Confederate Gold and Silver (18 page)

Sgt. Mark Foster, who had been a teacher in the hills of Tennessee prior to the war, was woken up by Francis around four in the morning so he could relieve Sgt. Steele. He had been on guard duty in the barns while the others slept. After putting his boots back on, Foster grudgingly walked the short distance to the barn through the rain, leaving behind the comfort of the warm dry place he had found in Mary’s parlor. In minutes he was running back to the house.

“Captain! Captain Francis, the wagon, one of the wagons is gone, and Steele he’s hurt right bad!” Waking up from the alarm Foster had sounded, Francis and his men were out the door and into the barn in no time.

Inside the biggest of the three barns they found the wooden slat they had secured the large double barn doors with now lying on the ground. Nearby they found Steele unconscious and lying in a pool of his own blood. The back of his head had been partially caved in by a piece of wrought iron which now lay on the ground next to his almost lifeless body. It was a horrible injury for the others to see. It was one Steele never saw coming. By now, Mary had come into the barn and she knelt down to look at the injury to Steele’s head. Seeing the extent of the injury, she could not help but cry as it was obvious to her how bad the injury was. Her tears confirmed to the others the seriousness of Steele’s injury.

“Captain, look here!” Sgt. Banks, who was standing outside of the now opened barn doors, was the first to see them. “Look here! There are at least four, maybe five sets of footprints in the mud.” Pointing to the muddy ground, he showed the others what he also saw left in the mud. “See here, there’s the tracks left by the wagon.”

Francis was trying to determine what was in the stolen wagon, but his mind had trouble focusing on anything except for the terrible injury that had been inflicted upon Steele. Looking around, he saw the Conestoga wagon with the stars painted on it was still in the barn. He quickly realized whoever had stolen one of the other wagons had likely done so for the food provisions stored within it. The stolen wagon had gold and silver coins secreted within it, but not as much as the wagon Francis knew was the most important one. He breathed a sigh of relief that the wagon with the stars painted on it had not been the one stolen.

“Captain, we’s going after them, ain’t we?”

The question brought Francis’ mind back to full attention and he soon had Steele carried into Mary’s parlor so she could do whatever she could for him. After posting a guard on the barns, he had the others saddle up their horses to go after the stolen wagon. He kept a guard on the buildings as he did not know if whoever had stolen the wagon would be greedy enough to come back for another one. “If they come back, don’t kill them unless you have to. I want to speak to them first!” The look his men now saw in his face caused them to realize that whoever had stolen the wagon would soon wish they had not.

They were forced to address this new problem from the deep sleep they had all been enjoying and they were now somewhat slow in getting their horses saddled. The exception had been Sgt. Stine who had his horse saddled and ready to go in moments. When Francis saw he was already mounted, he instructed him to follow the tracks of the wagon through the mud. He also told him he and the others would be right behind him. “Wait for us before you do anything!”

As Stine raced off, Francis quickly checked on the conditions of both Hatfield and Steele. Hatfield was peacefully asleep and unaware of what had happened to Steele, who now lay unconscious next to him while being tended to by Mary. As she looked up to see Francis enter her parlor, the tears in her eyes told him Steele would likely not make it to daylight.

It did not take long for Francis and the others to locate Stine as he had been riding back to find them after locating the stolen wagon. “Captain, I ain’t sure of what to make of it, but I think there are five men out there. They is just sitting around the wagon in the rain, just talking and laughing, almost as if they did not have a care in the world. It don’t make sense, does it, captain? Why you gonna steal a wagon and then stop and sit around talking so close to where you stole the wagon from? It’s like them boys don’t care if they is caught.”

After tying their horses up to some trees a short distance away from where Stine had found the stolen wagon, Francis and the others walked the remaining distance. As they made their way closer to where the stolen wagon sat, the rain that had been falling for the past couple of hours came to a stop. As they got closer, they saw the men who had stolen it were sitting around a small campfire, laughing and joking with each other just as Stine had described. As he watched them, Francis wondered if they were Confederate deserters or Yankee soldiers who had been probing the area before the main body of the Union army proceeded south. It really did not make a difference to him about who had stolen the wagon as he knew he was going to get it back no matter who had taken it. As they stood in a small group of pine trees less than one hundred yards from the stolen wagon, Francis pointed to a stone wall sitting between them and the men who had stolen it. In a low whisper he spoke to his men. “Maybe they needed the provisions that were in the wagon, but whoever they are they have something that belongs to us and we’re getting it back. I don’t take kindly to folks stealing from me!”

As he looked back towards the wagon, Sgt. Roy McKinney, a twenty-three year old cooper’s apprentice from New Bern, North Carolina, softly told Francis what he needed to know. “Captain, I count five men over yonder and there are only four of us. Looks like the odds are in our favor.” Even though the night was still partially overcast, Francis could not help but notice that McKinney was grinning at him. He knew McKinney and his fellow sergeants were looking to settle the score with the men who had stolen the wagon; more importantly they were looking to settle the score with those who had nearly killed a fellow soldier of theirs. Despite having one less man than the group of men who stolen the wagon, McKinney and the others did not care that they were outnumbered. His men were fired up over what had happened and they were now ready to exploit the advantage they had. It was an advantage of taking the fight to a group of soldiers who were unaware of what was about to descend upon them. As he looked back at the stolen wagon, Francis had one more thought. “McKinney’s right, the odds are in our favor.”

Just as he was about to tell his men where he wanted them and that he did not want them to fire their weapons until they heard him fire first, a deep and unrecognizable voice came from out of the darkness behind them. The voice startled them and they wheeled from where they knelt by the stone wall, pointing their guns in the direction where the voice had come from. Despite being seasoned hunters, as well as experienced soldiers, they had not heard anyone approach them from behind.

“Six men, theys six men down there. Don’t shoot, boss, please don’t shoot! I ain’t with them white folks.”

With his pistol in his right hand, Francis crept closer to the large black man who was behind them. He was down on all fours watching the men around the campfire. “Them men dun stole dat there wagon a short time ago from a barn. I dun seen them do it. Boss, is dat your wagon theys dun stole?” Francis had to listen closely as the black man softly whispered to him, afraid of being heard by the men who had stolen the wagon. He also had to try and figure out some of the words this man used as he was difficult to understand at times.

Francis quickly learned from this man, whose name was Samuel, of a horrible incident he had witnessed. He told Francis that two days prior the six men had shown up at his master’s plantation about twenty miles northwest of Mary’s plantation. He described how he and the other slaves had been returning to their cabins after having worked in the fields until late in the afternoon. He then talked of hearing gunshots as he reached his cabin. Now crying as he described the incident, Samuel told of seeing the six men riding off after the shots had been fired within the plantation’s main house. He then described running up to the main house to investigate what the shooting was about and how he had found his wife dead on the kitchen floor. He had found her with her dress pulled up around her face. “They dun had their way with my wife and then dun killed her.” Samuel’s wife had been alone in the kitchen preparing dinner for the plantation owner and his family, who had been away visiting a sick friend that afternoon, when she had been attacked by the men.

Samuel also told Francis about tracking these men for the past two days. He had wanted to kill them for what they had done, but had feared killing the men even though he knew he would have been right to do so. Samuel knew a black man who killed a white man in the South would be quickly hung for doing so, no matter how justified he was.

Already enraged by the theft of the wagon, Francis now was raging with anger from the story he had been told. “Samuel, we will take care of these men. You stay here until we are done and then you can come down to where we are. You understand me?”

“Yes, boss. Thank you, suh.”

McKinney had crept up to where Francis and Samuel were kneeling on the ground. Now he questioned Samuel as to where the sixth man was as he could still not see him. Samuel pointed his finger towards another small stand of pine trees that were about seventy feet away from where the wagon was sitting. “Boss, sees him right there in them trees. Looks real close, boss, I think dat man is smoking a pipe or maybe it’s a cigar, buts I can sure smell dat tobacco.” McKinney now looked at the trees Samuel had pointed to. As he did, he could now make out the outline of the sixth man as he appeared to lean against a tree while smoking. As he watched the man Samuel had pointed out to him, he could now smell the tobacco being smoked.

“We’ll get that son of a bitch too!” Looking at Francis, McKinney told him he would take care of the soldier smoking in the tree line when they approached the stolen wagon. Francis nodded his approval to McKinney.

With his men deployed as he had instructed them, Francis now crawled closer and closer to the campfire, getting to within twenty feet of the wagon. Raising his rifle, his pistol secured in his waistband, he dropped the soldier closest to him with a shot to the soldier’s upper chest. The soldier who was shot had been sitting on a log near the fire and had not seen Francis until it was too late. As promised, McKinney snuck up on the sixth man and knocked him out with a savage blow to the back of the head from his rifle butt. In the brief chaos that followed, three of the men who had stolen the wagon were killed. The others were seriously wounded. All of them were soon determined to be Union deserters. When Francis had his men account for the six men they had first seen, they then realized one of the Union soldiers had gotten away in the confusion of the moment. Immediately they located a small trail of blood leading away from where the deserters had sat near the fire. It was obvious the missing soldier had been wounded during the exchange which had taken place. Francis quickly sent two of his men to search for the missing soldier.

Questioning the two deserters who were still alive, Francis learned they had jumped Sgt. Steele from behind and had stolen the wagon after they found it contained food they desperately needed. A quick check of the wagon determined none of the secret compartments had been tampered with.

By this time Samuel had come down to where Francis and his men stood with the two remaining deserters, cautiously he kept his distance from them. Seeing Samuel, Francis again spoke to the Union deserters. “You men have deserted your army, and you have stolen our wagon and our food. You have also crushed the skull of one of my men and I fear he shall soon die from his injury.” Pointing his finger at Samuel, Francis spoke again. “This man here has also told me that two days ago you killed his wife after you had your way with her. What have you to say about that?”

As expected both men quickly begged for their lives and pleaded for mercy, accusing their dead friends of both raping Samuel’s wife and for injuring Steele. “Captain, sir, we were just hungry, we just needed food. We ain’t hurt no one, it was them other fellas who done all that.” Francis scoffed at their responses.

As he finished questioning the two deserters, Sgts. Foster and Davis returned from looking for the injured soldier who had gotten away from them. “Captain, that Yankee soldier ain’t gonna be stealing food from anybody else in this here life.” Francis nodded to Foster that he understood what he had been told.

Following his orders, and despite their pleas for mercy, his men tied the hands of the two remaining Union deserters behind their backs and placed them on two horses. After selecting one of the pine trees present, two ropes were thrown over a sturdy limb of the tree and both ropes were tied to the base of the tree. Each of the other two ends of the ropes were quickly fastened into nooses and placed around the necks of the two deserters. Without saying a word, Francis then smacked the backsides of both horses and the two deserters were left dangly in the early morning air, soon to be dead from broken necks. “May God have mercy on each of these Yankee bastards!” There was no need for anyone to say anything else. It was the first hanging a couple of his men had ever witnessed. It would not be their last. For a slave who watched from off in the shadows, it was not the first hanging he had ever witnessed. It was the first time he had ever seen white men hung. It did not bring him any satisfaction or joy.

With the horses hitched to the wagon, Francis and his men made their way back to the Charles plantation. While he rode, Francis wondered what would have happened if they had not located the Union soldier who had gotten away. He knew that would have likely brought him a whole new host of problems. What he did not know was the dead Union soldiers would soon be found by other Union troops. That subsequent discovery would cause Union troops in the area to intensify their push south to cripple the Confederate cause.

Summer,
2011

9
The
Discoveries
Continue.