Jesse Nolan in...
A 9-Chapter Thrilling Adventure!
by D.W. Owens
About
the author
Jesse Nolan in...
by D.W. Owens
About
the author
Chapter Four - Letter From a Dead Man
IT
WAS ALMOST DARK. The parking lot at Atlanta police headquarters was about
half full, and the street lights were starting to come on.
"Pretty good." Morgan leaned on Sheba and glared down
at me like an outraged African god. "First you find yourself a nice, fresh
corpse for show and tell, and then you're the guest of honor at a drive-by."
I looked back up at him, my face full of puppy dog innocence.
"Just another day in the magic kingdom, Lieutenant. I thought the question
and answer period was over. If you don't mind, unless you're going to press
some kind of charges, Bo and I would like to go."
"What did Barry have?"
"I don't know." I really didn¹t. But I didn't tell
him I was about to find out. "I mean it. I don't know much more about all
this than you do. You found the suvvie, didn't you?"
"Sure, we did. And all we learned was that it was stolen
in Alabama last week. So far prints haven't turned up anything."
"And the rifle?"
"It was in the car. An AR-15 modified to fire automatic.
Numbers filed off, prints worthless."
"The shooting was in Dekalb county, not Fulton. That's
out of your jurisdiction."
"For something like this, the departments like to cooperate.
And you're a key witness to a murder that took place in Fulton, and you
live in that little strip of Dekalb that's inside Atlanta city limits,
so that makes you my special little pain in the ass."
"Gee, it hasn't been a very rewarding day for you, has
it, Morgan?"
"Get out of here, Nolan, before I change my mind about
locking up Bo." He turned to go.
I cranked up Sheba and looked over at Bo. She was still
fuming about losing her thirty-eight.
"Get over it," I said. "You didn't have the right papers.
You're lucky Sid talked them out of pressing charges. And we'll get you
another thirty-eight."
"It better be a damn good one," she said through clenched
teeth.
"Look, they even wanted to confiscate these packages Barry
left us as evidence. Sid really had to do some fancy footwork to stop that
one."
"Could we please just go back to your place and find out
what's in these damn envelopes?" Bo crossed her arms across her chest,
stuck out her lower lip and looked away from me. She didn't say another
word all the way home.
Night had fallen and the street lights were glowing by
the time we pulled up to the curb in front of my landlady's house and parked.
It took us maybe ninety seconds to trot up the stairs to my apartment above
the garage in the rear and lock the door. I dug a letter opener out of
my desk, and a couple of minutes later Bo and I were sitting at the kitchen
table pulling papers out of the envelopes Sid had given us.
The cover letter on my bundle of documents read:
If you're reading this, either
I'm dead or something almost as bad has happened to me.
You get the Harley. I have
a couple of thousand dollars in a savings account, and you'll find the
passbook in my desk. Make sure it goes to my niece, Rainbow Hunter.
If you 're wondering what all
this is about, it's about gold.
Millions of dollars worth of
gold.
You know me, Jesse. I'm not
a blowhard, and I'm not the kind of person who takes the National Inquirer
or the Psychic Hotline seriously. I wouldn't put in this kind of work on
a sucker's bet, and you know it.
When I left town a few weeks
ago, it was for a buddy who was paying me to help with the historical research
for a Civil War book his father was writing. I'm on unemployment right
now, so it looked like a good way to enjoy myself and pick up a few hundred
dollars. What I found instead was a lot more than the few hundred bucks
he was going to pay me.
Do you remember the lost Confederate
gold, Jesse?
You should. We talked about
it several times. In the closing days of the Civil War, after Lee surrendered
to Grant at Appomattox, Jefferson Davis had the gold from the Confederate
treasury packed up in a wagon train and shipped south. The idea was to
maintain a Confederate government in exile and conduct a guerrilla war
from abroad. The wagon train was raided near Lincolnton, Georgia, and almost
all the gold was taken. It was a lot of gold, buddy. Even after the wagons
had been looted, the gold was still ankle deep in the bottom of the wagons.
None of that precious metal has been seen since.
I know where it is.
I was in the Grace County library
up in the Georgia mountains when I found out. The librarian allowed me
to look through some old documents, and left me alone in the rare books
room with an old hinged box that had about a hundred letters from the Civil
War era in it. I had gone through the letters and was putting them back
in the box when the rotting silk lining inside the lid simply fell off
and behind it I found some more letters.
One letter was from a certain
Ethan Coleman, who had served as a lieutenant in the Confederate army,
and Coleman had some very enlightening things to say about that raid near
Lincolnton. It was a letter to his son explaining the strange new family
tradition that his offspring had just inherited.
The raid on the wagons had
been a hoax. Jefferson Davis knew exactly who the "raiders" were. They
were men he had handpicked to take the gold and hide it securely against
the day when the South would rise up again. Coleman was their leader, and
the men were known to be fanatical in their devotion to the rebel cause.
The whole thing was set up to trick the rest of the world into thinking
that the gold was gone for good. Even Jefferson Davis didn't know where
the gold was to be hidden.
Yes, the gold disappeared,
but not into the hands of a bandit gang. Coleman and his men took the gold
and hid it somewhere in Harmony Springs up in Grace County.
I don't know exactly where.
But I know who does know. Or
at least I think I do. I stopped reading for a minute and looked over at
Bo. "What do you think?" I asked.
"I dunno. It's a long stretch, isn't it?"
I thought for a moment. "Maybe not. Barry wasn't the kind
of guy to get excited over nothing, he had a good head on his shoulders,
and he did know a lot about the Civil War era. If he says it's so--" I
paused for a second--"then it's probably so."
I went back to reading.
Well, the grandson fathered
a great-grandson, and the great-grandson fathered a great-great-grandson.
And each of them remained in the health resort town of Harmony Springs,
long after the mineral springs dried up and the tourist trade dried up
with it. Family members didn't understand why their cousins chose to live
in a town that had died like that, but they were quite generous with the
support they gave their kin--and that's why today they still send money
to their cousin, Harper Coleman, known to the locals as Goblin.
And I found him, or at least
I found out where he's at.
He still lives in Grace County,
somewhere near the ghost town of Harmony Springs. And I'm pretty sure he's
carrying on the family tradition of guarding the gold. Okay, there's nothing
in the letters that states it right out, but you'll see a lot of stuff
about Coleman's descendants "carrying on the tradition" and "bearing
the secret."
I know it must sound fantastic
to you, Jesse, but I've got the three original letters here in your packet... I looked. Inside the envelope I could see three yellowed
pieces of paper in sealable plastic bags.
You see, the folks at the Patriot
Foundation library got a little curious. Maybe it was too obvious that
I was excited about something, but one of the Foundation's officers invited
me into his office and asked a lot of questions about what I was doing.
He tried to make it sound like it was all just a friendly little chat,
but he wasn't very good at hiding the fact that he wanted to know exactly
what I was trying to find. I gave him polite
but evasive answers and sipped his whiskey for about an hour.
That evening I went out to
a nearby greasy spoon to get a cheeseburger, and when I got back to my
motel room and opened the door, someone jumped me. I surprised him as much
as he surprised me. He wore khaki pants and a cammy tee-shirt, and had
a crewcut so close to his head that it wasn't possible to tell what color
it was. He started at first and then just jumped and rushed me at the door,
pretty much knocking me out of the way with
a couple of punches. And that's about all I really saw of him. I managed
to get one or two licks in before he ran out of the room like a rabbit
on speed. But more important, I managed to snatch a bunch of my photocopies
out of his hand before he got out. Whoever it was gave me a couple of bruises
but didn't come anywhere near knocking me out. I checked out of the motel
right away and drove all night back to Atlanta.
I can't say how much they know or have guessed, but they obviously don't
know as much as I do.
You see, somebody--actually
several somebodies--followed me all the way home to Atlanta.
And they're still following
me now.
Jesse, you've heard of these
people before, or at least you've mentioned them to me a couple of times.
I asked around among the locals before I went to the Foundation's library.
You may think all that talk about a para-military training camp in Alabama
is just a lot of scare talk by excitable liberals, but it's real. Some
folks showed me some photos they'd taken. No one around there crosses the
Foundation--they're too afraid. There have been some suspicious fires around
here in the homes of people who complained too loudly about the Foundation,
and various locals in Tempora talk about run-ins with toughs from the nearby
boot camp.
That's why I'm sending these
envelopes to you and my niece, Rainbow. You're getting the originals, and
Bo is getting the only photocopies I've made. I've kept nothing in writing
myself. If I don't make it, the secret won't be lost with me.
But if you're reading this,
light a candle for me.
You've been a great pal, Jesse.
I've got blood kin that mean a lot less to me than you do. Most likely,
this is good-bye.
Go for the gold. Good luck.
And watch out.
Barry I looked up at Bo, who had already finished the letter and
was watching me. I could see a faint film of tears in her eyes, and when
she spoke her voice was tight. "Do you believe this?"
"I believe it."
"I think I do, too." Bo began rummaging around in the
other papers from her envelope. I rummaged around in mine, too, but I really
didn't need to. I was convinced.
I got up, got a couple of sodas from the fridge, opened
them, and handed her one. She took a sip and stared thoughtfully at the
sheaf of papers in her hand for a moment. "Are we going after the gold?"
"Do you think the gold's still there?"
"I wouldn't bet anything important on it. A lot can happen
in a hundred and thirty or forty years. And more than one person would
have known where that gold was. Keeping it secret for five or six generations
would be a helluva trick."
I nodded, as deep in thought as Bo was. "Right. But Barry
wasn't any fool. He wasn't the type to fall for a get-rich-quick scheme
or go chasing after a will-o'-the-wisp. And he knew the history of that
period inside and out. If he thought there was a good chance the gold was
still there, then I'd say the chances are pretty good that the gold is
still there. We're going after it."
"What you mean 'we,' paleface? Have I been drafted into
your private little army or something?"
I shook my head, smiling faintly at her sarcasm. "No.
But if the gold is still there, there's no point in letting Monroe and
his creeps have it."
Bo grinned. "So we're gonna hike up to this Harmony Springs
all by ourselves and let ourselves get ambushed somewhere along the way?"
"The danger won't come unless we actually turn up something.
And we'll be loaded for bear when we go."
"What is this Harmony Springs, anyway?"
"Barry told me about it once. It's a ghost town up in
Grace County in the Georgia mountains. It was a health resort town for
the wealthy back during the last half of the nineteenth century because
of some mineral springs there. The springs dried up in the 1940's and so
did the town. It's about fifteen miles from the nearest paved road. Once
in a while a hiker will take a trip up there, but for the most part it's
pretty much forgotten."
"Except for this Goblin guy. And he's gonna up and tell
us all about this lost gold just because we ask him to, even if his family
did keep it a secret for more than one and a quarter centuries."
"No, he probably won't. But if you were Seth Monroe, how
would you know how much we know about Goblin's gold? For all he could tell,
we may have a map right to the very spot. Remember, greed makes people
stupid."
"How much does Monroe know?"
I shrugged. "You got me. But if he knew enough to find
the booty, he wouldn't have tried to buy those papers from us. He'd be
hightailing it up to Harmony Springs right this very minute."
"What makes you think he isn't?"
"Because I've got a clear view of the street through the
screen door from here, right straight down the landlady's driveway, and
those two guys in that pick-up truck have been sitting down there ever
since we got here. They wouldn't be following us if they didn't need to."
I looked back down the driveway towards the truck. There
was a streetlight right in front of my landlady's house, and I could plainly
see the truck as well as the silhouettes of the two men inside. I stood
up, walked over to the screen door, and stared directly at the truck. They
gave no sign they were the least bit aware of me, or at least no sign that
I could see. I returned to my seat.
Bo took a look, too. After she'd studied them for a few
seconds, she sat back down again. "Okay, so what's the plan?"
"Tonight we take turns standing guard 'til the morning.
Then we pack up Sheba and head for Harmony Springs. It'll be an all-day
drive from here. And we let Morgan know what we're up to."
Bo nodded, looking at me somberly.
I began to pack for the trip. I started with the combat
shotgun.
Dear Jesse,
There were a couple
of other letters behind the lining in that box too, Jesse. One was by his
son, and the other was by his grandson. Each of them explained that they
were taking up the burden their dying fathers had laid down, keeping the
gold secret for the day when the South "would rise up in glory and meet
her destiny." The trail seemed to end there, but I asked some questions about town and found out that a great-granddaughter,
Esther, had married and moved to Alabama, taking most of the family records
with her. It took a while, but I poked around in Alabama until I found
Esther's daughter, who told me that the papers had been donated to the
American Patriot Foundation in Termpora, Alabama, when her mother died.
I did some of the smoothest talking I've ever done in my life, and I got
the library at the Foundation to let me look through the papers. There
were hundreds of family letters in that collection, and digging up the
information I needed was like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.
...and photocopies
of every other document here in this packet. But there's a catch.
