But which rocks?
Tomlinson said, “Secret compartments, man. That’s what he’s looking for. Ol’ Tucker was a true romantic. I love stuff like this.”
I was feeling around the edges of the rock with my fingers, trying to remember. I knew it was toward the top, but I wasn’t quite sure where. “No secret compartments. Just sloppy workmanship. Tuck built the house himself, which is why it should be no surprise whatsoever.”
High on the fireplace, off to the right, I felt one of the slabs move at my touch. It seemed to be in the right area. I wedged my fingers into the cracks and pulled… out came a section of stone that I nearly dropped, it was so heavy. I placed it gently on the floor and looked into the cavern its removal had created.
“Mister Dunn? I don’t suppose you have a flashlight?”
“Why, yes, I do. Got one out in the truck.”
As he went out the screen door, I pulled out another section of stone. I could see a box or something set back there; I decided to wait for the light.
Yes, there was a small wooden box, heavily waxed, made out of some black and exotic wood. Probably something he’d picked up on one of his trips to Central America or Cuba.
I handed the box to Ransom, then reached in again. I removed what had the weight and feel of a weapon.
It was: Tuck’s pearl-handled and engraved revolver. It had been wrapped in an oilcloth, mounted inside its holster, then wrapped again in more oilcloth. He was seldom fussy about the maintenance of anything he owned, but the revolver was in good condition. It was an old Smith amp; Wesson. 44 long barrel, a weapon with sufficient fire-power to bring down-in Tuck’s words-“anything on two legs and most things on four.”
I flipped the loading gate and spun the cylinder. Five of the chambers were loaded, the sixth empty-an old-time safety measure used particularly by men who rode on horseback.
I remembered Tuck saying more than once, “The only dangerous gun is a gun that’s not loaded.”
Not necessarily.
I pressed the ejector rod, punched out all five cartridges, dumped them in my pocket, then looked down the muzzle. Clean rifling, too.
I heard Ransom say, “My oh my, you don’t believe Daddy Gatrell left us something nice now? I don’t care a thing no more about that cash was supposed to be there.”
She had the box open. She was holding up two more gold coins, one large, one small, similar to the ones she’d already showed me, but not the same. On these, the name of the king was Philip, and the dates were 1612 and 1640.
“He left us three silver coins, too. See there in the box?”
Tomlinson held up a lead-colored coin between his thumb and forefinger. It was about the size of a nickel. He was squinting to read what was on it. “Interesting, very interesting. These coins, they were all struck between 1556 and 1598… and let’s see… they’ve got the Habsburg shield plus the legend. It’s in Latin, it says ‘Philippus II Dei Gratia,’ which means ‘Philip the Second by the Grace of God.’ That’s the way I translate it, anyway.”
He stopped and turned the coin, showing it to Ransom. The kindly teacher sharing knowledge. “On the obverse… the back side, I mean, there’s the Spanish cross with castles and royal lions in quarters, and the words, ‘The King of Spain and the Indies.’ ” He handed the coin to her for inspection.
Ransom was beaming. She said to Dunn, “These two men I’m with, they about the smartest people you ever gonna meet. This one-” She used her chin to indicate Tomlinson. “He reads languages. Knows all about everything.”
Tomlinson seemed pleased. “Oh… not really. The way I know is, I lived aboard in Key West for awhile. Did some work with dear old Mel Fisher when his people were salvaging the Atocha. So I learned a little about coins. These silver ones, they’re called eight-reals-portions of pieces of eight. Two pieces of eight are worth a gold escudo”-he touched his finger to the smaller of the gold coins that Ransom held-“and eight gold escudos equal a doubloon.”
She was following along. “Why’s the gold one perfect, very round, but this silver one look like it made by a child?”
“The reals, they’re irregular like that because they were made by cutting little chunks off bars of silver bullion and carved down ’til the weight was right, then hand-hammered between engraved dies. Very crude stuff. The mint was down in Ecuador, I think.”
“And they worth a lot of money. A man in Nassau offered me three hundred dollars apiece for the gold ones. Said even the little gold one, he’d give me the same.”
Tomlinson made a sound of derision. “Never trust that shyster, ever. By weight, yeah, they might be worth something like that. But they’re worth twenty, maybe thirty, times their weight because they’re so rare. A doubloon in excellent condition, even the escudos-” He shrugged. “-my guess is, if you had forty of them, you could sell them off carefully, find the right collectors, big money people, and you’d end up with enough to buy a pretty nice house on Sanibel. If you had sixty of them, you could buy an inexpensive place on Captiva.” He shrugged again. “That’s about all I can tell you. Where they’re from, how Tuck got them, I have no idea.”
I was beginning to have my suspicions, although I said nothing. Presumably, the coins had all been lost during transit somewhere between South America and Spain, but they obviously were not from the same ship nor the same shipwreck. They immortalized different kings from a variety of dates. That suggested to me that Tucker had not gotten the coins from some lucky diver who’d found a solitary wreck. He’d gotten them from a collector, someone who had acquired them over a period of time.
Sinclair Benton, according to Ransom, had been a powerful man on Cat Island for many decades. He’d sold his spells to the locals and they weren’t cheap, so they had to pay for them with what they could. So make some rough calculations. For two and a half centuries, the Spaniards shipped gold and silver from the mines of South America to Spain. In those two hundred fifty years or so, they lost many dozens of ships throughout the Caribbean to poor navigation and storms. Over the passage of, say, thirty years, what are the chances that people on Cat Island and surrounding islands found the occasional Spanish coin or two while beachcombing or diving or hacking coral out of the reefs?
Of course they did. People are still finding gold and silver coins on the beaches of Florida, particularly places like Sebastian Inlet and Key West.
Okay, then multiply X number of lucky people by X number of accessible coins and you’d probably end up with a sizable number of available doubloons, escudos, and reals. Or maybe Benton found the coins himself-listened to the fishermen, tracked down the rumored wrecks, and had his people work them. He could have found a little; he could have found a lot.
Ransom was beaming, very pleased with the knowledge of her new wealth. She reached into the box again and said, “Here you go, another letter he wrote to you. My brother, how can you not like a man who so thoughtful he always writing you notes?”
As she handed me the envelope, I said, “Yeah, he’s really starting to win me over, that father of yours.” Dear Duke, If you come this far, the witch bastard is probably dead and gone and not still after us, but he might not be dead and he might still be after us. So you got one more step to go. You will soon see why I don’t want to take no chances. There ain’t been much I done right in my life, and I want to do this thing right. First thing I want you to do is go to the Estero River where them loony Koreshans thought they lived on the inside of the earth and built all them wooden buildings in what used to be jungle but ain’t no more. Used to be a nice old lady there who took an interest in my papers and old pictures and such from my years as a famous hunting and fishing guide and all the famous people I showed how to fish and shoot. Many a times I kept my skiff at the Koreshan dock to fish the Estero River and them bars off Hendry Creek with Mr. Edison and Mr. Lindbergh and Harry Truman and Clark Gable, too. I didn’t trust them papers being around the ranch ’cause, as you know, this damn roof is likely to leak like a faucet come the rainy season and it do make paper and such rot. The Koreshans had themselves what we used to call a music hall and that’s where she put my stuff. It’s all in one of them nice big wooden boxes I brought me back from British Honduras, stored under the stage where no one ain’t likely to look. Walk inside and you’ll see two wooden columns and this big black globe that shows stars on the outside of the earth, us living on the inside. Them Koreshans was loony but they did know how to build good buildings in a hard land. Who knows, you might get a smile out of seeing them old papers and pictures. Second thing is, Duke, Joe and me, we got one more thing for you to do. Remember where it was you took off to after your mama and daddy died? You know the name of the river and so do I ’cause I had to hunt around for a week by skiff to find you. Just down from that river is a big long stretch of beach, which is where you had your camp set up, and behind there is a stand of royal palms and the stone pilings of a house that burnt down. Man name of Dr. Lunsford got control of some of the Ingraham property, built a little dock and airstrip, and tried to raise cattle there, which Joe and me supplied, but the skeeters run us all off. Cattle ranching down on Cape Sable, something else I failed at, too. Underneath one of the stone pilings, we buried a bottle that’s got a note in there for you. Joe cut an X into the top of the piling with an old saw, so it should be easy to find and ain’t going nowhere. Go find it and I promise you won’t be disappointed by your old uncle this time.