[Lady Justice 04] - Lady Justice And The Avenging Angels

by Robert Thornhill

  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the little town resembled one of the ghost towns you see in old western movies. There were maybe a half-dozen occupied houses and lots of vacant lots where buildings once had been.

  Dan pointed to a little rise. “The Monegaw Hotel used to be up there. It was something.”

  “So where’s the Younger Lookout from here?”

  “I see you been doin’ your homework. It’s just down that old gravel road, toward the river.”

  We followed the road; Dan parked the truck, and we climbed a hill through the scrub oaks. I emerged from the trees, and the vista before me was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen.

  The big limestone bluff rose several hundred feet from the Osage River below. We could see the river winding through the Ozark hills for miles in each direction. Across the river, the flat plain stretched as far as the eye could see.

  “Mighty pretty, ain’t it?” Dan said.

  “It’s absolutely awesome.”

  As we proceeded along the top of the bluff, I noticed hundreds of names and dates carved in the soft limestone, some dating back into the 1800s. As we stood on a promontory of rock, I could almost imagine the Indian chief Monegaw standing there watching for the soldiers coming from Fort Osage. Then I envisioned the Youngers standing watch, looking for posse hot on their trail. The huge rock bluff stood as a silent monument to the glorious past of these Ozark hills.

  “Where are the caves I read about?”

  “They’re all over the place. There’s some big ones right under this bluff. There’s another trail that goes along the base of the bluff just above the river. There’s lots of caves there. Most of ’em folks know about, but I bet there’s plenty that no one’s seen for years.”

  I spotted an old structure on the far riverbank. “What’s that over there?”

  “That’s what’s left of the old bridge that used to cross the Osage. Been gone a long time.”

  I was about to step around a rock when Dan yelled, “Stop! Don’t move!”

  I looked down, and a snake was coiled a few inches from where I was about to step.

  “Copperhead. You don’t want one of those guys hanging off your leg.”

  “Poison. Right?”

  “Yep, we got cottonmouths by the water and copperheads and a few timber rattlers in the woods. I’d back away slowly if I were you.”

  I did as Dan suggested and took another look at the beautiful valley. Reluctantly, we left the beautiful spot, and as we drove back to town, visions of the glory days of the little village of Monegaw filled my mind.

  Chapter 21

  I paid Dan his guide fee, and he dropped us off at the cheese store, where we had left our car. It was just about noon, and I remembered a little cafe on the Osceola Square. We were both starving, so we headed back to town.

  The cafe was called the Bus Stop because that’s what the building used to be the place where the Greyhound bus stopped to pick up passengers.

  The place was nearly full.

  A little old lady who must have been at least eighty met us with menus and the greeting, “Sit anywhere you want.”

  All eyes in the restaurant were on the two strangers who had darkened the doors. I had noticed on our two trips to the little burg that people of color were few and far between, so these two strangers, one of them black, drew the attention of the diner’s regulars.

  I looked at the menu and was about to make my selection when I saw the special written in chalk on a blackboard: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, applesauce, and a roll, $5.50.

  It was a no-brainer.

  The little lady took our order, and while we were waiting to be served, I surveyed the local crowd. Most seemed to be farmers, and I heard bits of conversation about cows, fences, and machinery of various kinds.

  Those that weren’t talking farming were talking fishing, and the words cat and crappie came up often. Two guys in suits and ties sat at a table by the door. From the bits of conversation from that table, I figured they were from the bank on the corner. Another gentleman joined them at their table, and they addressed him as Judge. Gathered in the little restaurant was a microcosm of the citizens of St. Clair County.

  Our dinners arrived, and we weren’t disappointed. The chicken was tender with just the right amount of crunchy coating on the outside. The green beans had been simmering for hours with bits of bacon, and the gravy was the best I had ever tasted. This definitely was the best comfort food I had ever eaten outside of Mel’s Diner. We attacked our chicken with a passion.

  I noticed throughout the meal that one patron, obviously a farmer, kept looking in our direction. He finished before us, paid his bill, and gave us one long last look before walking out the door.

  Willie was just sopping up the last bit of gravy on his plate with his last bite of roll when I popped the question. “You ready?”

  “Ready fo’ what?”

  “Ready to go treasure hunting?”

  A big grin spread across his face. “I’se born ready!”

  We stopped at a hardware store on our way into town and bought supplies, rope, a flashlight, gloves, a couple of bottles of water, and some snacks. Back at the car, I popped the trunk and pulled out two musty old backpacks that I used to take on hiking trips and loaded our supplies.

  We were ready to roll.

  I retraced the route that Dan had taken us back to The Forks and pulled off beside the gun battle historical marker. I retrieved the map from the Zink book and Willie’s parchment map from the knapsack and compared the two.

  As noted before, the two were quite similar. Both showed the old McFerrin cabin, The Forks, and the old logging trail that wound through the timber to Monegaw.

  “Willie, it’s a long way back up E to B, over to YY, and into Monegaw. In McFerrins’ day, this old logging road was the direct route to Monegaw.”

  “Yeah, but Dan said it warn’t der no mo’.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  The weeds were tall, and the brush was thick. We ventured a few yards into the thicket, and I heard Willie yelp.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow! Walt, get me outta dis!”

  I found my friend snarled in the middle of a wild blackberry patch, the stringy, thorny vines clinging to his legs and back.

  When he was finally free, he declared, “Ain’t no way I’m trompin’ trew dees woods.”

  I was inclined to agree with him.

  Back at the car, I looked at the maps again. The X that was on Willie’s map was actually on the Monegaw side of the timber, close to the wiggly line marked Osage. I thought it would be cool to retrace his family’s old route to the treasure, but nature just wasn’t cooperating.

  We drove back to Monegaw and climbed the hill to Younger’s Lookout. Again, we stood in awe at the magnificent vista before us. I pulled out the map again and noticed something I hadn’t seen before. There was a solid line across the wiggly line marked Osage.

  I pointed to the old piling on the far side of the river. “I’ll bet this line represents that old bridge. It’s gone now, but it was sure there when this map was drawn. And look, the X is to the northwest of where the old bridge used to be.”

  We looked behind us, away from the river. The ground was mostly rock with lots of gnarled scrub oak and lots of green moss. It wasn’t nearly as thick as the old timber road.

  “Let’s take a look back there.”

  There was a trail of sorts that led from the bluff back into the thicker scrub, and we followed it single file. I was in the lead with Willie close on my heels.

  We had ventured several hundred yards along the trail when something a few yards from us burst out of the underbrush. Willie let out a yelp and grabbed my backpack. I watched as a long-eared cottontail rabbit zigzagged across the trail, up
a small hill, and into a hole.

  “Dat ting skeered de bejeezus out o’ me!”

  “Willie, it was just a rabbit.”

  “Well, it was a skeery one!”

  I looked back to the trail that the rabbit had taken, and the hole in the rock caught my eye. Something clicked in the back of my mind, and suddenly I remembered an outing Maggie and I had taken to the Fantastic Caverns just north of Springfield.

  The place was billed as the only ride-through cave in Missouri. We had taken the tram ride through the beautiful cave and marveled at all of the glorious underground formations.

  The thing that clicked in my mind was that the cave was found sometime back in the 1800s by a farmer hunting with his dog. The dog chased some creature into a hole, and that hole turned out to be a fabulous geological discovery.

  The hole that the rabbit had entered was about the size of a basketball. The soil around it was soft, so we pulled our gloves out of the backpack and started digging. The soil gave way to loose rocks. We removed those and the larger rocks that were behind them. After about fifteen minutes of digging, we had a hole about two feet in diameter.

  I retrieved the flashlight from the backpack and shined it into the hole. “Willie! There’s a passageway! It’s not very big, but it looks like it gets bigger farther in. Are you game?”

  Willie took the light and peered into the darkness. “I ain’t neva been in no hole befo’.”

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything!”

  We pawed at the entrance for another five minutes, and soon the hole was plenty big enough to squeeze through.

  I looked at Willie. “Here we go, partner.”

  I crawled through first, with Willie right behind me. I was forced to wiggle on my belly for the first ten or fifteen yards, but then it opened wide enough that I could proceed on my hands and knees.

  It was really creepy in there. I would crawl a few yards, stop, shine the light ahead, and crawl a few yards more. When the light was off, the cave was in utter darkness. You just don’t realize how dark that dark can be until you’re buried beneath the earth.

  But my greatest fear wasn’t the dark it was what might be living there. I hate spiders more than anything else, and visions of hairy behemoths hanging in silken webs waiting for prey to kill and feed to their children flashed before my eyes.

  Fortunately, my fears were ungrounded. I found no giant arachnids, which was a good thing, because with Willie close behind in the narrow cave, there was no way to go but forward.

  We crawled another twenty yards, and when I stretched out my hand to feel the cave floor in front of me, there was nothing there. I flipped on the flashlight and saw that our little hole had opened up into an underground room. The floor was four feet below and the ceiling another five feet above.

  I wiggled through and dropped to the floor, with Willie close behind. It felt really good to stand erect. I shined the flashlight beam around the room. It was circular, probably twenty feet in diameter, and another passage, big enough to walk through, was on the far wall.

  We headed that direction and were about to enter the far passage when a beam from the flashlight caught an old burlap sack lying on the floor. I stopped short, and Willie ran into my back.

  I pointed to the sack, and we both just stood there staring. We regained our composure and bent to examine our new discovery.

  I opened the bag, and the first thing that came out was a Colt single action revolver followed by a box of ammunition. Next came a flask filled with liquid and a tin with the dried remains of some kind of biscuits. The last thing out was a small drawstring bag with the words Iron Mountain Railroad on the side.

  I opened the bag and withdrew a stack of old bills. The currency was much larger than our dollars today. The denominations were mostly one and two dollars, but there were a few fives, tens, and one fifty.

  I looked for a date. One note was dated 1862 with the words United States Note.

  On the back were the words: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, except duties on imports and interest on the public debt, and is exchangeable for US six-per-cent, twenty-year bonds, redeemable at the pleasure of the United States after five years.”

  We were speechless. It wasn’t exactly the treasure trove we had hoped for, but these were certainly valuable historical artifacts.

  “Willie, I’ll bet I know what this is.”

  “Wot’s dat?”

  “The James and Younger boys used to use the lookout to watch for the law. I’ll bet this was a stash they had ready to go for when they had to make a fast getaway. There’s a gun and ammo, food, and I’ll bet there’s some Ozark moonshine in that flask, and enough money to tide them over till their next job.”

  We were basking in the glow of our discovery when we heard a dull roar and a rumble coming from the passageway we had just left. We felt a rush of wind followed by a cloud of dust and debris.

  I shone the light on Willie and saw in his face the horror I was feeling myself. Someone had followed us and set off an explosion, sealing the entrance to the cave.

  We were trapped!

  Chapter 22

  How could I have been so foolish?

  I knew the Avenging Angels were based somewhere in these hills, and I knew they knew who I was. After all, they had tried to kill me. I guess I was not so much different than many before me who had let dreams of lost treasure cloud their vision.

  When the dust finally settled in the dark cave, Willie said, “Dis is bad, ain’t it? We’s stuck down here in dis hole, an’ nobody in dis whol’ world knows where we is ‘cept de guys what put us here.”

  I tried to put a positive spin on our situation. “Hey, we’ve got flashlights; we’ve got water and some snacks we’re going to be all right.”

  Willie must have sensed the lack of conviction in my voice. “Yeah, sho we is.”

  I knew it would be futile, but I had to try. I pulled my cell phone from the knapsack and flipped it open. Naturally, there were no bars. I shined the light around our underground prison again, taking stock of our situation, and tried to formulate a plan.

  “Well, we know it’s useless going back the way we came, and we’re wasting time just sitting here, so I vote we see where this other passage goes.”

  “I’m wit you,” Willie replied.

  We stuffed the outlaws’ loot into our packs and headed into the new passage. We walked for what seemed like an hour. Sometimes the passage was wide and tall; sometimes it narrowed, and we had to squeeze through sideways. I thought I heard something, so we stopped and listened. It was running water.

  “This could be a break,” I said. “If that is running water, it has to come out somewhere. Maybe we can follow it.”

  Another twenty-five yards ahead, we found the water. A small underground stream poured through a hole in the rock wall, ran across the floor of our passageway, and disappeared into another hole on the far side.

  Willie looked at the water disappearing into the wall to who-knew-where. “Ain’t no way I’m goin’ in dere!”

  “Me either,” I replied.

  I feared we had come to a dead end. I flashed the beam around the passageway and saw another hole about six feet off the floor above the rushing water. The hole was just low enough that we could get a good grip standing on our tiptoes, so I climbed into the hole first; Willie passed the knapsacks to me and followed.

  The new passage turned out to be similar to the one we were on, but it was a little disconcerting listening to the water gushing a few yards under our feet. The passage had a gradual incline. After we followed it a ways, the sound of the water disappeared.

  We came to another large room about the size of the room where we found the loot. I stepped in and felt something squishy underfoot.

  I shined the ligh
t on the floor and discovered that it was covered with white slimy stuff about an inch thick. I directed the beam upward, and the entire ceiling was alive with gray, furry creatures flexing webbed wings.

  “Holy Jesus!” Willie exclaimed. “What’s dat?”

  Willie’s shriek and my flashlight must have been just enough to arouse the creatures. There was a blur, a whoosh, and the sound of a hundred wings beating as the gray cloud swarmed out of the room and through the passage ahead of us.

  “Bats, Willie. They’re nocturnal. They sleep in caves during the day and come out to hunt at night.”

  “Hunt what? I hope de’s ain’t de kind o’ bats dat suck yo’ blood!”

  “No, most of the bats in Missouri eat fruit or insects. They’re not a bother to humans unless one has rabies.”

  Willie looked at the goop on the floor. “So if dey’s bats, I spose I’se standin’ in bat poop.”

  “Yep, it’s called guano.”

  “Well, what I wants to know is how we guano get out o’ here.”

  It was good to see that Willie hadn’t lost his sense of humor. “Actually, finding these little guys is a good thing.”

  “How you figger dat?”

  “When they flew out of this room, they didn’t go in the direction we came from. They went through there,” I said, pointing to the passage ahead. “They wouldn’t have gone that way unless there was another opening somewhere. Let’s go.”

  We plodded on through the cave and noticed that it began rising steadily upward. The passage made a sharp curve, and when we rounded the corner, something felt different.

  “Willie, do you feel that?” I felt a light puff of breeze touch my cheek, and the dank smell of the cave gave way to a clean, fresh scent. “I think we’re almost out of here.”

  Another fifty feet ahead, I could see a faint glow. We reached the source of the light and found ourselves in the mouth of an opening in the side of a cliff face.

  Night had fallen, but a three-quarter moon illuminated the scene below us. We sat for a moment, taking deep breaths of the sweet Ozark air. I clicked on the flashlight and saw that it was about fifteen feet to the forest floor below.