Yet another Manos Meadows Mystery this morning. The mystery of buried treasure is based on fact; there is a kernel of truth, but then the tale gets weird.
It is true that several outlaws, bank robbers and such, hid out in the hills of Cherokee County, Oklahoma, back in the 1930s. If you’ve ever seen or been in the Cookson Hills, you know it would be easy to get lost in the thick woods. 
Caves, dark hollows, few houses, clear streams for water: what more could a fugitive on the run want? Only thing is, after a bank robbery, there was a lot of stolen money. What to do with it?
The wooded hills, of course! Under a large rock, in the hollow of a tree trunk, back in a cave: any of these places would make ideal hiding places and the legend is they did. 
Stories abound which every native Cherokee Countian has heard, that lots of stolen money lies in various places in the area. The bank robbers did a marvelous job of hiding it but some times they didn’t have the opportunity of coming back for it. Jail or a lawman’s bullet interrupted many dreams of living happily ever after.
From those hard, cold facts grew the money mystery. Where was that treasure? You can bet that many people have searched for it. Did anybody find it? If they did, they kept it a secret and told no one.
Stories sprang up, passed down from generation to generation, of people hunting the outlaws’ bounty. One tale was that a person was digging in what he considered the right place and heard a horse-drawn wagon coming. He heard the horses’ hooves on flintrocks; he heard the rumble of the wheels. The fortune hunter, of course, stopped to listen. He sure didn’t want anybody discovering what he was doing. But, the funny thing was, when he stopped digging, the sound of the wagon stopped too. Going back to his work, he heard the wagon again, closer this time. Each time his shovel hit the ground, the wagon came closer through the dark and moonless night. Finally, it was too much for him and he left in a hurry.
Another story was of a different man digging for the gold but he kept encountering spider webs. They clogged his face, got in his eyes, nose, and mouth. He’d wipe them away and back they would come. I can imagine that would get on a person’s nerves, can’t you? Deciding no amount of riches was worth those ghostly webs, he took his shovel and went home.
Were these stories true? Yes, those stories of outlaws and the Cookson Hills are certainly true. Have people tried to find the stolen loot through the years? I don’t personally know of any, but I’m sure they have. Have I ever searched for it? Are you kidding? Maybe the ghostly wagon and invisible webs are all imaginary, but I don’t want to find out. I remember having a case of the shivers as I listened to these tales around the fireside on dark nights with my family near by.
Those stories made such an impression on me, that I’ve mentioned them in the Darcy and Flora books. Writers sometimes take a truth and enlarge it, you know. That’s how many mysteries come into being.
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