Read Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest for Free Online Page A

in hushed tones of the treasures hidden in the dry hills out in the surrounding desert. They say the treasures are precious jewels, and objects of gold and silver taken by Pancho Villa during his sacking of Mexico City. They tell of the secret mule trains that moved during the night and headed north with hordes of treasure taken from the rich and the churches. In the caves that go deep into the earth, Pancho Villa buried his booty of treasure. He would take three or four men with him and travel for one or two days, find a cave, unload the mules of their heavy burdens, and hide the treasure. Then he would shove the bewildered peasant soldiers against the cave walls and execute them with a machete or shoot them with his pistols, leaving their corpses to guard the treasure forever.
    Only Pancho Villa would know where the treasure was hidden. No maps were ever made. He kept the location of his booty buried in his mind. No one else would ever know where the treasure-filled caves were.
    According to the Indians of the region, it is bad luck if you try to find the Caves of Death; that it issmart to walk away if you happen to find one of these caves. They say that if you decide to go into one of them, you will first hear the voices of the dead, of the soldiers who were killed by Pancho Villa once they hid his treasure; that if you go deeper into the cave, the voices become louder and you can hear what was said when the treasure was hidden; and that if you are brave enough to keep on going, you will hear the screams of the soldiers as they were hacked or shot by Pancho Villa. As far as wandering any further than that, the Indians say to you, “Beware!” They warn that no one who has ventured that far has ever returned.
    The caves are like a spider web. They let you go in like a careless fly. Then you find yourself trapped, struggling and becoming more entangled in the web. When this happens, the spider hurries over to toy with you while it weaves a shroud around you. Finally, it destroys you. And this is what happened to Polito when he accidentally wandered into the Caves of Death.
    Polito, the old prospector, had endlessly searched the dry desert hills looking for gold and silver. Ever since he was a young man, he had been hoping for one rich strike. But it had always eluded him. Polito’s only companions were his mule and his dog Mocos. In the villages where he occasionally stopped for supplies, the people thought of him as a crazy old man.
    â€œCrazy old man, where is your treasure?” they would yell at him. But Polito paid them no mind. He would leave the village and return to his beloved desert and his hills.
    One particular evening after returning to the desert, Polito decided to camp out on a nearby hillbecause it was chilly. Just when the breeze was beginning to blow, he happened to find a cave and decided to shelter himself and his animals inside. This, he thought, would be his home for the night.
    Polito unloaded his mule, started a fire, and cooked his food. After eating, the prospector fed his mule and gave Mocos the scraps left from his supper. (The dog’s bony frame testified to the fact that Polito’s fare was not too abundant.) Just inside the mouth of the cave, Polito’s fire crackled and sent sparks of light into the darkness.
    Because the wind began to blow harder, Polito moved deeper into the cave, where he lay on his humble bed. Mocos came over, stretched himself out alongside the mat, and watched the old man moving about. Finally, the dog rested his head between his paws.
    The wind sounded like people whispering as it blew across the mouth of the cave, and Mocos raised his ears to better catch the sound, his head moving from side to side trying to determine the source. Polito also heard it. “Such an eerie sound,” he said to himself. There was something strange about this cave, he thought.
    Grabbing a burning piece of wood from the fire to use as a torch, the old prospector