“Simple. We simply need to dive for it.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
It wasn’t until the following morning that the four of them managed to fly into Minot in North Dakota and hire all the diving equipment required to retrieve the Confederate gold. The Cessna Centurion was replaced with David’s de Havilland DHC Sea Otter. In doing so, they were able to now land on the dammed river, where the Confederate treasure was supposed to have been hidden.
All told, it was nearly midday by the time the DHC Otter had gracefully skimmed the slow-moving water, taxied to the beach, and was anchored along the dark bank of the river.
Sam surveyed the area. The sky was a pale, washed out blue, with a few puffy white clouds. A cold, northerly breeze was enough to make the river ripple. Once this entire area had run with cooling molten magma, creating the common extrusive igneous rock — basalt. Over time, silt and clay were compacted into sedimentary rock. Today the riverbank was comprised of hard granite, basalt, and lose black shale.
On shore, Sam, Tom and David donned their dry suits and dive gear, while Virginia began laying out the ropes, pulleys, and inflatable lift bags that would most likely be required to bring up the treasure chest. They were using a set of standard air tanks fitted to SCUBA equipment and a single pony bottle containing a small amount of oxygen for emergencies. There would be no need for the larger, and more complicated rebreather systems, because the depth was shallow. Submersion times would be kept comfortably short.
Frowning with concern, Virginia gave Sam a thin-lipped smile. “You’re going to do this, aren’t you?”
He squeezed her hand affectionately. “I told you we’d find it and we’d get your father back. We still have three days to retrieve the gold and to make a deal.”
She squeezed his hand back. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Sam said with a carefree boyish grin. Nodding to Tom and David, he put his dive regulator into his mouth, shuffled off the ledge of the rocky shore to the river, and into the icy waters below.
Sam gently released air from his buoyancy control device until he started to sink. He followed the natural slope of the bank, with Tom and David following right behind. Bright crepuscular rays penetrated the crystal-clear waters all the way to the bottom of the river nearly seventy feet below. He swallowed, allowing his ears to equalize as he descended.
Sam checked his depth gauge.
It read: 35 feet. A couple feet above one atmosphere.
He turned to face the river bank. With the visibility excellent, he had a good 270-degree view of the surrounding submerged slopes, but no sign of any entrance to a mine. For a moment he worried that the entire mine had been flooded with silt. It was a possibility, but he hoped the dark shale and quartz which lined the slope would have prevented that.
Sam turned to Tom, his palms raised in a confused gesture.
Tom shrugged. It wouldn’t be the first time something wasn’t where they’d expected it to be.
On his dive slate, Sam wrote: LET’S SPLIT UP. SEARCH NORTH AND SOUTH.
David shook his head. Wiped the slate clean and wrote: NO. WE STICK TOGETHER!
Sam nodded. He gathered that David had been crossed by his family so many times before that he would never truly trust anyone. That suited Sam fine. They could stick together. Three pairs of eyes instead of one, would have a good chance of finding the opening if it was still down there.
He swam north along the sloping bank of the river at a depth of thirty feet. After swimming nearly two hundred feet, Sam turned around. They three divers returned to the starting point and then headed south until they reached the fork where the river split into two. Keeping the bank to their left, Sam continued round the point, heading up the second river.
Thirty feet past this point, he spotted what they were after.
An eddy swirled in front of them — marking the entrance to the abandoned mineshaft. As expected, it was partially buried in silt, rock, and river debris. A series of jet-black shale lined the entrance, blocking two thirds of the tunnel. Rotten railway sleepers that had once formed the framework for the mine’s adit had collapsed.
Sam switched on his flashlight and shined it inside.
The beam shot through the still water, to the shelf of a dark basalt boulder. A pair of wooden slats ran along the ground in the shape of a narrow-gauge mine rail. In its original form, gold is found in igneous volcanic hydrothermal veins where it is deposited along with quartz, amethyst, and other metal ores.
Several feet within, an old wooden mine wagon leaned on its left side, where a pile of quartz fell from its bucket. Sam guessed the original prospector who mined the shaft had used the cart, because it had been too difficult to bring metal rails to the rugged, Sioux occupied land.
Tom studied the adit’s rotten framework.
Sam pointed to his dive slate, which read: WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Tom wiped the slate and replied: IT’S LOOSE, BUT I’M GAME.
Sam handed the slate to David, who simply nodded that he was keen to keep going. It would be dangerous, but it wasn’t like any of them had much of a choice.
They needed to retrieve the Confederate treasury.
Lives depended on their success.
Tom and David switched on their headlights and hand flashlights. The remaining portion of the opening still clear was roughly three feet wide by two and a half high. It was going to be tight — especially for Tom — but the dimensions made the opening navigable.
To make it easier, Sam unclipped and removed his single air tank and fed it through first, before effortlessly swimming through the gap.
About ten feet inside, the tunnel opened up to a horizontal antechamber. Here the shaft was closer to four feet wide and five feet high. Small, but large enough to dive without fear of being unable to turn around if needed. Sam reattached his dive tank and waited for Tom and David to swim through.
When they were ready, he continued deeper into the shaft.
It ran approximately a hundred feet in a horizontal line. At the end of which, it took a ninety degree turn — straight down. Above them, a huge hardwood beam was still dug deeply into the sides of the tunnel to form a gantry from which objects were once craned down in the past.
Sam flashed his light down the vertical shaft.
It reached the bottom some twenty feet below. The width was fine to swim through, but it didn’t leave sufficient space. Anyone swimming forward couldn’t abruptly change direction. They would be forced to swim backwards.
Sam didn’t need to explain that to Tom or David, who both realized the problem the second they glanced into the narrow, confining space.
Sam removed his dive cable, running it over the old wooden beam and attaching the end to his dive belt with a carabiner. It ran off a spool that was thick enough to be used both as a guidewire and for lifting purposes. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only back up possible, given their space and time constraints.
Lips pressed tightly together, Tom gripped the opposite end of the guidewire and said nothing. Sam knew his friend would move hell and high water to ensure he could be dragged back out if he got stuck.
Without any further discussion, Sam started his descent headfirst down the vertical shaft into the darkness below.
The bottom of the narrow shaft opened into a small chamber. It was big enough for a single diver to turn around, but not much larger. Sam swept his flashlight in a gentle arc. The walls were scarred with multiple two to three feet gashes, where prospectors must have once tested various quartz seams for gold. To the north, a new tunnel headed in a downward slope, before breaking off into two more tunnels.
Sam swallowed hard. If the shaft went much deeper, they were going to need a lot more equipment. He was about to turn around to tell Tom and David just that, when he spotted a large pile of black shale lining a hole in the ground below. The jet-black shale was out of place, at geologic odds with the pink or white of quartz.