by Nick Thacker
Reggie looked at Derrick to see if he was trying to give Ben any unspoken signals. Maybe he didn’t want to reveal their hand, or perhaps Cornelia wouldn’t approve of their mission.
She turned to her grandson. “Do you mean the Borrachero?”
Reggie’s eyes widened. “You — you know about that, too?”
At this, she threw her head all the way back and laughed, a truly infectious laughter that made Reggie’s smile grow wider than it had in the past year.
“You are no better than Roger,” she said, her voice broken through tears of laughter. “When will you learn? I know everything there is to know about the Expedition.”
“Except where this plant — the treasure — really is,” Derrick said.
“Well, there is no treasure, my boy. I’ve told you that before.”
“But you just read us the letter —”
“I just read you a letter, and it is real. From Thomas Jefferson himself to his young protege, Meriwether Lewis. And he is as cryptic as ever, I’ll admit. It would appear that he is hiding something, trying to sell the intrigue he captures with his words. But as I have explained before, there is nothing out there but false hopes and lies.”
“Explain.”
She sighed. “Long ago, when Jefferson first had Meriwether hide this ‘treasure,’ there may well have been something worth dying for. But let’s say it’s this plant, the ‘Borrachero,’ from South America. This plant would have survived for how long out of the ground? Maybe a week? A month?”
“But it made it to the Spanish Fleet, didn’t it? How long was that journey?”
“Perhaps not long enough that the plant would perish. Perhaps the chemicals in the plant made it all the way to Jefferson himself, as the legend has it. But that was over two-hundred years ago — what plants can live that long?”
Ben nodded. “Makes sense. But maybe it was re-planted. Stuck in the ground somewhere on the Lewis and Clark trail where it could survive and thrive.”
Cornelia smiled at Ben. “Yes, that may have worked. But don’t you think we’d have heard about it before? This plant that can turn people into zombies? This is America, my boy. That trail has been walked and traveled ever since that expedition, and there are cities along its rivers. Anything they wanted to hide on the trail has long since been found.”
Joshua stood up and started pacing. “Yeah, you’re right. Anything obviously hidden on the trail would have been found already, but — maybe, I’m just guessing here — what if it wasn’t on the trail?”
“What do you mean?” Reggie asked. “What if the treasure is somewhere off the Lewis and Clark trail?”
“Well, yeah,” Joshua said. “Why would you hide something that’s meant to stay hidden on a trail that you know will be traveled by thousands of people after you’re gone?”
“But she’s right,” Reggie said. “Anything organic would be nothing but dust by now. There’d be no sense trying to hide something like a plant, or a flower, and they would have known that. Heck, I’d bet half the specimens Lewis and Clark sent back to Washington were decomposed upon their arrival.”
“Even if they’d preserved them?”
“They wouldn’t have been able to preserve a massive amount of anything, and if Jefferson’s treasure really is some sort of plant like this Borrachero thing, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of hiding it unless there was a lot of it.”
Reggie looked around at the others in the group. He could feel that they were all starting to agree, and that was dangerous. To agree in a situation meant they weren’t thinking outside the box. They weren’t solving the problem creatively, just tossing around the obvious reasons for ‘why it can’t be done.’ It was a treasure hunter’s fallacy, the greatest threat to the profession. ‘Experts’ told them something was impossible, and after a lifetime of failed expeditions, you started to believe them.
But Reggie wanted the truth more than he wanted the treasure. The treasure may be a lie, but the truth was out there.
“So maybe it wasn’t a plant,” he said. “Maybe it’s as simple as Derrick thought originally: just an empty box, meant to throw people off, or to buy time. It would make sense politically, for that time.”
“But it wouldn't make sense to Jefferson,” Ben said. “Everything these two have told us about the man says that he wouldn’t waste time — and money — on something as frivolous as that.”
“So what about Daris’ idea she shared on TV?” Reggie asked. “That it is Spanish silver and gold, mined from South America and taken by the conquistadors?”
“Silver doesn’t decompose,” Ben said.
“No, and if you had enough of it, it’d be worth hiding,” Derrick said. “And sending it with Lewis and Clark would have been a brilliant move — get it out of sight, away from the leaders of the new nation, and hidden in the land you now own. Land that’s not inhabited by many people.”
Cornelia’s eyes twinkled again as she listened. “See, now you are thinking like a treasure hunter. Of course — why would you hide it on the trail?”
“Because that’s the only way to know where to find it,” Reggie said.
“Unless you have the map,” she quickly replied. “And it seems as though my boy Roger does, in fact, have the map.”
“But we don’t know where it’s pointing. We have no idea how to read it.”
“Let’s see it again,” she said, nudging up to the dining room table. Reggie leaned in closer and watched as Derrick flipped the page to the first clue. He read it aloud.
Chapter FIFTY-FOUR
“CHRISTMAS EVE, 1805. WE ARE weary, yet spirits are high. Men are unsure what tomorrow might bring, yet optimism rings true. They cannot fear what they do not know, and yet what I know I do not either fear.”
Cornelia Derrick’s thin, white eyebrows rose and fell as her grandson read the first inscription. Her giant mound of hair bobbed up and down like a buoy as she nodded. When he’d finished, she looked up.
“That’s Fort Clatsop, just down the road. Are you planning on visiting the park?”
Derrick shook his head. “No, Grandma. I don’t think it’s going to give us anything we don’t already have.”
“I would agree,” she said. “I’ve been there about forty times, and I’ve hiked the entire area, including —” she lowered her head and grinned — “the off-limits areas.”
Derrick chuckled. “As you’ve said before. No, I don’t think there’s anything there besides tourists and souvenirs.”
“There wouldn't be,” she said. “If Lewis was to hide something, the last place I imagine it would be is inside — or near — a fort they’d wintered in. The dangers of the other men finding it would be too great, and the obviousness of the hiding spot would be, well, disappointing.”
“True. So it’s not at Clatsop,” Joshua said. Then, facing Cornelia, he added, “if it’s real.”
She smiled. “I can believe what I want, and you can believe what you want. What’s important to me is that you believe what you believe, and don’t let anyone take that away from you.”
Derrick smiled again, placing his hand on his grandmother’s. “Thank you. Let’s say you did believe. Where do you think we should start looking?”
“Well, you’ve got the treasure map right there in front of you, my boy. What’s the next page say?”
Derrick read it aloud after he’d turned the page. “Mar 23. Toward the Cottonwoods, where the unique three lay.”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s what I said,” Reggie said. “Seems like a lousy clue.”
Cornelia wore a sly expression on her face, and her eyes darted toward the three-ring binder sitting nearby on the table.
“What is it?” Reggie asked. “I know that look — you know something we don’t?”
“I do,” she said, reaching for the binder, which was still open to the Jefferson letter. “I still haven’t read the back of the letter to you.”
“Wait — the
re’s a back?” Derrick asked. “Why didn’t you — why didn’t you say anything?”
“I like the thrill of it all, my boy,” she said. “Now stop yammering and help me with this.”
She slid the binder toward Derrick and he flipped the page protector over. From across the table Reggie could see a postscript inscription on the top of the page. He was intrigued, but he kept silent and waited impatiently for Derrick to read it.
“P.S.: please inform me of your chosen locations for the objects which I will bestow upon you upon our next meeting. I wish you to record the location and approximate bearing of your decided caches, accurate to a measure that may be followed successfully by later explorers.”
Derrick blinked a few times, then read the last sentence Jefferson had written on the back of the letter. “I trust this information will be kept between only this house and yourself.”
Ben sat back. “Wow, so Jefferson explicitly asked Lewis to write down the locations of these caches, keep them secret, and tell no one but Jefferson? Ms. — Cornelia — I’m sorry, but how can you not believe there’s a treasure?”
She laughed at this. “You see, my boy, there was always a question in my mind. Always. But I never had this journal in front of me. I never had any information that made me believe there was, in fact, a treasure, and I came to the conclusion long ago that this letter was not from Jefferson, but nothing more than a hoax.”
“But now, with the journal?”
“It does present an intriguing possibility,” she said. “All of the other journals have been catalogued and well-documented. They have been translated, reviewed, and placed in order of chronological creation. There are no holes, no gaps in time, that would allow anyone else to insert the idea that there is a treasure — a missing journal.”
“Makes sense,” Joshua said. “And that’s how the APS has kept this journal secret for so long. Still, you admitted yourself that there not only wasn’t a treasure, but that it’s nowhere near Fort Clatsop. But the next clue just about forces it to be nearby.”
“Really?” she asked. “How’s that?”
“It’s about Fort Clatsop, the day they left at the beginning of spring, 1806.”
Derrick nodded along, then read the next page. “March 23. Toward the Cottonwoods, where the unique three lay.”
She frowned, looking over the tiny journal page as her grandson read. Ben hadn’t been sure until that moment how well the old lady’s vision had held up over time, but he was now. She could apparently read every word of the chicken scratch without even leaning forward more than a few inches.
“You didn’t read it correctly,” she said. “You read ‘March,’ but it says ‘Mar.’ Mar, period.”
“Right. A shortened form of March, correct?” Derrick asked.
“No, not in this case.”
Ben stared at the woman. What was she about to reveal?
“Remember, Lewis was not the best speller. None of the men were, and we have had to go back and translate into proper English much of the entries they wrote. They were inconsistent with their spelling and descriptions as well. But this word, Mar., is likely spelled correctly, but inconsistent with what we know of the current vernacular.”
“You mean it’s not meant to be March at all?”
“Correct. The word Mar. in this case, if you’re asking me, is actually Marias.”
Ben looked at Reggie and Joshua, the excitement building within him. He knew what it meant, and he was surprised that he hadn’t considered it already. When he realized that the other three men around him were still in the dark, he spoke up. “Marias? As in Maria’s River?”
“Yes,” she said. “Maria’s — named by Lewis for his neice — is a very important river to the Lewis and Clark expedition.”
“It’s a river in Montana,” Ben said. “In Blackfeet Indian territory. It’s a ways north of Yellowstone, and I fished it a few times back in the day.”
“That is right,” she said. “And it’s important because it’s the location of the ‘Marias Expedition’ Lewis led with a small group of men on their way back from the Pacific.”
“An expedition within an expedition,” Derrick said. “Seems fitting.”
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Lewis and Clark actually split up in early July of 1806, in order to ‘cover more land,’ as the history books describe. They each took some men and went their separate ways, Lewis traveling north and Clark south. Lewis cut across Montana to intersect the Marias River, where he spent a couple weeks in mid to late July. He was, purportedly, there to determine whether or not the river flowed as far north as the 50th parallel, which would have increased the amount of American land the Louisiana Purchase had given Jefferson.”
“It is perfect,” Ben said. “It fits, it fits everything perfectly. The Marias starts right in the mountains, way up in the Rockies. If you wanted to hide something…”
“Then that’s where I’d hide it,” Cornelia declared. “Take as few men as possible, run up to a far-off point that hasn’t been fully explored, and then leave clues that can be interpreted only if you’re looking in the right place.”
“And I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before,” Ben said. Everyone turned to look at him, waiting. “The clue — it’s talking about the ‘three cottonwoods,’ right? The three unique cottonwoods?”
“Yeah,” Reggie said. “You know which three Lewis was talking about?”
“I do,” Ben said. “It’s been right in front of me the whole time. I worked at Yellowstone, so I should have known it. I read a book about Rocky Mountain plants earlier this year, and —”
Reggie burst out laughing. “You read a book about plants?”
“It talked about animals a little too,” Ben said. “The point is, there are different types of Cottonwood tree. Three distinct species.”
Cornelia started nodding along, her eyes twinkling again.
“Those three types all live around the United States, but they only all grow in the same geographic location… in Montana.”
“An astute realization,” Cornelia said. “I remember reading in one of the Lewis and Clark biographies that even Meriwether Lewis came to the same realization. He wrote in one of the journals that all three species grew together in those foothills of the mountains, unlike anywhere else.”
“That’s brilliant,” Joshua said. “That’s exactly it. So somewhere on the Marias River, in the foothills, is where the first clue’s pointing to.”
“Wait a minute,” Derrick said. “What about the 23? It says right here, Mar. 23. If ‘Mar’ means ‘Marias,’ then what does the ‘23’ mean, if not ‘March 23?’”
“It’s the location,” Reggie said. “23… miles?”
“23 miles from the Marias?”
Cornelia shrugged. “Could be. Lewis and his men camped between 20 and 30 miles from the foot of the mountains,” Cornelia said. “It is written they were in Blackfeet Indian country, the mountains visible in the distance.”
“So they were on the Marias, camping out, about 23 miles from the mountains.” Ben sighed out of relief. “That narrows it down. If this is accurate, and there really is something out there, I’d say we start at the Marias River. Yeah?”
Nods all around. Cornelia’s smile lit the room. “You boys have been good to me,” she said. “I won’t forget that. I don’t drink, but my late husband left some sort of booze behind, and it’s been sitting in the cabinet for twenty years. I don’t know if this stuff goes bad, but do any of you want some Scotch?”
Ben caught Reggie’s eye as the woman spoke. He almost laughed out loud. Reggie, thankfully, spoke up. “You — you have Scotch that’s over twenty years old? Yeah, I’d be interested in a taste.”
“Yes, and it was twenty-five years old to begin with. I’m not going to do anything with it. Why don’t you just take it?”
Chapter FIFTY-FIVE
IT HAD BEEN ALMOST A day, as far as she could tell. Julie’s legs and feet were numb, and her hands were
close behind. She’d been sitting in the exact same position, unable to move an inch, for hours. The blackness of the gymnasium had crept into her, chilling her, and even her breathing felt slow and out of sync with the rest of her body, as if she was listening in on someone else breathing.
The breaths couldn’t be coming from her.
There was no way…
She yelped, and suddenly felt a hand over her mouth.
It wasn’t my breathing I was hearing, she realized. Horrified, she blinked rapidly, trying in vain to force her eyes to add more light to the room. Instead, nothing but more blackness.
She was panicking, and it was going to take its toll on her. Whatever was about to happen, she needed strength. Willpower. Panicking sapped that from her, and she did her best to calm her breathing, but…
The stench of sweat and flesh filled her lungs, and she gagged. She could taste the hand, the hard, cracked leathery hand of a soldier.
The soldier. The one who’d tried to grope her and touch her earlier. Morrison.
“Hello, little lady,” he whispered, his voice somehow more disgusting than his hand. She gagged again, nearly choking on her tongue for fear that she might let it touch the man’s palm.
She didn’t speak — she couldn’t speak. His hand was tight on her open mouth, easily covering it and preventing her from speaking. She nearly couldn’t breathe, either, as the top of his monstrous hand was smashed next to her nostrils.
Still, she forced a breath, then another. And another. Slowly she beat the fear back into submission. The disgust, the anger — those would stay. But the fear had no place here, not now. This man wanted one thing, and that was nothing to fear.
She could fear the man in charge, Morrison’s boss, the man they called The Hawk. What was his name again? Vincent? Something ‘Garza,’ she knew. She could fear him — he was an organized, purposeful man, with a plan that involved tying her to a chair in the middle of an abandoned gymnasium, where screaming wouldn’t be heard, and men like Morrison could sneak up on her in the dark, and…
