Free The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures by W.C. Jameson Page B

Trabuco, but the message informed him he was to be paid twenty-five hundred dollars for his troubles. He was also instructed to tell no one of the arrangement. The message carried neither information regarding the subject of the meeting nor an explanation as to why Elliot was selected to attend.
    Elliot was more than qualified as a pilot. A native of Salt Lake City, he had been employed as a stunt flyer for a circus, at one time owned a charter service, and was currently working as a crop duster helping Utah farmers fight the plague of crickets that was devastating much of the state’s agricultural productivity. Having never made much money at his flying enterprises, Elliot was lured by the large fee and agreed to make the seven-hundred-mile round trip.
    Two days later Elliot landed at the tiny Kirtland airstrip. As he was climbing out of his plane, he noticed a tall man in a dark suit walking toward him. The man was a Mexican. Without speaking, he handed Elliot a typed note. It was from Don Trabuco and carried instructions to meet him at the Kirtland Hotel. The Mexican motioned the pilot toward a waiting automobile.
    Don Leon Trabuco had a home near the city of Puebla, Mexico. There, Trabuco owned vast parcels of land and ranches. He was also a banker and operated several successful businesses in Puebla. When he met Elliot at the hotel, Trabuco, along with his aides, were expensively dressed. All were very polite, and all spoke English as though they had been educated in the United States. It was rumored that Trabuco was descended from the original Spanish conquistadores who conquered Mexico centuries earlier. It was also told that he was the head of a large, prominent, and extremely powerful family that controlled the politics and economics throughout much of the region where he lived.
    As Trabuco spoke, one of his assistants handed Elliot a flight map of an area near Puebla where one of Trabuco’s large ranches was located. Here, Trabuco told the pilot, he was to land his plane and pick up a cargo of gold ingots. After leaving the ranch, Elliot was to fly an evasive pattern back to New Mexico and land at a remote airstrip near a small isolated mesa located a few miles northwest of the town of Shiprock. The assistant pointed out fuel stops along the return route.
    Trabuco told Elliot that if he were pleased with his compensation this would be the first of several trips, and that ultimately a total of seventeen tons of gold was to be delivered to the designated site over a period of several weeks. For his efforts, Trabuco told Elliot he would be paid forty thousand dollars in cash. He also informed him that this, and any future business conducted between the two men, was to be kept secret.
    Elliot thought about the proposition. Mentally, he calculated how many planes he would be able to purchase and how he could improve and expand his crop-dusting business. Following a few minutes of deliberation, Elliot agreed to the arrangement. Smiling, Trabuco told Elliot to fly his plane to the Puebla ranch the next day. He then handed the pilot twenty-five hundred dollars in cash.
    Late afternoon of the following day, Elliot landed his plane and pulled to a stop at the end of a short landing strip near the Trabuco ranch house in Mexico. Within seconds, a number of uniformed guards carrying machine guns met him and instructed him to stand to one side while they monitored the loading of a number of heavy gold ingots into the plane by three laborers. This done, Elliot was shown his quarters and fed dinner.
    The next morning after breakfast, Elliot took off and flew the prescribed route back to New Mexico. During the 1930s, eluding the border patrol and other law enforcement authorities was a simple task. This done, he eventually landed his plane at a tiny, rough and rocky makeshift landing strip adjacent to the specified mesa.
    By the time Elliot cut his engines, a brand-new pickup truck was driven to the side of the plane. From the cab