“You’d think it would have gone all blurry by now, but it hasn’t. It’s still as clear to me as when I was in the middle of it. Okay, in the dream I was standing in this dark pit of a place, alone, I couldn’t even see my own hand, but I wasn’t scared about that. I was waiting for a man to bring me a million dollars in gold bars. I know now I was dreaming about the treasure I was looking for in Winkel’s Cave. I heard him coming but then I realized it wasn’t his footsteps I was hearing, and I jerked awake. I’d heard those two guys outside my window. That was all the dream was, nothing more than that.”
Dix was shaking his head. “I still can’t believe there’s a treasure hidden in Winkel’s Cave. I’ve never heard anything like that.” He looked up to see Rob and Rafe standing in the living room doorway, all bundled up and ready to take off for Breaker’s Hill, their eyes focused on Ruth.
Rob said, “You know about a treasure in Winkel’s Cave, Ruth? Is it pirate’s gold? Doubloons?”
She smiled at both boys, shook her head. “Nope, it’s better—a stolen gold shipment intended for General Lee in Richmond.”
“Wow,” Rafe said, taking three steps into the living room. “A treasure, here, nearly right where we live and we didn’t know anything about it.”
“But why Winkel’s Cave?” Rob wanted to know. He took a matching three steps into the living room.
Ruth said, “Did you guys know that the main ingredient in black gunpowder is potassium nitrate? That comes from niter, or saltpeter, which is formed in cave deposits. During the Civil War, they mined a whole bunch of caves in western Virginia for niter. I’m betting that’s how the soldiers who stole the gold knew about Winkel’s Cave. Maybe they even did some mining there, found the cavern, and decided it was the perfect hiding place. That’s where they hid the gold bars.”
“A million dollars in gold?” Rob asked, moving to stand beside his brother. “How much gold is that?”
“It must have been a great deal since they went to all that trouble.”
Both boys were nearly on top of Ruth now, their sledding forgotten. Brewster hopped onto the back of the sofa and barked at them until Rob picked him up. Ruth said, “Hey, guys, I’ll keep you posted, I promise.”
Dix broke in. “Okay, we need to talk to Ruth now, so off with you. Be careful. I don’t want any more stitches.”
The boys dragged out of the living room. “I wondered if they’d leave without a fight,” Dix said, watching them go. “You really got their juices going, Ruth.”
When they heard the front door open and close, Savich said, “Okay, Ruth, back up. Tell us all about this treasure map, where you found it.”
“Okay. Last month I bought a collection of really old books at an estate sale in Manassas. The books were all over a hundred years old, on every conceivable subject, as you might expect in an old home library. In a skinny little songbook with all the popular songs of the day, I found a map of a cave that clearly had to be Winkel’s Cave. It showed what was labeled as gold bars hidden there by rebel soldiers who were supposed to escort it from the rail hub of Manassas Junction to General Lee in Richmond, like I told the boys. On July twenty-first, 1861, there was mass confusion when McDowell attacked at Bull Run—or Manassas, as it’s called here in the South—and the soldiers must have taken advantage of the confusion and stolen the gold bars, brought them here to store temporarily.
“When the dust settled, there were reports of over a hundred pounds of gold missing from Harpers Ferry. Many believed Union soldiers had captured it. The rebel soldiers who secreted the gold bars in a niche in the cave drew the map so they could come back for the gold after the war, but I guess none of them survived since the map was still in that book. I had the feeling it could have been the only one made, left for safekeeping in that little songbook, maybe when one of the soldiers left the battlefield to visit his family. Obviously he didn’t tell any of his family what he’d done, or about the map. Anyway it looked legitimate, the right age, at least the paper looked old enough, and the handwriting was appropriate for the time.”
Dix said, “There could have been more maps. That would be too much trust among thieves.”
Ruth shrugged. “Maybe. Anyway, it was sure worth a try.”
“But since it looks like others were ahead of you in that cave,” Savich said, “the gold is probably long gone.”
“You’re right, Dillon. And my map is gone. If they didn’t have it before, they’ve got it now.”