Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (20 page)

Thomas took the cup and downed it in a single gulp.

Jack Taylor limped out of the front door onto the porch. “So how’s this going to work?” he asked.

“Let me explain,” Graves said.

JUST PAST MIDNIGHT, with a crescent moon overhead, the men slipped one at a time from the hotel and met up at the stables. John Barnett had rustled himself out of bed, but he did not look good. In the dim light, he glowed a blotchy pale white. He and Dan were the only two not to partake of the whiskey, and it showed. The others seemed filled with an alcohol-fueled fervor. Dan just looked scared.

“Matches?” Graves asked.

“Got them,” Thomas said, “and the tools.”

“I was just up at the station,” Taylor said. “It’s quiet.”

“I walked the path an hour ago,” Graves said. “There’s nobody to the north of the train station—it’s clear all the way to Bray’s.”

They moved through the town like silent wraiths. Two blocks west, they turned. Two more west to Manchester Street, passing a few houses that were blissfully quiet. Turning north, they passed a few blocks of empty fields until they reached the station and found the Twin Sisters, still on their carriages amid a jumbled mass of other, larger cannon. The air smelled of gunpowder and grease, swamp soil and sweat. Graves stared for a second at the pair of famous cannon, then turned to Thomas.

“I hear something,” Thomas whispered.

“Get down,” Graves ordered.

The men crouched alongside the landing.

Two Union soldiers were stumbling along the tracks from east to west. They were safely in their cups after a night of liberty and oblivious to their surroundings. Singing an Irish ditty, they cut across a field outside the station, making their way northwest to their encampment three-quarters of a mile distant. Had they turned to the south, they might have been able to make out the men crouched along the platform. Instead, they stumbled toward home. Graves waited until they were out of sight before speaking.

“That was close,” he said. “Let’s drag the guns from the pile and get out of here.”

Feverishly, they began moving the cannon and their carriages into the darkness, Graves and Dan pulling on one, Pruitt, Thomas, and Taylor dragging the other. Barnett stumbled along in the rear, keeping watch.

After moving a few hundred yards into the trees and bushes, they stopped not far from the bayou.

“Gather some tinder,” Graves ordered Dan.

Thomas removed the matches from a round metal container, then began to arrange the twigs and leaves Dan retrieved. Barnett was leaning against a tree, unable to be of help.

“Henry, the wood of the carriages is good and dry,” he said slowly. “Won’t smoke much.”

Graves nodded. “You just take it easy, John. We’ll handle the work.”

Taylor removed one of the shovels from the wagon and limped a short distance away. He started poking the ground, seeking soft earth. Thomas broke a few more twigs into smaller pieces, then struck a match. It sputtered, then fizzled out. Removing a knife from his pocket, he shaved the sulfur from a half-dozen matches and piled them on some dried leaves. Positioning himself on his knees, he bent his head down next to the tinder.

“Come on, now,” he whispered, as he struck another match.

The match sparked, and he thrust it into the pile of sulfur, which burst into flames. The leaves ignited, and the small tinder began to burn. Thomas waited a few minutes, then began to fan the flames with his hat.

Graves stared at the crescent moon. A few clouds passed in front, and then it was clear again. “Hotter than a smitty’s forge,” he noted.

The whiskey the men had consumed was wearing off, and with it went the false bravado. If the nearby Union troops stumbled across their little operation, it could mean imprisonment, even death. It was time to move this along.

“You find a spot?” he said to Taylor, who stepped into the light from the fire.

“Got one, Henry,” Thomas whispered. “It’s near those pines over there.”

“Light those cattails in the fire for torches,” Graves said. “Dan, you go with Jack and get the hole started.”

Dan followed Taylor a short distance into the woods.

“I have a good fire,” Thomas noted.

“Then let’s start lifting these carriage pieces onto the Same,” Graves said.

Taylor was soaked in sweat. The first few feet had been easy. Sandy soil and loose loam. Then the pair had struck a layer of solid soil. Now they were going down inch by inch.

“Wish we had a pick,” Dan said easily. “Make this go quicker.”

Graves poked in the fire with a stick. Dragging out a metal fitting, he waited until Pruitt poured water over the blackened metal, then reached down and tossed it aside. There was already a pile of metal plates and bolts, enough to fill a bucket.

“Fill that empty bucket with what metal will fit,” Graves said to Pruitt, “then dump it in the bayou. Bring back a full bucket of water.”

Pruitt bent down and began tossing the warm metal pieces into the bucket.

Graves walked over to where the digging was progressing and whispered to Taylor, “How far you down?”

“About three feet,” Taylor noted.

“That’s deep enough. Help pull the twins over here and drop them in their grave.”

Dan climbed from the hole. The cattails were almost out, and the light had grown dim. “Ain’t much of a hole, Mr. Taylor.”

“No, it ain’t, Dan,” he said, “but it’ll have to do.”

As if on cue, Graves, Pruitt, and Thomas appeared, dragging one of the cannon.

“Jack,” Graves whispered, “you and Dan on one side, me and Sol on the other.”

Walking the few feet to the hole, they tossed it in, then walked back and repeated the procedure with the second gun.

“Ain’t much of a hole, Jack,” Graves said, grinning.

“That soil was a damn shade harder than it looked, Henry,” Taylor said.

Dan began to shovel dirt over the guns, as Graves stepped back and wiped his hands on his pants. “Let me have your pocketknife, Sol,” he said quietly.

Sol reached into his pocket, removed the knife, and flipped it open. He handed it to Graves, who pricked his finger and handed it back. Thomas did the same, then handed it to Taylor, who reached up and handed it to Bamett.

“Now, men,” Graves said, “this is a blood pact that we tell no one about any of this until such time as the Confederacy rises again.”

The men touched fingers together.

“The Twin Sisters stay hidden,” Taylor said, “until they are safe.”

The men repeated the mantra.

“Mark a few trees with the ax,” Graves said, “and spread leaves over the hole.”

Taylor grabbed the ax and hacked marks into several nearby trees, while Pruitt and Thomas covered the area with leaves and branches. Graves walked a few yards to the east and stared into the distance. He could just make out a light inside a top-floor room of a three-story house in Harrisburg. Taking his bearings from all points on the compass, he walked back Barnett had turned the wagon around and was pointed back toward the tracks.

“Let’s get on out of here,” Graves said quietly.

1905: FORTY YEARS LATER

“We’re here, John,” Graves said easily.

Barnett was staring out the window. “Seems so long ago, Henry,” he said, “like it was a dream.”

Graves and Barnett stepped off the train in Harrisburg into a vastly different world. Harrisburg was slowly being absorbed into Houston, and the area had been greatly built up in the last four decades. Graves had become a doctor, while Barnett was now a successful businessman in Gonzales. The men had aged and were no longer the wild-eyed youthful soldiers of 1865. Graves’s hair was more white than blond. Barnett, for his part, sported salt-and-pepper hair and a middle-aged paunch. Over the years, the pair had lost touch with Taylor and Thomas. It was rumored that Taylor had settled in Oklahoma in the land rush of 1889. It was said Sol Thomas had gone north to the Dakota Territories when gold was discovered, then died when he stepped out in the street in Deadwood during a bank robbery and caught a stray bullet. No one really knew. Dan had chosen to remain in Graves’s employment after he was freed. He had passed away in 1878 when an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the South.

“Let’s start back at the Harris House,” Graves said, staring up as a Ford Model C backfired on the street outside, then puttered away.

The two men walked the short distance to Myrtle Street, then looked around in surprise. The block where the hotel had been located had been razed. To the north was a new building with a sign that said “Harrisburg Electrical Cooperative.”

“Let’s ask in there,” Graves said.

Barnett nodded and followed Graves inside.

The clerk at the counter looked up as the two men entered. “Can I help you?”

“There used to be a hotel named the Harris House,” Graves said, smiling. “You familiar with that?”

“No,” the clerk said, “but hold on. Jeff,” he shouted in back.

An older man walked out carrying a rag. He wiped his hands. The man was tall and lean. His hair was going to gray, and he had a neatly trimmed beard.

“Jeff’s been around these parts forever,” the clerk said.

“Do you know where the Harris House Hotel was located?” Graves asked.

“I haven’t heard that name in thirty years,” Jeff said, “since just after the War of Northern Aggression.”

“We stayed there just after the war,” Barnett offered.

“After the war,” Jeff said. “You boys Yankees?”

“No, sir,” Graves said, “rebels. I’m Dr. Henry Graves from Lometa, this here’s John Barnett of Gonzales.”

Jeff nodded. “Good. I don’t trust Yankees.”

“About the hotel,” Barnett said.

“You men are two blocks south of where the old hotel was located,” Jeff said. “The streets were all changed ’bout ten years after the war when they relaid the railroad tracks. It’s all different around here now.”

“The tracks were moved?” Graves said anxiously.

“Sure enough,” Jeff said. “This city’s been all changed around since you was last here.”

“There used to be a three-story house near the bayou,” Graves said quickly. “You know the house I mean?”

“The old Valentine place,” Jeff said. “That’s still there. Three blocks north and two blocks west.”

“Thanks a lot,” Barnett said.

“No problem,” Jeff said. “If you need some more help finding something, you just give me a shout.”

That day, Graves and Barnett searched for where the cannon were buried.

But that, and all subsequent searches, turned up nothing.

II

Dr. Graves, What Have You Done?
1987—1997

EVERY TIME WE RETURN FROM SEARCHING FOR THE Twin Sisters cannon in Harrisburg, we swear we’ll never go back. It’s the only sane thing to do. I don’t wish to demean the good citizens of Harrisburg, but I can envision more exotic locales to spend a holiday. Why we’ve come four times to torture ourselves, I’ll never know. That we go again and again borders on psychosis, which means we have definitely lost contact with reality.

Like other searchers who have become addicted to the Twin Sisters, some of whom have looked half a lifetime, I believe that, despite the fragmentary and incoherent evidence, they are buried somewhere around Harrisburg. This isn’t all that inconceivable when you consider that I believed in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and virgins until my fortieth birthday.

No one really knows what happened to the famed Twin Sisters cannon that were put to good use by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. Stories circulated that they were dumped in Galveston Bay to keep them out of the hands of Union soldiers, or sent north after the war where they were melted down, or—the most fabulous tale of all—buried after the war in Harrisburg. The truth is probably lost in the mists of time.

The only good source is the eyewitness account of a Union soldier stationed in Houston who found the cannon lying in a pile with several others near his barracks. Corporal M. A. Sweetman, who was about to be mustered out of the army, wrote in his diary, on July 30, 1865:

1 saw a number of old cannon, one and perhaps more of large size, and all of them dismounted. There were no caissons, limbers nor ammunition boxes, and the guns had the appearance of having been picked up somewhere, hauled in and dumped temporarily to await removal to some other place. Among these guns were two short and very common-looking iron 24-pounders.

Sweetman also found another pair of guns that he thought interesting:

On brass plates attached to the wooden carriages of each of the two guns, iron six-pounders, much more symmetrical in shape and appearance, was the following, the first line in old English.

TWIN SISTERS
THIS GUN WAS USED WITH TERRIBLE EFFECT
AT THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO.
PRESENTED TO THE STATE OF TEXAS
BY THE STATE OF LOUISIANA
MARCH 4, 1861
HENRY W. ALLEN
CHARLES C. BRUSLE
WILLIAM G. AUSTIN
COMMITTEE OF PRESENTATION

From the condition of the guns at the time I saw them, it was evident that no person there at the time took very much interest in them, and if the only object was to get rid of them it is more likely they would be thrown into Buffalo Bayou than shipped.

Sweetman then exits stage left while Dr. H. N. Graves enters stage right.

ON THEIR WAY home after the end of the war, Dr. Graves and his buddies step off the train at Harrisburg six miles south of Houston on August 15, 1865. In Graves’s own words:

Arriving at Harrisburg, when alighted from the train we saw a number of cannon of various sizes dumped by the side of the railroad track Looking over the pile, I was surprised to note that the famous Twin Sisters were among them and felt that they, at least, should be protected from vandalism or confiscation by the Federal Troops, then preparing to take possession of Texas. Therefore, to my messmates, Sol Thomas, Ira Pruitt, Jack Taylor, and John Barnett of Gonzales, I suggested that we bury the Twin Sisters. One of them responded, “That’s right-we’ll bury them so deep no damned Yankee will ever, find them.”

He goes on to say:

Before burying the cannon, we took the woodwork apart and burned it. The carriages themselves, we threw in the bayou, after which we rolled the cannon some 300 or 400 yards into the woods.

I have a problem with this statement. Number one, what woodwork? An entire gun carriage was built of wood. Number two, a fire would have caused suspicion. Union soldiers were camped within a mile and often walked to Harrisburg for food and drink. Number three, what was left of the carriages to throw in the river if they were burned? And number four, why roll the cannon 400 yards into the woods when you could have rolled them on carriages? Besides, you can’t roll cannon because of the trunnions, the pins opposite each other on a gun so it can be pivoted up and down. This scenario doesn’t make sense. Also, it was a hot, sultry night. These guys were toughened by war, but they weren’t at their physical peak, and one of them had measles. So I don’t believe they hauled the guns as far as Graves claimed, certainly not through a forest at night. They must have used a road or path most of the way before turning into the woods.

Graves went on:

It developed that the earth at the spot selected for burial was more compact than anticipated, as a result of which we dug only about two and a half or three feet. Then we buried the little Twins in a single shallow grave, marking the spot as best we could by hacking a number of nearby trees. The earth was tamped down as firmly as could be done with our feet, and dried leaves and brush were heaped over the spot.

This is the only detailed account Graves gave. If only he had said which direction he and his buddies took when they stole the cannon and pushed them off into the night. Regrettably, he left more questions than answers.

Before leaving, the men all took a solemn oath that none of them would ever reveal the secret of their hiding place until all possibility of their cannons’ capture and confiscation by enemy hands was removed.

In 1905, forty years later, Dr. Graves, Sol Thomas, and John Barnett returned to Harrisburg and attempted to relocate the site where they buried the guns. They drew maps separately, according to their memories of the landmarks, and compared sketches. The maps all coincided; however, the men were not successful in finding the exact spot, since the terrain had undergone marked changes—a situation I find all too often on NUMA searches.

The three men actually found three of the original marked trees and two of the stones they had placed in the general area. This would indicate that they must have been within a dozen feet of the Twin Sisters.

Another fifteen years passed, and then, in 1920, a reporter with the
Houston Chronicle
by the name of Mamie Cox persuaded Dr. Graves to come back to Harrisburg for another try at finding the Twin Sisters. In her story, Graves was driven around Harrisburg before stopping in the general location of the guns’ burial. Unfortunately, no record was left as to where the car stopped for the search or to whom the property belonged. Supposedly, Graves found two of the landmarks he left in 1865.

So ends an intriguing tale of a mystery filled with bafflement.

Texans have been drawn to search for their heritage over the decades. Many individuals and groups have probed the landscape around Harrisburg looking for the guns. They’re probably the only tourists who go there. Despite their efforts in analyzing clues and pursuing tantalizing leads that never pan out, they still search. And so does NUMA.

WE FIRST BEAT the bushes in the fall of 1987. Wayne Gronquist, Austin attorney and then president of NUMA, assembled a group of ten or so Texans who owned metal detectors and were fired up for the hunt. The first probe concentrated on the area west of the railroad tracks that run north across Bray’s Bayou into Houston. We spread out in a line and worked inland from Bray’s Bayou.

It was like trying to pick up confetti with a nail on a stick during a windstorm. Over the years, industrial manufacturers had used this location to dump everything from scrap metal to steel fifty-five-gallon drums to old refrigerators. There was so much iron that the metal detectors and magnetometers almost burned up.

I made the only discovery of the day. When sweeping through a field of high grass, I was startled down to my socks when two illegal immigrants leaped up and took off across the field. They must have been either hiding or sleeping when I almost walked on top of them. I shouted after them, “It’s okay, enjoy your day!” But they never turned or looked back before vanishing in the woods.

IN 1988, GRONQUIST met up with another group of Texans looking for the cannon, led by Richard Harper and Randy Wiseman, who agreed to join forces with NUMA. Our people consisted of Bob Esbenson, Dana Larson, Tony Bell, and the Ross family. We all gathered in Harrisburg in March to begin the sweep. While we searched along the bayou, Harper and Wiseman hired a huge backhoe to dig a hundred-foot trench twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, but found nothing of interest.

The next day, using the Schonstedt gradiometer, I found an iron rim that came off an old wagon wheel and dug it up along with several old bottles. I felt the rim was too narrow for a cannon carriage, more in keeping with the size of a buggy wheel. But Harper and Wiseman became enthused, and they felt sure the rim came from the Twin Sisters gun carriage. They later dated the bottles to sometime in the 1860s.

The next day, there was a conflict between the two groups. Harper and Wiseman became angry because one of the people who had volunteered to bring his metal detector was a known treasure hunter. Why this bothered them, I’ll never know. If found, there was no way the guns were going anywhere but to the state capital in Austin, and from there to the conservation labs at Texas A&M. They were also disappointed that we had not rented a bigger backhoe, even though we had excavated along the railroad tracks where they requested. Then there was a problem of proprietary rights. I got the idea that they thought the Twin Sisters belonged to them and that we were interlopers cutting into their territory.

I figured this was the perfect time to steal off into the night and head to the nearest saloon for a tequila on the rocks.

FOR THE NEXT safari through the. tick-infested Harrisburg bush country, I called on the services of Connie Young, the noted psychic from Enid, Oklahoma. Along with Craig Dirgo, on his first expedition with NUMA, we drove through Harrisburg while Connie worked her magic. She sensed a pair of hot spots between the Southern Pacific railroad tracks and Bray’s Bayou. We then continued to Galveston, where Wayne Gronquist and a group of volunteers were searching for the Republic of Texas warship
Invincible.
Connie thought there was a possibility that
Invincible
might be under the sand on the beach, since the shoreline had worked out nearly half a mile after the long rock jetties were built around the turn of the century. A Texas rancher, who had volunteered his services, drove up and down the beach in his SUV while I dragged a gradiometer out the rear end. Connie, Craig, and a Boy Scout came along for the ride.

We were passing time waiting for a target to make itself known on the recorders, when I turned to Connie and said, “Time sure flies when you’re having fun.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when the rancher drove over a ditch in the beach without slowing. Craig and I both tumbled from where we were sitting on the tailgate. He rolled on the sand and back to his feet. I went straight up into the air and down onto my head. The blow crushed two of the discs in my spine. Anguish and torment can’t describe the pain. I could only gasp, unable to utter a word. Everyone stood around in a daze, thinking I had broken my back, until Craig walked over, picking sand from his ear, then looked down at me on the ground.

“You don’t look so good,” he said, tilting his head to allow the sand to run from his ear.

Over time Dirgo has proved to be a master of the obvious.

“Move your leg for me,” he said.

I did, though in much pain. He reached down to help me to my feet.

“I think you’ll live to write another day,” he said, as I slowly rose to my feet, “but we might want to take a side trip to the hospital.”

A trip to the hospital and an X ray told the story. I’ve lost half an inch in height due to age and another inch and a half to a pair of mashed discs. I had compressed from six feet three to six feet one in two seconds and was no longer as tall as Dirk Pitt, the hero in my books. A year and six months would pass before the pain slowly receded.

I think Craig said it best that day after we left the hospital and were driving back to the motel in the rental car. “I thought we killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

“I’ll make it,” I said through gritted teeth.

Craig steered along the road running down Galveston’s sea-wall. “You know the good thing about motels?”

“What’s that,” I asked.

“Ice machines.”

Craig, who over the years has proven to be a more than an adequate scrounger, continued. “I’m going to get a trash bag and fill it with ice,” he said, “then I’ll take some duct tape and wrap it around your body to hold it in place.”

It worked, but I looked like a hunchback.

UNABLE TO GO out on the search boat the following day, I instructed Gronquist to begin running search lanes at the outer edge of the grid and work in while hunting for
Invincible
with the gradiometer. Not wishing to sit around, I thought I could take my mind off the pain with a side expedition. So Connie, Craig, and I took a little handheld magnetometer and drove the short distance to Harrisburg and looked for the Twin Sisters.

Craig ran the mag over the area while Connie experienced vibes. There was a low reading, perhaps suggesting a buried target. Craig then drove into town and rented a backhoe and operator. I was still in the throes of anguish when Connie, bless her heart, bought me a lawn chair to sit on and relax my aching back during the dig.

As soon as the operator with the backhoe arrived, it began to rain. We sat there under newspapers, teeth clenched, as Craig, crammed into the scoop, went down in the trench every few feet, and swept the mag around the bottom, which was now rapidly filling with water. The mag target petered out as we went deeper.

I paid off the patient backhoe operator, and we drove back to the motel where we stay in Galveston, Gaidos Motor Lodge. No sooner did we walk in, Connie drenched, Craig looking like a snowman built from mud, and me sloped over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, than we find Gronquist and crew packing and almost ready to depart.