Volume 11 , Issue 2

Frank James Returns To Wichita Mountains

By Now ... a 30 years had passed since the border gold was hidden during the bitter winter of 1876, when Frank James made known his return to his old stomping grounds.

In 1907 he and his wife, Ann, settled two miles north of Fletcher on a 160 acre farm between the Wichita Mountains and the Keechi Hills, the latter where Frank was later to dig up a least six thousand dollars of the outlaw loot.

Years before, Frank had hung up his guns for a final time. He was no longer the surly, gentlemanly, outlaw whom so many had read about. At sixty-four and balding, he remained soft spoken and took no pleasure in recounting the past. His objectives he now kept mainly to himself. The news of Frank's purchase of the farm spread fast when papers announced the story in November, 1907. Frank was then building his new home and planned to move in during the spring. Frank was also busy helping celebrate Oklahoma's statehood.

On Frank's sandy farm land he built a frame house, worked a plot of ground, and planted a grove of peach trees. Just before his mother died, in February, 1911, she visited Frank and his wife at their farm. She died in Oklahoma City while en route back to Missouri. It was reported by old timers that say Frank James wore out six horses riding the trails, searching for landmarks to put him back on the road to the golden treasure. But the country had now been fenced and plowed. The Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation had been opened to white settlement in August, 1901. Miners had swarmed into the Wichita Mountains to seek their own fortunes. Towns had grown up overnight, and new roads were traveled. The old trails were not called by the names the outlaws had known them.

Frank hoped that the old landmarks would help him recall his secluded haunts of thirty years before, the treasure code Jesse had laid down, and the brass bucket somewhere on Tarbone Mountain. It was one of Frank's day after day rides that attracted the eye of Dr. L. C. Knee, a highly respected physician of early Lawton. While paying house calls near Apache, Dr. Knee observed every day for a week or more that Frank had ridden to the top of a hill about four miles east of Apache. There he sat astride his mount, facing south, staring as if in a kind of trance.

One day, out of curiosity, Dr. Knee drove his buggy up to Frank James. After the usual comments about the weather, Dr. Knee dismissed his manners and said, "I don't want to seem inquisitive, Frank, but why do you sit in that saddle up here for so long, just staring at the bald prairie? What is it you're looking for?"

It was not known what Frank replied, but it was not many weeks later that the doctor and two local men arrived with teams and fresno scrapers and dug out a portion of a small canyon. Their search yielded the proper clues, for they had not dug long when they uncovered the skeleton of a burro, and not far away they found a burro shoe firmly embedded in a large tree. But it was their last clue, and after spending more than four thousand dollars, Dr. Knee gave up in disgust.

Frank had once explained that the eighteen burros had traveled so slowly after they forded Cache Creek in the winter of 1875 that it would take him only about a fifteen minute ride on a good horse to cover the same distance to where they had unloaded the heavy golden cargo.

Dr. Knee may have known the old Fort Sill stage driver, Holsey Green Bennett, who one winter day early in 1876 spotted seventeen burros grazing at the base of Mount Scott. Bennett had thought it strange, for o military animals were allowed to roam that far from the fort, and the animals he saw carried no government brand.

One piece of property just east of Cement in the Keechi Hills, attracted Frank James. It was the farm of a teacher, Mrs. Belle Hedlund. In 1907, Frank inquired about an old spring and some symbols etched on a rock and asked Mrs. Hedlund whether he could look over her land.

The schoolteacher was curious and walked along with the stranger (Frank James) as he poked an iron rod into the ground in an inviting spot. She showed him the only spring she knew about, at the foot of a lone knoll with a natural cave through one side, known as Buzzard Roost.

Frank pointing to a nearby rock as he bent down to reach under a stone and pulled out a rusted spoon, declared, "If this is the right place, this was Jesse's Kitchen."

As Frank continued his search, he confided in Mrs. Hedlund that he was seeking sixty-four thousand dollars that Jesse had taken during a robbery at Independence, Missouri.

Jesse had carved a map and directions on a large rock and turned it upside down. That rock Frank believed was on Mrs. Hedlund's farm, near the spring, where the outlaws had camped on many an occasion. Frank revealed that Jesse drew a similar map on his boot, later transferred it to paper, and gave it to his mother.

Some time later Frank found some of the markings he was seeking. At the foot of "Buzzard Roost" he found the carving of a pair of crossed rifles cut deeply into a rock. The barrel of one pointed east to an aged tree, on which were etched the letters "M. O. O." and below, the letter "Y." Beneath the carvings was a "mule shoe nailed into a blaze."

Not far from that tree Frank unearthed a copper kettle with a crock cover containing six thousand dollars -- or so he said. One old settler who was sure that Frank's claim was true was Uncle Billy Royce, who owned the farm adjacent to Mrs. Hedlund's. Billy Royce knew that the kettle of loot was not all that Frank was seeking. One day while Frank was in Cement buying supplies, Royce first spotted him. He took a double look and then hollered out, "Hello, Frank!" The old outlaw wheeled around, staring, as if trying to remember where he had seen him before.
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