Legends of the Lost

Legends of the Lost Five Dead Outlaws Leave No Clues to $125,000 in Buried Loot

The outlaws are definitely dead. But their loot - valued at $125,000 in gold, silver bars, and coins - may still be out there in the desert, waiting for someone to find it. The outlaws were five in number, and they were buried near the loot they supposedly heisted from a stagecoach near Canyon Diablo between Winslow and Flagstaff.

The story of the Dead Outlaws' Loot began on the morning of May 10, 1881, at the rawboned town of Canyon Diablo. Here passengers sat in a red Concord stagecoach, waiting to leave the woebegone spot. They had to deboard the decidedly more commodious train and climb into the stagecoach because the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad tracks stopped at this point. Canyon Diablo was not only a town but also an approximately 250-footdeep defile awaiting a bridge before the railroad could continue its westward progress.

While the tired, cramped passengers tried to make themselves comfortable, a Wells Fargo employee unceremoniously stashed four mailbags in the boot on the back of the stage. The driver snapped the reins, and the six-horse team pulled the stage away from the station.

The stage driver was none other than muleskinner John Hance, who would later make a career of guiding enthralled visitors into the Grand Canyon and regaling them with incredible tall tales.

On this particular morning, though, Hance was about his work, driving the stage north to a spot where the horses could negotiate Canyon Diablo. They then charged west across the red sands of the Little Colorado River valley, past the black cinder hills, and steadily upward into the lush green forests that flank the San Francisco Peaks.

As Hance let the lathered horses slow to catch their breath, five men appeared out of nowhere and surrounded the stage. The unmasked bandits pointed the business end of their six-shooters straight at Hance's nose. Despite the driver's assurances that there was no money box aboard, the outlaws dispatched two heavy mail sacks from the boot and then ordered the stage on its way.

The passengers were wideeyed but still in possession of their valuables. Hance himself may have been a bit unnerved, but he also was curious that the bandits had taken only a coupleof apparently worthless sacks of mail and left his passengers unaccosted.

At 5 P.M. the stage finally arrived in Flagstaff, which wasn't much of a town back then either. When Hance reported to the stationmaster that "some folks ain't gonna get their mail today," the agent blanched and escorted him inside, along with the grim-faced town marshal.

The agent informed Hance that the mailbags had been a disguise: inside were not purloined letters but "a fortune" in gold and silver packed in two whiskey kegs and wrapped in paper. Because there had been so many robberies along the stage line, Wells Fargo was transferring the money incognito from a bank in Albuquerque to San Francisco. Hance said what the others were thinking: it had to have been an inside job for the outlaws to know which two bags to lift.

A posse headed out immediately, but the outlaws were long gone. More than a week later, Capt. E.C. Hentig and his Sixth U.S. Cavalry, Company D, out of Fort Apache, heard of the robbery. With some Indian scouts, they started to track the by then lukewarm trail of the robbers. The trail led them to a spring tucked into the San Francisco Peaks above Flagstaff. Here Hentig and his troops found five men about to mount their horses; one was a burly red-bearded man who matched the description given by John Hance.

An exchange of gunfire left the five supposed robbers dead. They were placed in a single shallow grave beside the cabin at the spring. According to Hentig, there was no sign of any loot. Later Hance was brought to the temporary grave, the bodies were exhumed, and he identified them as the ones who held up the stage.

As time went on, the robbery made good wintertime storytelling among Flagstaff's early settlers. Prospectors occasionally showed up to look for the gold and silver, including a mysterious father and son who claimed they had come to study the geology of the area. They were seen in ice caves near the spring, poring over a map by lantern light. When a homesteader confronted them, they acknowledged that Their intention was to find the lost treasure. But they never let on where they had gotten the map.

Some believe the spot where the loot is buried is marked by letters inscribed in a rock near the old cabin by the spring. Others, perhaps affected by the altitude, claim they've seen a silvery light glowing in the vicinity.

The story took on renewed credibility in 1913 when "Short Jimmy" McGuire appeared in a Flagstaff saloon, declaring he had found the lost loot with the help of a willow water witch. A month later he was back at the same bar, flashing $50 gold pieces and buying drinks for everybody in the house.

Unfortunately Jimmy had one too many and keeled over of a heart attack on the spot. The pants pockets of the newly deceased bulged with gold coins. The devout believed Short Jimmy had located the Dead Outlaws' Loot, and they were off to the spring once again searching fervently for what they thought he'd left behind.

George McCormick, prospector and owner of a copper mine in the Grand Canyon, had searched for the loot over the years. His prospecting penchant was instilled in his son, Melvin "Mac" McCormick, who spent several years with friend C.J. Halliday looking for the missing gold and silver and many other lost treasures in the Southwest. C.J., who supposedly found the rock inscription, and Melvin have passed away, but Melvin's widow, Hilda, recalled going to the spring with her husband to look for the treasure and finding nothing. "Pa,"

As she called him, used an old-fashioned metal detector in his searching and just had a good time being outdoors.

As with many other lost treasure tales, some people doubt the existence of any treasure at all. In this particular instance, it is uncertain whether there was even a robbery. A search of the Prescott Daily Arizona Miner, the region's major newspaper in 1881, uncovered no articles about a stage holdup near Flagstaff during that period. Wells Fargo archives also contain no supporting documentation of what would have been a noteworthy occurrence.

The story of the Dead Outlaws' Loot (and the basis for much of this article) appeared under the byline of Maurice Kildare in a Western pulp magazine. Kildare was one of many pen names used by the late Gladwell "Toney" Richardson, one of the West's most prolific writers on lost mines and lost treasures. In his 76 years, this Flagstaff resident wrote more than 300 novels and 5,000 magazine articles under his own and many other names. Richardson knew both Melvin McCormick and C.J. Halliday, and he said that he was with Halliday when the treasure hunter found the inscription etched into the rocks near the spring.

Still, might this have been just another of John Hance's tall tales? Hilda McCormick believes not. There is a Dead Outlaws' Loot, she says, "or Pa wouldn't have looked for it."