PROLOGUE
Wheelchairs and stretchers rolled down the random-width board halls and the noises of the hospital and medical school came through the doors along with a faint odor of ether. How a hospital and medical school ended up in east central Alabama was a wonder, but, indeed, the Alabama legislature had chartered the Grafenburg Medical Institute and now it served its hometown, Dadeville and the surrounding communities such as Lafayette and Dudleyville.
Dr. Grafenburg and his daughter, also a doctor, were working, seeing patients, formulating drugs and teaching aspiring doctors. While the community, appreciated the school and the doctors, the lady doctor somewhat grudgingly, the secret that they kept would have well gotten them hanged.
Deep under the basement of the medical school was a sub-basement complete with a tunnel that ran all the way to the old Indian encampments near Horseshoe Bend. This tunnel had been dug by former slaves who were seeking escape to the north, not from the former plantation owners, but from the northerners, carpetbaggers, if you will, who had come south and confiscated the lands and property of many white southerners. This tunnel was over ten miles long, supported by heart-pine timbers, more sturdy than the great coal mines of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. A man could walk upright and with the ventilation provided would never want for air.
These interlopers were thieves and outlaws and often meaner and more brutal than any slave owners.
As the former slaves escaped they took food, clothes and valuables that had been at their old home places and stored these items in earthenware vaults all along the tunnel.
As more and more former slaves escaped, the new owners became agitated and often tortured the southern property owners, or the remaining former slaves, in a vain effort to determine how the escapes were taking place.
As the escapes slowed, rumors of tunnels and night wagons, abounded, as did stories of stolen gold, silver and precious stones. The cache was, in truth, greater than any amount rumored.
YOU ARE READING
That Summer
AdventureWhen normal isn't or how a seemingly normal summer almost got us all killed. Copyright@2014 Vader A. Pennington All characters are fictional. Any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locations actually exist, however the...
