Now finish the story and see if you can get any clues to missing treasure.
After Tom Beale and his men buried the treasure, they spent several weeks in Virginia visiting friends and family. They wanted to tell everyone about their good luck, but they decided not to take the risk and kept silent. They spoke only of hunting buffaloes, the long trip, and Santa Fe. In January Tom Beale visited Lynchburg, Virginia. He stayed in a hotel owned by Robert Morriss. Before long the two men became good friends.
Morriss loved to hear Tom tell stories about the West. He would listen by the hour to the younger man's tales of his adventures. In the meantime, Beale was sizing up the hotel owner. He decided that Morriss was on honest man. If he was ever going to trust anyone, that person would be Robert Morriss. But Beale was not quite ready to confide in him.
Beale decided to make another trip west. This time he and his men were gone for two years. When they returned they brought back more gold and silver. And again they buried the treasure in the same place in the mountains.
This time they had added some jewels to the treasure. On the way back they had stopped in St. Louis, where they traded some of the gold for jewels that were easier to carry. The merchant (MUR-chant) who made the deal with them was a Frenchman they trusted.
Beale had been doing a lot of thinking on his way back to virginia. suppose something should happen to him and his men ? How would their families find the treasure ?
He hit upon a plan that has remained a puzzle for more than 150 years. He wrote three messages, each one in a different code. The first message told about the hidden treasure. The second listed the men in Beale's party. The third was the most important. It told exactly where the treasure was hidden.
Then Tom wrote a letter of explanation in plain English. It told why he was acting in this mysterious way. He put these messages in an iron box and gave the box to Robert Morriss. "I expect to come back again, Mr. Morriss, and this time it will be for good. But no one can be sure of what's going to happen in this life. If I don't come back in two years, open the box. What is inside will tell you exactly what to do.
"You can count on me, Tom," said Morriss.
Beale went back out West for the third time. He was sure that Morriss who was the smartest man he had ever met, would be able to break the codes. He never made a bigger mistake in his life.
When Beale reached St. Louis, he wrote to Morris, telling him to wait ten years before opening the box. He added that some of the papers were in code. He was leaving the key to the codes with a friend in St. Louis who would send it to Morriss 1832.