Legends of the Lost

BY: James E. Cook

egends of the Lost Deep in the Mazatzals, the Black Maverick Gold Mine Has Eluded Searchers for Decades

As the jet climbs away from Phoenix, bound for Dallas and Atlanta, it passes over a distinctive set of mountains called Four Peaks. The tallest of the peaks rises to 7,645 feet, compared with about 1,100 feet elevation at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.Because it's a morning flight, the early sun will be glinting off Roosevelt Lake, a huge reservoir about 55 miles east-northeast of Phoenix, separated from the metropolitan area by Four Peaks. At that point in the flight, the plane is more or less directly over the Lost Black Maverick Mine. But where, exactly, is that lost lode? It has eluded searchers for decades.

Four Peaks is at the southern end of the Mazatzal Mountains. Historically, Arizonans mispronounce the name of the range as "matt-uh-zals." Correctly, it's more like "mah-zaht-sahls." In the early days of Arizona Territory, Native Americans conversing in sign language with Anglo settlers held up four fingers spread wide to signify Four Peaks.

The rugged range is now part of Tonto National Forest, and much of it is a protected Wilderness area. Four Peaks was never a red-hot mining district like some other areas in Arizona. There were some gold and amethyst mines, but mostly the mountains were the site of cattle ranching.

And thereby hangs our tale of gold that was found, and lost again.

History does not record the surname of the cowboy called Valentino. He was a Yaqui, part of a tribe of Mexican Indians. Many Yaquis fled persecution in Mexico around the turn of the century and settled in enclaves near Phoenix and Tucson, adding to the rich cultural mix of those cities.

Valentino was riding the range one day in the rugged country on the west side of Four Peaks. Live oaks and man-zanita brush made the going tough. He spotted a black bull about two years old. The bull was a maverick, unbranded and unclaimed.

The cowboy chased the bull through the brush until he could spin a loop with his riata. He lassoed the bull, and his well-trained horse sat back on its haunches, upending the bull. The animal landed in a tiny creek more of a seep, really, a muddy spot in a clearing. Valentino hog-tied the bull and notched his ear as a sign of ownership. Then he turned the animal loose.

Valentino put the gold in the pocket of his leather chaps. As the cowboy remounted his horse, the animal almost broke through some old timbers that appeared to be covering a pit, maybe a gold mine. Nearby Valentino found the foundations of a cabin. The structure had been gone so long that a tree was growing through where the floor would have been. He also found the rusted remains of what looked like a pick. All that remained was brittle, rusted iron around the pick's eye.

All this was of only passing interest to the cowboy, who had work to do. Someday he would return, perhaps, and see if he could find more gold.

Valentino later left the Four Peaks country and took a job on a ranch at Rye, farther northeast of Phoenix. Many of the old-time cowboys and ranchers in the Rye area saw Valentino's gold sample and heard his story.

Some tried to get him to show them where he found the gold, but Valentino refused. It is said that one cowboy suggested they force the Yaqui to show where the mine was, then kill him. A Hispanic cowboy over-heard the plot and warned Valentino.

Later two riders came in from the Four Peaks area and reported they found ruins of an old camp. Could it have been the one Valentino had seen? The Yaqui seemed upset until the men described the location in more detail. Then he threw his hat in the air and chortled. The camp was many miles from the one he had seen.

Still later Valentino moved back south to the Phoenix area. He became friends with an Anglo couple in the suburban town of Chandler. He told them his story of the gold nugget, and they offered to help him locate and develop the mine. It was agreed that the three would share equally in the ownership of the mine they would call the Black Maverick.

Valentino and his Anglo friends carefully planned a trip into the Four Peaks area to find the gold. Valentino's memories of its exact location were fading, but he thought he could scramble around and find the seep where he had lassoed the bull.

Then one morning Valentino told his friends he'd had a terrible dream. He had found the mine, but Apache Indians were shooting at him from the cliffs above.

Valentino was disturbed by the dream because during his youth in Sonora, Mexico, he had been taught that to disclose the location of a mine to anyone other than a Yaqui was bad news. Such a breach of confidence would bring instant death from Yaqui gods.

His Anglo friends convinced Valentino that his fears were mere superstition. The party then set out on its exploration of the Four Peaks country.

A couple of days into the trip, Valentino became nervous and morose. He also became very tight-lipped, refusing to discuss the possible location of the mine. Frustrated, his partners gave up the search and went back to Chandler. They returned on their own much later to search once more for the mine, but without Valentino's help it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Some months after the failed expedition, Valentino died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He had carried his gold ore in a pocket in his chaps until it almost wore a hole through the leather. After his death, a friend of his ground the ore sample and panned out enough coarse gold to almost fill a small pill bottle.

So far as is known, that's the only gold to be recovered from the lost Black Maverick Mine.

Maybe there's a rich lode of gold out there on the west slopes of Four Peaks. As my plane climbs out of Phoenix, bound ultimately for Atlanta, I look down on the steep, scrubby slopes of Four Peaks and wonder just where the old mine might be.

Even from the air, the four summits are distinct, and I think how fitting was the Indian sign for the mysterious mountains: four fingers, held wide apart.