“Yes, sir!”
“Steele, you and Rickert come with me. Just bring your rifles and leave the rest of your gear here. Frank will see it is taken care of for y’all.”
After detailing Sgts. Steele and Rickert to complete a task for him, Francis stood off to the side watching as the other sergeants started to load the train with their horses. His men were working together for the first time. Over the coming weeks he hoped they would mesh well with each other, forming a hard working unit. Their success depended on it. The South needed them to succeed so they could continue to wage their fight against the hated Yankees. Unfortunately for this group of men the fight would not go quite as planned.
Summer, 2011
7
Clues Uncovered.
“Never take counsel of your fears.”
General Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, CSA
It all took place so fast that Paul was not sure what had happened when the object fell on him, but now as he examined himself he saw he had not been bitten or injured by what had fallen. At first, he thought it had been an animal or a wasp’s nest, but it was neither. Now as he got up off the ground, he saw what he had been looking for earlier.
As Paul moved closer to what he had tossed away when it fell on him, he saw the rest of the bones he had been thinking about earlier. It was not the bones that now shocked him; what shocked him was what was lying there with the bones. Lying on the ground was a frayed and tattered Confederate soldier’s uniform which apparently belonged to a soldier who had hidden himself within the tree many years ago. Shocked to think he had just found the remains of a long dead Confederate soldier, he stared at what was on the ground in front of him. As he did, he quickly did the math in his head and calculated what he had found had likely been inside the massive Live Oak tree for almost one hundred and fifty years. It would take weeks for him to put all of the pieces of his discovery together, but he quickly made a connection between the tattered clothes and the rusted bayonet; they had all belonged to this soldier. As he looked at the collection of bones, some of which were still partially entangled within the old uniform, he also saw within the base of the tree a piece of rotted rope, a saber, and what appeared to once have been a hat. Paul quickly looked around to see if anyone else was now present in the woods with him. He saw no one.
Stunned by what he had just found, Paul began to question what had occurred and how a body could have possibly remained hidden within a tree for so many years. His law enforcement experience told him this was not possible, especially after a body’s skin and muscle had decomposed and deteriorated. “How the heck did this soldier stay hidden for so many years? And how come animals and humidity did not do more damage to the clothes and bones?” Paul did not immediately have any answers for the questions he asked himself. He then attempted to try and make some sense out of what he had found.
Crawling into the base of the large Live Oak on his hands and knees, Paul cautiously looked up into the dark interior of the tree. Summoning his courage, as he was still afraid of being bit by an animal hiding within the tree, he reached up inside the tree and grabbed onto the first object he felt. Tugging on it, he pulled down two sections of rotted rope that appeared to have been tied to something inside the tree. Two more similar attempts of reaching into the interior of the tree turned up nothing else. “I bet something else is up there, but I just cannot see, it’s too dark.” The tree’s cavity easily extended upwards for at least eight feet, but Paul could not see past the first few feet due to the lack of light inside the tree. His last two attempts at trying to find anything else hidden inside the tree produced little except for a long scratch on his right forearm. Looking at the scratch on his arm caused him to have a thought as to why the soldier may have stayed hidden for so long. “I bet some of the clothing, perhaps the bones as well, got hung up on the inside of the tree as it is obviously splintered pretty bad in there.” Reaching into his back pocket, he used his handkerchief to wipe the small amount of blood off his arm.
Sitting back down on the ground, Paul began looking at the tattered Confederate uniform and the rotted pieces of rope he had found. It took him several minutes of thinking about what the rope had possibly been used for, but then he theorized the soldier had perhaps used it to somehow hide himself inside the tree. “It’s almost like the soldier may have been hiding from someone. Sounds kind of crazy, but who knows. Maybe he put the rock inside the tree so he could climb a little higher. Who knows, but it’s very weird though.”
As he continued to inspect the items he found that afternoon, items the tree had previously refused to surrender for almost one hundred and fifty years, Paul continued to search for answers to the many questions racing through his head. While the clothing was tattered, he easily identified the items as being a shirt, a pair of badly ripped pants, and a blouse. The blouse was easily identifiable as part of a Confederate uniform. “Perhaps this soldier was a Confederate officer? I doubt too many regular soldiers wore this type of blouse.” Then, despite the many dead bodies he had handled at the various crime scenes he had supervised, Paul felt a chill run down his back as he began to inspect the items even closer.
Starting with the pants, besides noticing one of the pant legs had been slit open from the bottom of the leg to almost up to the knee area, Paul found nothing except for one long bone which had gotten caught inside one of the legs of the pants. Reaching inside the pant leg, he simply pulled the bone out and set it aside for now. After realizing the pants had no pockets to them, he placed them off to the side with the bone he had found. Then he picked up the tattered remains of a shirt, one which still had two buttons sewn on it. After looking at the shirt for a couple of moments, he set the shirt aside as well.
As Paul placed the shirt down on the ground, he then remembered as these items had fallen on him that something fairly hard had struck his head when he was attempting to back out of the tree. Looking around on the ground he tried to identify what had struck him, but he could not tell for sure what it was.
Now turning his attention to the uniform blouse, Paul saw it was in relatively good shape except for three small holes in the left shoulder area. Over the years it had become stained from insect droppings and covered to some extent with bits of tree bark and dead insects. Looking at the small holes gave him the impression they likely had been caused by insects eating away at the cloth. As he picked the blouse up off the ground, besides seeing that it was also covered with almost one hundred and fifty years of windblown dust, he sensed it weighed far more than what it should. He quickly realized the blouse was about to reveal items which had been hidden within it since the day the soldier had climbed up into the tree. Reaching into the partially torn left exterior pocket, one still fastened shut by a button, Paul found three ten dollar gold coins, each of them minted in 1861. He could not believe what he had found. The coins were in excellent condition, but obviously dirty from their time being hidden in the blouse. Carefully he placed the coins in the left front pocket of the beige cargo shorts he was wearing. “What else could be hidden in the other pockets I wonder? More coins perhaps?” Checking the right front exterior pocket he found nothing.
Reaching into the left interior pocket of the blouse, Paul removed a dirt-stained brownish colored liquor bottle. Briefly examining the bottle gave him the thought it looked to be one that had once held about a pint of liquid. Remarkably the flask style bottle still had the cork in its neck. He gave the bottle a shake and heard something inside of it, but made no attempt to open it. Carefully he placed the bottle on top of the pants lying on the ground by his feet. Resuming his search of the blouse pockets, he found another bottle inside the right interior pocket. This bottle was slightly larger than the first one. While stained and faded from time, it appeared to have been bluish green in its original color. Looking at the bottle, he saw it had some type of cloth stuck into its fairly wide neck, apparently replacing the original cork that had
likely been lost. As he had with the first bottle, Paul also detected something was inside the second bottle when he shook it, but like the first one he made no attempt to look inside it.
Next Paul picked up what appeared to be the remnants of the soldier’s hat, but it was in such bad condition that he was not even sure it was a hat he was looking at. “I want to say it looks like a kepi hat. I know Confederate officers wore them during the war, but it’s in terrible shape, I’m really not even sure if this is a hat or not.” He placed the hat on the ground and then picked up the pants again. As he looked at the pants, Paul saw there was no belt that went with the pants. “Had some of the rope been used as a belt I wonder?”
The object he immediately took an interest in was the soldier’s saber that now lay on the ground near the base of the tree. As he picked the saber up, he saw it had remained in very good condition. Paul’s first impression, due to the size of the saber, was it appeared to be the type a cavalry officer would have used during the war. “When I first knelt down I did not see this saber, I only saw the bayonet. So where did the saber come from? Was it hanging inside the tree or was it stuck inside the soldier’s pants?” Then he realized the saber did not have a scabbard with it. He again felt a chill go down his neck. “If this saber had been hanging somehow inside this tree it could have fallen at anytime and gone through the back of my neck when I was kneeling inside of the tree. Then what would I have done?” That scary thought stayed with him for several minutes as he counted his blessings over his continued good fortune. As he counted his good fortune, he wondered if the saber had been the object which had hit him on the back of the head when the bones and clothing had fallen on him. He quickly realized how close he had come to possibly suffering a serious injury.
Paul sat back down on the ground to go over what he had discovered. As he did, he again briefly wondered if he should call the authorities to report what he had found. Pushing his thought aside, he realized this had been a chance discovery which many people, including himself, would never have believed was possible. His thoughts then turned back to the soldier whose skull and bones were now lying on the ground around him. “Who was this soldier and why did he hide inside this tree? I wonder what unit he was with and what he was doing out here in what looks to be the middle of nowhere?” As he pondered his many thoughts, he realized he had found a bayonet and a saber, but had not found any type of firearm or any parts of one. “Could it still be inside the tree or did he discard it before he took refuge within the tree?” As he sat there pondering his many questions, his eyes focused on what he thought was one of the soldier’s femur bones, the bone he had pulled out of one of the pant legs minutes earlier.
Picking up the long bone, he casually inspected its two ends. As his hands cradled the bone, he felt a smooth object stuck in the middle of it. Turning the bone over to look at what his hands had first detected, Paul could see a small round object had penetrated the bone and had become lodged in it. Around the object he saw several small radial fractures in the bone, each approximately one inch in length. As he looked closer, he could only see the top of the object as the majority of it was embedded deep within the bone. His first thought was to try and pry the object out of the bone, but then his law enforcement training kicked in and he resisted the urge to do so. “If this really is a Confederate soldier, could this object be a minie ball he had been shot with so many years ago? Was the reason he was resting, or possibly hiding inside the tree, was because he had been shot?” The totality of his discovery continued to raise more questions than he could logically deal with in one afternoon.
The loud exhaust sound made by a large boat moving quickly nearby on the river snapped Paul back into a clearer mindset from the thoughts he had been having regarding the dead soldier. Now he realized he had to make a decision on what to do with what he had found. “Should I just keep a few of these items for myself and then put the rest of them back inside the tree?” It was a question he immediately felt guilty about asking himself. Just as quickly as he had asked himself the question, he was kicking himself for even thinking along those lines. He knew that was not what he was going to do with the items he had found. Believing for some unknown reason he had been selected to find these remains, Paul knew he had to do the right thing. That meant telling someone about what he had found. But he also knew he was now curious about what he had found. The thought of uncovering something special from the past tickled his still keen investigative instincts. He just needed time, and some of the clues he had found, to help him find the answers to the thoughts he was now just starting to put together.
Picking up the skull and the bones, he placed them all, except the bone with the apparent minie ball still stuck in it, back inside the base of the tree. Along with those items, he also placed a piece of the rotted rope, the decayed hat, and the apparent sole of a boot. Paul then covered them with leaves to make it look like he had never been there.
Paul decided he would return the following morning with a flashlight to investigate the inside of the tree even further. He was sure the tree had not yet given up all of her secrets. After that he would decide who to call to report what he had found. As a Civil War buff, he wanted to make sure this soldier finally received a proper burial; leaving the soldier’s remains within a hollow tree was totally unacceptable. He did not yet know who he would call, but he knew he would make sure this soldier was properly laid to rest.
As he gathered up the bayonet, the sword, the femur bone, and the soldier’s other belongings, including the two bottles he had found within the blouse, Paul started to make his way back to his boat. As he did, he looked over his shoulders several times to make sure no one had been watching him. He could sense that his heart was beating almost as fast as his brain was racing. Both were trying to process what he had stumbled across. “What the hell have I found?” It was a question he repeated to himself several times during the afternoon.
As he walked to where he had tied the boat up, he found himself repeatedly checking his pocket to make sure he had not dropped any of the gold coins he had found. Climbing back onto the boat, Paul had the fear someone at the marina might see what he had found. As he tried to figure out how to hide the items he had found, he spied his new Igloo cooler. After draining the ice and water from his cooler, he placed the items inside the cooler to keep them from being seen. Not wanting any moisture to further damage the blouse he found, he took the time to wrap it inside the plastic bag he received when he purchased his drinks at a nearby Kangaroo Express Mini-Mart that morning. He did his best to hide the saber from view by wrapping it in the beach towel he had brought with him. Satisfied he had done his best to hide everything from view, and now perspiring heavily under the hot summer sun, he grabbed a cold bottle of water and sat down under the boat’s canopy, relaxing for the first time in a couple of hours.
“Hey, boy, whatcha all doin’ over there?”
The gruff voice startled him as he sat relaxing on the boat, his eyes closed as he drank the cold bottle of water. Quickly sitting up, Paul saw the small green and brown camouflaged colored War Eagle fishing boat first; then his eyes focused on the male operator. The operator was standing up as he steered the small fishing boat closer to his. He could see no one else was in the small boat. In his haste to hide what he had found, Paul had not taken the time to see if any other boats had been present and now one was. He quickly became upset with himself for not taking the time to look. As the boat got closer, he recognized the operator to be the same guy who had been with Chubby at the diner, the one who had glared at him. “Great, just what I need. Some pain in the butt poking around seeing what I am up to. I need to get rid of this guy quick.”
“What’s that?” Paul yelled back at Swamp. It was the name Betty had referred to him as.
As the small boat drifted closer to his, Paul saw Swamp had been trolling along the shore with two fishing lines running off the back of his boat. He had been usin
g his electric MotorGuide motor as he fished and not the Yamaha 50 horsepower motor which was mounted on the back of the boat. The electric motor allowed Swamp to troll without scaring the fish. It had also allowed him to approach Paul’s boat without being heard. Swamp then hollered to him again, asking him if he was having problems with his boat.
“Nope, no problems with either the boat or the motor, it’s running just fine.”
As Swamp’s boat drifted closer to his, Paul saw Swamp was sizing him up. “Well, y’all ain’t hunting then in there is you? That’s illegal you know.”
“Nope, I’m not hunting or fishing. I’m just relaxing on the boat, enjoying a bottle of water and having something to eat. That’s not a problem for you, or is it?” The last part of Paul’s response was meant to be as sarcastic as it sounded. Now he turned away, hoping Swamp would get the message that he did not care if the conversation went on any longer. Paul also could not help but think Swamp was someone who really did not care what the laws were when it came to hunting and fishing. Silently he thought, “Like you’ve never broken the law regarding fishing or hunting too early, or too late in the season, you fat bastard.”
Confederate Gold and Silver Page 11
