Cave Dwellers (20 page)

   When they got to level ground, Siri knelt down and looked expectantly at her. She wanted Ramira to get on her back too.

   Watching the male and Zaac fly around, Siri had decided that they were not going to outdo the females. She was offering Ramira the chance to fly.

   Ramira was at a loss. She had never ridden horses. As a matter of fact, she had never been on any animal’s back. Zaac was able to do it. How hard could it be?
she thought. Her legs were pretty strong. She should have enough strength in them to grip the bird’s sides.

   Then the same thought occurred to her that had entered Zaac’s mind earlier. If she could cling to the sides of walls, surely she should be able to stay on the bird’s back.

   She climbed up onto Siri’s back. When she got settled, the female turned her neck to assure herself that Ramira was in position. Feeling Ramira’s knees pressed into her sides and Ramira’s hands holding on to her neck, she stood up and started walking. The walk turned into a run as she extended her wings and with a few flaps jumped into the air.

   They climbed higher and higher until the birds were flying beside each other. Ramira could not believe it. This was truly exhilarating.

   Zaac looked over at Ramira. “Isn’t this great?”

   “Yes! Wonderful!” The air blew her hair back, her eyes were sparkling and a smile completely lighted up her face.

   Zaac could tell by looking at her that she was having the time of her life.

   Their reverie was soon interrupted by squawking from the ledge where the megapetomeinon lived. The adults launched themselves and joined their offspring in the air. The adults meant no
harm, they were only getting a closer look at what the younger birds were doing with the intruders.

   They had never seen a human on a megapetomeinon’s back. It was a sight—all seven megapetomeinon circling majestically around the cavern, two of which had Zaac and Ramira on their backs.

22

   The days had turned into weeks and the weeks into months. It was toward the end of September with October only a few days away.

   Zaac and Ramira had tried all of the tunnels leading out of the cavern except two. When they returned from each trip, Rogue and Siri were waiting for them. Their game of tag had advanced until each couple was trying to catch the other.

   Zaac and Ramira’s climbing ability had increased. They were now able to climb from one side of the cavern to the other across the top. This meant clinging to the roof upside down.

   At first this seemed really strange to both of them, but gradually, as they did it more and more, it came to feel perfectly natural.

   Zaac was progressing in his martial arts training. He passed the tests for his orange belt and was now close to completing his green belt. Even though Ramira was much more advanced, he had to be careful when they were sparring because of his newly acquired strength. He had to stop short with all of his strikes and kicks. He could accidentally hurt her when she tried to block him.

   Zaac’s birthday was the sixteenth of September. He missed the usual celebration but he was also about to receive a gift that few teenagers could even imagine.

   “We have two tunnels left,” Zaac said to Ramira that morning. “Which one do you think we should try?”

   “Let’s try the one on the upper ledge close to the entrance on the other side.” She looked across hopefully.

   “That sounds like a winner to me. It can’t be any worse than the ones we have tried so far.”

   They got their usual supplies for a couple of days’ travel, moss to light the way and started off.

   Zaac led with Ramira following. They had traveled close to two hours when Zaac emerged onto a ledge at one end of a cavern that was at least two hundred
feet across. From one side to the other was a huge pit over a hundred feet deep.

   All that Zaac was able to see was a black void. The moss they were carrying lit up only the ledge where they stood.

   “What do we do now?”

   “Wait a minute,” Ramira said.

   She sent out her signals and they bounced off the cavern walls, feeding her information about the terrain features. “There’s a ledge with a tunnel facing us on the opposite side of the cavern.”

   “We might as well climb over and see where it leads.”

   It took only a few minutes for them to climb to the other side by the shortest route—across the roof. They reached the ledge and entered the tunnel, which was wide enough for them to walk side by side. The ceiling was close to nine feet.

   After about twenty minutes they encountered a small cavern room on the left side of the passageway.

   Zaac took a step into the room, not really expecting to see anything, and noticed a couple of small wooden boxes on one side. The other side had something that was covered with old, half-rotting burlap.

   He turned around to Ramira, “Take a look at this.”

   “What do you think it is?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

   “Let’s find out.”

   Kneeling in front of one of the boxes, he reached down to open it. When he lifted the lid, he never expected in a million years to find what was there.

   The box was full of U.S. gold double eagles.

   Zaac fell back in disbelief, his mouth open in astonishment.

   “What is it?” Ramira asked from the room’s entrance.

   “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Take a look.” He turned to her, still dumbfounded.

   Ramira rushed up beside him and gaped in amazement too. “How in the world do you think that got down here?”

   “Who knows? But it makes me wonder what’s in the other box.” He lifted the lid on that one.

   It, too, was filled with gold coins.

   “Wow!”

   Ramira fell down beside him, speechless.

   When the shock wore off, Zaac reached inside one of the boxes and scooped out a handful of coins. He let them fall out of his hand only to scoop up another handful and repeat the process.

   Ramira did the same thing with the other box.

   “What do you think they’re worth?” he asked.

   “I’m not sure, but my guess would be several million dollars.”

   Suddenly another thought entered his mind, the burlap. What was under it?

   He stood up and rushed over to it. Taking a corner, he pulled it off.

   If Zaac was shocked before, he was completely floored at what was in front of him now.

   Neatly stacked one upon the other
were bars of gold. There were six layers with eight bars to a layer. A total of forty-eight bars of gold.

   Zaac and Ramira were spellbound. No words could express the thoughts that flooded their brains.

   Ramira reached over and lifted one of the bars. “This thing weights over twenty pounds I’m sure.”

   Zaac picked up another testing the weight. “It doesn’t feel that heavy.”

   “You’re not a good judge of weight with your new-found strength.” She placed her bar back on the pile. “It would be interesting to know how this gold got here and who it belongs too.”

   “I don’t know about you but I’m all for finders keepers,” Zaac said, laughing. “Now all we have to do is find a way out of here.”

   “This gold gives us a new hope at least,” Ramira said. “This type wasn’t minted until the late 1800s. The bars were probably later. That means someone was able to enter these tunnels at that time.”

   “How do you know so much about gold?”

   “I did an essay on it a couple of years ago. It was quite interesting.” She thought back to her research. “If these bars are like the others they made, a standard gold bar weights 27.5 lbs. That is equivalent to 440 ounces.”

   Zaac knew that gold prices were astronomical. “With the gold prices what they are today, what would these be worth?”

   “Over forty million dollars,” she replied jubilantly.

   “Awesome!”

   Their minds both strayed to thoughts of how the gold happened to be in this small cavern room located in the mountains of North Carolina.

   As it happens, there was a story: Modoc Indians robbed an army mule train carrying what was thought to be $200,000 in gold coins near the Castle Craigs railroad station. The sum was actually $250,000 in gold coins. It was buried in a cave near the
craigs and supposedly was never discovered. But, in fact, it had been found.

   Karl Rothsheim’s father was an immigrant from Russia who arrived in the Port of New York about 1870. There were many other immigrants with him from Sleswig, Bohamia, Austrich, Prussia, Germany, Bavaria, France, and Russia. They were cigar makers, farmers, joiners, clerks, gardeners, cooks, brewers and merchants.

   Karl’s father was a merchant, and Karl took up the family business. When the West opened up, he and thousands of others sought out the land of opportunity. On one of his trips, he was heading to the Craigs railroad station to go back east when he was caught in a storm. Some people would say it was chance or luck, but the place he sought shelter happened to be the cave where the treasure was buried.

   Karl built a fire and was waiting out the storm when he noticed the edge of a canvas bag sticking out of the ground. He dug and loosened the dirt around it, enabling him to open the sack. Much to his surprise, it was the cache of gold coins that had been taken by the Modoc Indians.

   He took part of the stash with him as he went back east. Purchasing a couple of trunks with false bottoms, he packed up the rest on his next trip and took it home.

   Karl used a small sum of the money to buy a vast quantity of land as well as the mountain containing the cave, which had a passageway to the room where he hid the gold. He ultimately became partners in a gold mine, allowing him to have the gold bars made, which he then stored in the cavern room. He had strong wooden doors made to block the entrance to the cave.

   Karl never married and spent his free time admiring his horde of gold. On one of his visits, a small tremor caused a collapse in the cave. He was killed and the collapse sealed up the tunnel. He had no heirs and no one knew of his vast treasure. Until Zaac and Ramira arrived.

   They left the gold where they found it and went out of the room to continue up the tunnel. Another ten minutes up the passageway, they found the reason no one had found the gold.

   The tunnel was completely blocked with rocks and boulders, preventing anyone from entering or leaving.

   “What do we do now?” Ramira asked starring at the huge rock pile blocking the tunnel. “There goes our chance of escape.”

   “Not really,” Zaac said. “It just means I have a small job to do.”

   It dawned on Ramira what he was saying. It would prevent any normal person from leaving. But Zaac was not normal. He could clear enough of the debris for them to get through it.

   “I’ll carry the larger rocks and boulders to the pit and throw them in. The smaller ones I’ll toss down the tunnel a few times until I get them in the pit too.”

   “What can I do to help?” She was suddenly filled with hope.

   “If you could keep me supplied with moss so I can see, it would be a big help.”

   They started clearing the top of the pile. Zaac tossed the smaller rocks up the tunnel and carried the larger ones; Ramira held the moss to throw the light where he needed it.

   Zaac didn’t want the moss to die so they went back at the end of each day and replanted it. They took a new batch the next morning.

   At the end of the fourth day, Zaac removed a couple of rocks from the top of the pile and a faint breeze rushed through the small opening.

   “I feel fresh air,” he shouted down to Ramira.

  She responded with a shout of glee. “Yes!! Another day or two and we should be out.”

   “And we have a few things to discuss before we leave.”

   Ramira couldn’t imagine what they needed to discuss. “What sort of things?”

   “One of them is Rogue and Siri. The other is this gold. We need to decide what to do about them.”

   “You’re right. I hadn’t really given that much thought. This gold adds a totally new dimension to the equation.”

   “Stand back. I’m going to start tossing the rocks down. I don’t think I’ll carry any more.” Zaac planned to use some of the rocks to reseal the tunnel once they were through.

   He worked for another hour before they called it a day. They went back to the cavern and ate dinner. While they ate, they discussed their plans.

   “I think we should take a couple of the bars out and place them in a vault at a bank. At this point, we should probably leave Rogue and Siri in the cavern. If they’re seen, the whole world will be after them, trying to catch them or worse,” Zaac said between mouthfuls.