Search for Last Dutchman's

Only 35 miles east of Phoenix, Superstition Mountain rises dull red and sheer from the sunbaked Arizona wasteland with its yucca, saguaro, greasewood and ocotillo. In that land Geronimo, Cochise and their Apaches once roamed, and Superstition Mountain gave them hiding. When the moon is right, its beams shine through two notches flanking a spike of rock called Weaver's Needle. Some say the moonlight points to the location of the Lost Dutchman's gold mine, where men have sought wealth for more than a century--and died in the seeking.

The Lost Dutchman legend begins with Don Miguel Peralta. whose family worked the mine in the in the mid-1800s. According to one version of the story, Don Miguel's pack train of 50 mules and 100 men was attacked and massacred by a band of Apaches, who reburied the treasure to please the thunder god. But one man escaped the ambush, sold a map of the mine to two gringos.

Snowboard's Saga. That map--or drawings purporting to be the map--has been appearing, disappearing and reappearing ever since. In the 1870s a German prospector, Jacob ("Dutchman") Waltz, called "Snowbeard" by the Indians, killed at least five men in getting his hands on the map. For years afterward, Waltz lived with a quadroon girl in an adobe hut in Phoenix, periodically slipped into the crags of Superstition Mountain to replenish his supply of nuggets.

From Waltz came the name "Lost Dutchman's Mine." and since his death in 1891, dozens of adventurers carrying creased, crude maps have gone after the treasure. None of them found it, but more than 30 died trying. In 1931 a retired Government worker set out for Lost Dutchman's. Months later, his bleached skull was found, pierced by a bullet hole. A miner named Williamson, another named Lamb, a magazine writer named Scuelebtz, all followed maps into the Superstition Mountain fastness--and were never seen again. Only two years ago a prospector left his campsite in the middle of a meal and disappeared forever.

Fool's Gold. It was on the trail of the dreamers and dead men that two young Hawaiians, Benjamin Ferreira, 27. and Stanley Fernandez, 22, arrived in Arizona last April with 300 Ibs. of prospecting gear, food and, inevitably, a map. For $25 apiece, a guide packed them to within a ridge's climb of Weaver's Needle, helped them set up camp, and left. For days Ferreira and Fernandez searched for Lost Dutchman's gold. Once they pounced on a gleaming seam--but it turned out to be pyrite--fool's gold. Fernandez began to tire of the hunt, took to spending long hours practicing a fast draw with his .44-cal. revolver. Ferreira searched on, growing angrier as Fernandez refused to help.

Then Benjamin Ferreira turned up again in Honolulu, alone. Fernandez, he explained, had stayed on with an old Arizona prospector, ashamed at his failure. But an unidentified informant told police that Ferreira had killed his partner. Questioned, Ferreira quickly confessed. During one of his arguments with Fernandez, he said, he had knocked his partner down, shot him in the head with a rifle. Complained Ferreira: "All he did was fast-draw, fast-draw--all the time."

Last week an Arizona search party found Fernandez' body hidden in a Superstition Mountain gully. And this week Benjamin Ferreira is being returned to Arizona to stand trial for the latest in the long line of killings that have marked the history of Lost Dutchman's Mine, where men follow maps and chase moonbeams in ceaseless quest of a treasure.

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