Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-06-21

OR a long time I have known that
Coronado's children-the children of
hope and faith whose treasures are
laid down very deep in the earth, in
deed, rather than up in heaven-were
many, but until my book of tales about
lost mines and buried treasures got abroad,
did not know how many. Already have the
leads to enough new stories and have become
acquainted with enough characters to make
another book. OF course more of them write
than come in person, but they write in way
that many professional writer's might well take
lesson from; they write with directness.
The visitor who interested me most perhaps
had something to show, and after seeing it
I do not wonder that he has for more than
IS years been puzzled His name is Belt and
he is railroad man.
About 1903. he tells the story, he and his
father were setting a steel trap for coons on
the Neches River, in East Texas, very near
the crossing of the old Spanish road that ran
from San Antonio to New Orleans. They were
claiming the trap to a tree when one Of them
noticed something peculiar showing through
a slit in the wood. The older man always car
ried hand ak with him when he was out in
the woods and he chopped into the tree. With
a few strokes he extracted the brass model of
q human hand. have it in my possession
now. The hand is clenched and it is an ex-
quSite piece of work. The wrist of which the
hand is part runs off to point, SO that the
artifact has the appearance of spike; and as
q spike it had evidently been driven into the
tree. 1t measures Az inches from tip to tip
OUCH a find naturally aroused in the father
- and son q great deal Of curiosity. The
piney woods along the Neches River are full
of stories about Spanish treasure but generally
the markers called for by charts missing.
Here a unique and extraordinary marker.
But what did it mark?
Well, old man Belt did not have much to do;
he had never been slave to work; and so he
began to investigate. For Is years he did little
but roam the woods, in hand, investigating
every tree that showed a knot, hole in It's
trunk or any other peculiarly Sometimes
If tree had "a kind of likely look" whether il
showed any particular feature not he cut
into it. One day he extracted from tree
small copper knife about inches long 1t
would make beautiful paper cutter in any
library The knife was imbedded so as to
point toward the tree that had started all the
investigation.
Belt now began working imaginary
line running through the tree that had held
the brass hand ard the tree containing the
copper knife. mile SO out on this line he
discovered in another tree a copper peg, or
spike, some inches long, pointed toward the
hand. He found two other copper pegs each
smaller by an inch but both imbedded in such
a way as to establish the line he had been
working The last peg cut out was nearly
six miles from the tree on the river. This
certainly was interesting, but what did the
line lead to?
Thinking that perhaps there might be an
other line, Belt applied his investigation
to another quarter. He found second knife,
shaped little differently from the first, its
point curved like that of skinning knife On
the line established by it and the brass hand he
found three of the little copper pegs already de-
1crtbed. This second line made with the first