I am a history nut. Even 50 years ago, when I traveled through West Texas between Plainview and Sanderson, I would stop at every historical marker to read and learn about those who had preceded you and me. The Texas Historical Survey Committee placed one in particular – Marker #754 – at Castle Gap.
The historical plaque has been sandblasted over the years by high winds and dust devils. The gap, whose rimrock suggests the parapets of a castle, is a mile long but only yards wide at its narrowest point between King and Castle Mountains. This lonely and forgotten area has witnessed the flow of Texas history from Indians, Spaniards, trail herds, stagecoaches, settlers, and even rumors of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico sending treasure-laden wagons out of Mexico and heading toward waiting ships at Indianola.
Did those wagons ford the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossing as the sunset approached? Did they encounter large herds on the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail being driven north to markets? Did Comanche Indians attack them on their war trail into Mexico? Or was the story of Emperor Maximilian’s treasure just that – a story to tell around the campfire?
I would stop, sit on the hood of the car, and wonder, “What if? What did happen here? What could have happened here? Would that make a good story?”
A short story grew in my mind and became the middle part of my novella Chasing the Sun. Have you read it yet?
Just as the sun moves from the East to the West, here is the story of adventurers following the trail of treasure from the Civil War in the East to the West Coast in the 1880s.
Ride with them as they encounter Union soldiers searching for Confederate Gold, riders facing Indians as they hunt for Maximillian’s Lost Treasure, and the dangerous discovery of a haunted cave of treasure and death.
Join the adventure.