The Secret

My name is Walter and today, January 1, 1980, is my 104^th birthday. This makes me the oldest living resident of Rye, New Hampshire. Of course, Rye only has a population of 5,400 so in the grand scheme of things it’s probably no big deal. What makes this day a big deal is I am about to tell a secret that I have been safeguarding for 94 years. The person I’ve chosen to share this secret with is 10 years old, the same age I was when it was told to me.

When I was a young boy I would meet my mother at the nursing home after school. She started working there after my father died. Like most of the men in Rye, he was a commercial fisherman. A storm blew up one day while he was out on the Georges Banks and we never saw him again. I really hated the nursing home! The place smelled like decay and most of the people were either cranky or feeble minded, that is except for one man. At 102 Oscar was Rye’s oldest person at that time. He had seen so many changes over his life from the war of 1812 and the civil war to the opening of the West. The Erie Canal was dug when he was a young man and the steam locomotive made it possible to travel from coast to coast in days instead of months. I would sit with Oscar and listen to his stories day after day as my mother struggled with her duties.

About a week before Oscar died he said he had a secret to tell me. Whether I shared this secret with anyone else was up to me because he wouldn’t be around much longer anyway. The story he told me was about pirate treasure on the Isle of Sholes and the Smuttynose Island murders. Everyone in Rye has heard the legends about Blackbeard and the treasure he buried somewhere on one of the islands, but no one took them seriously, no one except for Louis H.F. Wagner the man who found the treasure.

Unfortunately Wagner celebrated too much and revealed the treasure’s location to his boss John Hontvet. When Louis went to retrieve his find, John’s wife plus her cousin and sister-in-law were standing guard. They attacked Louis, who managed to kill two of the three of the women. The third lady ran off and hid. Louis gathered up the treasure and moved it to a new hiding place. Louis evaded capture for a short time but was eventually caught, tried, convicted and hung. Oscar was Louis’s attorney. Just before being marched to the gallows, Louis gave the treasures location to Oscar. Many years later Oscar told me where the treasure was hidden.

Once I was old enough to row a boat to the islands without drawing attention, I went to the secret location. I’ve always been a cautious person and never took too much treasure at one time to avoid raising suspicion. Much of the booty is still there. Tommy, my young friend will now have the same opportunity that I had. Now’s the time to tell him where the treasure is hidden.

No, I’m not going to share the location with my readers. You will have to find your own treasure.