Spake As a Dragon

by Larry Hunt

CHAPTER TWELVE

  Prisoners of War

   

  Sergeant Scarburg remained at Doctor Letterman’s Hospital for a few days. Day by day his condition improves due in large part to the constant care he receives from Miss Barton or one of her attendants. Miss Barton had found a scrap of paper in Robert’s pocket. It is his promotion orders to Sergeant. She could read the name ‘Robert Steven Scarburg, Sergeant, 48th Alabama Infantry.’ He is glad to know his name and who he is, but his memory is still foggy; however, it is slowly beginning to return.

  One hot day an orderly enters the hospital tent and yells, “Attention to Orders!” He begins to read the names of the Confederate prisoners that will be transferred.

  “Private Johnny Adams, Private William Bates, Private Benjamin Dunway...” he continues calling out names until he gets to the “S” names – Sergeant Robert Scarburg,” Robert did not hear the rest of the names the orderly calls out. He knew this day would come, but he just did not think it would be this quick. At least he now knew for certain his name!

  Private Benjamin Dunway occupies the bunk next to Robert. Ben was in McLaw’s 10th Georgia Infantry. During Pickett’s Charge, Ben’s 10th was on the left of Luke and Matthew’s 48th Alabama. Before the war, Ben worked for the Consolidated Mining Company in a small town in the hills of northern Georgia named Dahlonega. Raised in the backcountry with little or no formal education, but Ben had a heart as big as his six-foot six-inch frame. He has already been in the Army almost two years even though he is only eighteen years old. He, unlike Luke, did not reach the rock wall on Cemetery Ridge, but suffered a shoulder wound and was captured. During their stay in the hospital tent, Ben and Robert become friends. Due to their age differences, Ben looked upon Robert as a father figure.

  Robert and Ben spend most of the days talking. They are not allowed out of their tent. Ben recalls the various battles his Company and Robert’s have been in, Ben talks and Robert listens. But the conversation always returns to home, well at least Ben speaks of his home. Robert vaguely remembered his great-great-grandmother telling him the story of the Battle of Scarburg Mill when was a boy. The blow to his head affected his short-term memory, but his long-term was getting better by the day. He especially remembered the name Dahlonega when Ben mentioned it. Granny Scarburg had told of the two Revolutionary War wagons, which left from Ben’s hometown of Dahlonega heading to the Armies of General Washington.

  Remembering his grandma’s story, Robert asks Ben if he might know what the wagons, heavy loaded, would have been carrying eighty-two years earlier. Ben answers quickly – gold! If they left Dahlonega fully loaded, they must have been carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold. It had to be gold; Dahlonega had nothing else worth transporting anywhere. The gold ore leaves the mines, goes to the smelter, and after melting the gold is poured into twenty-four karat gold bars weighing twenty-seven and one-half pounds each. Robert is stunned as he hears this – gold! The wagons must have been carrying gold!

  Granny had not told him much; those days were hard for her to recall since she had watched the British hang her husband and two sons. She didn’t forget to mention the two burned wagons at the Scarburg Mill. She had talked a little about his Pappy’s Masonic Lodge and his Bible, but Robert was young, and those things did not seem important to him at the time. His granny did not mention the word gold. He never envisioned two wagons full of gold BARS! Somehow the numbers 2K168 were important too, but he did not know what they meant, and Granny never explained them either. Robert had figured if he died his sons should know the ‘numbers,’ whatever the puzzle meant. Maybe someone would figure them out someday, but he thought the Mill, a House of the Lord, the Bible, Masons and gold how did all this tie together? Or was there even a connection?