Alvin Fernald's Incredible Buried Treasure Read online

  I questioned him with a glance, then took the box. With the rest looking on, I unwrapped it. Inside was another box, this one rather elaborate and lined with felt. And buried in the felt was the fanciest gold pocket watch I have ever seen.

  Jim couldn’t contain himself. “Go ahead, Caleb! Open it! Open the gold disk that covers the glass and the dial!”

  I thumbed open the cover to the watch and looked inside. The dial was a beauty, with the numerals made from a striking combination of gold and silver.

  But it was the message engraved so gracefully on the cover of the watch that immediately attracted my attention:

  For Caleb Getme,

  My Closest Friend, and

  Godfather to My Beloved Nan.

  I looked up at Jim. He had a look of true happiness on his face, such as I’d never seen before.

  My next move was involuntary. I simply went straight through the back door, slamming it behind me, and fled to The Palace, a sanctuary where I stayed for the remainder of the day.

  The following morning I opened the shop door, crossed over to Jim, who was dressing the press, and seized and squeezed his arm. Nothing further was ever said about the watch. Nothing further ever needed to be said.

  I wore it proudly for the rest of my life.

  Chapter 14

  Those were the greatest months of my life, even greater than my months with Mr. Lincoln. But they soon came to an end.

  On a morning late in June I was working in the shop, cleaning the press. Lil’Nan was playing on the floor beside me. Suddenly the door flew open with such force that the building shuddered. I looked up with a start. I can’t possibly explain the fear that washed across me.

  A man stood in the doorway. He was enormous. He had chin whiskers, a ring of gray beneath a lopsided smile. A stained black hat, rim snapped down all around, sat on top of his head. Another man, almost as tall, was looking over his right shoulder through wire-rimmed glasses. He too was grinning as though in triumph.

  I leaned against the press for support as I whispered their names. “Massa Gideon. And Massa Esau.” Two of the three sons of the owner of Three Rivers Plantation!

  Gideon stepped quickly through the door, walked over to me, and struck a vicious blow to the side of my face with his clenched fist. I sprawled backward across the press. Almost instantly my mouth was full of blood. I looked up. Both their faces swam into view.

  “How does it feel, you precious little slave?” asked Gideon in a guttural voice. “That’s just the beginning. We have much more planned for you.”

  Lil’Nan made a gurgling sound at my feet. Esau reached down with one hand and swung her up to his chest. “We’ve been watching,” he said. “You seem mighty attached to the babe.”

  “Leave her alone!” I shouted.

  “Just shut your yap,” said Gideon in a low voice. “And don’t try to get away from us, now that we’ve found you, or we’ll deal with the child first, then deal with you.”

  “What do you want from me?” I blurted out. By now I could scarcely see through my swollen left eye.

  “What do we want from you?” repeated Gideon. As always, he was the leader. “What we want from you is a fat payback for what you did to our brother.”

  “What I did?”

  “What you did.” There was pain in his voice. “You blinded him. For life.”

  “Blinded him?”

  “Yes. You hit him with a maple sapling right across his eyes. He hasn’t seen anything since. Mostly he lives in a rocking chair with a white cane across his lap.”

  Esau put in, “Me and Gideon here was talking about it one day at Three Rivers, and we decided to find you an’ make you pay for what you done to brother Joseph.”

  “He kilt my Ma and Pa.”

  “They was trying to escape.”

  I changed the subject. “Put the baby back on the floor, and I’ll do anything you ask.” My voice sounded normal. It encouraged me.

  “When I decide to,” said Esau.

  I swallowed some blood, and asked, “How’d you find me?”

  “It wasn’t difficult,” bragged Gideon. “Wasn’t difficult at all. A few weeks ago we remembered that we had seen newspaper reports about a young black moving into the White House with that ape Lincoln. Me and Esau rode up to Washington and asked a lot of people a lot of questions. Finally found a pair of young ’uns who claimed they had rented you a patch of grass to rest on. Then we found somebody that had seen a small black taggin’ along after a bunch of soldiers, so we knew not only which road you’d taken, but who you were with.”

  “We even found the doctor that treated your leg,” bragged Esau. “After we spent a few minutes with his wife, he told us all about it.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Gideon, “how many people remember seeing a bunch of soldiers treating a black boy with respect. That ain’t usual, as you know.”

  “Don’t ever try to run away from us again,” warned Esau, “or we’ll find you sure as God put white men in charge of blacks.”

  “What you aimin’ to do with me?”

  “For a while, we thought about blindin’ you, like you did to Joseph. Then we thought maybe it would be better to give you back to Joe as a slave, so you could serve him the rest of your born days. We even brought a horse to take you back. Right, Esau?”

  Esau nodded his head.

  “Right now, we’re goin’ to let you sizzle on the fire here for a time,” said Gideon. “We need some rest. We’ll stay overnight at the hotel. I reckon you know better than to try to get away, or we’ll come back and take care of the baby. Make no mistake. We’ll do it. Tomorrow we’ll pick you up and ride you back to Three Rivers, where you’ll be treated like any other runaway.” He turned to his brother. “Let’s go, Esau.”

  Esau bent over and deposited Lil’Nan on the floor with such force that the baby started to cry. Esau moved the toe of a boot into her stomach, and pushed his foot forward. “Shut up!” She cried harder.

  “Be here first thing in the morning,” ordered Gideon. “And don’t talk about this to anybody else.”

  Chapter 15

  I fully intended to keep the threatening visit a secret in order to protect Lil’Nan, but when Jim returned to the shop he took one look at my face, and said, “Good God, what happened to you?”

  I couldn’t help it. I blurted out the whole story. When I told him how they had threatened the baby, his face looked like thunder, and he swept her up off the floor. He opened a closet in the corner of the shop, searched inside, then brought out the pistol he had carried during the war, and thrust it under his belt.

  “Caleb, go get Major Demarest. And don’t be afeared. By their own reckoning, those men won’t be back until tomorrow. Ask the major to come here immediately. Tell him it really is a matter of life and death.”

  I skedaddled out of there and limped over to the jail building, which was also the office of Major—now Sheriff—Demarest. I was out of breath with exertion and excitement, but I gasped out the message. I didn’t tell him anything more. I calculated the story might be better accepted if it came from one adult to another.

  A scowl came over the major’s face when Jim told him what had happened. He was wearing his old battle cap. He took it off, brushed back his red hair with one hand, then looked at the ceiling in thought.

  Finally he said, “Jim and Caleb, we have a problem here. Our problem is that those two miserable bushwhackers haven’t done anything yet. They haven’t committed a crime. So there’s no way I can jail them for any length of time. Oh, I can put them in the hoosegow overnight, for threatening Caleb and the baby, and I will do that, but I’ll have to let them go free in the morning.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “What we need to do is give them such a fright that they’ll leave town and never even think of returning.”

  Jim nodded in agreement, so I did too.

  “I’m beginning to get an idea how to do that,” said the major.

  “Give me fifteen min
utes to go over to the hotel, arrest those two pitiful characters, and throw them in the clink. That will give you two men freedom to move around town. (He had included me as one of the men!) Then I want the two of you to go find all of Aimee squad. Tell them we need to meet here at four this afternoon. Don’t let them give you any excuses.” With that, he stomped out the door.

  Jim and I divided up the names. Just as a precaution, he took Lil’Nan upstairs to his digs, briefly told Hannah not to let the baby out of her sight, and left her with his pistol.

  Just before 4:00 PM the men began assembling in the print shop. When Major Demarest arrived from the jail, he spoke in his commanding-officer voice. “Men, Caleb has an ugly story to tell you. Go ahead, Caleb.”

  I stood there wearing my bruised face, and told them of Gideon and Esau’s visit. As I told it, Henry Hildebrand started drumming his fist against the bench, and frowning looks settled across the rest of the faces.

  When I finished there were murmurs of “won’t let them get away with that,” and “ride ’em out on a rail.”

  The major stood up. He explained why he couldn’t legally lock up the two men indefinitely. Then he explained to all of us his plan for frightening the men so badly they’d stay out of Riverton forever. By the time he finished, the men were beginning to smile again, nod their heads in agreement, and were adding touches of their own. As they left they were looking forward to meeting again at the jail that same night.

  The major brought Gideon and Esau through the front door of the jail, and out onto the roadway. Their hands were bound behind their backs, and both were scowling. Gideon saw me, and spit in my direction. With Major Demarest, Jim, and six experienced Union soldiers around me, all well armed, I felt totally safe, and spit back at him. He looked around at my companions, and a trace of fear crossed his face, especially when he saw that two of them were carrying ropes.

  The major led the way, walking between the prisoners with a hand on each of them. Jim and I came next, followed by Hiram Trait and Horace Robinson, each carrying a rope. The other four men followed. Night had fallen, and we walked in darkness. According to plan, none of us made a sound or spoke a word. It was eerie. It even got on my nerves.

  Gideon finally said, “Where are we going?” and Esau looked around with a plea on his face. No one answered.

  We walked in silence for about three miles, to a wooded area north of town. Major Demarest pushed his two prisoners off the road and into the trees. He stopped them in a small clearing, with a huge maple tree in the middle. A fallen log lay halfway in the brush at one side. A fire had been laid beneath the heaviest branch of the tree. The major, who had helped build hundreds of campfires during the war, lit this one, and soon the men were bathed in a warm bubble of flickering light.

  Finally the major broke the silence. “Hold the prisoners,” he ordered. A man appeared on each side of Gideon and Esau, and seized their upper arms.

  Major Demarest nodded to Hiram Trait and Horace Robinson, who were carrying the two ropes. They sat down on the fallen log, and each man began fashioning a knot. Gideon and Esau’s faces showed increasing alarm as they realized what the rope men were doing. They were fashioning hangman’s nooses. Esau began whimpering. Gideon simply said, “No, no!” But the flickering firelight showed the fear in his eyes.

  When Trait and Robinson completed the nooses, they tested them two or three times, then glanced up at Major Demarest. He held out his hand. Trait handed him the rope, and he deftly threw the noose up and over the lowest branch, where it swung back and forth in the firelight. The second noose followed.

  By now Esau was sobbing, the tears running down his cheeks. Gideon said, “We promise. We’ll never say a word to the black boy again.” He looked at me, then dropped to his knees. “We promise.” I almost felt sorry for him. By now Esau, too, had dropped to his knees.

  The major reached up, grabbed one of the swinging nooses, and pulled on it with all his strength. His feet left the ground, and he swung in midair, as though he had been hanged. The wooded area was still silent until both Gideon and Esau gave little cries of anguish.

  Major Demarest looked at the two men, shook his head, and said, “I reckon you know how much we’d like to use those ropes. It would give us pure pleasure to end your miserable lives. There’d be no way, then, that you could threaten a small black boy and a babe in arms. But we can’t do that. Not legally. Not this time, we can’t.”

  By now the two men’s faces were beginning to reflect a newfound hope.

  The major pulled a knife out of a sheath on his belt, and continued, “I’m going to cut the leather thongs binding your arms behind you. Then you are going to run just as fast as you can—as fast as you can because it may save your life—back to town. You’ll find your horses tied up behind the jail. You’ll instantly ride them out of town as fast as you can. I will store these two ropes in the jail, and if you ever are seen in this county again, they will be put to proper use. Do you understand?”

  This time the men spoke loudly. “Yes!”

  “Yes, what?”

  Esau looked questioningly at Gideon, who finally said, “Yes, sir!”

  “Yes, sir!” echoed Esau.

  The major looked at his men. “You men are involved in this, too. Do you obligate yourself to remove these men from the face of the earth if you ever see one or both of them again?” The men nodded.

  The major returned his attention to Gideon and Esau. “If I were you I’d pray to God that Caleb, here, and the babe called Lil’Nan live long and healthy lives, because if an accident ever befalls either of them—any kind of accident—I myself will immediately depart for Three Rivers Plantation to do what I have to do, and what I’ll take pleasure in doing. Do you understand my meaning?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  With two flicks of his knife he cut the thongs binding their hands. They instantly ran toward the road, feet scrambling, arms flailing.

  The major withdrew his pistol from under his belt. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot the two men, but instead he fired it at the darkened sky.

  Within seconds the rest of the men drew their pistols and let off a volley that must have been heard in Riverton.

  Jim said to me, “I’ll bet they’ll still be running when they get to Three Rivers.”

  I said, “And I’ll bet they’ll never be seen around these diggin’s again.”

  Chapter 16

  I am not the bravest lad alive. There was no doubt that the two massas from the plantation had terrified me until the men from my unit had come to my rescue. But I began to worry, not only about my own safety, but the security of my meager but beloved possessions. What would happen to them if someone broke into The Palace? I had gathered them into a small sack with a drawstring, but then I couldn’t find anywhere to hide the sack. Temporarily I hid it under my winter jacket far back on a shelf, but I had no confidence in this hiding place.

  I even tried prying up one of The Palace’s floorboards, but there was only dirt beneath it. I knew the sack would decay within a short time. I gave up that idea.

  Jim had ordered a set of type with a new family type face. When it arrived it was packaged in a strong metal box. The lid was held in place by a heavy hasp. Jim asked me to unload the type into an empty type drawer. As I did so, I had the germ of an idea.

  When the type was safely in place, I turned to Jim and asked if I could have the shipping container. He nodded his head without even asking what I wanted it for. Immediately I took it to The Palace and hid it under the bed so he wouldn’t see it, and possibly change his mind.

  That night I moved my possessions from the sack to the metal box. They fit, with some room to spare. But I still had to hide the box.

  The following day was Sunday. After church services, and Sunday dinner, I put the box into the sack to conceal it, borrowed a shovel from behind the shed, and set off down the road, hoping no one would take particular notice of me. Had they noticed,
they would, of course, observed my prized pocket watch.

  I will not divulge at this moment where I went, but when I returned to The Palace late in the afternoon on June 10 the box was no longer with me.

  My aim now was to keep the box hidden until I wanted to reveal its location at some later date, but at the same time to make certain that it would be found should anything untoward occur to me. I puzzled over this for days, then finally settled on a solution.

  The following morning, in what I hoped was a casual voice, I asked Jim what kind of paper was least likely to decay over a period of time.

  He pushed back his print visor, scratched the side of his head, and gave my question some thought. “Parchment, I reckon. But even that gradually will succumb to sunlight and humidity. It might be better to use some kind of cloth. Yeah... I remember now. There’s a certain weave of linen that has a reputation for lasting many years despite exposure to the sun and humidity. Why do you ask?”

  I had anticipated the question, and had an answer, though not a very believable one. “I’ve been thinking, Jim. We never know what may happen. If I should die, I’d like to leave a message behind for two people who mean more to me, except for you, than anyone else, even Mr. Lincoln.” I smiled briefly. “Anyway I can’t leave him much of a message. I’m talking about Ol’Nan and Lil’Nan, in case you’re wondering.” Then I asked another question. “Can you print on that linen cloth?”

  “Never tried, but I don’t see why not. The reason it’s so durable is because it’s an extremely tight weave, which should make it better as a writing surface than most cloth.”

  “Do you think you could get me a piece, say about one foot square?”

  “The next time my paper supplier comes in, I’ll ask.”

  Two weeks later Jim handed me a package. Inside was a piece of rolled-up cloth. It was an off-white color, and the weave was so fine that I could scarcely unroll it.