Confederate Gold and Silver (45 page)

“We’re going to drive to where the cross is, so load up what you can into my Ford. The rest of your gear will have to go in your truck. The minivan won’t make it back there as the ride is kind of a rough, but y’all can bring the Jeep along if you want.”

Paul rode with Duke as they drove the short distance to the fifty plus acres the Johnson family had kept as hunting and fishing spots. As he did, he could not help feeling as if they were travelling back in time as this part of Duke’s farm was one time had forgotten about it. It was a stunning piece of property. “Duke, this is absolutely beautiful back here. Someone in your family made a great decision to preserve this.”

As they were driven back to the grave site by Chick, both Pete and Jayne took the opportunity to document the beauty of the farmland and to put into perspective where the site was situated on the farm. Pete’s video camera and the still shots taken by Jayne captured the beauty of the property through the pictures they took.

Driving slowly across Duke’s fields, the metal cross finally came into view. “See here, there’s the cross my granddaddy done stuck in the ground years ago to replace the wooden cross you just seen.”

“Duke, stop here away from the site for a few moments. We want to make sure we document the beauty of the site before we start walking around it. We don’t want to spoil the beauty of the field by having tire tracks running through it when people see the video footage. I want it to look like we are seeing it now, almost as if human hands had never touched the property.”

“No problem. The cross is something to see up close though. My family believes this is a special place to visit.”

Before they approached the grave site, Paul had Pete set up several tripods and the area was filmed from many different angles. He also had Bobby Ray, because of his experience in documenting crime scenes, work with Chick and together they drew a somewhat detailed map of the area around the metal cross. As they worked on the map, Paul yelled a thought he had to them. “Make sure you leave some room on your map so we can pencil in some details once we get to work.”

Once all of this was done, Duke led them closer to where the metal cross had stood for years in his field. As they stood a few feet, Paul was touched by the beauty of the simple cross. “Duke, I don’t mean to sound corny, but I am taken back by the kind act your granddaddy did so many years ago to honor someone who was buried here. That simple act made sure their burial spot would not be forgotten by time. When others see our documentary, I’m sure they will also feel the same way. It’s a gesture of kindness which I cannot properly describe. What a thoughtful act!”

Standing near the cross, Paul could see Duke’s eyes had teared up when he heard his granddaddy described like that. He could tell Duke’s granddaddy obviously still held a special place in his heart. “That was just my granddaddy being him. He was a great man!”

Chick and Bobby Ray had almost completed the map, but now they took a few quick final measurements to accurately place the cross on it. With the aid of a compass they also plotted where north was on the map so they could have a true sense of direction for any later needs.

Paul then gathered all of them together near Duke’s Ford. “I have waited to tell you all about this and now the time is perfect, thanks to Duke.” After reaching into his shirt pocket, he unfolded a copy of the roughly drawn map he had found within one of the bottles. “When I first found the letters, I also found this map with them. Take a look at it and tell me if this map is not the same location as what you see here in Duke’s field. It certainly looks like it is to me. When you look at the map you will see it doesn’t tell you much, but there’s the cross and the small pile of large rocks on it.”

Looking at the map, the others saw the cross and the pile of rocks which had been crudely drawn on it many years ago. “Why do you think there are no measurements or any other signs on the map to show where the money was buried?” It was a question Jayne had asked, but one Paul was glad Duke had not heard. He did not want him to know about the money that was possibly buried by the cross until they knew for sure it was there. Duke fortunately had walked back to his vehicle to retrieve a pair of sunglasses when Jayne asked her question. Bobby Ray and Paul, due to their law enforcement experience, both had the answer for Jayne’s question. It was Bobby Ray who answered for them.

“When you draw a map to remind you where you have hidden something, you don’t have to put in all of the details because you know where you have hidden it. You just want the map to help you with your bearings. If you put too much detail on the map and then it gets lost or misplaced, you have just told someone where to find what you have hidden in the first place. Make sense?”

Jayne still did not completely understand what Bobby Ray had told her. “So it’s more of a guide or a reference than it is a true map?”

“Exactly.”

By now Duke had rejoined them. After a few more minutes of speaking with him about the history of his property and taking in the beauty of the scene in front of them, they started to excavate the ground around where the metal cross stood. As they did, Pete constantly checked and rechecked his video cameras to make sure they were capturing what was occurring. After digging down just over three feet below the surface, and in a complete circle around the cross, Chick and Jayne scanned the hole with the two White’s metal detectors they had rented for their needs. The metal detectors gave off no readings of anything metallic being buried in the area around the cross.

Somewhat disappointed and perplexed, and still standing in the hole they had dug, Jayne wiped the sweat of the afternoon’s work off her brow. The heat of the North Carolina summer afternoon had the day’s temperature close to ninety-five degrees. The humidity was just as high. “Perhaps we need to dig deeper because the metal detectors are not showing anything on their display screens.”

Leaning on a shovel and catching his breath from digging, Paul was also disappointed by the lack of any immediate success. “OK, let’s dig down another three feet or so and then we will see what that brings us.” As they started taking turns digging again, Paul noticed Duke had walked back to his Ford and was now driving back towards the barns. “Perhaps he has something else to be doing?” It was the only reason he could think of as to why Duke had left.

As they continued to dig, they could hear the noise of some kind of vehicle being driven in the field. Soon they could tell the noise was becoming louder and moving closer to them. Stopping momentarily to see what the noise was, they saw Duke had gone back to his barn and was returning to the grave site driving a yellow John Deere 310D backhoe. It was a machine equipped with both a front-end bucket and a backhoe. After parking the still running machine near the other vehicles, Duke climbed down off the backhoe wearing a smile on his face. “I thought this might make it easier on you folks!” Collectively they all smiled at him as they knew he had just made their digging far easier.

In moments Duke was back in the machine. Following Paul’s hand gestures, he carefully scraped the soil away from within the circle where they had been digging. Three complete passes around the circle, with the cross still standing in the middle, had enlarged the hole another four feet in diameter. It was now almost seven feet in depth. Still they found nothing. Paul signaled Duke to turn off the backhoe and he had them take a break to rest.

As they took a break for a few minutes after working under the hot sun for almost two hours, Bobby Ray pulled out the large cooler of bottled water Chick had packed in Paul’s truck. The cool water was a welcome relief from their thirst, but it did little to ease the frustration they each felt over finding nothing to indicate they had been digging in the proper location. After taking a long swig of cold water, Chick stood looking at the area they had excavated. “I would have thought we would have found some indication of a grave by now. I would not think a grave hand dug by soldiers would have been dug this deep, especially if they were being pursued by Yankee soldiers at some point. Perhaps they did, but I cannot imagine why.”

Paul had moved off a short distance from the cross and was quenching his thirst while seated on a large rock. He was wondering if he had been wrong about where the money had actually been buried. “Is this another wild goose chase we are part of, chasing the legend of the Confederate gold and silver which may not have ever existed?” Inside he did not think so, but he was already questioning himself.

As he sat there, Jayne walked over to where he was sitting, carrying with her a bottle of water and one of the metal detectors. Sitting down on another large rock next to where Paul sat, she swapped out the batteries in one of the metal detectors as the icon on the metal detector’s electronic screen had shown the batteries were running low. After she was finished, she sat there cooling down. “Paul, do you think we are in the right spot?”

“I don’t know, but I guess we need to either dig deeper or we need to expand the width of the area we are excavating. If we don’t find anything after our next attempt we will try another spot, but I still believe the money is here. It’s far too early to get too discouraged.”

As Jayne stood up to get back to digging, she grabbed the metal detector she had laid against the rock she had been sitting on. Doing so caused the metal detector to give off a faint beep.

“What was that?” Paul asked, taking notice of the beep from where he was sitting.

“I don’t know, possibly from metal in the rock I was sitting on perhaps?”

“Maybe or maybe from something else!”

Seeing the metal detector so close to the rock Jayne had been sitting on caused Paul to realize he had missed an obvious clue the map had left for them. He kicked himself for wasting time digging by the cross when the map had clearly told him where the money was actually buried. Calling the others over to where Jayne and he had been sitting, he told them Jayne’s metal detector had registered a faint beep when she had stood up to move. Jayne now made another pass directly over the rock she had been sitting on, but this time nothing metallic was detected. She then made a couple of other passes over the ground adjacent to where she had been sitting. Again the metal detector gave no indication of anything metallic being present.

“Perhaps it was some small amount of metal contained within a rock in the ground the metal detector made a slight detection of or perhaps it was just a false positive anomaly which popped up?” Chick was grabbing for answers for what caused the sound they had heard.

“Perhaps, but explain this to me first. Tell me why in the area we are digging in, within this beautiful meadow, why are there no other rocks lying around like these four? Why are they just here? One of Francis’ letters spoke about four rocks and I completely forgot about them until just now. I was so focused on digging by the cross. Are these the rocks his letter talked about being by the grave site? They have to be the same ones we looked at when we examined the map. Perhaps he used the cross as a reference point so he would see it from a distance when he returned to the area and the rocks are actually on top of the grave? Perhaps they were put there to keep animals from digging up the bodies? I don’t know though, I’m just thinking out loud.”

Quickly he got them moving again. “Let’s find out what’s under these rocks, but first, Chick and Bobby Ray, you need to make sure these rocks are on your map and the map shows how far they are spaced apart. The map also needs to show their relationship to where the cross is as well. Jayne, you and Pete need to document these rocks carefully with some more photos and videotape. Make sure you show the rocks with the cross in some of your photos and make sure a segment of your video shows the same thing. Even give some thought to having Duke lift you up in the bucket of the backhoe for an elevated type of photo, just for a different type of view of the scene. However you decide to do it, just make sure you get some good shots of these rocks. Duke, we will need to carefully move these rocks with your backhoe when the others are done with their tasks.”

With all of the tasks soon completed, Paul then grabbed a shovel and took away several shovelfuls of soil from the area Jayne had been sitting in. “OK, Jayne, try the metal detector again over where I just dug, let’s see what happens.”

She had barely placed the metal detector over the small hole when it gave a loud and steady beep, a beep which got everyone’s attention. “It’s obvious something is in the ground here, something very large by the size of the icon on the metal detector’s screen. The screen is bouncing back and forth between the icons for metal and coins so it’s hard to figure out what it’s registering.” Realizing she had used the word coins in front of Duke, Jayne looked to see what kind of reaction he had responded with. From his facial expressions she could tell he had not picked up on what she had just said.

“We digging?” Duke asked eagerly as he climbed back up on his John Deere.

“We’re digging, but gently, Duke, gently. If I give you the signal to stop, stop immediately and we will finish it by hand. We don’t want to damage anything with that heavy piece of equipment of yours.”

Watching as Duke started up his machine, Paul yelled over the noise of the machine to Jayne and Pete without looking at them. “You guys getting this on video and with your cameras?”

Pete was moving one of his tripods from one location to another when Paul had hollered to him. “Yeah, but give me one minute. I need Bobby Ray to help me with a video camera I have set up on a tripod. Then I want to turn on my small video camera so I can move about freely while he’s digging. I just need a minute.”

When Pete gave the sign he was ready, Duke carefully moved the four large rocks away from where they had been. He set them in a pile off to the side. From his years of experience in running machines like his backhoe, he then began to gently scrape away the soil that had been under the rocks. He had only been working for a couple of minutes when Paul, who had been standing next to the bucket as Duke worked the ground around him, waved frantically for him to stop. “You found something! Back the machine away and turn it off for a while until we see what we’ve got.”