Gold Envy

PROLOGUE There were some who came to La Dura, or to where they thought La Dura should be, with copies of the Jesuit maps and codes ... they failed. Many others came with different maps, different codes, or with nothing at all except the fever for gold and treasure ... they too failed. Records have been kept since the forties and we know that each year at least three-thousand Americans cross the border in search of La Dura, and that fifteen hundred never return. The brutal terrain, Indians, bandits, the d**g cartels, illness, murder, and the inability to live off the land ... endless dead-ends ... false trails ... just a few of the reasons for failure. The famous and the infamous have searched for La Dura. The lucky ones are those who returned to the border empty-handed. The others ... well, their stories are lost forever, bleaching with their bones under the warm Mexican sun in some unchartered canyon. There are many who believe the gold will never be found and that the iron door that guards the treasure house of La Dura has been buried, far beyond the reach of any metal detector, by earthquakes of past centuries. There is the story that the Apaches have told since La Dura became a dream. It is said that somewhere there is a gold chain and on that chain hangs a Medallion that was made from the gold of La Dura. It shows a beautiful dove trying to rise in flight to escape a striking rattlesnake. Could the legend be true? Could this Medallion be the key to the world's greatest known treasure? Is the Medallion, if truly there ever was a Medallion, somewhere with the bones of the padres, who were massacred during the great Indian revolt, or did it ever really exist? There is a story told around campfires on both sides of the border of a Medallion, coated with dust, that hung forgotten in a pawnshop window in Magdalene. Could it be? The tales are endless and varied, but the one told most often is the story of an old Spanish family who knows where the Medallion is hidden and they have ... Ah, a thousand pardons, Señor. You know that so much is legend. Just for a moment, let us suppose this story is fact. We know that the padres were stealing from the King of Spain. Their ancient records show that they had an underground treasure house where tons of gold bars were stored, to be used for the power and glory of their order. Those records do not lie. We do know that these Jesuits invented codes that even today we are unable to decipher, and yet, if one had the Medallion and could locate a true copy of the padre's maps ... There was a rumor, a tale told in whispers, a story that exists without hard facts ... one that I first heard in a little cantina somewhere south of Sahuaipa. A strange story, about a woman and four men who had somehow obtained the lost Medallion and an ancient map; the details are hazy at best. It seems they went into the mountains, and there the trail ended. Somewhere in old Mexico, high in the trackless Sierra Madre, far beyond the reach of all known high-tech equipment, the greatest treasure of all awaits discovery. Who really knows? The legend, it must be a dream, yet I hear it. I have heard it many times before. In the hush before the dawn, at high noon when the desert is hot and still, or when fever racks my body and sweat drenches me like summer rain. It comes at sunset ... very soft. Like the faint echo of a long-forgotten mission bell. It comes on the wind from the mountains and whispers to me as it plays through the mesquite and chaparral. "Come, come to La Dura ... come to the gold of La Dura." You see, something deep inside tells me it is not a dream. It can't be a dream. Ah, but who really knows, Señor? Maybe, you will find La Dura. Or maybe, it will be me.