Confederate Gold and Silver

by Peter F. Warren

  “Good luck!” She quickly drifted off into the shadows near the locked entrance of the cemetery.

  Pete and Bobby Ray were quickly up and over the fairly low rear section of the brick wall surrounding the cemetery. They had climbed over the wall close to where they were planning on digging. Chick was soon perched on top of the wall handing them down the gear that Paul handed up to him from outside the cemetery. Pete and Bobby Ray stacked the gear near the northwest corner of the cemetery.

  After Paul climbed over the wall, Pete and Bobby Ray unfurled a large ten by ten foot black plastic tarp, fastening one end to the several broken bricks on top of the brick wall. After fastening plastic zip ties to the grommet holes in the tarps, they fastened two other similar sized tarps to the first tarp. Soon four two-by-fours were standing on edge with the tarps fastened to them. Paul had gotten the two-by-fours earlier in the afternoon at Home Depot and had drilled holes in the wood boards so they could easily fasten the tarps to the boards with zip ties. They now had a place to work under. The small lean-to style tent they had constructed was one which allowed them to use small lights while they dug. Room was limited under the tarps so they knew they would have to take turns rotating in and out from under it. On the left side of the tent, the side closest to the cemetery’s entrance, they fastened a smaller black tarp to prevent as much light from escaping from the area they would be working in.

  As Pete and Bobby Ray were finishing putting the tarps around their work area, Paul and Chick fastened another black tarp to the inside of the cemetery’s two wrought iron gates. Using four zip ties they quickly fastened the tarp in place as another means of hiding what they were trying to do from anyone who might be up late on one of the nearby boats. After they had told Jayne this tarp was in place, she was able to see from the outside that it looked like the cemetery was in complete darkness. From down by the boats no one could have known a black plastic tarp was blocking their view of the inside of the cemetery.

  The first pass over the northwest corner with one of the metal detectors gave no indication over the metal detector’s headphones that any metallic objects were buried there. After a second pass confirmed the results, Paul told the others he was not surprised by what the metal detectors told them. “OK, so lets do some digging and we will see if that makes any changes to the readings after we dig down a foot or so. Try to cut the sod carefully so we can put it back in place when we are done.”

  As Chick and Pete began digging up the sod, Paul crawled out from beneath the tarps carrying the second metal detector in his right hand. In his left hand he had the headphones that went with it. Standing up, he handed the metal detector and the headphones to Bobby Ray. “Sweep the area around the tarps and see if you get any readings. This thing is pretty much idiot proof to use so that’s why I am having you do this for us.”

  “Thanks for recognizing my level of competency. I appreciate that!”

  Crawling back under the tarp, Paul helped to dig out some of the loose soil from the area where Chick and Pete had been digging. They dug out an area almost four feet square and almost a foot deep, placing the loose soil on another tarp that had been placed nearby. Soon finished with their digging, Chick again put the headphones on. They were being used to eliminate the possibility of someone hearing the metal detector if it pinged after registering something metallic buried in the ground. Slowly he moved the metal detector across the area they had dug out. As he did, Paul could see he was focusing on a small area on the very left side of the hole. They were barely five feet away from one of the young children’s graves as they dug.

  Without saying a word, Chick motioned for them to dig further to the left in that one area. Now down on his knees, Paul used a small garden shovel to dig out three more healthy shovelfuls of soil and sand from the hole. As he put the shovel into the hole for the fourth time, the shovel hit something hard. From the look he saw in Paul’s face, Chick knew they had found something. He had barely placed the metal detector in the enlarged hole when he heard the loud ping in his headphones. It told him something metallic had been buried there. Pushing the headphones down around his neck, he looked at them with a smile on his face. “The metal detector is pinging like crazy, something’s buried here!”

  Making sure the tarps were pulled as tight to each other as possible so no light escaped, Chick shined a small flashlight down into the shallow hole as Paul scooped up some of the remaining loose soil with his hands. As he did, his left hand felt the object his shovel had just struck, it was a large rock. It took a couple more minutes of digging, but quickly they realized the rock had been placed on top of a wooden lid. It was a lid to a wooden barrel, one very similar to the kind they had found buried in North Carolina. Digging out a few more shovelfuls of soil soon enlarged the hole enough so they could clearly see both the rock and the barrel’s lid. A few more shovelfuls cleared away enough soil so they could see the top third of the barrel. Chick and Paul grinned at each other as they shook hands. “We’re turning out to be quite the treasurer hunters, aren’t we?”

  Crawling out from under the tarps, Paul went to find Jayne. When he found her by the two locked gates she was standing near the outer edges of where light from a nearby overhead light met the night’s darkness. The overhead light sat close to the marina’s sidewalk, barely fifty feet away from where she stood. Quietly approaching her, he saw the pose she had taken was one like that of a cop trying to conduct a surveillance in the middle of the night without being seen.

  Somewhat startled when she first heard it, Jayne quickly turned to see what had made the noise behind her. Paul had been about fifteen feet away from her when she first heard him. “Jayne, its Paul, hope I didn’t scare you too badly. We found it! I just wanted you to know what was going on. It looks like the money is in a wooden barrel, just like in North Carolina.” Turning to leave without giving her a chance to say anything, he saw she already had a smile on her face. Even the faint light could not hide her distinctive smile.

  Bobby Ray was finishing up with the metal detector when Paul found him. Softly he whispered the good news to him. “Bobby Ray, you can stop now. It looks like we found it where we were digging.”

  “That’s good, but if y’all did, then what’s this beeping noise I’m getting here? I’ve been working this here thing almost ten to twelve feet away from where y’all are.”

  “What? Show me!”

  Bobby Ray passed the metal detector over the area where he had heard the pings. Hearing them again, he handed the headset to Paul to listen to as he passed the metal detector over the patch of ground. The pings were strong and loud, clearly something was buried in the ground by their feet. Paul quickly realized whatever was there had been buried very close to the surface.

  Handing the headset back to Bobby Ray, Paul was at a loss for what they had just found. “I did not expect this, so I don’t know what you found. There are not any grave markers in this area of the cemetery and I didn’t see any depressions in the ground earlier today to indicate someone was buried here without the grave being marked. For now, just mark the spot with something and we will come back to it when we get done with what we are working on right now. When you get done marking the spot, we need some large rocks, more dirt, or whatever you can find. Besides the gold and silver, we are likely taking the barrel with us as well. We need to fill the hole with something. Maybe there’s an old stone wall just outside the cemetery or something like that. Let me know if you need help and I’ll send someone out to help you.”

  Crawling silently back under the tarps, Paul let Chick and Pete in on what Bobby Ray had found. “Hey, listen to this. Bobby Ray’s been playing around with the metal detector out there and it looks like he found another spot where something might be buried. Could there be two spots where the money is buried?”

  Chick and Pete had both stopped to listen to what Paul had told them, but without saying a word they quickly went back t
o work excavating the sandy soil from around the entire wooden barrel. As they did, they could see this barrel had remained in far better shape than the one they had uncovered on Duke’s property. Finishing with their digging, Pete unpacked his camera so they could document the discovery of the barrel while it was still in the ground. As he got ready, Paul began to crawl outside from under the tarps, ones that hid them from prying eyes. “Let me know when you are ready to take a picture and I’ll let you know if the flash is something which might give us away to someone down on the dock. I’ll let you know if it was that noticeable from outside.”

  The first picture was quickly taken. The light from the flash had barely escaped from the tent. After Paul had come back inside the tarps, he gave Pete the green light to continue and another nine digital photos were taken to document their find. With Chick holding the flashlight and from the light given off by a small work light Paul wore on a headband, Pete used his hand held video camera to further document what they had just found.

  After setting aside the rock, Paul carefully pulled and pried the wooden top off of the barrel. The small work light he had strapped around his head gave some illumination into the hole while he worked. Reaching into the barrel for the first time, his left hand grabbed the first cloth bag he saw. As he tugged at the bag, he was surprised to see it did not tear from the weight of the coins. Slowly and carefully he lifted the bag of coins out of the barrel and gently placed it inside one of the same plastic buckets they had used in North Carolina. Using both of his hands, he then lifted another bag of coins from inside the barrel with the same results. But the next two cloth bags ripped as he attempted to remove them and soon he was scooping loose coins out of the barrel with his hands.

  After several minutes of work, Pete relieved Paul and soon he began scooping the loose coins into a bucket Chick held near the barrel. After almost an hour of work they had filled three of the plastic buckets with gold and silver coins. They had to pause at one point so Chick could grab another empty bucket for them to put more coins in. As he waited for the next bucket, Pete moved closer so his arms could extend further down inside the barrel.

  As he did, his right hand touched something other than the loose coins he had been scooping up. “Hey, what’s this?” Softly he whispered that something other than coins was hidden in the barrel. “There is something else in here, something wrapped in cloth and it’s heavy!” As he grabbed the cloth bag to pull it up, the bag tore and everything which had been in it dropped back to the bottom of the barrel. Only one object remained tangled up in the bag. After pulling the object free of the cloth bag, Pete wiped the accumulated sand and soil away from it. It was not until Paul moved closer, with the light from his work light now shining down on the object, that they recognized what the crudely made object actually was. “It’s a gold bar, a solid gold bar,” Pete softly shrieked, “and there’s more of them in there!” As he moved back closer to the barrel, Chick and Paul alternated looks of disbelief between the gold bar and each other. Holding the bar for the first time, they each were at a loss for words for a few seconds.

  “What have we found?” It was all Chick could muster at the moment.

  Pete then alternated between removing several more handfuls of coins and removing six more bars; three gold and three silver. With the barrel soon emptied of most of the precious contents it had held for so long, they carefully pulled it from the soft sandy soil. Outside of one board, which fell out when they lifted it from the hole, the barrel stayed intact. With the barrel on its side and still hidden from view under the tarps, Pete used his hands to scrape out the remaining few coins. He placed them in one of the plastic buckets they had almost filled with other coins.

  Briefly they took a moment to look at what they had freed from the ground. As Chick and Paul finished examining the barrel, Pete ran the metal detector over the hole. He quickly located three gold coins which had fallen out of the barrel when they lifted it from the hole. Patting him on the back, Paul complimented him for what he had done. “That was good thinking on your part, Pete. I would have hated to have left them behind.”

  While they had been digging up the barrel, Bobby Ray had located a small stone wall running through a wooded area on the backside of the marina’s property. It took him a few trips, but with Chick’s help they soon had enough large rocks to fill the void left in the ground by the removal of the barrel.

  Leaving Pete alone under the tarps to fill in the hole with the rocks and soil, and to replace the sod over the hole, Chick and Paul went to investigate the spot Bobby Ray had found with his metal detector.

  “Chick, we only have a couple of hours left before it starts getting light. We do not have time to set up the tarps. Let’s just dig and see what we find.”

  “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 ar
e 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.