Rio Bonito's Silver Mystery

[Fiftytwo pennies]

I was down a my grandfather's Antique shop and came across three copies of True Treasure. I really like the story and thought I would share it.
Rio Bonito’s Mystery Silver
By Maurice Kildare
True Treasure October 1969
All day as he moved down the Rio Bonito, “Malpais Slim” Hawks watched the distant mountain peaks and the near hills for Apache smoke columns. If he were detected by their far-ranging scouts, the main band would be signaled in. From that moment, his life would depend on beating them to Fort Stanton, still far to the east.
The dreaded Warm Spring Apaches under Chief Victorio were out raiding afar that August of 1877. Malpais Slim had seen their dust trail from the White Mountain peaks. Pitching out of them, a number of clear running creeks formed the headwaters of the Rio Bonito in central New Mexico.
Slim’s packed mule rounded a bend of the stream. Following on his saddle horse, he spotted a cave-out in the right bank against which he rode. Low in height, it was composed of dirt and small gravel. Only a few boulders were in the muck. A spring runoff of heavy water had undercut the bank and spilled it down, revealing a hole under the rim.
The opening appeared to be packed with small, Black-colored bricks. Curious, Slim pulled one of them out. In another second he forgot all about the Apache danger and was breathing hard in astonishment over an amazing discovery.
The “brick” in his hand was silver! It had been cast and hidden there so long that thick verdigris covered it.
Bringing back the mule that had strayed away, Slim packed in all the silver ingots that the panniers would hold. Preparing to ride out, he reconnoitered briefly. It might be several days before circumstances would permit him to return for the balance of what was surely a great hoard.
From the width and the depth of the closely packed ingots, there seemed to be no end to the cache under the bank rim. Meanwhile, someone else might come along and find it as accidentally as he had happened upon the hoard.
Taking the short-handled shovel from his provender, he dug and tore down the firm rim until the mysterious cache was concealed. Only when satisfied that it was well hidden did he mount and ride on down the Rio Bonito.

The 50-year-old, chunkily-built Malpais Slim, his nerves tingling with intense excitement, forgot all about the murderous Apaches. While still in this state of not being alert to possible danger, he gained downstream past the collection of adobe huts that became Angus on today’s New Mexico State Highway 37.
Looking around instinctively, he was startled by the discovery of a column of black smoke on a heading to the north. It gave him a rude awakening to personal danger. Then a bullet whined close. It was followed by several others from the timber on the other side of the Rio Bonito. The smoke signal, not more than a mile away, had been in the air some time, totally unseen by him.
Leaning forward while snaking the carbine from the saddle boat, Slim kicked into a run. Heavily loaded, the mule could not make much speed. By the time he had gained three hundred yards from where he had been shot at, five mounted apaches dashed from the timber towards him.
Twisting the saddle and slowing for more accurate aim, he brought down two of them. The others wheeled aside, streaking back for cover. They were sure to return, and with reinforcements. A lone white man was usually a sitting duck for these crafty, murderous Indians.
With all the odds against him, slim pounded leather for nearly five miles before the Apaches appeared in renewed attack. Trying to cut around to head him off, rough terrain in the hills forced them into a long curve. The longer distance upslope tired their ponies, but Malpais Slim was hardly in any better shape.
Bullets whined around him from long distances as the redskins charged forward. Despite the distance over which they came at him, it looked as though he would be forced into making a desperate stand. Even slowing down might be fatal. In this crisis, rope-whipping the mule to get away, a break appeared in the canyon wall, to the right. Surprised and elated, he sent the pack mule into it. Far behind, as he disappeared, the Apaches set up a blood-chilling howl of frustration.
It was near sundown. With any kind of luck, he figured it should be possible to evade and outrun the Apaches. In line with that strategy, he took a course directly south, toward the Rio Ruidoso. Before the dusk he reached timber along the river.
Fading into the timber’s concealment, but always alert to apache attempts to outwit him, he was circling northeast off the stream when darkness came. After resorting to tracking him, the Indians would never be able to follow his get-away sign then. Perhaps they would imagine that he had continued streaking south and would keep pursuing him in that direction.
Not pausing, although forced to slow to a steady pace, he continued his escape courses. Some time after midnight, he rode into Fort Stanton, where soldiers stationed there greeted him with no delight at all.

The main body of troopers was out chasing raiding apaches, the several bands of Chief Victorio. As far as the soldiers were concerned, Malpais Slim was a stupid prospector chased out of the hills where he had no business in the first place.
Malpais Slim camped outside but near the fort for safety. Resting over a few days, he rode on east to the shack and adobe village of Roswell, surrounding a general store, hotel and stage station. Leaving his stock in the wagon yard of Aaron O. Wilburn, he took a stagecoach north to Albuquerque with the silver ingots.
In the Duke city he sold then for $2,800. The bars were far from assaying pure silver, being mixed with copper and lead. Naturally the old ingots, weighing a few ounces over four pounds each, occasioned considerable interest. They had been cast in sand molds, only the top surfaces smooth. There was not a single mark on any of them as evidence of their origin, but obviously the metal had been mined and cash by the Spaniards a century or more before.
Many men tired to inveigle the secret from Slim, imagining that he must have run onto the great cache of gold and silver reputed to have been removed from Gran Quivira when the Spaniards were expelled from New Mexico. As to that, Slim had utterly no idea himself. Curious and hoping that some of the cache would prove to be golden ingots; he was must anxious to return to the Rio Bonito.
While in Albuquerque he tired checking old Spanish records and journadas in the ancient church of a Felipe to produce any evidence related to his find.
Two experienced miners whom he knew insisted that he had found a treasure buried sometime during the 1680 rebellion of the pueblo Indians. They declared that it would take that long for the thick film of verdigris to accumulate on the ingots. But all inquires as to where he had found the ingots remained unanswered.
Malpais Slim, never known by a given name, was a lone wolf. Like many such loners in the troublesome New Mexico years, the fact would get him into serious trouble time and again.
Golden October was at hand before he headed south again. At Roswell, where Captain Joseph C. Lee had bought out Wilburn, he acquired extra pack mules and supplied himself for a swift dash to the Rio Bonito. He reasoned that with the pack stock a great fortune could be brought out.
On arriving at Fort Stanton he was held up. Apaches were still laying waste to southern and western New Mexico Territory. After being stalled for time by the military, Lieutenant-Colonel Nathan A.M. Dudley, commander of the 9th Cavalry stationed there, denied him permission to proceed. Indeed, he appeared to assume a distinct dislike for Malpais Slim. For that matter, the testy colonel held all prospectors and miners in contempt. As with many other military officers, he imagined them all becoming rich by picking up valuable minerals on top of the ground to which they were not entitled.

Of course, Malpais Slim had other ideas about returning to the Rio Bonito. Surmising what he probably would do, Colonel Dudley dispatched small patrols secretly during the night. The next morning Malpais Slim set off east, ostensibly for Roswell. Once well away from the fort he circled south, then north returning to the Rio Bonito five miles west of the fort. There he was gathered in by patrol lying in wait.
Colonel Dudley threw him into the guard house and threatened to keep him there. Late November had come before Malpais Slim managed to affect his release by agreeing to go to Roswell. Allowing time for colonel to forget him, he followed up the Rio Hondo, then over to Ruidoso. While he avoided cavalry patrols, on reaching the mountains a fierce snowstorm hurled down.
Below-zero winds blew his gale, keeping huddled in a cave a week for protection. When the weather cleared, snow lay four feet deep all over the country. Realizing that he could not possibly find the cache of silver under the snow, he went east out of the bitter winter. While cooling his heels in Roswell, highly exaggerated accounts of bloody events of the Lincoln County War reached there almost daily. With the turn of the New Year, the factional fighting obviously neared a climax.
Nevertheless, most anxious to profit from his stupendous find, Malpais Slim set his course across the desert. He made it all the way to the site of Angus. His night camp there was surrounded by armed riders before dawn. He didn’t know any of them and never learned what side they fought on. Considering him a newcomer intent on fighting against them, or running ammunition through, they grabbed him. Insisting that he was the only prospector, Malpais Slim declared that he was headed for White Oaks and opening mines there. On searching his packs the intruders found no arms or ammunition. Only then did they grudgingly concede that he might be a harmless prospector. Even so, they refused to allow him to continue west or north. Packing him up, they escorted Malpais Slim east. After a good daylight they shooed him on toward Roswell, with the warning that he would be shot on sight if seen again.
Malpais Slim had no fear of Indians and very little of the Lincoln County warriors. However, he realized that their threat was no idle boast. They would kill suspicious characters from ambush. So he was once more compelled to cool his heels in town.

While at Roswell he wrote his two prospector friends in Albuquerque, requesting that they join him. Patently, only force would get him through the country to his goal. With their help, he could not be kicked around and would make it. But he never heard from them.
Meanwhile, the expected bloody climax of the Lincoln county War came off. On April 1 Sheriff William Brady and his deputy, George Hindman, were shot down on the street. In July followed the infamous three day battle with the Kid and his gang holed up in the McSween residence. Colonel Dudley brought in his troops and then let the Murphy-Dolan faction with a sheriff’s posse kill a large number of men, including McSween, and burn down the house.
That supposedly put an end to the Lincoln County War, but didn’t. Believing so, Malpais Slim essayed to return for the silver once more. By the southern route he made it without incident to a spot on the Rio Bonito where he thought the find had been made. Making camp in the timber, he hobbled his stock on grass and sought the exact site where the ingots were cached.
Locating a gravelly bank that looked familiar, he started trenching into it. After three days of failure he surveyed the sides of the stream, seeking another place that might possibly have been the site of the cache. Nothing showed, but he remained confident that he was at the right place.
There had been a flood since he recovered the silver ingots, washing away whatever identifying camouflage he had left behind. However, a mere few feet into the bank should reveal the staked silver. Nor were the ingots buried very deep beneath the surface above.
Of course he always maintained a sharp lookout for danger, and every morning just at break of day he scouted around the hidden camp, looking for Indian sign.
It was Apaches he expected to come around, not white men. Therefore it was a surprise one morning while he sat eating breakfast when five unshaven, flint-eyed characters rode right into camp at a bare walk. Slow movement and the thick carpet of grass deadened their sound.
Looking up from a tin plate of food, he studied them, just as intently as they did him. Unsmiling, making no greeting, the five dismounted, gun belt leather creaking as they advanced.
“Digging here eh?” drawled a red-haired ruffian who appeared to be in charge.
“Never can tell, might be valuables in the gravel down on bedrock.”
“Maybe. Throw some chuck together. We’re a mite hungry.”
Frying them meat from a haunch of fresh venison, Malpais Slim made another dutch oven of sourdough biscuits and a second pot of coffee. During the delay, and while they smoked Slim’s makings, there was no conversation at all.
Obviously the men were outlaws, riding somewhere fast. Slim expected to be robbed, even down to his last dime. He was surprised when they took only a little grub to be carried on a saddle. And just as uncommunicative as ever, they rode off.
Three nights following the outlaw’s visit Malpais Slim sat beside the glowing coals of the super firebed, pondering the situation. Suddenly he was almost bowled over by a bullet smacking the air past his head. Instantly he rolled out flat, dragging his Winchester carbine from piled gear.
Crawling twistedly through cover of ground shadow, he got behind a pile of loose boulders at the base of a tree. While he did so, rifles hurled into his camp. The crashing shots ended for a space of about two minutes before opening up again. But this time no lead whined and smashed near him. In helpless rage he realized that the unknown attackers had deliberately killed his stock. This did not seem like the act of Indians. On the other hand, why would outlaws be so spiteful?
Perhaps they were solely after his supplies, killing his stock to prevent pursuit afterwards. But that didn’t make sense either. Warily he remained quiet and immobile, waiting for one more of the bunch jumping him to be exposed.
Not one of them showed anywhere in the night before a voice hailed the camp. It issued from thick brush on the south side, into which the shafting moonlight did not penetrate.
“Hey! You give up?”
The voice did not sound like that of a white man. Malpais Slim remained quiet.
“You in there!” the heavy, jerky voice went on. “You wanta live, you give up!”
Several more times the odd-sounding speaker yelled warnings, demanding his surrender. Still unable to determine if an Indian or a renegade white man accosted him, slim prepared to defend himself desperately.
Finally the man quit yelling. Somewhere in the bush occurred scurrying sounds. The faintest of echoes on the soft night wind indicated voices in consultation. However, nothing raised loud enough for the language to be identified. Quiet reigned again when a human form appeared to one side of the bush. It advanced a few feet, until the moonlight revealed the man to be an Apache. High hide leggings reached almost to his knees. He wore a dirty white cotton G-string and a tattered blue soldier’s coat around his shoulders. The rifle he carried was held ready to fire.
When the wary Indian gained halfway to the firebed a second advanced into sight. Still another appeared as the first pair moved all the way to the dying coals.
They stood looking around, peering into the night shadows. Apparently they concluded that he had fled afoot into the wilderness. One of them turned pat way around to summon others from the bush and timber. The third moved forward at a dog trot-and died with Malpais Slim’s first bullet. So fast did he pour a continuous stream of fire from the carbine muzzle that the two standing in camp were cut down before being able to trigger off a single shot.
Since his hiding place had been exposed, Slim crawled backward from the rocks. Quickly he worked under the cover of a low tree limbs on the right. No attack materialized and silence reigned for more then half an hour. But Slim could not guess that the Apaches were carefully moving in close, searching out the area immediately around the camp. Finally the smallest of sounds directed his attention to a spot not ten feet away. An Apache lay there briefly, and then snaked forward a few inches on his belly, pausing to listen intently again.
The crash of Malpais Slim’s rifle awoke the echoes. The Apache slumped to the ground where he lay, dying without a struggle. Again Slim shifted to a new hiding place.
The night wore and grew irritably impatient, since a renewed attack did not materialize soon. Eventually it occurred to him that the Apaches might be very few in number. If so, he had a good chance to get away with his hair intact. Crawling out of the brush, he hunkered over while withdrawing to the Rio Bonito; he followed downstream in the canyon.
Daylight began coming on, silver gray turning to yellow, He reconnoitered briefly, concluding that he had better get under cover, even though he would be unable to make good time. But already he had waited too long.
A bullet pinged overhead and he dropped ground ward. Scurrying fast, he managed to take refuge in some scattered rocks. Having time to look around, his pulse almost froze at sight of five Apaches afoot, charging his position… Hurriedly he squeezed off two bullets. Even as he did so the wily redskins dropped from sight in the tall weeds and grass. Seeking a better defensive position, he exposed himself a mere instant. A rifle roared, sending a bullet through his left shoulder. Biting back blinding pain with teeth gritted together, he edged the Winchester out.
From down the canyon between the walls yells suddenly burst on the air. When he looked, Malpais Slim saw a dozen mounted Apaches hunkered upward, continuing to fire wildly. The mounted ones in turn began blasting away as they neared, planning to overwhelm him in one rush. It looked like the end and Malpais slim prepared to take four Apaches with him.
Despite the noise close at hand, the thunder of many hooves on the ground and against rocks echoed in the air. Around the lower bend of the stream, charging in behind the mounted Apaches appeared a cavalry patrol. They opened fire on the Indians, who suddenly broke and ran, trying to escape past Malpais Slim’s position. There wasn’t any thing he could do to stop them.
The cavalry was so close on the Apaches that they fled pell-mell, as the devil himself barked at their heels. They seemed to vanish into nowhere, and the patrol turned back to Malpais Slim.
The cavalrymen were part of Troop F that had been with Troop H, 9th Cavalry, under command of Captain Henry Carroll. They were returning to Fort Stanton following a fight with Apaches at Dog Canyon on august 3, 1878. They were just close enough to barely hear the thunder of rifles, and pored into the canyon instead of continuing by.

Malpais Slim was packed to Fort Stanton, where a surgeon attended him. But his wound was a bad one and it would be some time before he would regain use of his left arm. Bitter over the turn of events, he went with a cavalry patrol escorted wagon train to Roswell. Fortunately, he had escaped with his money intact.
Putting up at Lee’s place, he rested easy until beginning to mend. Restless, he spent considerable time at the general store whiskey counter and in the adobe cantinas at night.
For once he broke his taciturnity and talked, but mostly to Lee. The subject uppermost in his mind was the silver on the Rio Bonito. Listening to his statements, Lee encouraged him to return when physically able. Some details of his account leaked to others, who promptly entered the disturbed country on searches of their own.
Getting the chance to buy two half broken ponies cheap, Malpais Slim unwisely began fishing them as soon as his arm was out of the sling. Working on a pinto first, he got along well for almost a week. Then one mourning he was thrown into the adobe corral wall and the shoulder was injured again.
After the broken bones began mending he left the ponies in Lee’s wagon yard and took the stage to Albuquerque, where he proposed spending the winter months.
Again Malpais Slim broke his rule of silence. Drinking in the saloons with acquaintances, he hinted strongly of a fortune in silver in Rio Bonito. Men who heard him checked up and found that he had indeed sold some of it. A number of them took off south on a hunt on their own, despite the snow-covered ground. Lacking concrete details, they were doomed to failure.
Returning to Roswell in May, Malpais Slim outfitted again. Meanwhile, Lee had investigated reasons accounting for the presence of silver ingots on the Rio Bonito. His first discovery was that the site as described by Malpais slim was near an ancient Spanish trail. In his opinion, it was probable that the ingots had been in transit to Mexico. Perhaps the pack animals gave out, or in the dire emergency of a continuous Indian attack that decimated the party, the silver had been buried.
“It had to be something like that,” Lee asserted. “Back in those times no silver was mined anywhere near here. At least, no evidence of such mines appears on Spanish records.”
“Maybe some of the stuff came from Gran Quivira,” Malpais slim ventured.
Lee shook his head. He had dug into that possibility also. According to Spanish records, that great treasure had been cached between two hills far to the north.
The Lincoln County War was no more, but the recently battling factions adhered to a bitter truce. For that reason, Lee insisted that three of his trusted Mexicans accompany Malpais Slim this time.
With quite a bunch of stock including burros, the party set forth around the first of June. On reaching the place where he always believed the cache to be, the bank was tunneled into along a space of three hundred feet. Puzzled and forced to abandon the project there, Malpais Slim moved higher along the Rio Bonito.
A number of tests holes were made. But not many places existed where the bank was composed of loose soil and small gravel. Although the party remained out until September, no clue whatever was discovered.
Disgusted, Malpais Slim returned north to Albuquerque and in subsequent years prospecting east of the Sangre de Cristos. Southern New Mexico became overrun with prospectors and mines were discovered and developed. The hills being safe from Indians after 1884, and the mining industry established towns and railroads.
One of the roving prospectors was a man named Dick Bacon. Usually headquartering in White Oaks, he ranged afar. Finding two silver lodes, he sold them both and kept moving around.
One windy March day in 1882 he prospected on the upper Rio Bonito. Having given up hope of panning anything, he started out. Riding along the side of the stream he glanced down and reined up to a quick halt. What appeared to be a small piece of black Iron showed plainly though the clear water. Dismounting, Bacon picked it up. Within minutes he realized that it was a silver ingot. For two weeks he searched the stream above and below the discovery site. Returning to White Oaks, he made cautious inquiries without revealing his reasons.
Almost the first thing he heard was that Malpais Slim, some years before, had found and sold silver coming from Rio Bonito. As carefully as he guarded his secret, news of his find seeped out. The Albuquerque Review for April, 8, 1882, gave a meager account of the silver bar. The report stated that the “bars of bullion weighed four pounds.” and that it must have been in the stream many decades and might have washed out of a cache somewhere along it.
The Albuquerque Review for April 8, 1882, gave a meager account of the silver bar. The report stated that the “bar of bullion weighed four pounds,” and that it must have been in the stream many decades and might have washed out of a cache somewhere along it.
The rush was o to the Rio Bonito. Scores of men searched it from the headwaters to fort Stanton. But if anyone found another bar it was kept very secret.

During the summer of 1886 Malpais Slim returned to Albuquerque. From several desert rats there he heard of Bacon’s find. The fact started him, for long since he could scarcely credit his own discovery. That he couldn’t go back to where he covered over the huge stack of silver in the dirt bank seemed incredible.
Wandering south with his pack outfit, Malpais slim visited many mining camps, always listening for more information about Bacon’s silver ingot. The story had then became entangled with a great Spanish treasure and raised to impossible heights. Reaching the Rio Bonito, Slim went over the old ground one final time. Then he wandered west to prospect in Arizona until he died at Prescott about 1900.
During his last years he was interviewed several times by a reporter on the Prescott Courier, who made quite a fancy yarn of the silver bars. The account was picked up and republished by other territorial newspapers.
Men hunted the silver on the Rio Bonito, especially during the 1880’s. One of the more famous was Miguel a. Otero, later governor of New Mexico. From his youth to the last of his days Otero was in some way engaged in mining. All of his life he periodically interested himself in lost Spanish mines and treasures.
Otero made several expeditions into Lincoln County, hunting the silver ingots while ostensibly engaged in other pursuits. This colorful New Mexico figure found and worked several old Spanish diggings but, like so many others, never came close to the lost silver.
Lee furnished Otero details as revealed by Malpais Slim. For several years he thought Slim dead and unreservedly told Otero all that he knew, both at Roswell and at Albuquerque. In his memoirs, Otero hints at obtaining actual records of the cache, in documents in Santa Fe and in old Mexico. If true, however, he divulged them only to his closest associates.
Once while inspecting the great John S. Chi sum ranch to handle its sale, a Mexican, Jesus Sosa, assured Otero that he could go directly to Rio Bonito’s silver.
Taking Sosa to guide him, Otero set out hunting the silver in a buckboard, his usual method of travel. The vehicle could be taken in on the Rio Bonito through flatland to specific points. From camp there the two men searched the stream on foot. But Sosa could never find the right place. Manana they would come upon it, so Otero went back to Albuquerque. He wrote later that the silver most certainly had been planted on the stream by Spaniards and must still be there.
In his time, Otero investigated at least a hundred stories of lost mines and buried treasures. He found some of them that began just as nebulously as Sosa’s story. One year he tried to promote a bed of ichthyol near Gallup in the belief that it was petroleum.
The chances are extremely great that not all of the silver ingots in the cache discovered by Malpais Slim have been found. At least, present day treasure hunters believe that the bulk of it is still there. The search is on, one that is described as “frantic.”
Many of these hunters enter Billy the Kid country-Lincoln County-via U.S. Highway 70. In spite of it’s being well established that Malpais Slim and Bacon made their finds on the Rio Bonito, hunters spread out all along the Nogal, Hondo, Ruidoso, Eagle Creek and the Tularosa.

[toye026]

Cool story!! Thank you for sharing

[EPC Guy]

Really enjoyed the story - thanks!

[JCWhite]

An inspiring read.... Thanx.

[Metalman]

I just thought I would let you know I did not find it either ,, but I have spent a little time looking for it !!

I spent several years working security at the Bonito lake camp grounds ,,from the story the lost silver could now be under the lake .

Metalman

[Zman]

Great story, thanks for sharing.

[gordiesgirl]

Great story Thanks for Sharing

[MinelabMan]

Thanks 52, cool story. I'd be happy to find a 4 ounce bar, and beside myself with a 4 pounder!