Mesa, Arizona
Saturday, May 16th , 1925
I am reluctant to write down this narrative, as I have no desire for anyone to discover it. However, as the years pass, my memory of certain details threatens to fade and if I am ever to fully realize the fortune I crave, I mustn’t forget a single one.
Over four years ago, I described my discovery of the Lost Dutchman Goldmine. Since that time, between the gold I discovered there and what I have acquired recently in Goldfield, my wealth has not diminished. Yet, I do not possess enough.
I have not returned to the Dutchman since 1920. My sons are still in the dark regarding my discovery. The reason I have not returned is simple—I do not know the way, nor can I search for it. If I could find my path to one particular spot in a specific canyon, I would know my way. However, the location of that canyon eludes me as I reached it by mistake and left it in a cloud of disorientation.
I recall the image of the canyon well enough—the rough sketch I made at the time for reference. I will transfer below.
If I could find this canyon or rather the junction of two canyons, I think I would be set. I have not, however, been able to get beyond Weaver’s Needle in my two ventures into the Superstition Mountains since 1920 without attempts being made on my life. One such attempt, I hardly survived and spent weeks disguising my injuries at home. The other I survived by a hair.
The Dutchman is not near Weaver’s Needle at all, whatever people may say. Of that I am certain, for I could see the Needle from the mine, but at a distance. We were certainly in the eastern side of the Superstition Mountains, not the western.
Lest my memory fail me before I can make a successful foray into the mountains, I will transcribe the directions from the canyon as I worked to memorize them more than four years ago. To lose such an amount of gold merely to a dropped memory would be tragic.
Theo read the entry, read the directions, then read both through a second time. He glanced at Hazel playing with her dolls on the floor, then read the entry a third time.
It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t add up at all. Was my father such a liar that he carried it over into his personal diary?
He flipped back to the earlier entries for reference, then returned to the 1925 writing. He shook his head.
He lays out the directions clearly, yet he also says that he stumbled onto the mine in the dark one night and left in a cloud of disorientation. He couldn’t have seen half the directions—a “horse’s head with a Roman nose and one ear laid back,” just as Jacob Waltz described’ for instance—would have been invisible in the dark. Yet, how could he have remembered where they would be in a ‘cloud of disorientation?’
How did he even get back in the first place? He said that he had lost himself when he found the mine.
Theo sighed, shutting the diary with a snap. “Gold doesn’t magically show you the way back home.”
“The person who gave you the gold might show you the way home.” Hazel cocked her head and smiled before going back to her dolls.
Theo stared at her. The person who gave you the gold…
Theo opened the diary again, searching for the description of Weaver’s Needle. He landed first on a list of names but kept turning pages backwards.
“We were certainly in the eastern side of the Superstition Mountains, not the western.”
We. He said, “we were.” He said that he refused to have a partner in the first entry. Is it possible that after all, someone found him? That he survived the mountains because someone helped him? Theo’s eyes remained rested on Hazel, but he didn’t really see her.
Might whoever have helped him, be the one who tried to kill him twice? If so, he might be the one who succeeded last week…