Confederate Gold and Silver (54 page)

“Sounds like a plan!”

As they started digging the second hole, the clear night they had been working under began to cloud over. The smell of rain was now in the air. Paul sensed the change that was occurring and he prayed it would rain, but not until they had finished with everything they needed to get done.

After Bobby Ray had set a tarp on the ground, Chick and Paul cut the sod away and placed it on the tarp. Soon they quietly started digging the second hole. As they had with the soil they removed from the first hole, they also placed the sandy soil from the second hole on the tarp to minimize any signs that someone had been digging in the cemetery. Like the first hole, they again dug up several inches of soil and then ran the metal detector over the hole they were digging.

The strong ping Bobby Ray and Paul had earlier heard was now loud and steady; a clear indication something metallic was buried in the ground. Before they arrived at the cemetery that night, Paul had placed black electrical tape over the electronic screens of each metal detector. He had done this to minimize any light from the screens giving away their location to someone who might be in the area. Again they were forced to dig blindly, not knowing how deep the object was buried or what the object was.

Using a small gardener’s trowel to dig with, Paul was on his hands and knees removing soil from the hole when the trowel hit a metallic object buried roughly six inches below the surface. Using his hands, he scooped several handfuls of soil from the hole until he could feel the object. Leaning into the shallow hole, he turned the small work light on that he was still wearing around his head. Peering into the hole, he prayed it would not be a coffin or something equally as morbid he would be looking at. Hesitating for a moment, he backed away from the hole. Turning off the small work light, he looked up at Chick. “What if we have found a rotted out coffin or someone’s remains? I don’t mind telling you this is getting very creepy!”

Regaining his courage, Paul turned his small light on as he moved back closer to the hole. After removing more soil away from the object, he saw it was made of leather. Softly he whispered to Chick and Bobby Ray a brief description of what they had found. “I don’t know what it is yet, but whatever it is it has a leather strap on it and I can see it has a metal buckle as well. That’s what probably set the metal detector off.” Working for several more minutes, he moved more soil away from the edges of the object. Forcing his fingers into the soft sandy soil around the leather object, he yanked at it to try and free it from where it had rested for so many years. As he did, the leather object tore in half as it came free of the soil, dislodging far easier than he had expected. As he tugged to free the object from the soil, Paul had clutched part of the object in his hands and now he fell backwards; his momentum causing him to come to rest in an awkward prone position on the ground. He had expected far more resistance from the object when he tried freeing it from the soil.

Even in the partial darkness, the sight of Paul falling backwards when the object had come free was too much for both Bobby Ray and Chick not too laugh at. They did their best to stifle their laughter as their friend struggled to get back up onto his knees from where he had landed. “I’m glad you both are finding humor in this at my expense. What the heck happened here?”

Standing up while still clutching the object he had freed from the ground, Paul’s work light quickly identified it to be the remnants of a small saddlebag, its pouch still strapped shut by a small leather strap. It only took a minute for Chick to realize what the object was. “That’s the type of saddlebags a cavalry soldier would have used!”

Placing the torn off portion of the saddlebags on the ground where he now knelt down, Paul unbuckled the leather pouch. Opening the pouch revealed a collection of additional gold and silver coins of several different denominations. “What is going on here? These coins have to be part of the Confederate treasury, but why were they buried ten feet away from what we found already?”

Seeing Paul had only pulled half of a complete set of saddlebags from the hole, Chick then knelt back down to find the other half. After digging with his hands for a couple of moments, he began pulling the other half of the saddlebags from the hole. As he lifted the remaining portion of the saddlebags out of the ground, the rotted leather pouch split wide open and close to two hundred gold and silver coins spilled back into the hole.

The saddlebag splitting open cost them almost another half-hour in time. With daylight approaching, the three of them worked quickly on their knees to recover all of the spilled coins. They were forced to wrap the coins up in a Murrells Inlet sweatshirt Bobby Ray had been wearing as all of their plastic buckets were now completely filled with what they had already retrieved from the barrel.

As the saddlebags were being unearthed, Pete was carefully filling in the first hole they had dug. He had done his best to carefully replace the sod over the top of the hole. As he had done at the first hole, he now ran the metal detector over the second hole to see if they had missed anything or had dropped any coins. The metal detector remained quiet. Being satisfied he had scanned the second area thoroughly, he placed the metal detector on the ground and now went to work filling in the second hole. As he did, Bobby Ray and Chick carried the now heavy buckets of coins to the cemetery’s back wall. After resting for a moment, they handed the buckets over the wall to Paul. He was already standing on the outside of the cemetery packing up some of their other gear. After the buckets of coins were safely over the wall, they handed him the two buckets which contained the gold and silver bars. Soon the sweatshirt of Bobby Ray’s, now filled with coins from the saddlebags, was also handed over the wall. The last item handed over the wall was the empty barrel.

After stacking the pails and other items, Paul climbed back over the wall to where Chick and Bobby Ray were catching their breath. “Bobby Ray, you help Pete finish filling in the hole and then both of you double-check the areas around the two holes so it looks like we were never here. Do what it takes to get rid of any extra soil from the two holes, but just get rid of it. Chick, you start collecting our tools and breaking down the tarps. I’m going to get Jayne so we can get out of here as soon as possible. I want to start loading all of this stuff back into our vehicles before anyone sees us. I’ll be right back to help you guys.”

Jayne had been standing guard alone for several hours when Paul approached her to tell her to come help them finish up. She was relieved to see him as she had become bored by her necessary, but unexciting task. “Well, are you going to tell me? Did you find what we hoped to find?”

“Oh, yeah! But we don’t have time for you look at it now. You need to help us police the area where we have been working. We need to get our stuff back to the vehicles quick, daylight will soon be here.”

As soon as they finished filling in the second hole, Bobby Ray and Pete swept the two areas where they had been digging for any tools Chick had not seen. Paul did the same and they found nothing had been missed. The areas around the two holes were also free of any extra soil and sod. They had all done what they could to police the area.

Pointing out the two areas where they had been digging, Paul gave Jayne a task to complete to make sure they had not missed anything. “The rest of us are going to start loading everything back into our vehicles. I want you to take one of the metal detectors and run it over the entire area where we were working just to make sure nothing has been missed. Make sure you wear the headset in the event the detector pings so it is not heard by anyone else. I’ll come get you when we are done.”

The others had already started carrying the now heavy and full plastic buckets of coins, and some of their other gear, back towards the parking lot when Paul caught up to them. He was carrying the plastic tarps and some of the tools they had been digging with. He quickly moved past them as they struggled carrying the heavy buckets. As he did, he urged them to work quickly so they were not delayed in getting away from the marina. Soon he had the tarps and the tools packed away in his truck by the time the others reached the parking lot. Now he helped them place the buckets into the bed of his truck. It took them two trips back and forth from the cemetery to the parking lot, but soon they had everything loaded back into their vehicles. Finally done putting everything away, they realized just how tired they were. They had been up all day, had worked through the night, and had just finished carrying the heavy buckets of coins, the gold and silver bars, and all of their gear back to their vehicles. Tired, but happy at what they had found, Chick leaned against his van to catch his breath. “Paul, we need to hire some younger guys to do the grunt work for us. This is way too much for us old guys.”

“Amen to that brother, amen.” Bobby Ray was also clearly tired from a long night as well. He had to be at his real job in less than three hours.

Dropping down to one knee to catch his breath, Pete looked up at Chick. “When I signed up for this gig you told me I wouldn’t have to dig in any sewers, but you never told me I would have to be digging in a bone yard at night. You know that you people are very sick, don’t you?”

Pete’s comment made them laugh and in some way they each realized what they had just done was beyond what was normal for them to be doing. None of them had ever thought about digging for gold in a cemetery at night before yesterday.

After resting for a few moments, Paul jogged back to the cemetery to get Jayne. As he pulled himself up on the cemetery’s rear wall he could see she was still running the metal detector over the areas where they had been working. Looking up, she saw Paul had turned on his small work light to get her attention. Turning off the metal detector, she quickly walked over to where he was on the wall.

“Jayne, let’s go!” Paul helped her to the top and then he jumped down outside the wall. Jayne jumped to the ground still holding onto the metal detector. “How are we looking in there? Did we leave anything behind?”

Reaching out and grabbing Paul’s left hand, Jayne whispered to him. “Just this! I found it on the ground by where the buckets had been stacked by the wall.”

Kneeling down behind the brick wall, Paul turned the work light on. Shining the light into his left hand, he saw Jayne had found an 1860 ten dollar gold coin on the ground. “What the heck, that’s no big deal, it’s likely only worth a couple of thousand dollars these days.” Jayne knew Paul’s remark had been made sarcastically and she quietly laughed at the comment.

“Anything else?”

“Nope, we are good to go.”

“OK, then lets get out of here, but let’s just play it safe. Casually sweep the ground with the metal detector as we make our way back to the parking lot.”

They had just started driving back towards the security booth when it started to rain, lightly at first then heavier. “Let’s hope it rains for a day or two. It will help to cover our tracks and it will keep our friend Woody from working in there.” Paul looked for a response from Bobby Ray, but saw he had already fallen asleep, worn out from an evening of manual labor.

******

It did not take long for them to drive back to Paul’s house. Backing his truck up towards his garage, Paul could see in his rearview mirror that Donna had seen them pulling into the driveway. She had hit the button to open the garage door for them and now the door finished opening as the truck came to a stop only a couple of feet away from the garage. Now awake from his ten minute power nap, Bobby Ray jumped out of Paul’s truck carrying his rolled up Murrells Inlet sweatshirt with him.

Walking up to Donna, who was standing in the garage wearing her bathrobe, Bobby Ray handed her the dirty sweatshirt. It was still holding some of the coins they had found. Looking at her, he jokingly told her what he wanted done with it. “Wash and iron this for me, no starch please, and keep the change!” Donna had not expected anything but a dirty sweatshirt being handed to her. She nearly doubled over from the unexpected weight of the coins.

“What is in this sweatshirt? What have you guys found tonight?”

Placing the dirty sweatshirt down on the folding table in the garage, she unfolded it. The loose coins spilled out across the table. “Oh, my. I guess you guys found what you were looking for!”

Looking up from the table, Donna saw the full buckets of coins now being carried into the garage. She was about to say something when Jayne came in carrying the plastic Rubbermaid container they had packed the seven gold and silver bars in after leaving the cemetery. Handing Donna one of the gold bars, Jayne introduced herself to her as they had yet to meet each other before now. “We found seven of these, four gold and three silver.”

“Oh, Lord! I never would have imagined this. That poor soldier died for all of this.”

“You know, I don’t think he was the only one who died over this money. I bet several others probably did as well.”

“Probably so, probably so.”

After they had carried the wooden barrel and the torn saddlebags into the garage, Paul closed the garage door. He did not want any of his neighbors to see what they were doing so early in the morning inside his garage.

Standing guard while the others had been working, Jayne now saw the fruits of their labor for the first time. “This is way more than what we found in North Carolina and that doesn’t even factor in the gold and silver bars. I can only imagine what these bars themselves are worth. Wow!”

Before they started to examine what they found, Pete documented their find on videotape. Jayne soon followed his lead by taking several digital photos of the coins and bars as well. They had not taken pictures of the saddlebags or of the coins which had spilled out of them at the cemetery as Paul had not wanted to risk having photos taken when they worked without the protection of the tarps. He had been concerned about the camera flash being seen by others.

After they documented what they had found, Paul emptied the part of the saddlebag still containing the coins. Donna and Jayne soon filled another small plastic bucket with the 196 gold and silver coins the saddlebag had held for so many years.