Legend of the Paymaster's Gold

by Jo Shawyer

  Ben suggested that his dad could take a tree core from the logs. That wouldn’t tell them when the log cabin was built, of course, but it would tell them how old the huge trees were at the time that they were cut. And that would be interesting to know.

  They were interrupted by John. He came inside, pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, and gave it to Eadie. “You’re keen on mysteries,” he said, “maybe this is a clue. We found it stuck to a bit of the plaster off the wall. It’s the only piece we found, but it has writing on it.” He smiled and went outside again to finish his lunch.

  “What is it, Eadie?” Ben asked.

  “It’s got writing on it, old-fashioned writing. It’s hard to make out.” She turned and went outside where the light was better. The boys followed.

  “Oh,” she smiled. “I’ve read about this in books. Look. Whoever wrote it, wrote down the page and then turned the page and wrote across the first writing!”

  “What a stupid thing to do!” Sam said. “Now you can hardly read it.”

  “It was to save paper. If this was written during the War of 1812, so early in the settlement here, then paper would have been scarce.”

  “Do you think that it’s that old?” Ben asked.

  “What does it say?” Sam was impatient.

  “I can make out, ‘killed at Queenston’ and ‘battle fought.’” Eadie turned the paper to read the writing in the other direction, “‘Hide in cellar,’ and ‘silver spoons.’”

  “Brock was killed at Queenston!”

  “And the battle must refer to the War of 1812!”

  “Did someone hide spoons in a cellar?”

  “A cellar? It could it be our cellar! This must have been a cabin in 1812!”

  Ben said, “If the shed-room really was a log cabin.…”

  Eadie interrupted, “And if it really was here in 1812.…”

  Sam added, “And if someone hid silver spoons in it, then maybe they’re still here!”

  Ben stood still and looked at Sam and Eadie. “Then the cellar in this log cabin would have been a super hiding place for the paymaster’s gold, too!”

  Eadie looked at the torn and dirty scrap of paper again. She asked, “Who’d you think wrote this?” But the boys weren’t listening. They were figuring out how to get into the cellar which Sam and Eadie’s dad had declared to be out of bounds.

  The squiggly letters sloped across the yellowed paper.” This must have been written right here, during the war,” Eadie said to herself, “by someone who was living here, in our shed-room! Except — it was a log cabin then.”

  It was only a scrap of yellowed paper but it made the war come alive for Eadie: soldiers marching on the road, American raiders riding through, threatening families, stealing livestock, setting fire to barns. She shivered. “Sam and Ben just think that the war would have been exciting, but I think it would have been more scary than exciting.”

  Eadie put the paper carefully into her pocket. She turned to listen to the boys.

  “We’ve got to get inside that cellar, by ourselves, to have a better look around,” Sam was saying. “We never really got a decent look when we went down into it with Dad. He wouldn’t let us touch anything….”

  “But your parents told you not to go down into the cellar.”

  Sam ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

  “Old Tucker won’t let us on his land to look for log cabin sites. And Mum and Dad won’t let us go down into the cellar here when we know that this is a log cabin….”

  “Which was here as early as the War of 1812, for sure!” Eadie added.

  Ben sighed. “What good is a metal detector if you can’t get into the best places to use it?”

  Chapter

  Ten

  January 1814

  Freezing cold. Too cold for the cows. We had to pack straw around their shed to keep them warm. We have to keep them alive. It is too cold for war. Everything is quiet just now. John even came home for a few days at Christmas. That was the best present! He was half-starved and terribly thin. He told us about a lady called Laura Secord who walked through the night last summer to take a message to Lieutenant FitzGibbon and the British soldiers that the Americans were coming. There was a battle and he was so brave that he was promoted to Captain. Laura Secord must have been brave, too, like Phoebe McNames.

  After lunch, Sam and Ben settled down at the computer to search the Internet. They wanted to know how to build an abatis.

  “Tell me again, what’s an abatis?” asked Eadie.

  Sam explained, “Remember? It’s for defence. Here, this website says that you cut brushwood to build it up like a wall with the tips pointing outwards against the enemy. Like a bristles on a brush. You can hide behind it when you’re firing your musket.”

  “It’s what General Procter didn’t build at Moraviantown,” Ben added. Dave at the library had told them that he was involved with a military re-enactment society. He said that he might find a place for them in a re-enactment in the fall. They would have to help make an abatis.

  Eadie left them to it. She had a plan of her own. She wanted to find out more about Phoebe McNames. Dave had told her that there were McNames gravestones in Brick Street Cemetery. She got on her bike and headed east along Commissioners Road. The cemetery was not far away, just a few kilometres.

  Eadie had heard about Laura Secord in her history classes. Laura Secord was famous for helping the soldiers in the War of 1812 by walking all night through the bush to warn Lieutenant FitzGibbon about plans for an American invasion that she’d overheard. Eadie couldn’t understand why Phoebe McNames wasn’t famous. She had helped the soldiers, too, by passing them their ammunition during Procter’s skirmish on Reservoir Hill.

  I guess Phoebe can’t be famous if that skirmish is only a legend and didn’t really happen. Eadie sighed. She could imagine Phoebe dashing from her log cabin, somewhere along Commissioners Road, taking buckets of water for the soldiers to drink and helping them load their muskets. Why did she do it? Maybe her husband was away at the war and she was alone. Maybe it was a way of seeking protection from the British soldiers? Would loyal Phoebe have offered a hiding place for the paymaster’s gold? If she did, was the gold reclaimed afterward, or not? Did Phoebe McNames live in their shed-room when it was a log cabin?

  Eadie found the cemetery easily. There was a metal sign. Eadie paused to read it.

  Brick Street Cemetery

  This cemetery served as the burial ground for settlers who first arrived in Westminster Township, 1810. In use by 1819, it is situated on land originally granted to Peter McNames and James Sheldon. Though the farms which once surrounded it have been subdivided, the Brick Street Cemetery, now the charge of the Mount Zion United Church, remains as a memorial to our pioneer ancestors.

  Eadie felt a shiver of emotion. She felt so close to the past. So close to the people who had lived on Commissioners Road before her. Imagine, she thought, the first settlers only came around the time of the War of 1812. And they needed a cemetery so soon, 1819. I suppose some of those burials were babies. You always read in history books that lots of children died young, long ago.

  The cemetery had rows and rows of tombstones, many of them very old. Just simple, thin, white stones, rounded at the top. Eadie wandered up and down the rows, ignoring the bigger, more expensive, and more recent tombstones. She was looking for older ones. Suddenly she saw it: not an upright stone, but a flat one, broken, lying in the grass. She could just make out, “Phoebe, wife of … McNames” and then, on the broken bit, “Peter.” Maybe he was Phoebe’s husband? Eadie stared at the tombstone for a long time, trying to imagine what sort of person Phoebe had been. Brave, for sure. And loyal. And strong, too.

  Eadie reached into her knapsack for her notebook where she had jotted down notes from her dad’s historical atlas. Eadie read out loud to Phoebe McNames’s tombstone. It was Eadie’s way of honouring Phoebe.

  To the record of this gallant exploit must be added a brief
mention of the heroic conduct of a woman, Mrs. McNames.… Her husband was away on duty as a militiaman, and when the fight began near her house she sprang upon a baggage wagon and, regardless of the bullets which whistled around her, she handed out ammunition to the troops and carried water for them to drink during the whole of the engagement. A country inhabited, as Canada was, by a people as brave and as loyal as Mrs. McNames, although it might be overrun by a hostile army for a season ... could not be conquered....

  “There you are, Phoebe. Someone long ago believed that this really happened and I think so, too.” Eadie closed her notebook. In her mind’s eye, she could see the whole scene. Procter dashing on ahead, Carroll’s men frantically trying to get the baggage wagons up Reservoir Hill, others clawing their way up the sides of the ravine to shoot down on the Kentucky Riflemen, and Mrs. McNames dashing to help them, her long skirt becoming streaked with dirt, her hair falling loose and blowing in the wind.

  Eadie wandered on among the tombstones. Then she saw other McNames tombstones, which was confusing. There was a stone to the memory of Peter McNames. And one to a daughter of Peter and Phoebe. How many Peter McNameses were there? And how many Phoebes? Sons named after fathers. Daughters named after mothers. Whatever the truth was, Eadie decided to believe that a Phoebe McNames was indeed a heroine of the War of 1812. It’s a shame, Eadie thought, that no one talks about Phoebe McNames.

  Eadie sat on a bench near Phoebe’s grave to review what she knew about the paymaster and his gold. There really had been settlers living there at the time of the War of 1812. All of them would have built log houses. If there had been a paymaster with Captain Carroll’s group of militia, what had he done with his gold during the skirmish on Reservoir Hill? Did he hide it with a settler family? Then, where was it now? Had the paymaster been killed in the skirmish? Had the Americans raided the log house where it was hidden and taken it away? How can I find out the truth? And what is the truth? Legends! They’re so complicated! What do I believe?

  Eadie thought of the story that had been told through the generations in her mother’s family. It was about Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Murray. She was a pioneer, a settler, all those years ago in the early 1800s. The story was that she walked twenty miles through the bush — in fact, all through the night through the bush — to get to the gristmill. She carried a sack of grain with her to get ground into flour.

  Remembering this story, Eadie smiled to herself and her eyes got what Sam called her “dreamy look.” It was one of her favourite stories. She could imagine her great-great-great-grandmother making her way through the forest, bent over, carrying her sack of grain, but determined to get it made into flour for her family. Eadie thought of wolves and bears and nighttime in the forest, and shivered. Grandma Murray should have won a bravery award.

  But, when Eadie asked if the story was true, her mother had said, “We have no documents from the miller, no receipts. And Grandma Murray didn’t keep a diary or write that incident down….”

  So it was only a legend. A lot of families with pioneer histories told the same story about their grandmothers. Some of the stories could be true, though. There were only scattered pioneer homes, and the early gristmills were few and far apart. But whether the grandmothers really walked twenty miles through the bush to get to the mill may or may not have happened.

  Eadie took out her camera and photographed Phoebe’s grave. Then she climbed on her bike and made her way slowly home.

  Sam and Ben had left a note: “Come to our woods.” So Eadie walked out behind the house, past the old apple orchard to the little woods. She couldn’t see the boys anywhere until they jumped up and shouted. They had been hiding behind a wall of brushwood.

  “We’ve made an abatis, Eadie!”

  “Just like the soldiers did in the War of 1812.”

  “See? It’s just dragging tree limbs together so that the branches face outward. We can hide behind it,” Sam said.

  “Pretend you’re the enemy and try to get through.”

  Eadie tried. “You’re right. It’s hard to shift because all the boughs are tangled together. And it’s prickly. Although,” she paused, “maybe if I had on a woollen uniform I wouldn’t feel the sharp pointy bits….”

  “Well, yes, it should have some bigger limbs of trees in it, but Dad would get mad if we really hacked the bushes to death.”

  Eadie looked at the abatis more closely. “It’s great. How long did it take you to make it?”

  “About two hours. But there’s only Ben and me. If we were a company of thirty militia, not a problem. We could do it really fast.”

  “You’ve cut down a lot of brush, Sam….”

  “It’s research, Eadie.”

  “For Dave,” Ben added.

  “Is that what Dave wants you to build at the re-enactment?”

  “Yeah. We’re going to ask him to come and see this one, to see if it’s all right.”

  The boys didn’t ask about Eadie’s afternoon and she never told them. It was private, between Phoebe McNames and herself.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  March 1814

  The weather is warmer. Snow’s almost gone. Father is worried that the American raids will begin again. I visited Lucy today because the Tuckers were making maple sugar. She showed me all the wool she has spun this winter. A lot more than me. And it’s finer, too. Mine is all knobbly. Mother says that it will do to knit into a blanket. Mrs. Tucker showed me her big china bowl, all white with fancy writing and coloured flowers painted on it. It has two handles. The writing says “Elizabeth and James Tucker, Dymock, Glos, 1809.” Their friends gave it to them when they left England. I am going to show Lucy our six silver spoons. Mother kept them tucked in her dress all the time we were travelling here. One spoon is very special. It is a marriage spoon made for Father and Mother. It was made in England, before they came to America. It was made by a lady silversmith in London called Hester Bateman. “Hester Bateman.” That’s a lovely name. It says “HB” on the back of the spoon. The front of it is all decorated with rows of tiny marks and initials A and R W. Annie and Robert Wareham. My name is the same as Mother’s.

  The next day, the telephone woke Eadie up. It was John, the builder. He said that he wouldn’t be coming. He and his son, Brad, had to go to a funeral. Eadie said sympathetic things, like she had heard her parents say on such occasions. “Sorry about that, John. See you later. When you’re ready.”

  She looked at her watch: 9:00 a.m. Her parents had both gone to work. She pounded on Sam’s door. “Get up, Sam, this is our big chance!”

  “Chance for what?”

  “To get into the cellar!”

  While Sam got up, Eadie phoned Ben to come right over and to bring his metal detector.

  Breakfast forgotten, Eadie found two flashlights in the kitchen and three shovels in the garage. When Sam came downstairs, she got him to help to bring a ladder in from the garage. Everything was ready when Ben arrived.

  Sam and Eadie explained to Ben that the builder wasn’t coming.

  “But your parents said —”

  “Yes, we know,” Sam interrupted. “But this is gold, Ben. Gold! They won’t be mad at us if we find the gold. We know our shed-room is a pioneer cabin now.”

  “And that someone hid silver spoons in the cellar,” Eadie added.

  Ben shrugged and picked up his metal detector. “It’s on your head.”

  “Here we go.” Sam lifted the trap door.

  Sam went down into the cellar first. Eadie and Ben passed him the shovels. Then Eadie went down. Ben went down the ladder last, with his metal detector.

  The cellar was cool and dark and damp. They paused to listen. Rustling noises? Mice?

  “This is spooky.” Ben hadn’t been down in the cellar before.

  “We’ve got to look everywhere,” Sam said. “That’s why we need the shovels. We’ve got to poke into the corners, and maybe even scrape the floor a little, in case some earth from the walls has fallen dow
n in the last two hundred years.”

  The twins turned and looked at Ben. They waited.

  Ben switched on the metal detector.

  Nothing. Not a peep.

  They couldn’t believe it.

  “Well,” Sam said, “we haven’t really poked around yet. Let’s dig a little.”

  Cautiously, they began to feel their way around the cellar. Eadie held the flashlights while Ben swept his metal detector back and forth across the cellar floor. They explored the cellar more thoroughly than their father had. They walked into curtains of spider webs and stirred up years of dust with every step.

  Nothing.

  “Do you think the batteries are dead?” Sam asked hopefully.

  “Nope. I checked them before I came over.”

  “Let’s climb up the ladder and poke in beside all those beams in the ceiling,” Eadie suggested. “Maybe they didn’t hide anything in a box in the ground. Maybe they hid coins, scattered them around, under the beams. Or, maybe the silver spoons.”

  They went back and forth, checking for anything tucked in beside the beams, sweeping the floor methodically with the metal detector. Nothing.

  “Let’s dig,” said Eadie. “Like archaeologists! A hole in each corner and one in the middle. If there’s anything here, it’ll be close enough for the metal detector to beep.”

  Again, Eadie held the flashlights while the boys dug holes. Even though the cellar was cool, they were sweating. But their shovels felt nothing hard, like a paymaster’s box. And the metal detector was silent.

  “Not even a rusty, old nail,” Sam said. He threw down his shovel in disgust.

  “I can’t believe it,” Eadie said, staring at the holes. “We know this shed-room was a log cabin. I was convinced that it was here in 1812. I thought we might find more scraps of paper with writing, too. And what about the silver spoons?”