Wicked Woods (5 page)

On the shores of Shepody Bay a little cape juts out into the surge of the Atlantic Ocean. This cape is called Wolf Point, and though you won't find it on too many maps, the local folk may be able to point you to it. They will warn you of the quicksand and boggy terrain that abounds in that part of the countryside. Some folks believe this dangerous terrain is caused by the Fundy tides working their way through underwater passages, while other folks will talk of darker doings.

Let me take you back to the days of the American Revolution. Britain was on the tail end of a defeat and the Loyalists, who remained faithful to the monarchy and the British Empire, were in retreat. They travelled up to the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, seeking shelter and hoping to find a little peace.

One of these Loyalists, whom we shall call Miles, landed in a small skiff upon the shores of Wolf Point. He was accompanied by a trusted servant, Dougal, who had chosen to follow Miles to this new country rather than remain in America. Miles, like a lot of Loyalists, had to flee on very short notice. He carried his cash in a moneybelt tucked beneath his shirt.

Miles purchased a horse from a local farmer and rested near the shoreline, trying to gather his thoughts. Along with nearly fifty thousand fellow stubborn lovers of the crown, he had fled his home of New York following the end of the American Revolution and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. He had left everything behind, taking only what he could carry. It was a scary situation and he was doing his best to cope. He decided to make camp beside a twisted apple tree and a cool running stream.

“Prepare a meal,” he told Dougal. “We'll rest here for now before travelling inland.”

Dougal was a little tired of his master's constant orders, and he was weary from the long journey as well. Still, he had served this man for ten long years. He went to the bags and got out the provi–sions they'd brought, following his master's command.

Old habits die hard.

Except fate stepped in. Dougal, tired from the journey, stum–bled as he was bringing Miles his meal and spilled the food upon the ground.

“You clumsy cur,” Miles cursed. He was a proud man, upset that he'd been reduced to such circumstances. Pride leads to anger —and you know what comes next.

Miles beat Dougal again and again with his riding crop. Dougal lost his temper and grabbed hold of a winter-fallen branch of an apple tree. He beat Miles into the dirt, taking out the years of frustration caused by his obedience in one mad act of violence. A poorly swung blow crumpled Miles's skull like an overripe water–melon. Miles fell to the ground and didn't stir.

Dougal stared down at Miles. Fear clutched him in its tight, bony grip. He hadn't meant to kill the man. He had just lost his temper and found it too late. He knelt and attempted to scoop out a hasty grave, using the end of the bloodstained apple-wood branch as a makeshift shovel. It's hard work rooting in the dirt with a stick. It took a good half-hour to make any kind of impres–sion in the ground.

Finally the grave was dug. Dougal stood, grunting as he straight–ened his back. He still didn't know what he could do. He was safe enough, he supposed. His master had fled New York in the safety of the night without telling anyone where he was bound. There was no record of him ever living here in New Brunswick. How can you murder a man who wasn't ever there?

The nearby stream seemed to laugh at his predicament.

“It wasn't my fault!” Dougal shouted. “He drove me to it.”

Then he shoved his master's body into the grave, kicking him in because he couldn't bear to touch the corpse. He scooped what dirt he could over the body and scattered dead branches and leaves and pine needles overtop, kicking them into a mound.

And that's when Dougal remembered the gold.

How could he be so foolish? All that money lying there, wrapped around the gut of a dead man. It was such a waste to leave all that gold for the digging of the bears and the churning of the worms.

Dougal knelt down slowly, as if in prayer. He reached toward the makeshift grave, pawing the dirt aside. Gently now, bit by bit. A grave was a sacred place, he told himself. You can't be rooting at it like a sow at slop.

And then, just as he touched the bag of gold, feeling the hard edges of the coins pressing against the soft leather sack, Miles rose up from the grave, grabbing at Dougal's extended hands. Dougal shrieked and drew back, snatching up the branch and beating Miles back down. Then he rose to his feet and leapt onto the waiting horse, which was prancing nervously at the sound of the battle. The horse took off, very nearly braining Dougal with an overhanging pine bough.

Dougal fled, leaving the gold behind with his master. There was no way on this good green earth that Dougal would dare try his hand at that gravesite again. The gold could stay there and rot for all he cared.

Years later, Dougal could still feel his master's dying grip upon his wrists. He didn't sleep well and he took to drink when–ever he could scrape up enough to pay for it. Sometimes he stole the needed beverage. Sometimes he stole from others in order to get the money he needed to buy a jug or two of numb–ing amnesia.

Eventually he was caught at his petty thieving and sentenced to jail. While he was in there he talked with far too many eager listeners, telling whoever would listen his tale of woe. He told his audience of the murder and the apple tree and the laughing little stream that ran by Wolf Point.

“It was all his fault,” Dougal would tell them. “I'm not a violent man. I wouldn't raise a hand to save my life. He drove me to it. He's the reason I'm lying here rotting in prison. He's laying there still —him and all that gold just waiting for me to drop dead.”

“Well, why should we keep him waiting?” Lambert Rogers asked. Lambert was a hard man who had grown up the hard way and he'd never seen the need to pass up an opportunity that offered itself to him as readily as this.

He strangled Dougal in his sleep. True to his word, Dougal did not raise a hand to save his own life. Lambert was pleased. He knew that Dougal had told many of the prisoners about bury–ing Miles along with his gold, but he figured that most of them wouldn't have listened as closely as he had. People talk a lot in prison. There's not much else you can do with your time.

A year later, Lambert was released. His sentence was served and no one who mattered knew that he had killed Dougal. Murder in prison back in those days was nearly as common as idle talk.

Lambert rounded up a crew of three trusty friends and they rode out to Wolf Point on stolen horses. It took the four of them most of a summer to track down Dougal's apple tree and stream, but Lambert knew it when he saw it.

“This is it,” he said. “This is where the gold lies.”

They stepped down from their horses, crushing dead branches and dried pine needles and rotted leaves beneath their boots. They knelt and they dug like dogs in the dirt.

“Deeper,” Lambert said. “We're almost there.”

For just an instant of time, Lambert swore that he saw a tat–tered muslin sack and the taunting glint of gold. He reached for it and two bony hands pushed out of the dirt and caught him fast.

His partners ran off into the night, leaving Lambert there in the darkness beneath the twisted apple tree, screaming his lungs raw. They did not stop running until they had reached the town, and they sat and drank in the rear of a local tavern, staring off into the shadowed corners of the room, not daring to meet each other's stare.

Nobody ever heard of Lambert again. For all I know, he's out there still, now a skeleton himself, the pieces fallen and scattered, his wrist bones caught fast by a pair of long bony hands reaching out of the dirt. Perhaps the apple tree has found new life in the decay beneath its grasping twisted roots, and the stream rambles on, not caring a whit for the doings of men, laughing to itself in the cool summer breeze.

6
A T
REASURE
D
OWSER'S
B
OOMERANG

APOHAQUI

If all the tales that have been told about Captain Kidd are true, I bet the Canada Revenue Agency would give an awful lot to lay their hands on his ghost. It seems like all that man ever did was bury trea–sure across the Maritimes. There are rumours of a trove tucked away some–where handy to Dark Harbour on Grand Manan Island; there's a stash buried deep near Belleisle Bay; and of course, many of you have heard of the world famous Oak Island money pit in Nova Scotia.

It seems to me that a man who loved to dig as much as Kidd did ought to have taken up the trade of farming, or maybe coal mining. These careers may have been far more stable, with fewer occupational hazards, such as rope burns and ring around the collar. Rumours of his many buried treasures in New England, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick are still whispered along the Atlantic coast. With very few exceptions, these rumours are quite unsubstantiated.

Even harder to verify is another tale of buried treasure that was found in an old Apohaqui diary, and retold in Stuart Trueman's excellent collection of New Brunswick ghost stories, Ghosts, Pirates and Treasure Troves: The Phantoms That Haunt New Brunswick and numerous other sources before him. The story, which takes place outside of the little town of Apohaqui, about eighty kilometres northeast of Saint John, involves a treasure-dowsing blacksmith who dreamt of Captain Kidd's treasure, and the commander of Fort Howe.

Fort Howe was built in 1777 to help defend New Brunswick against the incursion of the American Revolutionary forces. The blockhouse fort is still found intact in Saint John, over–looking the harbour. Back in 1777, it was manned by a Major Gilfred Studholme, who sometimes spelled his name Gilford or Guilfred. Historians haven't been able to ascertain which spell–ing was correct. Record keeping back in those days was haphaz–ard, at best.

The story begins long after Major Gilfred had passed away and was buried outside of Saint John. One evening in the early 1800s, a blacksmith in Apohaqui, whom we shall call Thomas Greene, claimed to have had a dream about a large treasure bur–ied at Major Gilfred's gravesite. Now that wasn't much to go on, but it was enough for him to gather up an expeditionary force to unearth the treasure through ceremony and secrecy.

He gathered four of his friends and a local Saint John boy who was familiar with the graveyard and they set out in a hired car–riage. One can only assume they journeyed by night, as grave robbing wasn't something that folks usually condoned.

Greene's only compass was a divining rod made of a hollow stick filled with various alchemical compounds and wrapped in whalebone. Greene carried the rod chest-high with his palms up. As he approached the treasure, it began to jiggle and bounce, like a fishing rod with a rainbow trout nibbling at the hook.

“Water witches” would use the rods to search out likely well sites. Dowsing or divining rods are still used today and many a Maritime well-digging company keeps the name and phone number of a reputable water witch close at hand.

Greene strode on pompously, stiff-legged like a trooper on parade. He led his band of treasure hunters uphill and down before settling his aim upon a large, craggy Jack pine in the heart of a field of buckwheat.

“Here it is,” Greene said. “Dig here.”

“Are you certain?” one of his cohorts asked. “The ground seems awful hard for digging.”

“Gold will draw dirt down, surer than dead meat draws flies,” Greene asserted. “You can dig in the bog if you'd like, but the treasure lies here.”

So saying, he drew out a large and rusted naval cutlass.

“Did you bring the hen?” Greene asked one of the men, a farmer who right now would have rather been digging for turnips in a barren field than out here beneath this dark pine tree. “We'll need a hen to sacrifice.”

“I had a chicken ready and waiting,” the farmer said, “but he jumped into a pot and my wife boiled him up for supper.”

“Fool,” Greene said. “I told you to bring it.”

“Digging's hungry work,” the farmer said. “I can't shovel on an empty belly.”

There was nothing to be done.

“Dig there,” Greene ordered, “and we'll buy all the chickens we ever need.”

So saying, he jammed the tip of the cutlass into the dirt and scraped out a large circle completely surrounding the tree and the treasure spot.

“Must the hole be that big?” the farmer asked.

“The circle is to guard against evil spirits,” Greene said. “Any fool knows that. Once it has been drawn you must not say a word for fear of chasing the magic away. And not a dirt nor clod nor clump must pass through the circle or else the spell will be bro–ken for sure.”

“For a blacksmith you sure seem to know an awful lot about treasure digging.”

“It's the banging of the metal that does it,” Greene explained. “People tell me things while I'm banging on the metal at the forge, mostly because they don't figure I'm listening to them.”