One time there was a fellow named Hamilton Sipes went over in the Indian Territory and he married up with a Choctaw. Three or four years later he come back home, and he had a buckskin map marked with pokeberry juice. This here map showed how to find a buried treasure in a cave, right close to where Ham was raised.
The way Ham told it, a bunch of Spaniards come up here in the early days, and they had gold by the bucketful. Some say they had stole it down in Mexico, but maybe they dug the stuff out of the ground right here. Anyhow, they sure had it. When the Indians jumped on them, they hid the gold in a cave, and then they tried to get away down the river, but the redskins killed every last one of 'em. It is against Choctaw religion to mess with dead men's gold, but one of the warriors made this here map, and it was handed down in his wife's family. Ham got hold of it some way, while he was a-livin' in the Territory.
When he got back home, Ham just visited round amongst his kinfolks for awhile. Then one day he borrowed a pick and shovel and started out to get the gold. There was seven pony-loads of it, according to the old story, and Ham figured he'd be a rich man. He found the cave hole all right, and there was the three turkey tracks carved on a rock, just like it was on the map. Ham stopped to rest right outside the cave, when all of a sudden, he heard a noise, and here come a terrible big rock a-bouncin' down the mountain. He throwed himself under a ledge, or it would have killed him sure. He just left the pick and shovel lay and went over to Zeke Mosier's place. Poor Ham was scared so bad he couldn't eat no supper, and he had the dry shakes all night.
Uncle Zeke tried to tell him there ain't nothing to be scared of. It's in the nature of a rock to roll down hill, he says, All them big boulders in the riverbed must have fell off the mountain sometime. "That narrow shave you had yesterday was just a accident," says Uncle Zeke, "and it wouldn't happen again in a thousand years." Ham knowed this was true, but he had lived with the Indians too long. He couldn't forget them old Choctaw stories about what happens to fellows that dig up dead men's treasure.
It was pretty near a week before Ham come back to the cave, and this time Uncle Zeke tagged along. Just as Ham went to pick up the shovel, a copperhead bit him on the wrist. It wasn't no time till his arm was swole plumb to a strut, and he was a-suffering something terrible. Uncle Zeke hitched up and took him into town, and the town doctor give him medicine with a big needle. He finally pulled through, but it was touch-and-go for awhile. And Ham says them Indians ain't such fools as some folks think, and the gold can lay there till hell freezes solid for all he cares.
Some other fellows went and dug in the cave, and nothing happened to 'em. But they didn't have no map, so naturally they never found the gold. Ham's money was all gone by this time, and he couldn't get no credit at the store. He got to thinking how lots of folks has been snakebit right in their own back yard, when they wasn't looking for no treasure at all, but just picking up chips or something. And there wasn't nothing spooky about rocks rolling down the mountain neither, when you come to think about it sensible. So finally Ham says he will make one more try for that there gold.
It was a terrible hot day when Ham and Uncle Zeke started out. When they got to the cave Ham set down just inside the entrance and spread his map out on a flat rock. All of a sudden it got so dark he couldn't hardly see the pokeberry marks on the buckskin. The sky turned plumb black, and then come a terrible roaring up the holler. "Cyclone!" says Uncle Zeke, and they both throwed theirself down on the floor of the cave. The air was full of big trees and branches for a minute, and then it was all over. Ham and Zeke wasn't hurt, but they was covered with dust, and the buckskin map was gone. The cyclone had blowed it plumb away.
Neither one of them fellers said a word till they got back to Zeke's house and took a couple horns of whiskey to clear the dust out of their throat. Then Zeke began to grumble about the map being lost. "It ain't what you might call lost," says Ham. "I reckon it was just took back where it come from." And the next morning Ham Sipes was gone too, and we never did hear from him no more. The folks always figured he must have went back to the Choctaws over in the Territory.
From Stiff as Poker (originally published as The Devil's Pretty Daughter) by Vance Randolph, New York: Columbia University Press, 1955, pp. 31-34. Randolph writes that he heard the story from "Mr. H. F. Walker, Joplin, Mo, July, 1923. He had it from an old-timer at Sulphur Springs, Ark." Randolph continues, "The Ozark country is full of yarns about buried gold. I am personally acquainted with men who spent years in the search for this legendary treasure." Also, see my story about Elbie (L.B.) Squires of Stella, Missouri, and the discovery in Bear Cave.