Dead Man's Tale

A treasure hunter, a skull and bones and the Lost Dutchman Mine lead a writer along the hot trail to a cold case ADVENTURE GUIDE Dead Man's Tale

The map that killed Adolph Ruth must have seemed a lightning stroke of good luck.

The warm spring wind whistles through the hoodoos as I trace a serpentine path through bloodstained mountains still haunted with dread. The sun climbs higher. And the morning chorus of white-winged doves, Gambel's quail and cactus wrens gives way to the incessant buzz and whine of deerflies and no-see-ums. I swat at them with a bandanna and continue searching the mesquites, saguaros and ocotillos for movement. But the trail I follow is 75 years old, and there's little chance of discovering new physical evidence to the cold case of Washington, D.C., treasure-hunter Adolph Ruth, who vanished in this hellish maze of cliffs and canyons searching for the Lost Dutchman's gold.

It's 2:40 P.M. when I-hot and dehydrated-reach the site of Ruth's only known camp, at Willow Springs in the Superstition Mountains. Corralled by an avalanche of boulders choking West Boulder Canyon, Willow Springs marks the beginning of my quest to retrace Ruth's fatal trail. Nearly disabled by a painful leg injury, Ruth ventured into this unforgiving wilderness hoping to find the treasure marked on his map and wound up with what looked like bullet holes in his skull.

I peer into a black pool of water. Hundreds of young flies guzzle water, underscoring the thin line between life and death that Ruth faced alone in this desolate canyon. On June 14, 1931, he wrote: My dear Wife and Children, Yesterday, Saturday, June 13th, Mr. Purnell and Jack Keenan and I rode 3 burros and two carried my tent, bedding, fifty pounds of flour, 10 pounds of sugar, coffee, etc. I rode my burro until we got to this water. I didn't get off because I was afraid I could not stand on it [my bad leg] again. . . . Love, A. Ruth.

Just six months later, a search party discovered his skull in La Barge Canyon, nearly a mile distant from where they later found his skeleton on the slopes of Black Top Mesa. Moreover, both skull and bones were scattered far from this camp, where two cowboys had abandoned a helpless old man with a map to one of the most fabled treasures of the Southwest-the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. So I am determined to walk 7 torturous miles along his path to decide for myself whether he fell victim to the merciless desert sun, as the sheriff ruled, or died at the hands of a murderer, as I've long suspected.

I shoulder my pack. I'm still cramped, stiff and dehydrated, although I'm fit and pack far more water than Ruth did. But I've limited my fluid intake in order to level the playing field to that of a frail old man limping down the brutal course of West Boulder Canyon, carrying little more than a cane and a metal thermos of hot water in the searing June heat.

TREACHEROUS QUEST The fantasy of buried treasure in the Superstition Wilderness drove desperate, Depression-era dreamers like Adolph Ruth into a brutal and deadly reality. Grueling desert temperatures and a limited water supply could make the sheer, jagged ridgelines of the Superstition Mountains' west buttress look like the gates of hell to weary fortune-seekers. JOHN ANNERINO Dust whirls as I boulder-hop down a river of gray stones while the desert temperature soars past 95 degrees. I am lightheaded, and the rocks moving like marbles underfoot, threaten to snap an ankle. I slip on them and drop in my tracks, lying on the hot stones as gnats swarm around my face.

I crawl to my feet, my left leg rigid with a deep, painful cramp. I try to shake it out, but I'm too dehydrated. I limp a quartermile to a water cache. It takes forever in the pall of heat. I camp a half-mile beyond the cache at 6:35 P.M. After drinking two quarts of warm water, I walk back upstream to a rank pool. I strain a gallon-and-a-half of water through my saltstained bandanna and treat it with chlorine. I am weary but refreshed, and spend the evening contemplating Ruth's fate.

At first glance, the map that killed Adolph Ruth must have seemed a lightning stroke of good luck. Ruth's son, Erwin, had smuggled the Juan Gonzáles family from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, into Laredo, Texas, in 1913 and was paid with a set of maps to the Peralta family's mines. Ruth and his son followed one of the maps into California's Anza-Borrego badlands in 1919, but there Adolph broke his leg and nearly died. Doctors set his bone with a metal plate, shortening his right leg 2 inches, and told him if he ever broke it again, he'd die.

Twelve years later, Ruth resumed his search for lost gold after uncovering the infamous Gonzáles-Peralta map among Erwin's possessions. Many versions of "Lost Dutchman" Jacob Waltz's tale claim that Walz located a rich lode first worked by the Peralta family. But the Peralta Massacre and the 1854 Gadsden Purchase drove surviving Peralta family members out of the area. One of the most enticing clues that remained was the Gonzáles-Peralta map, which included a reference to Sombrero Butte, possibly another name for Weavers Needle, long the focal point of Lost Dutchman lore. Ignoring his family's pleas, Ruth drove cross-country with his prized map and an unidentified man and reached the Quarter Circle U Ranch near the Peralta Trail on May 13, 1931.

He asked the ranch owner, William A. "Tex" Barkley, to guide him, but Barkley told Ruth to wait until he returned from a cattle drive. Impatient, Ruth hired two of Barkley's cowhands, Jack Keenan and Leroy F. Purnell, to take him into the mountains. But here's where the mystery deepens. Why did Keenan and Purnell pack Ruth into the godforsaken depths of Willow Springs, at least 7 miles from an area resembling the terrain on the Gonzáles-Peralta map?

I break camp the next morning, rehydrated and well-rested. I dog the ghost trail of Ruth up the short, steep climb to Bull Pass, then down into Needle Canyon, toward the site where Ruth's remains were eventually found. Some writers are convinced that Ruth met his fate by climbing over Bull Pass on foot, but hiking along that trail, I cannot believe he could have made it through the pass.

I detour to Charlebois Spring to examine a large petroglyph called the Peralta Master Map, and then retrace my footsteps through a verdant grove of cottonwood trees shading La Barge Creek. The path is overshadowed by clues to the lost mine. In his book, Treasure Secrets of the Lost Dutchman, the late Charles L. Kenworthy wrote that he had pinpointed the Lost Dutchman and the Peralta mines on the nearby rugged slopes.

High above my right shoulder lies Peters Mesa, where treasureseekers once found an 1846 Paterson Colt .44 caliber revolver, three skeletons, a strongbox and 11.5 pounds of gold ore. Why hadn't Keenan and Purnell packed Ruth into this canyon oasis, much nearer his destination?

It's twilight when I cross the low divide separating La Barge Canyon from Needle Canyon. I stand in the pass for some time imagining possible scenarios of Ruth's death.

After Ruth vanished, a hound named Music led an expedition-tion mounted by The Arizona Republic to Ruth's skull. Here, in these canyons, that discovery mystifies me now. How did Ruth manage to crawl up Black Top Mesa? And could a flash flood have carried his skull from there into Needle Canyon, then up over the divide into La Barge Canyon? If coyotes carried it so far, and in the process created two bullet-sized holes, how did they avoid damaging the delicate nasal bones? The men who found the skull believed Ruth had been shot, and in January 1932, Smithsonian Institution physical anthropologist Dr. Ales Hrdlicka examined the skull and found a “strong possibility” that Ruth was shot with a “high powered gun,” possibly a .44 or .45 caliber Army revolver.

Nonetheless, Maricopa County Sheriff J.D. Adams concluded in his January 25, 1932, letter to Arizona Sen. Carl Hayden that Ruth died of thirst. “You know that a crippled man walking 6 miles over rugged, rough mountainous country under the burning heat of an Arizona sun in the month of June would absolutely perish of thirst,” Adams wrote.

I don't dispute that. But Ruth wouldn't have made it that far. West Boulder Canyon would have done him in. How then, did his remains reach Needle Canyon? And if he died of thirst, what became of the map? The longer I study the terrain, the more I suspect foul play.

The sound of water trickling alongside my camp in Needle Canyon soothes me throughout the night. But this is not the mysterious desert sanctuary I relished in my teens. It's a dead man's trail through perilous mountains stalked by a rogues' gallery of two-legged varmints led by none other

TRAIL OF ADVENTURE Three Great Superstition Hikes ROGERS CANYON

Situated in the Tonto National Forest's Superstition Wilderness, this 9-mile-round-trip hike into Rogers Canyon mingles vivid desert scenery with a surprising riparian area shaded by sycamore, ash and several varieties of oak trees. Along the trail, a natural rock alcove harbors a well-preserved, 700-year-old secluded Salado cliff dwelling. Hike in the early spring or late fail to experience the canyon's beautiful colors.

REAVIS FALLS

A 140-foot seasonal-flow waterfall cascades from a rocky outcrop offering unexpected pleasure in the dry recesses of the Sonoran Desert. Hikers can reach Reavis Falls on this 15-mile-round-trip hike through the beautiful mountains of Lost Dutchman lore.

MASSACRE GROUNDS

It's just a 1.5-mile trek from the trailhead to the site where Apache Indians reportedly ambushed and massacred Spanish miners who were transporting gold ore to Mexico. This easy-to-moderate trail shows its true colors in the spring when vibrant wildflowers carpet the hills below the imposing cliffs of the Superstition Mountains.

Information on all hikes: (602) 225-5200; www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/home.shtml.

DECOY CANYON

Some believe the dried-up and perhaps bullet-punctured skull of Adolph Ruth, found in La Barge Canyon (left), was planted by his assailants to throw law-enforcement officers and loot hunters off the trail. JOHN ANNERINO More than Ruth's predecessor, the Dutchman himself. During his deathbed confession, Jacob Waltz admitted to murdering seven men: three Peralta descendants he'd claim-jumped for the mine, his own nephew who'd traveled from Germany to help, two soldiers he later found working the mine and a lonely prospector with two burros.

"I shot him without giving him a chance to explain," Waltz reportedly confided to Richard Holmes in the wee hours of October 25, 1891. "I unloaded the equipment, and set fire to it, then drove the burros away."

Set against a tableau of greed, murder and the specter of the 1930s Depression that drove many over the edge, Adolph Ruth was a marked man from the moment he mentioned his treasure map to Tex Barkley in front of his ranch hands at the Quarter Circle U.

Early the next morning, I climb to the top of Black Top Mesa to compare the topography with the Gonzáles-Peralta map and study "Spanish hieroglyphics," petroglyphs known as the Peralta Master Map. Far below, I envision searchers huddled around a campfire as Ruth's bullet-riddled skull dangles nearby. I can imagine his white bones scattered like rock salt below the black cliffs beneath my feet.

I spend an eerily dark, silent night camped alone in Bull Pass. Everything's packed, my shoes are laced on my feet and I'm sleeping with one eye open in case someone else creeps into this bad dream. Officially, Purnell and Keenan were said to have bulletproof alibis and were exonerated. They left the state. Case closed.

I'm not convinced. Who else had the motive, the means and the opportunity to murder Ruth? The unidentified man who drove to Arizona with Ruth? A mysterious, machete-wielding "renegade" reportedly seen in the area over the years? Desperate Goldfield miners sifting through meager diggings, who didn't much like the idea of a pinstriped Easterner driving off into the sunset with the mother lode of lost treasures?

Two other questions keep me tossing and turning throughout the night as I count down to first light when I can walk out of Adolph Ruth's nightmare. A month after the news of the skull discovery, Tex Barkley and Sheriff Adams found the rest of the skeleton.

Coincidence?

Thirty-five years later, private investigator Glenn Magill interviewed Jack Keenan's widow. She reportedly told him: "You know, my husband and his partner never were able to find the mine, even with Mr. Ruth's maps."

Those words confirm my own suspicions that Ruth was betrayed at Willow Springs. He was shot point-blank somewhere between West Boulder Canyon and Peters Mesa. His GonzálesPeralta treasure map was stolen. His body was packed out from the crime scene and thrown over the edge of Black Top Mesa. His severed skull was physically planted for searchers to find in La Barge Canyon. And the gunman never swung from the gallows. All

You know that a crippled man walking 6 miles over rugged, rough mountainous country under the burning heat of an Arizona sun in the month of June would absolutely perish of thirst.