Kid Wade's Gold

By Marvin Braun

Kid Wade was a notorious horse thief in Nebraska and the Dakota Territory in the late 1800s. It is estimated that he helped steal several thousand ponies. Although Wade never admitted it, a local Nebraska legend believes that he was the lone outlaw responsible for stealing Fort Niobrara’s payroll in 1883. That gold was never found.

While on an outing to search for dinosaur bones, the Brown children stumble upon an exciting clue that leads them to seek an outlaw’s hidden treasure. Join the Browns in their exciting search for
Kid Wade’s missing gold!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669801061

Marvin Braun

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Copyright © 2021 by Marvin Braun.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/25/2021

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     Loot, Lightning, and Luck

Chapter 2     T. rexes, Tusks, and Turtles

Chapter 3     Rain, Ropes, and Rattlers

Chapter 4     Rocks, Remains, and Revolvers

Chapter 5     Fowl, Fish, and Frustration

Chapter 6     Bull Dog, Bart, and Bones

Chapter 7     Pargo, Ponies, and Plans

Chapter 8     Caves, Clues, and Cowboys

Chapter 9     Buck, Brands, and Big Nose

Chapter 10   Museums, Maps, and Musings

Chapter 11   Lector, Luck, and Letters

Chapter 12   Hat & Fat Cat

Chapter 13   Guns, Gambling, and Goose

Chapter 14   Cave, Cougar, and Coins

Epilogue

INTRODUCTION

T HE KID INSIDE each of us wants to find hidden treasure. I know that feeling within myself, and I see it in the games I play with my grandchildren. Kid Wade’s Gold is fiction. It is written for my grandchildren and for that treasure-seeking child within each of us.

Kid Wade, Doc Middleton, and Black Bill were actual outlaws and members of The Pony Boys Gang, which carried out their activities in North-Central Nebraska. They were credited to have stolen thousands of horses in the latter half of the 1800s. Sheriff Ellis of Le Mars, Iowa, and Sheriff Hersheiser of O’Neill, Nebraska, the two constables involved in Kid Wade’s capture, arrest, and transfer were also actual people. They are the only real characters in this book.

The story is speculative, but it perhaps could have happened.

CHAPTER 1

Loot, Lightning, and Luck

July 18, 1883

K ID WADE PULLED on the reins to stop his horse. It didn’t take much because the brown gelding was tired. The Kid was tired too; he and his horse Buck had been running for hours, ever since robbing the westbound stagecoach just before it entered Long Pine, Nebraska. He assumed that a posse would be tracking him by now, so he knew he couldn’t stop and rest.

There below him, the Keya Paha River meandered its way between sandy tree-covered banks. Keya Paha Wakpa was Lakota for Turtle Hill River. Although he couldn’t see the actual butte that the stream was named for, it was a lot farther west, the horizon was silhouetted with similar flat-topped, rock-covered hills. Turtle Butte was pretty unique though; the huge rock formation on top of it really did look like a turtle. He had actually drawn a picture of it just to show his friends.

Image%201%20Turtle%20Hill.jpg

The rock formation on top looked like a turtle.

Man, he sure wished he could find the gold that was supposedly hidden there. He’d be set for life then! The rumors were that in the fall of 1877, some outlaws had stolen a bunch of ponies from an Indian camp west of the butte. As they were driving the stolen horses east, they came upon a camp of miners returning from the Black Hills who were carrying a large amount of raw gold. The miners were friendly to the outlaws, fed them, and talked with them, only to be robbed and murdered by the thieves, who then stole the gold too.

Eventually, the band of Brule Sioux caught up with them, killed all but one of the outlaws, and recaptured their stolen ponies. The rumor was that the surviving outlaw made it to Turtle Butte, quickly hid the gold there, and then continued his escape. He had never returned for the buried gold—or so the legend said. The Kid, Doc Middleton, and several other members of the Pony gang had searched Turtle Butte for the treasure, but there were a million places you could hide gold there, and they had no success at finding it.

The Kid refocused his mind to the present; he had his own gold to worry about now. He was carrying a hundred pounds of gold coins in his saddle bags that he had stolen this morning. The Northern Nebraska Stage Line had been carrying the payroll for Fort Niobrara’s garrison, and now that money was in his stuffed saddle bags. Woo wee! Those soldiers were going to be mad when they didn’t get paid today. They’d probably be looking for him too, the same as a posse from Bassett just as soon as they found out they weren’t getting paid. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been identified by the stagecoach driver or the guard, so they really didn’t know who they were looking for; they would just be following his trail.

It had been so easy. With Doc Middleton in custody, nobody suspected that the Middleton Gang was capable of doing anything besides stealing a few horses. Well, he wasn’t the Middleton Gang, but The Kid had showed ’em. About a mile before the stage reached the stage station in Long Pine Canyon, he’d pulled up his bandana, ridden right up beside it, pushed his pistol into the guard’s belly, and ordered, Throw down your shotgun, and tell the driver to stop the stage, or you’ll never see another day.

The Kid chuckled, a man holding a .44 Colt that’s poking you in the stomach can be very convincing.

He would have never even known about the gold, except for the girl. It was supposed to be a secret. Generally, Fort Niobrara’s payroll was carried by rail to Valentine via the Sioux City & Pacific Railroad under military guard, but because of the flooding on the Loop River, the railroad line to Long Pine was unable to run. As a result, the Northern Nebraska Stage Line had been contracted to do the job. Since it was supposed to be a close-kept secret, they hadn’t sent any extra guards.

He doubted that he’d ever see that girl again. She was a pretty little thing, which was probably why she knew about the payroll coming in on the stagecoach. One of the young men working at the stage freight office had shared the secret with her to impress her. She, in turn, had shared the fact with him while he visited her at her parent’s home near Long Pine last night. He hoped she wouldn’t put two and two together and link him to the robbery. He trusted that she had bought the lie that he was going to visit a friend in Niobrara City.

A ways to the east, Buffalo Creek entered the Keya Paha. There wasn’t much to it this time of the year, but it looked like that was about to change. The sky behind him was turning a deep blue,