thing.
The whole world is my native land.
—Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-first century A.D .
The Landry family Bible held an amazing secret, a secret neither my husband nor his father had hinted at knowing even once during the eight years of my living in Bayou Allain. I let that bother me for a while, let myself pout privately about being left out of the loop. I pouted semiprivately as well, dropping a note to my best girlfriend, knowing she’d pick up on things not being quite right.
But then I realized how stupid that was. Terrill shared everything with me. He told me personal things I knew he’d never trusted anyone else to know. Since he hadn’t mentioned that a Civil War treasure was buried on the family’s land, it made sense that he, too, was in the dark. Before telling him, however, I needed to know more, to figure out exactly how the code pointing to the cache of gold worked.
The inconvenience of having to go to the parish library so often was minor. The Bible, though the family’s property, was considered a historic find, having been unearthed during the razing of a tumbled-down barn that was part of the original Landry homestead. The judge had agreed to let the book remain on public display.
I have no idea why the letter in the binding hadn’t been discovered before. Maybe it had. Maybe the decision was made to leave it where it had been found. Or maybe the lack of resources for restoring the worn leather meant no one had ever looked at the cover carefully.
The minute I read it, I knew what I had—but only because I’d been looking through the boxes in Bear’s attic, and the list of codes the letter referenced was fresh in my mind. It wasn’t a complicated cipher, but a series of dots and dashes resembling Morse code that referred to books, chapters, and verses in the Bible instead of representing the alphabet.
Alone, the markings meant nothing and were virtually worthless, but the handwritten letter in the leather binding made them worth, well, whatever the key to a buried treasure was worth! And, honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out how they worked after I read the note….
My name is Ruth Callahan Landry. I am the lawful wedded wife of Samuel Jonathan Landry. We have not been blessed with children for me to tell what has happened, and my Samuel wi l l be dead and soon in the arms of the Lord, though I would wish him to stay on this earth as my husband for fifty more years were the Lord willing and had not the gangrene set in before he got himself home for me to tend to the gunshot wound. I know what he did was sinful but I am a woman alone and I am not of a mind to face the Union soldiers even now in New Orleans to return the gold my Samuel took when he knew he was going against the Lord. The satchel is safely buried in the ground, and I have made markings in the Old Testament books of Ruth and Samuel 1 to serve as a guide to the location should I have a need to settle monetary obligations I am unable to satisfy with the fruits of honest labor. The clarification of how the markings are to be read have been recorded with this letter.
If no such need arises before I am joined again with my beloved Samuel at the feet of the Lord, the gold will remain in its final resting place until it is discovered and returned to whom it rightfully belongs.
After reading Ruth Callahan Landry’s words, I couldn’t wait to work out the symbols for myself. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find the treasure, or if almost a hundred and fifty years later there was anything left to find, but I wanted more than anything to surprise Terrill with an amazing inheritance that was by all rights his. When I went back to the attic for the codes, a newspaper clipping slipped loose from a folder containing several more. I picked it up, glanced at the story, and that’s when I knew the puzzle was bigger than a cache of gold—and more than I could solve on my own.
Fifteen
Having realized four hours
The whole world is my native land.
—Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-first century A.D .
The Landry family Bible held an amazing secret, a secret neither my husband nor his father had hinted at knowing even once during the eight years of my living in Bayou Allain. I let that bother me for a while, let myself pout privately about being left out of the loop. I pouted semiprivately as well, dropping a note to my best girlfriend, knowing she’d pick up on things not being quite right.
But then I realized how stupid that was. Terrill shared everything with me. He told me personal things I knew he’d never trusted anyone else to know. Since he hadn’t mentioned that a Civil War treasure was buried on the family’s land, it made sense that he, too, was in the dark. Before telling him, however, I needed to know more, to figure out exactly how the code pointing to the cache of gold worked.
The inconvenience of having to go to the parish library so often was minor. The Bible, though the family’s property, was considered a historic find, having been unearthed during the razing of a tumbled-down barn that was part of the original Landry homestead. The judge had agreed to let the book remain on public display.
I have no idea why the letter in the binding hadn’t been discovered before. Maybe it had. Maybe the decision was made to leave it where it had been found. Or maybe the lack of resources for restoring the worn leather meant no one had ever looked at the cover carefully.
The minute I read it, I knew what I had—but only because I’d been looking through the boxes in Bear’s attic, and the list of codes the letter referenced was fresh in my mind. It wasn’t a complicated cipher, but a series of dots and dashes resembling Morse code that referred to books, chapters, and verses in the Bible instead of representing the alphabet.
Alone, the markings meant nothing and were virtually worthless, but the handwritten letter in the leather binding made them worth, well, whatever the key to a buried treasure was worth! And, honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out how they worked after I read the note….
My name is Ruth Callahan Landry. I am the lawful wedded wife of Samuel Jonathan Landry. We have not been blessed with children for me to tell what has happened, and my Samuel wi l l be dead and soon in the arms of the Lord, though I would wish him to stay on this earth as my husband for fifty more years were the Lord willing and had not the gangrene set in before he got himself home for me to tend to the gunshot wound. I know what he did was sinful but I am a woman alone and I am not of a mind to face the Union soldiers even now in New Orleans to return the gold my Samuel took when he knew he was going against the Lord. The satchel is safely buried in the ground, and I have made markings in the Old Testament books of Ruth and Samuel 1 to serve as a guide to the location should I have a need to settle monetary obligations I am unable to satisfy with the fruits of honest labor. The clarification of how the markings are to be read have been recorded with this letter.
If no such need arises before I am joined again with my beloved Samuel at the feet of the Lord, the gold will remain in its final resting place until it is discovered and returned to whom it rightfully belongs.
After reading Ruth Callahan Landry’s words, I couldn’t wait to work out the symbols for myself. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find the treasure, or if almost a hundred and fifty years later there was anything left to find, but I wanted more than anything to surprise Terrill with an amazing inheritance that was by all rights his. When I went back to the attic for the codes, a newspaper clipping slipped loose from a folder containing several more. I picked it up, glanced at the story, and that’s when I knew the puzzle was bigger than a cache of gold—and more than I could solve on my own.
Fifteen
Having realized four hours
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