“Maybe?” echoed Driscoll, turning toward Randy. “I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t brought your canoe back to you. Is this the way you treat anybody who does you a favor?”
“Not always,” replied Randy, keeping his temper and again checking Jebs’ effort to rush at Driscoll, but youve got to admit that you’ve been playing the man of mystery. You sat all last night and figured on us as if you wondered when the shooting would begin. You asked a lot of prying questions about us, and told us nothing except that your greatgrandfather was a Confederate soldier. You can’t blame us for getting a little mistrustful, especially when we wake up and find you and our canoe both gone.”
“I thought,” said Driscoll, “that you’d stolen something from me.”
“How could we steal anything from you?” flung out Jebs angrily. “We just met you here on the creek, last evening.”
“I didn’t mean on the creek. I meant at Wagram. The town of Wagram.”
“We—I—haven’t been there,” said Jebs. “Not lately, anyway.”
“I’ve never been there at all,” interrupted Randy. “I always thought Wagram was a place in Austria, where Napoleon won a big battle.”
“It’s a place in North Carolina, too,” said Jebs. “Not far down the stream from here.” He eyed Driscoll. “What got stolen from ypu there, and what makes you think we took it?”
“It was a map.”
“A map?” said Randy. “But yesterday I saw some sort of old folded paper in your dugout. You shoved it out of sight when we met.”
“I had two copies,” Driscoll informed them, “and one of them was stolen, by somebody who wants to steal something a lot bigger and more valuable. But,” he added, and at last he smiled, “I know now it wasn’t you two. Last night I got up and prowled through your stuff.”
“That’s what you were doing when I woke up and saw you,” said Randy, opening his eyes wide.
“That’s right. I dug through all your gear and put it back the way it was. You didn’t have my map.”
“Shoo!” growled Jebs. “How could you be so sure? Maybe we stuck it in our hammocks. If you’re going to be suspicious, better be suspicious all the way. Right now I don’t care what you think.”
“I looked in your hammocks first of all,” said Driscoll evenly. “I did that yesterday evening before supper, after you slung them to those trees yonder and then jumped into the creek for a swim. I knew you wouldn’t have the map in your pockets, because you don’t have pockets—just swimming trunks. Later, when you were both asleep, I had a look at your luggage. I had to be sure. After all, when I first ran into you up yonder where the three-way fork comes in the creek, you both acted strange.”
“No stranger than you,” muttered Jebs, still unappeased.
“Then,” went on Driscoll, “you came and camped here, right with me. Maybe it just happened you did that, but I couldn’t help wondering. When I found out you didn’t have my extra map, I knew somebody else must have taken it. In fact, it must have been the two men who tried to strand you here by towing your canoe away.”
“What two men?” demanded Jebs. “I don’t get it.”
“Anyway, I brought your canoe back again,” said Driscoll, “and that’s all of my part of the business.”
“No it isn’t,” said Randy. “Sit down, Driscoll. Don’t you think you owe us more of your story than that? You suspected us of stealing something, and you know now that we didn’t steal anything. Maybe we can help you with—whatever you’re doing.”
“Sure enough,” added Jebs sarcastically. “That is, if you think you can trust bad boys like us.”
Driscoll sat down on the log, and Randy stirred up the dying fire. Now he put more bacon to fry. “Let’s all have a good breakfast,” he invited, “and you tell us about yourself. You owe it to us. We aren’t dangerous. We told you the whole truth. We’re just out for a little adventure on the creek.”
“And I’m out for a big adventure,” said Driscoll. He drew a long breath. “Well, I’ll begin at the beginning.”
“That’s a right handy place to begin,” remarked Jebs as he poured coffee for himself and the others, and chose eggs to break into the crackling fat in the mess kits.
“I’m an orphan,” began Driscoll. “My father was killed in the war. Pacific Theater, summer of 1944.”
Randy felt a wave of sympathy. His own father had died in action in France, but he did not say so. He listened.
“My father was a North Carolinian, but his folks moved to Tennessee when he was just a kid, and I was born in Nashville. My mother had died before I was old enough to remember her. The war came and my father went to that. I lived with a grown-up cousin on my mother’s side.”
Driscoll grimaced and his mouth tightened.
“You didn’t like that grown-up cousin,” guessed Jebs.
“I reckon he didn’t like me. He was a farmer, and he had two boys of his own, but he let them loaf. I was the one who had to pay for my keep, he always said. He worked me pretty hard.”
“Rugged,” sympathized Jebs, his anger evaporated, as usual.
“Yes, it was. But my father had a friend in the army—Ken Bailey. They were sergeants in the same outfit, and Ken Bailey came from North Carolina, too. When my father died, Ken promised he’d look me up and take care of me. He hunted me up at my cousin’s place in Tennessee a couple of years ago, and there was some trouble about getting custody of me. You see, my cousin would like to have control of the G. I. insurance my father left in my name. They went to court twice, and the second time Ken Bailey got himself appointed my guardian. He brought me home to his own place, in Lawson. He’s a deputy sheriff there, and we’ve been living together bachelor fashion.”
“Go on,” said Jebs. “How come you showed up here on the face of the deep, long miles away from Lawson County?”
“I’m looking for my home place,” said Driscoll. “I never saw it, my father never saw it, not even my grandfather ever saw it. But it’s where generations of Jordans were born and raised. It’s called Chimney Pot House, and it’s here on the creek somewhere.”
“Do tell!” exclaimed Jebs.
“It was my great-grandfather who left Chimney Pot while he was still a young man,” elaborated Driscoll. “The Reconstruction Acts were going on in North Carolina then, and they were tough on an ex-soldier of the Confederate Army. Likewise, there was a lot of swampiness seeping in from the creek and the other waters around the house and land, and no money to keep them drained away. Anyhow, he left the house, moved out somewhere around Asheville in the mountains west of here, and got married. The house just vanished. And with it,” said Driscoll, suddenly somber, “vanished a treasure.”
“Like that ghost story the Indian told us?” asked Randy, dishing out scrambled eggs and bacon.
“It’s no ghost story,” said Driscoll. “My greatgrandfather always said it happened, and he never told a lie in—”
“Sure, sure, we know,” granted Jebs. “Go on.”
“Gold was brought here, to Chimney Pot House. It was part of the gold belonging to the Confederate States of America.”
“Confederate gold?” spoke up Randy, mystified. “I always thought the Confederates never had anything but paper money, and that wasn’t worth anything at the end of the war.”
“They had half a million dollars in gold,” said Driscoll. “The Dixie version of Fort Knox. Poor old Dixie’s bottom dollar, as that old poem used to say, only the poem was about the beat-up army, not money. They packed the gold into wagons when Jefferson Davis and his cabinet retreated from Richmond, in 1865. Captain William Parker, of the Confederate Navy, had charge, with a guard of sixty cadets from the Confederate Naval Academy. Some of them were kids about our age, or not much older.”
“And they carried all that gold to your Chimney Pot place and left it there?” asked Jebs excitedly.
“Let me go ahead.” Driscoll Jordan was speaking more warmly and rapidly than either Randy or Jebs had thought possible. �
��They took those wagons down through Virginia and into North Carolina, by way of Charlotte, about a hundred miles west of here. After that, they hurried down through South Carolina, with Union cavalry chasing them, and in Georgia the whole bunch split up and scattered. Parker and his cadets crossed the Savannah River, back to Abbeville in South Carolina. They stored the gold in a warehouse, then they disbanded and went home, all over the South.”
“I remember hearing something about this,” said Randy, lifting a forkful of egg. “It’s in the history books. Nobody knows what ever became of that half million dollars in gold.”
“I know what happened to part of it,” said Driscoll.
“Don’t tell me,” begged Jebs. “Let me guess. It’s at that Chimney Pot place of yours.”
“That’s just where it is. My great-grandfather was riding with President Davis’ cavalry escort, and with him was his colored servant, who’d stuck with him all during the war. They put their heads together, and tried to decide what they could save for the Confederacy. All sorts of characters were starting to zero in on that Abbeville warehouse—deserters and stragglers and Union patrols. My great-grandfather and his servant slipped inside and took away what they could carry on their two horses. That was a bag of gold apiece, and each bag had $10,000 inside it and weighed about sixty pounds. All the extra weight a horse could carry, besides its rider.
“Well, they got home to Chimney Pot with that $20,000. They meant to keep that much of the money for the use of the Confederacy. Only—”
He fell silent. He looked grim. With that gray cap on his head, he might have been a young veteran of Dixie’s lost army.
“Only,” Randy finished for him, “there wasn’t any Confederacy.”
“No. My people left that house, the way I told you, and moved to western North Carolina, where my grandfather was born. My great-grandfather died young, and left behind him the story that the money was still hidden at Chimney Pot House. I used to hear about that, and there were two maps, showing where the house stood. Now, after all these years, nobody seems to think Chimney Pot House is anything but a ghost legend.”
Once more he fell silent. This time Jebs and Randy ate, waiting for him to resume the story when he felt like it. Driscoll finished his own breakfast before he spoke again.
“I told you it took quite a while after the war before Ken Bailey found me at my cousin’s and got himself appointed my guardian. I came to Lawson with him only year before last, and about all I brought from my cousin’s home was an envelope with those two maps. Ken Bailey’s my best friend, and my father’s friend before me, but he’s like you two— he takes his time about accepting old stories as being more than fairy tales. It wasn’t until just a few days ago that he agreed to bring me down here to see what we could find out. He has some business with the sheriff of the county, and he wrote to an old friend of his family who lives at Wagram—Judge Forman —and we stopped at Judge Forman’s house to see if we could find out anything about Chimney Pot House.”
Driscoll took off his gray cap, stared into its worn interior, then put it back on.
“We got to Wagram day before yesterday,” he said. “Judge Forman’s a nice old man. He knew a lot about the history of Drowning Creek and Lumber River, and he introduced us to some people who knew a lot more. One or two of them remembered something, but they talked about it the way they’d talk about Uncle Remus or the Three Bears. And Judge Forman said he’d written to the county seat, and word had come back that Chimney Pot isn’t mentioned in the county records. Anyway, they convinced Ken Bailey that we were on a wild-goose chase, and he started in to convince me.
“But I lugged out my two maps and showed them to the folks. There were about half a dozen of them there—folks, I mean, not maps. We were eating in a little restaurant at Wagram. I showed them how old the maps were, and how on each one there was a mark to show where Chimney Pot House stood. The map showed—”
Pausing, he looked with searching appraisal at Randy, then at Jebs.
“Listen,” he offered suddenly, “I’m going to show you that map. I think you’re okay, and you’ve offered to help me.”
“We’re just perishing to death to see that map,” Jebs admitted frankly.
Driscoll drew it from the pocket of his blue shirt. It was folded small, and the paper looked yellow- brown with age. Some of the folds had cracked, and were mended with strips of transparent cellophane tape. Driscoll carefully unfolded it on his lap, and the other two boys sat on the log to his right and left, gazing with rapt interest.
At first glance, the map looked like a picture of a writhing, blotchy snake, drawn in ink that through many decades had turned to the color of a dried coffee stain. Driscoll tapped it with his forefinger.
“This is the map of Drowning Creek, or Lumber River or maybe some of both. Here,” he went on, sliding his fingertip to where a small square was drawn, in a bend of the pictured stream, “is Chimney Pot House. It’s on a sort of side creek, that nobody knows anything about. And you can see another faded little line there, to show where a road ran out, but everybody says there’s no road at that point, nothing but swamp and trees, and bushes and vines, grown up so thick that nobody could get in there even on foot, let alone in a car. And the ghost story bobbed up, about shadowy shapes guarding a house full of treasure. That’s what finished the idea for Ken Bailey.”
“Finished the idea?” repeated Randy.
“Yes. He argued to me that I’d gotten some old ghost yarn mixed into something or other my folks had said about Jordan family history. He was nice about it, but he’d made up his mind. He had me convinced, too, for a few minutes. Then, when we started away from the table, I knew all of a sudden that it wasn’t a ghost story.”
“How do you mean?” asked Jebs.
Driscoll widened his mouth tightly, without smiling. “One of my two maps was gone.”
“Gone!” cried both Jebs and Randy at once.
“I was talking to Judge Forman and Mrs. Forman; they’d been having noon dinner at the cafe with us. The other people were all drifting away. Ken Bailey had left, because he had this errand at the county seat. I forget the name of the town—”
“Laurinburg,” supplied Jebs.
“That’s right. As I said, Ken had gone, and wouldn’t be back until supper time, when I was supposed to meet him at the cafe. I folded up one map, the one I’ve got here. And I couldn’t find the other. It was gone. I hadn’t dropped it or lost it. I’d had them both on the table. It was stolen.”
“Somebody else was sure it wasn’t any ghost story,” said Randy.
“That’s for sure!” burst out Driscoll so fiercely that Randy and Jebs both started. “Somebody had heard all about Chimney Pot and the Confederate gold, except how to get there—and decided that map would lead him!”
“What did you do?” Randy asked Driscoll. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I thought hard for about six seconds.”
“Who did you pick out for the guilty one?” prompted Jebs.
“I told you there were five or six of us together,” said Driscoll. “Judge Forman and his wife sat across the table from me. They couldn’t have taken the map even if they were that kind of folks. I’d have noticed it sliding away from me.”
“It would be somebody to one side or the other of you,” agreed Randy. “How about the cafe man himself?”
“He’d served us our dinner and gone back to his cash register. Ken Bailey’s out, of course. Even suppose he’d take anything of mine—and he wouldn’t do that, not for a million dollars—he’d had lots of chances to get that map before we ever talked of starting for Wagram and Drowning Creek. There were a couple of other people there, though. A fellow named Pullis, and a young friend of his, who was named Brose, or Ambrose.”
“How did they get mixed into all this?” wondered Jebs.
“Judge Forman had sent for them, because Mr. Pullis has a sort of little farm out in the direction where we thought Chimney
Pot might stand. Judge Forman wanted to ask him if he’d heard anything about a house like Chimney Pot. Pullis said it was a ghost story. Anyway, he’d been there to eat with us, but he and that Ambrose fellow had left. Maybe he took the map. I couldn’t be sure.”
“You were in a spot,” said Jebs.
“I certainly was. Ken Bailey was gone, and wouldn’t be back for hours. Meanwhile, what about the map? I figured I’d better find out. So, after the Formans went home, I left a note for Ken with the cafe man, to say I was going to get my map back.”
“That took nerve,” said Randy.
“Maybe, but I didn’t stop to study much about that. I had money—Ken gives me an allowance from my dad’s insurance money, and he pays me for helping him keep his deputy sheriff records. I had about twenty dollars in all. I walked about a mile, down to the creek, and there I found an Indian cabin. The Indian sold me that gum-tree canoe, and the tarpaulin and a quilt, for my twenty dollars. He threw in a couple of things to eat that he happened to have on hand—a box of crackers, sardines, coffee.” “Where did you get that chopper you carry around with you?” inquired Jebs. “That machete?”
Driscoll’s V-chinned, scarred face frowned, slightly but darkly. “My dad sent it to me from the Philippines. It was just about the only keepsake I had to remember him by, and I make a habit of bringing it wherever I go. It was in Ken Bailey’s car, and I’d taken it out to show to Judge Forman when Ken drove off. So I brought it with me, and maybe I’ll need it.”
“Well,” said Randy, “you got a dugout, some camping stuff and so on. What then?”
“Then I paddled up Drowning Creek to where I could see the three-fork way that shows on the map.” Driscoll pointed it out. “I took the fork for a reference point, to figure which way was downstream to Chimney Pot. You two came floating along, and I hid my dugout under some bushes near the bank to have a look at you. That’s the story up to where you came into it.”
“And you figured we might have your map,” said Jebs.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1951 Page 4