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Mosby's Gold

Metal Detectorists Dream

By Cleve Taylor Published 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 4 min read
4
Mosby's Gold
Photo by Fer Troulik on Unsplash

Mosby’s Gold

Jenna was excited. Anytime she got a chance to house sit a dog between semesters and combine it with her hobby of metal detecting was a double treat. She had been interested in metal detecting ever since she used to sit with her grandmother, eat licorice with her, and watch a British television series about metal detectorists. She knew from that show that detectorists mostly found bottle caps and other trash, but that the dream of finding something interesting drove them on. The same was true for Jenna.

She had found a few coins and a cheap broken bracelet on the beach at Ocean City, but her findings in Loudoun County, Virginia, where she lived, were scarce and while occasionally intriguing, worthless in terms of value. But she had hopes.

Loudoun was Mosby Raider civil war territory, and tales abound of his exploits. One such speculative exploit was that his cavalry troops had intercepted a wagon transporting gold that had been moved from the Dahlonega Georgia Mint before Confederate troops could attack and secure the facility. If this were true, and Mosby divided all the gold among his troops, not taking any for himself as he had done with the greenback train raid, then it was quite possible that some troops might have hidden their shares around Loudoun County. They assembled only for specific attacks, and disassembled into the countryside after the events, and so could have been anywhere with their shares.

This would be a special week for Jenna. She was staying at the Martin estate just a couple of miles outside Leesburg. The two dogs she was attending were delightfully friendly, and she took video on her smartphone of them cavorting happily on the lawn and fetching the tennis balls she tossed for them. Using FaceBook messenger, she sent the video to the Martins who were vacationing in the Bahamas and who considered the dogs members of their family and not just pets of the moment.

When Jenna had asked the Martins for permission to use her metal detector on their property, especially around the old barn that predated the civil war, they said laughingly,” Of course,” and Mr. Martin, with a grin had added, “But you’ll have to split anything you find with us.” “That would only be fair,” Jenna replied, only slightly more serious than the Martins.

After feeding her charges, she gave them their toys, a lovingly chewed up rag doll that was the favorite of Laddie, the collie, and a rubber chew toy that looked like it might have started out as a toy space ship, to Dante, the border shepherd. Then she retrieved her metal detector, a rod for probing, and a small shovel from her Subaru Outback, and walked the half mile to the old barn that sat forlornly and neglected on the edge of the estate.

As carefully as a forensics technician at a murder site, Jenna walked the area around the old barn and inside the barn with her metal detector. She could see in her mind one of Mosby’s sixteen year old cavalrymen with his trusty .44 colt pistol holed up in the barn after a raid while Union troops scoured the countryside for them. She could also imagine that irregular soldier burying any spoils he might have with him so that he would have nothing incriminating on him if stopped and searched.

Her Metal detector buzzed. She isolated the location of the buzzing, probed the site with her rod, and breathlessly dug with her spade. “More excitement than a horseshoe warrants,” she thought to herself as she cleaned off a very old looking horseshoe. “Still, a new find,” she told herself. Further exploration turned up the metal bit of an old hoe, and surprisingly because of where it was found, an old disfigured spoon.

Then, over by the exterior edge of the old barn, a loud buzz. She dug carefully and soon turned up a deteriorating canvas bag with something metallic inside. Slowly and ever more carefully she extracted the bag which itself was wrapped a couple of turns around the object. She pulled away the fragments of the bag, and “Oh my God, it’s a pistol!” she said out loud to herself in near disbelief. Mouth agape, she peered back into the hole she had dug. There was something else in there.

On her knees, oblivious to the dirt grinding into the knees of her pants, using her hands, she dug with her fingers around what revealed itself to be a Mason jar, with its metal lid mostly rusted away. Inside the jar were 32 gold coins with the Dahlonega Georgia Mint imprint.

Two days later the Martins returned home. “Find any Treasure?” Mr. Martin, jokingly asked.

“Yes I did, Jenna replied. Come see what I found.”

Short Story
4

About the Creator

Cleve Taylor

Published author of three books: Ricky Pardue US Marshal, A Collection of Cleve's Short Stories and Poems, and Johnny Duwell and the Silver Coins, all available in paperback and e-books on Amazon. Over 160 Vocal.media stories and poems.

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