treasure could be recovered. It would require a significant investment in time, energy, and money to do so, but finding the huge quantity of gold would make the effort worthwhile.