Continued from February 2, 2023 edition I didn’t put much stock in this because Dave Arnold left Water Valley and came up into the Big Country Area to search for this treasure or treasures, and as far as we knew never went back. Therefore it could not have been the Clyde Map. Bill Townsley made a big discovery, found with the help of the internet. Townsley found Dave Arnold’s death certificate in San Angelo, Texas; he died in July of 1911. This meant that the map in the trunk in Eastland could in fact have been the Dave Arnold Sheepskin Map.
It stands to reason that the two men who came and bought the map in Eastland in 1937 were Joe Woods and Joe Cauble. When I interviewed Cauble in Snyder in 1971, he had a wooden chest and said he had in it more material on these treasure sites than any man living. I went to Oklahoma in 1973 and was out of Texas for 20 years, coming back periodically to continue some research. When Cauble died in 1977, I contacted his widow who had moved to Abilene, and asked, “What happened to the chest full of maps?” She said, “My son, Joe Cauble, Jr., has them at Lake Leon, south of Eastland.” I was still out of Texas and began to converse with Joe Cauble,Jr., by telephone and he seemed friendly.
But Bob Kyker, from Tulsa and I interviewed Vernon Cauble in Wichita Falls, and he said, “I have as much right to those maps and materials as he has, and I will help you boys gain access to them.” I didn’t know that there was friction between the two half-brothers. The next time I called Joe Cauble, Jr., he said, “You tried to go behind my back to get that material; I know your kind because my (Cont. on pg B7) dad had to run them off all his life.” I tried to explain to him, but he cursed me and called me every name in the book. I said to myself, “I will wait until he dies.”
