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 since the most remote times, a Mexican with three pack burros came into camp. He and his animals were travel-worn, and he asked permission to camp and rest his stock. Permission was readily granted, and, true to his easy manner, the Mexican hobbled his burros, then stretched out in the sun and took life easily for several days.
Then the men working on the house noticed that he appeared to be searching for various herbs and plants and studying the ground closely. After he had investigated in his solitary fashion for about two weeks, the Mexican seemed greatly depressed. One night he came to the Texans’ camp 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 as follows:
“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 display to the stars. They traveled to and across the Rio Grande without trouble, and then, señor, came the sands—the terrible desert. They were days in crossing it, and then, with the tough Spanish mules worn to the bone, they camped at the nearest place where there was water.
“They prepared to rest for a week, but in the night the Indians attacked, killed one man, and got away with two mules. The party started again at dawn, the Indians following. The Spanish captain decided to leave one wagon behind; so he took out the heavy boxes and put them in the carriage with himself. Thus the pobrecitos traveled until 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 slipped 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 leave tomorrow. If you find the Spanish gold, it is yours. Adiós!”
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 a chest of gold lies buried on Riverside Ranch has endured from those early days down to the present.