CUNDIYO, N.M. — Cynthia Meachum began her search for the hidden treasure at the confluence of two shallow streams in this tiny village north of Santa Fe, the spot “where warm waters halt,” or at least that’s where she thinks they do.

The only one who knows for sure is Forrest Fenn, who buried the clues to the whereabouts of a bronze chest loaded with riches in a poem printed on Page 132 of his self-published memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase.” It tells of the cancer he beat and the two times he was shot down by enemy fire in Laos and Vietnam when he was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War.

The poem has 24 verses. There are nine clues. Or so he says.

Ms. Meachum, 62, thinks she has deciphered eight of them — “or maybe not,” she conceded. She has been second-guessing herself since she started looking for the treasure three years ago.

Mr. Fenn, 85, a successful art dealer in Santa Fe, had no better explanation for hiding a treasure — he calculates it could be worth $2 million — than to say he wanted to give families a reason to “get off their couches.”